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

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

#261

Post by atwood22 »

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…

Unless the author is correct 100% of the time, it should be easy to point to examples where the author admits they’re wrong, which would trivially negate the hypothesis that autistic people can’t admit they’re wrong. Instead of providing examples, the author choose to write many hundreds of words that basically boil down to “I’m not wrong, everyone else is wrong.” That doesn’t sound like healthy introspection to me. It sounds like rationalizing.

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

#262

Post by larve »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #197
larve wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would you even want to know if other people thought you read these situations incorrectly?

It's oh so hard to relate a conversation you were involved in in a manner that's transparent enough for making a proper assessment, especially since I know I am actually missing a lot of subtext.

That said, I have a coach that helps me with this, and I work on my writing a lot. I am currently at a job where I never run into this particular problem, yet I have thorny discussions with lots of "disagreements" all the time. This really helped me understand that it's not just me.

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

#263

Post by jjk166 »

knaik94 wrote: post #234
shlant wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why so many people are saying this. The article specifically says at the begging: "When these conflicts arise, here are some things that might be happening" SOME and MIGHT are being completely ignored and replaced with absolutes by many commenters. At no point does it claim to be an exhaustive list of every possible single interaction, nor does it say that there are no other explanations. If anythi…

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.

Reread that sentence again, just a little more slowly. If you need to say something false to protect someone's ego, then the person whose ego is in need of protecting is the one who is wrong, and can't acknowledge it without undue risk to their ego. That's a statement of fact, not a command.

Refusing to change is not the same thing as demanding others change. If you can't live in a world where someone does not change their behavior to protect your ego, that's a you problem.

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

#264

Post by larve »

cloverich wrote: post #227
larve wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I am pretty good at being social and suave in the workplace (so well I never would have thought I was autistic until age 40), but of course I can be in a bad mood or phrase something wrong. But even if that is the case, shutting down a business conversation because you think your engineer sounds patronizing is just… not great business/tech crossover, to be honest.

I understand and empathize with your angle. But it is important to know -- nobody likes being patronized. Whether it is actually happening, or only perceived to be happening, this is a universal truth of social interactions. The vast majority of people in all social settings -- professional or otherwise -- will not collaborate with someone who is patronizing unless forced, even if it will be mutually beneficial. This…

I know quite well. This article is in many ways me trying to figure out how to do just that. I know I can't just say "I know a lot about this, trust me and just answer my question." But if just asking the plain question is perceived as patronizing, how can I move on? Sometimes, getting some maneuvering room and empathy from the other side helps tremendously.

I legitimately do not know what patronizing is. I have an abstract understanding of it, and it baffles me why anybody would do something like that. Yet it is an abstract force with very real consequences I have to deal with.

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

#265

Post by larve »

white_dragon88 wrote: post #246
larve wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

It's actually just lifted from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32192873

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

#266

Post by [deleted] »

larve wrote: post #250
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…

[deleted]

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

#267

Post by knaik94 »

larve wrote: post #250
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…

With additional context, I think that's fair to ask but I want to believe there's still things you can meaningfully do to make these interactions feel more intuitive. I would argue that allistic people do see from the other side but have a hard time understanding why austic people end up with a different conclusion. People care how other people see them, that's true to a certain degree. People might not change, but everyone feels affected by other's perceptions of them. There's a lot of conditioned connotations that come from how we grow up in society, so it's not a small bit of effort to move on from a jab or patronizing talk. If someone has worked hard to gain respect and not feel insecure about themselves, patronizing talk is hard to move forward from. In that situation it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not.

People like other people that make them laugh, so I don't know how helpful this will be but I would say try your hand at incorporating some humor into your speech, if you don't already. Focus mainly on humor that punches up, lean towards the humor of Hasan Minaj and not towards the humor of The Big Bang Theory.

It's also not about feigning agreement or caving in to authority. You have to let other people be wrong. It's more nuanced than I can go into here via comments, but I imagine you understand. Letting other people be wrong shouldn't be about prioritizing your values, it's about respecting their learning process as well. If you want to prioritize your values despite understanding that it comes at the cost of respecting other people's learning process, that's a choice you can make. Intent doesn't negate the consequences of how words might affect someone else. I am trying my best to be respectful, I hope I didn't offend with anything I said because that's not my intent. I apologize if I did already at some point.

Thank you for the healthy discourse with me, I appreciate it.

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

#268

Post by morelisp »

jaywalk wrote: post #204
denton-scratch wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

From a purely technical standpoint, of course they are valid questions. But from a political standpoint, when you know that your manager just read a blog post about React, I think the discussion needs to be framed differently. Starting out with something like "Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with React. What were some of the positive aspects of it that stood out to you?" will help to understand their perspective. Again, I ful…

The manager is such a blank slate in this story it's almost useless to discuss, but what stood out for me was:

"A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React... in order to make an informed decision, I needed to understand a few things: ... Why do they think a technology change is a solution? Do they understand the implications of such a switch?"

What problems such a switch might solve and what the implications are is what the manager is asking you. Why would you direct exactly those questions back to them?

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

#269

Post by xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #182
brainwipe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuro diverse people can't necessarily change their behaviour because it's how their brain is wired. It's like asking a visually impaired person to just see better. Many neuro diverse people have to force themselves to "fit in" causing untold stress and trauma. That's not for their own good, it's forcing their brains to work in a way that they don't.

I'm fairly sure everyone alive has a neural plasticity above zero.

Ingenious. Groundbreaking. Whitepaper-worthy. If only people on the autistic spectrum would just simply learn their way out of it.

Even better idea: use your neural plasticity and get some empathy.

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

#270

Post by denton-scratch »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #196
denton-scratch wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Mental health diagnoses pretty much only happen when the patient's life is impacted enough to convince the people involved in their life that there's a problem and figuring it out is necessary. If you get good enough grades, have a non-zero amount of friends, have a family and career that accommodates your random foibles, and generally manage your life well, then you can be as textbook mentally ill as you want withou…

I questioned the "autism" thing because author seems to be able to express himself clearly, seems to have empathy, and seems to care. I only mentioned the (assumed) late diagnosis because it seems to lend weight to my question.

It's been suggested to me that I might have Asperger's (I believe the suggestion was hostile; it was my ex-wife, who is a trained psychotherapist). If I have Asperger's, it's only in the sense that everyone has a little bit of Asperger's. But I worried about it for several years. Vague psychological diagnoses are harmful.

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