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“Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

the.scapegoat.dev

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Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#131

Post by denton-scratch »

jaywalk wrote: post #61
Orothrim wrote: post #10

The issue with this article is how the author is approaching all of these discussions. There is no attempt to see the other person's perspective, or evaluate how the author should be approaching the discussion. This is very common among us Engineers but is a massive failure. If a manager comes over and suggests something to you, you need to understand their perspective for coming to that discussion, not asking questi…

Yeah, the example about rewriting a page in React really stood out to me for this. He says "I entertained the question in good faith" but he was clearly just asking "gotcha" questions to try and show the manager what a stupid question it was. And it may very well have been a stupid question, but as you said, he didn't even attempt to understand his manager's perspective. I can totally understand why his manager got f…

> just asking "gotcha" questions

I didn't read them as "gotcha" questions. They looked like straightforward and sensible questions. I wonder if the manager was expecting some kind of kickback, and was braced to be adversarial. Perhaps there's some history here, between author and his manager.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#132

Post by dalbasal »

I think this is a good/important article. Yes, it is a "POV" perspective, and has elements of defensiveness but it is also honest and open... trying to find better communication.

>>>impatient and cut me off or interject with a snap interpretation of what I have said so far.

So... this sounds like you have already entered into defensiveness by this point, one way or another. Defensiveness tends to be mutual, so perhaps you are also feeling/presenting defensiveness.

For example, in your manager meeting... "I simply need you to answer these questions" can easily seem prosecutorial. It is framed in a way that makes you seem good, and him (or his ideas) seem bad. He is making whimsical decisions based on blog posts. You are focusing on real, important issues like usability.

This is a frame, a somewhat combative frame... probably/probably loaded with non complimentary assumptions on your part. Whether these assumptions are true, false, exaggerated or whatnot... It creates a passive aggressive frame. These tend to be stubborn frames. It sounds like you are throwing out questions in an attempt to derail/dismiss the idea, not collaborate.

Imagine the tables turned around. Next meeting on the subject. This time, your manager "needs to ask questions before forming an opinion:"

(1) What is your objection to the react framework? (2) Why is performance selectively concerning only in this context, but not others?...etc.

You can see where I am going. These are loaded questions, passive aggressive. Such questions will almost always elicit a a defensive riposte.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#133

Post by jiggawatts »

starkd wrote: post #91
jiggawatts wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the blame is with the other party. An uncomfortable truth we all pretend to ignore is that more than half the population is below average intelligence.[1] The comments in this blog post don't just apply to autistic people, but apply equally to people that are simply less wrong than average. An observation I made is that some people make correct statements approximately 90% of the time. This is waaaay above…

I think you might be confusing autistism with high intelligence. The two are very different. I'm not sure it's even remotely comparable. Most autistic truly autistic people have a severe deficit to the point they have a problem with basic navigation of the world. Not just inconvencies. There's a tendency to turn every difficulty into a syndrome. While reading the article, I had the distinct feeling the author was not…

A friend of mine was both autistic and highly intelligent in a narrow way that autistic people often are.

It was... fun to watch him take university lecturers down a peg or two.

The linked article is by someone who is clearly very knowledgeable about specific topics in the same way.

How many IT people do you know who attend conferences?

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#134

Post by Hayarotle »

dghf wrote: post #53
Orothrim wrote: post #10

The issue with this article is how the author is approaching all of these discussions. There is no attempt to see the other person's perspective, or evaluate how the author should be approaching the discussion. This is very common among us Engineers but is a massive failure. If a manager comes over and suggests something to you, you need to understand their perspective for coming to that discussion, not asking questi…

> If a manager comes over and suggests something to you, you need to understand their perspective for coming to that discussion Isn't that exactly what the author did, at least in the React discussion? They tried to establish what potential benefits the manager hoped to get from the React rewrite. It was the manager who immediately gave up on the discussion, not the author.

The problem is with the (interpreted) subtext of the question. The question "Is our checkout page not performing well?" might be just a question, but in the context the author was put in, it usually has different implications. Many people would ask such question in order to imply that changing the framework was unnecessary and that the checkout page is already performing well enough. This seems to be how the manager interpreted the question.

There are different ways of asking the same question, with different subtext. He could had started, for example, by saying "We should analyze how our checkout page's performance could improve if we switch to React". This way he would be able to ask essentially the same questions he intended to, but without accidentally implying that the switch is undesirable and unnecessary.

Now, someone working with someone with autism should understand they have trouble with this kind of subtext, and give them more leeway. But most people don't know how to do this, as they're not used to such interactions.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#135

Post by nibbleshifter »

JackFr wrote: post #111
trashtester wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a manager comes over and suggests something to you, you need to understand their perspective for coming to that discussion For someone having autism, this may be impossible. If they are open about their autism, one could argue that the manager should be the one trying to see the topic from two sides. One may also need to come up with a shared understanding where the manager has a way to inform the autistic perso…

I’m all for accommodating disability. But in this case an obvious solution might be to do what your manager suggests simply because he is your manager. As a non-autistic person I don’t find it difficult to voice my concerns about a particular course of action and then do it anyway if that’s what the boss wants. (I realize the sticking point is “voice my concerns” — doing that in a manner that doesn’t come off as conf…

> But in this case an obvious solution might be to do what your manager suggests simply because he is your manager

That is career suicide (unless you make sure to get it in writing every single time).

As a knowledge worker you are paid to not just be a yes man automaton, you are paid to evaluate and push back as needed.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#136

Post by zelphirkalt »

petercooper wrote: post #44
larve wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for reading, author here! the article is very much a response to a blame already expressed. People can be wrong about factual things, which can be verified. Otherwise it’s a difference of opinions. These are my thoughts on why differences of opinions get phrased as “autistic people just can’t admit when they are wrong”, when myself and most autistic people I know in fact readily admit when we are wrong and mov…

People can be wrong about factual things, which can be verified. We need to be careful, though, to not adopt black and white thinking even around "facts." Often, multiple contradictory factual things can be true at the same time and all pass verification. Illusions are a lighthearted example of this that helped me appreciate this point. For example, the Yanni/Laurel audio illusion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann…

> Illusions are a lighthearted example of this that helped me appreciate this point. For example, the Yanni/Laurel audio illusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanny_or_Laurel) where people on both sides argue, in good faith, that the sound is one or the other. And even if you analyze the underlying audio in depth, neither side is factually wrong because that is how they experience it and isn't merely based around an opinion :-)

This example does not add much. If it is how people experience, then the only fact they can derive is, that they personally experienced it that way. There is no point in fighting about "what it really is", when all you have is a personal exerience. Anyone saying it objectively is this one or that one, only based on personal experience, is not accounting for the fact, that others can experience differently, which is silly.

In this light I assume, that you put quotes around "facts" as a means of saying, that they are not really facts, because if they were, then there would truly only be black and white.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#137

Post by scotty79 »

dusted wrote: post #19

I read this as being strongly opinionated and egocentric.. I want to call it "ausplaining", this tendency to go "no no, YOU don't understand ME (because I'm special, not because I'm wrong)" whenever we get ourselves into situations like the exemplified. I do this A LOT as well, and when people do stick with me for long enough, I often find that I'm either getting my point across by re-framing my explanation, or disco…

Wow. The sheer level of disrespect in this comment...

You can't appreciate that this person have spent 10h per day for last 23 years at dealing with computer issues. Instead you think it would be better spent learning some office politics. I'm not even sure how to comment on that.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#138

Post by PebblesRox »

crabbygrabby wrote: post #51

My little brother is autistic and admits he's wrong all the time. The title of this is trash.

The article is arguing against the myth that autistic people don’t admit when they’re wrong, hence the quotation marks in the title.

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#139

Post by [deleted] »

mfcl wrote: post #121
hackerlight wrote: post #95

> 1. The allistic (non-autistic) person is not hearing what I'm saying. It's possible that they're not smart enough, literally. I find ease of communication is uncorrelated with whether they're on the spectrum or otherwise. It's their raw intelligence level. Somehow the bandwidth between our brains is really high. They often know what I'm saying before I've finished my sentence, because they've already figured it out…

Wow.

[deleted]

Re: “Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong”

#140

Post by bsenftner »

q-big wrote: post #55
dusted wrote: post #19

I read this as being strongly opinionated and egocentric.. I want to call it "ausplaining", this tendency to go "no no, YOU don't understand ME (because I'm special, not because I'm wrong)" whenever we get ourselves into situations like the exemplified. I do this A LOT as well, and when people do stick with me for long enough, I often find that I'm either getting my point across by re-framing my explanation, or disco…

> The author may also benefit from investing some of their mental capital (I'm not being sarcastic, they're obviously very intelligent) into learning how to play the games I am not aware of any good systematic textbooks on this topic. (of course not the author)

The entire field of business and professional communications - there is an entire college for the topic, with multiple disciplines. A College of Communications is not just where the radio, film and journalist majors go, the college has courses that go into professional career depth the nature of communicating ideas to audiences that are not necessarily receptive. I know several communications graduates, my wife was a cinematography major. The communications and language tools taught in a communications program are comprehensive, which makes a lot of sense when one considers how many of the communications careers require complex ideas and complex collaboration to create the delivery of these ideas as audio, motion picture, and prose compositions - the collaborators have to be great communicators or these projects will never deliver.
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