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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”

#371

Post by throwaway675309 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #165
mort96 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was wondering the same thing, the author exhibits many traits that I didn't consider someone who is traditionally diagnosed as autistic as capable of having.

I feel like the author might lie somewhere on the spectrum but I was pretty sure being actually autistic was a separate and vastly more serious diagnosis.

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

#373

Post by NotTameAntelope »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #365
jrochkind1 wrote: post #359

> However, "giving in" is not the same as acknowledging when you are wrong: it is simply playing mind games—games I am not interested in playing. > There is more to life: I am an engineer; I like solving problems. I embrace fairness and open intellectual exchange. This matters to me a whole lot more than getting promoted. Plus, "giving in" does not preserve peace—it simply appeases bullies and makes the workplace tox…

> let's try it your way this time I've never understood why people go along with things they disagree about. It seems people often beat a good argument with the threat of retribution if we dont play along. Doesnt sound like a recipe for well thought out actions or incentives.

Because people understand that their perspective might be incomplete or wrong, and/or the consequences of failure are reversible.

People also understand that "correctness" is often subjective and not boolean in nature, so insisting their opinion is in all ways the most correct would be silly.

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

#374

Post by larve »

jaywalk wrote: post #304
larve wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everything you said here makes the response you put in the blog post even more strange. If you already knew about all of the positive aspects of switching to React in this instance, why on Earth did you start off with "Is our checkout page not performing well?" Obviously there are also drawbacks, but you immediately started off from an adversarial position as if it was just a completely off the wall idea. Clearly tha…

I phrased this badly, none of these situations applied, they were just situations where I would recommend using React, to show I'm not opposed to React as such.

The problem I think is that you think me asking a question is adversarial, while I'm just... asking a question in good faith. I'm not considering it a completely off the wall idea at all, I want to know why they think it's a good idea, because I don't understand. This is where the autism comes in, I think. You think I'm being adversarial and dismissive, I think I am open and engaged.

I put a tremendous amount of effort into being socially pleasant, but there still are situations where I think I am doing my best to fully engage with the other person, yet there is a whole game of subtext I am not getting. This is very different from me not accepting I am wrong.

I would love to get the subtext, trust me, and I work hard at it. But it's playing a game that I don't have the rules to. Hopefully what I'm writing will help someone just maybe pause, and think, "did they actually ask this question to be dismissive? or do they just ask because they want to help you solve your problem?." Social grace and empathy goes both ways.

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

#375

Post by throwawaylinux »

SilasX wrote: post #353
throwawaylinux wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relat…

If that's what the manager wanted, they could have clarified as much in response to the author's first answer, or at least recognized there was a disconnect, and worked backwards from that to the point that their expectations were aligned. If they can't do that, then it's not clear their goals are well-defined enough to have a productive conversation on the matter in the first place, or that they are capable of corre…

Yeah they could have. I'm talking about responding to what they actually said though. If the manager was here I might also have some advice for them too, and it wouldn't involve telling them they're right and the other guy is wrong because he just doesn't understand you.

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

#376

Post by nomel »

namlem wrote: post #372

How far on the spectrum do you have to be for this to apply? I and a few of my friends are ASD, though very high functioning, and I'm pretty sure none of us have this problem.

Same here, and I'm quite literally the opposite. I'm the first to admit that I'm wrong, and I don't see how one could be logical without that trait. Being wrong is trivial compared to being right. Great care should be taken when presenting something as "correct", and equal care should be taken to communicate uncertainty, when it's present. I try very hard to never be "wrong", because I find it very uncomfortable for everyone involved. It's a waste of time and effort, and often causes emotions.

I'm also a person that has "I don't know" in the ready, in my vocabulary, which I've found is somewhat rare in the professional world, especially as education level increases.

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

#377

Post by naasking »

notahacker wrote: post #155
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. Otherwise it’s a difference of opinions. This attitude is exactly what [neurotypical] people generally mean when they say "[some] autistic people can't acknowledge when they're wrong". Not that autistic people are so convinced of their own rightness that they stare at the compiler saying "my code is flawless, the compiler must be bugged" because there…

> But that when it comes to cases where [multiple] people suggest that the question they asked or the tone they asked it in might have been suboptimal for the situation, they are likely to rationalise it as just unverifiable opinion

I mean, that judgment is literally a matter of opinion. If they had behaved the same in an office full of autistic people like them, or with people of another culture, the outcome would have been totally different. That said, sometimes opinions matter, like say, the legal rights of fetuses when it comes to abortion, to pick a recent example.

So concluding something is a "difference of opinions" is not the end of the story, sometimes such differences need to be resolved.

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

#378

Post by [deleted] »

scotty79 wrote: post #145
W4ldi wrote: post #12

It's called narcissistic entitlement to expect the whole world to change their behaviour because of ones own inability to fit in. I'm not saying it is fair. Life is never fair. The only one who has the ability to influence those situations is oneself. You can't rely on other to change - it won't work anyways. You have to be the one that improves those interactions. For your own good.

> It's called narcissistic entitlement to expect the whole world to change their behaviour because of ones own inability to fit in. Is it not exactly what allistic people are doing? Autistic people communicate just fine with other autistic people. It's allistic people that don't fit in and want to change everybody around them because they can't suffer a bit of diversity in thinking and communication.

[deleted]

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

#379

Post by naasking »

larve wrote: post #327
pdenton wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of saying you're autistic, say you have autism. What you are is a human being, most likely. Having autism is just one of your traits. TL;DR Autism is what you've got, not who you are.

Many autistic people prefer to say they are autistic. Hopefully it's become clear that I think this way, and I can't just not think this way. Thinking is my main way of interacting with the world, it's not just "a trait".

You can ignore the parent comment. It's become fashionable these days to not use certain descriptive labels in a traditional manner because a certain class of people feel it's dehumanizing by "reducing one to one's condition". For instance, someone isn't "diabetic" they're a "person with diabetes", because the diabetes is just something they have it's not who they are. You're not "autistic", you're a "person with autism", and so on.

It's just a semantic game that is only making communication more verbose for no meaningful gain, as if everyone didn't already understand "autistic" to mean "person with autism".

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

#380

Post by larve »

xupybd wrote: post #350
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…

How did you learn you were autistic? I've always thought I might be but I've not invested the time in finding out.

I was watching the netflix documentary about rubik's cube on netflix with my wife, and you see this autistic kid (rubik's cube champion), who doesn't speak until he's three, being friend with a much more socially accomplished other champion, and you can see him over the documentary looking at his friend and learning. I saw that and I suddenly realized that my whole twenties, that's exactly what I did. I read books and copied other people and wrote notes about social rules and practiced and practiced. I also started speaking at age 3 or 4 (my parents weren't really worried because I grew up bilingual and apparently it's common for bilingual kids to speak late).

I did take a few autism tests here and there, but always thought "oh they're just meant to make you feel special when you score high, that doesn't mean anything. plus i make good friends everywhere I go". When I told my wife she was like "who thinks that scoring high on an autism test is something people want", and we both took some of these tests. On one of the more widespread one (https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/ ), I scored 43, while she scored something like 12. My mind was absolutely blown. I started reading a few books and joining a few autism communities, and it might sound trite, but it's the first time in my life that I felt like I joined "my" community. So many of the stories and anecdotes I would read were like "finally I read something I can relate to".

I am looking for an official diagnosis (not simple) without too much effort, because I find most of the value in now being able to articulate so many of the things that puzzle me, or the conflicts I might have with my wife, or behaviours of mine, and mostly not being ashamed anymore. It's been extremely liberating, and it provides me with better words and verbs to tackle difficult situations.

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