“Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong” • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by throwawaylinux » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

larve wrote: post #18

korijn wrote: post #3

It's interesting to me that all four examples put the blame with the other party. I hope it's just worded poorly or I am reading too much into it. Edit: I'm not saying that invalidates the article's content (in fact I recognize the situations from personal experience), but it doesn't really put a positive spin on it.

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 also be objectively wrong when it comes to social interactions as well though.

To give an example, if someone who is less technical asks you a question that does not give enough background information to give a precise technical answer on, the wrong thing to do is respond by first simply asking questions back at them. Particularly if the questions could be difficult for them to immediately see how it relates to answering their initial question. It doesn't matter that it's because you think holistically or they don't have as deep an understanding, or anything else. The right thing to do is try to stay with people in conversation. Explain your thinking, make sure they understand why you need to ask these questions before you can answer, or give them a range of possibilities that are dependent on these unknowns.

And asking somebody to explain their reasoning and justification for their question before you begin to answer it is very rude, so that's wrong too. It's reasonable to expect more justification as requests become more time-intensive, but an initial response to a question should have some degree of good faith and politeness. Clearly they don't understand all the implications, which is why they asked for your opinion. So asking whether they understand all the implications of what they are asking is a rhetorical question and is basically calling them a moron.

"Should we rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React?"

This question might sound like your manager is expecting a yes or no answer, but they aren't. They want some "conversation". They want your opinion, some explanation for it, an opening to continue the conversation. Even if you could answer with an unqualified "no" without further clarification and be correct on a technical basis, that response is wrong in this social interaction.

"It's possible react could help with performance but it would be quite a lot of work. I don't think we should at this point unless we're seeing performance problems."

Something like that would be a better answer.

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

#162

Post by tenebrisalietum » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

atwood22 wrote: post #9

I can’t imagine dedicating this much time analyzing whether or not I can acknowledge when I’m wrong. It’s almost like this entire piece is an elaborate rationalization the author is making rather than admitting they are wrong.

> A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React because they had read a blog post about another company doing it.

> In this particular situation, the discussion never got past the first question. Is our checkout page not performing well?

> However, the manager interpreted my words as outright rejecting their idea.

If this is what actually happened, the manager is terrible and unprofessional. I feel I run into situations like this as well, where I ask a simple question and because the person asking is treating me like an NPC in a game they're playing but not telling me, I don't get the question answered and furthermore I get something attributed to me (e.g. refusal, uncooperativeness, etc.) that isn't true at all.

I wish there was some way to easily communicate universally that "I mean the literal meaning of these words, nothing more, nothing less."

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

#163

Post by scotty79 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

300bps wrote: post #87

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…

I cringed reading the article because of how much it reminded me of my younger self in my software engineering career 30 years ago. For what it’s worth, I think your assessment and advice are both spot-on. I know the original author is far into his career as well but I think especially as we get more senior that humility and valuing other’s perspectives become as important as the technology. Some of the biggest mista…

Great. You learned to mask better. But younger people and some older ones are really not keen on doing that anymore.

Humility is great, but automatically accepting the blame for somebody's failure to communicate something to you just because they are allistic ... that is not so great.

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

#164

Post by shlant » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

starkd wrote: post #74

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…

He openly admits his default way of dealing with the miscommunication was to quietly walk out of the room. Looks like he could consider some of his own advice. Also, referring to "allistic communication patterns" might also be another impediment here. Normal people don't talk like that. It's like talking to a robot.

> Also, referring to "allistic communication patterns" might also be another impediment here. Normal people don't talk like that. It's like talking to a robot.

why are you assuming they are talking to people IRL like they would write a blog post? Very few people talk in person like they type or behave differently in professional environments vs casual. Seems like a weird critique.

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

#165

Post by denton-scratch » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #108

atwood22 wrote: post #9

I can’t imagine dedicating this much time analyzing whether or not I can acknowledge when I’m wrong. It’s almost like this entire piece is an elaborate rationalization the author is making rather than admitting they are wrong.

Imagine you hear throughout your life that you can't admit you're wrong or that your _kind of person_ can't admit they're wrong. Wouldn't it be a sign of healthy introspection to dedicate time to analyze whether that's correct? And a fundamental requirement to admit to being wrong is, well, actually being wrong. If you analyze a situation and find that you're factually correct, you haven't failed to admit to being wr…

> Wouldn't it be a sign of healthy introspection to dedicate time to analyze whether that's correct?

I wonder if Author is in fact autistic. It seems (not sure if I've got this right) that author wasn't diagnosed until his forties. I'd have expected a diagnosis of autism to occur pre-teen.

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

#166

Post by knaik94 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #89

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…

I didn’t read it as egocentric. The author cares a lot about correctness and delivering high quality work, but the definition of quality or good is very limited in scope. I don’t doubt the veracity of what the author wrote, but I would guess that if we spoke to the counter-parties, their recollection of certain things would be very different. How people perceive the world and express themselves vary, and some people…

I believe it is unintentionally egocentric to assume a single individual's perspective is enough to guarantee correctness. I imagine most of the time that individual makes the best call, but that's not less egocentric. It's easy for an individual to qualify the correctness of technical material, but not easy to do the same for soft skills like communication. As a senior developer or leader, you need some egocentricity in order to have a focused project and clear goals.

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

#167

Post by jart » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #66

UncleMeat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that this approach limits leadership. Often people are asked to solve both technical and nontechnical problems. People can reasonably ask you both to define "better" and to achieve it. If you expect requirements for everything then you'll place a limit on your influence.

This is what I was going to say but phrased better. The issue isn't autistic vs. allistic, the issue is that you've decided you don't want to devote any brainpower to questions which are not directly technical. Sometimes that's fine, but it also means you are probably at the apex of your professional development. So do it, but also realize it means you're unlikely to get promoted further, and your opinion about techn…

I thought it was. The alistic manager wanted to plug into the social gravity of React and the autistic employee wanted an explanation for his labor he could understand. All people regardless of autistic or allistic are usually self-interested and not consciously aware of what motivates their desires. For example, I doubt the manager was capable of explaining what attracted him to React any more than the OP could understand why being part of a famous community might benefit them. Only thing that helps in these situations is for one side to know the other side better than they know themselves. It's easier to work with people if you can mentally model what motivates their desires. That's called empathy and whether or not you've got it distinguishes senior from junior engineers. It should also be a hard requirement for managers.

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

#168

Post by tgflynn » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

Maybe I'm missing something but I have a hard time seeing what any of this has to do with autism. Everything in this article sounds like the lament of an intellectually honest and rational person working in an environment filled with people who are not.

I do recognize that we are only getting one side of the story here, but giving the author the benefit of the doubt, that is what I see in this post.

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

#169

Post by jcranmer » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #109

denton-scratch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more than half the population is below average intelligence. I guess I'm in the bottom half, then; I thought the average was that quantity for which half are below, and half are above.

That's the median. The "average" (when used undecorated/unspecified) generally means the mean. A distribution which is biased towards high-side outliers (such as wealth or income) will generally have more than half of the population below the mean. It's not at all obvious to me that general intelligence has such a distribution (and I can think of plenty of physical mechanisms [injury, disease, malnutrition during dev…

> The "average" (when used undecorated/unspecified) generally means the mean.

I wouldn't say that. Most population statistics--think "average" wages and the like--tend to use median. And when we're talking about intelligence, this isn't something that is readily quantifiable with a number. IQ is explicitly normalized so that 100 is median, and 110 is one standard deviation above median. "mean IQ" isn't a meaningful concept. Given that we can't even measure "mean intelligence", average intelligence tends to mean median intelligence in practice.

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

#170

Post by starkd » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #151

starkd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There isn’t anything “most” autistic people have. The disorder is defined by having at least three of twelve major symptoms so it’s possible for two people with autism to not even overlap in their symptoms. There is also a huge range of severity and many people with the disorder are high-functioning. High-functioning autism is significantly correlated with high IQs. This dismissal amounts to “this can’t be hard for y…

That's kind of my point. The traits that characterize the disorder are so varied, it's hard to believe its just one disorder. I think most people can identify with many of the symptons. I know I can, even though I'm not autistic. Personally, I think the economy seems to encourage that kind of productivity in many ways, so it shouldn't be such a mystery as to why some who are hyperfocused on succeeding should be identifying with it.

I dont think I was being dismissive of anyone, but is it really necessary to call all of life's difficulties some kind of disorder? Does making it a disorder some how legitimize someone's struggles? I don't think so.