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

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

#241

Post by starkd » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

shlant wrote: post #193

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…

I think you should probably do some more reading into Autism Spectrum Disorder. Your comment echos cliched and harmful ideas of what Autism is. The reason "Spectrum" is in the name is because there is a wide range of ways it can manifest - from very severe on one end to less impactful (and in some ways beneficial depending on context) on the other. People who used to be referred to as having Asperger Syndrome for exa…

the idea of a spectrum is still relatively new. Medicine goes through these fads all the time. There's also a natural tendency to define syndromes broader than they actually are. It still seems a very loose definition of the term, as they still, as far as I know, have yet to identify the underlying biological mechanism.

This is not to diminish anyone's suffering. There's also a danger of taking false refuge in a syndrome that can be equally demoralizing and even paralyzing. No one should be defined by their diseases or medical conditions.

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

#242

Post by larve » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

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…

Author here.

I am curious how these are gotcha questions? To me they are the proper questions to ask, as a manager, they probably don’t care about react or vue or any other framework, they care about conversions and revenue and other metrics. That’s exactly what I want to understand, so that I can contextualize and see if React might or might not make sense.

Reasons why React might actually make sense, to show I didn’t just cherry-pick this as a “well duh obviously it’s stupid”:

- we use shopify as a backend, and they published a nifty new react checkout widget that we could replace our convoluted checkout with - all our web developers are actually coming from react, and hate the current jquery mess, and really want to change. It would be time-intensive, but team morale would skyrocket, - another department is planning to move to react as well

After a long time in tech, I really have learnt to not really care about technology that much (as you might see in my article about PHP and JS :).

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

#243

Post by foogazi » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

I liked the article

> 3. I care more about doing good work than office politics.

This whole section illustrates the uncrossable chasm of not “getting” people, while at the same time believing in your own smartness

You should strive for general I, not just logical I

People are not computers, they don’t share your logic and your own logic is fallible as it runs on top of unreliable wet-ware

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

#244

Post by larve » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:46 PM UTC

shlant wrote: post #239

knaik94 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most commenters are saying this based on the conclusion the author ends with. The lines that stood out to me is "I don't care much for saying false things to appease someone's ego. In cases like this, I'm not the one who can't acknowledge being wrong." They decided that everyone around them needs to change.

1. that isn't the conclusion the author ends with. That quote is addressing example #4. The overall conclusion is under the header "Conclusion" 2. That quote also is not saying "everyone needs to change". It's says they are not going to lie about being wrong just because someone else knows less than them (see the title of example #4). Why should anyone be expected to do this? Why should experts in their field pretend…

Thank you! I have indeed tried as best as I could to not prescribe anything, and just present them as “these things have happened, they have not gone well, I think I tried pretty hard, here’s what I think might have been happening”.

If anything, I admit I am wrong daily (if not hourly), and I pretty much never blame anybody, because I don’t really understand what that means anyway. Someone could have done something better, sure, but who and how? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

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

#245

Post by starkd » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

larve wrote: post #201

starkd wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. He did not explicitly quote his conversations with his colleagues. Still, you have to admit "allistic communication patterns" is an awkward phrase to use for a blog post talking about his personal struggles. It might be something you find in a psychology research text, but he was trying to relate his personal experience.

Author here, thanks for reading. I was a bit torn about the “allistic” word, and decided to include it because it does encode what I was talking about in a very technical manner. In fact, if I regret one thing, it is to edit this blog post to shreds. It used to be much more conversational at around 2000 words, and probably conveyed more nuance. I like the form it currently has too, but it requires taking every word a…

The post was perfectly fine. Don't be too hard on yourself. It was a minor criticism. I only proffered it because I thought it offered a useful insight. I've noticed many people tend to use this higher abstract language rather than "real" more relateable terms. I tend to do this myself, when I spend countless time editing words only to find it can be more easily said with much more basic language. This is a commonplace, I think.

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

#246

Post by white_dragon88 » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

larve wrote: post #68

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…

Author here, thanks for reading. I didn’t give much information about my life, but I am pretty adept at playing all these games. So much so that I thought there was no way I could be autistic because of how many friends and business relationships I had. Until it hit me that I spent my 20ies doing what you suggest, which is studying the heck out of these things. But it stops at engineering, where I try to be very open…

I’m pretty sure I’m autistic on some level, I can look back on my life and point at the many clear signs (which go well beyond socially awkward behaviour). What I do try to do though is not let that be a part of my identity. I hate identity politics in general, and the title rubbed me the wrong way. Firstly, who even says that? You? Like one person you met, or an article you read somewhere? It’s a pretty outlandish thing to say regardless of who is saying it, so the article feels like you’re basically teeing up and easy ball to hit. Just my thoughts, take them for what you will

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

#247

Post by shlant » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

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.

I hope more Autistic and non-Autistic people don't put up with this kind of argument. I'm sure most people have an example of a manager making a technical decision (many times due to ego) and being wrong and then the engineering team has to clean up the mess. There should at least be room for discussion which in the example given, the manager does not seem to be interested in.

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

#248

Post by coldtea » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

>In this particular situation, the discussion never got past the first question. I needed to understand why our checkout had to be improved; I explained that technology choices made no difference to the user. However, the manager interpreted my words as outright rejecting their idea.

Well, it was "outright rejecting their idea".

Whatever the phrasing used, the actual question wasn't "Would it be technological better and improve the user experience if we use React for our checkout UI?".

It was rather "I read about this React thing. Sounds cool. Cool companies use it. Should we use it ourselves too and be cool like them?"

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

#249

Post by shlant » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

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…

you seem to be very uncharitable to the author. Why would you assume some sort of maliciousness? Why is it that "he was clearly just asking "gotcha" questions to try and show the manager what a stupid question it was"? What are you basing this on?

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

#250

Post by larve » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

knaik94 wrote: post #187

I read this as writing from someone who has a hard time seeing from other people's perspective. I believe part of the responsibility falls on the author. While they acknowledge that they aren't great at communication, their conclusion does not include working on soft skills. It's something I realized when I started tutoring, if a student fails to understand you, it's not their fault for not understanding. It's on you…

I understand where you coming from, and I do agree. I approached learning social skills as rigorously as I did technology books, and it has helped me grow a huge network of friends of all backgrounds, get married, move continents, get on well with pretty much all of my colleagues. It also ironically made me think I was not autistic for decades, because how could I be since I have such good social skills.

But I still have values that I hold on to. If someone adamantly states they are right about something, and turn it into a “social skill showdown” where one has to feign agreement and cave in to some sort of authority, then count me out. I know other people do it, I kind of understand why, but it’s not for me. I don’t think it’s cold at all, it’s just me prioritizing my values.

What I’m realizing as I write these articles and am more open about my introspection is that a lot of allistic people, for all their talk about empathy and theory of mind, really don’t try very hard to see things from the other side. Maybe I can’t intuitively chose just the right words to make my question not sound patronizing, maybe I don’t even understand what “sounding patronizing” is. At that point it’s really on that person to put in a bit of effort and skip over the jab and realize the question is probably not meant to patronize.

Otherwise it’s like asking a blind person to just look where they’re going when they’re walking into a wall.