Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

the.scapegoat.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 521 posts

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

#501

Post by spiralx »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #471
jrochkind1 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sometimes people aren't going to agree. Now what? somebody's going to have to go along, aren't they? The person who is the most bull-headed about not giving in isn't actually more likely to turn out to be right. And because I know I might be wrong even though I don't think I am, I've been mistaken about that before, that's literally what being wrong is . Sometimes when I'm wrong I am not going to realize it f…

The interesting thing about your argument is that the most bull headed person is the least likely to participate in the suggested manner. The attitude seems it will only exacerbate the number of times the Bull headed win for their bull headedness and the number of times the submissive people submit.

If there were only those two people involved that's possible. But in a situation with onlookers the bull-headed 'winner' will gain a reputation for being aggressive and unlikeable, while the the 'loser' will seem reasonable and professional. If our 'winner' persists with this behaviour they'll end up ostracised at best and more likely ousted from their position because no matter how correct they are, that sort of behaviour is always a net negative overall.

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

#502

Post by MichaelZuo »

xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE wrote: post #269
MichaelZuo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you trying to mock autistic folks? Anyways judging by your posting history, try reflecting on your own empathy.

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

#503

Post by saltcured »

larve wrote: post #457
Beltalowda wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to explain, but as a first response it implies "the current code is fine", or "we don't need to do this". That is, you risk it being perceived as a challenge to the idea ("rewrite it in React"), rather than a question to explore the goals. Note that I wouldn't mind such a question at all myself, but others can be more sensitive to such things. Actually, I think "Why? Is the current code not working?" is a p…

Making these kinds of judgments is exactly why autism is a disability. I understand from the comments and my life experience that there is something there, I learned to smile, be engaging, mirror body posture, ask questions instead of going into statements too quickly, but what are you describing just makes no sense to me. How is "what goals would you like to achieve?" not dismissive, but "do you think our checkout i…

I'm not 100% sure if you are asking for further explanation of why it would seem dismissive, but I'll try to break it down a bit from an NT perspective, in case that is illuminating.

The query "Do you think..." can sometimes backfire if the other party is feeling defensive or vulnerable. It can imply that you've already decided to frame the conversation as exploring their problematic beliefs rather than objective facts.

The negative phrasing "not performing well" unfortunately echoes another idiom where the non-negated statement is assumed to be true and the negated question bears a tone of incredulity. These questions all probe the same fact but carry different emotional baggage: "Should we try to improve the performance of X?" "Does X perform well?" "Does X have performance problems?" "Is X not performing well?" Slight differences in vocal tone or emphasis can dramatically increase these differences too.

Then, by jumping to specifics (about performance), it can also imply that you are assuming that this is the only reasonable motivation for the work in question, rejecting other avenues. A safe way to avoid this type of interpretation would be to start off more broadly and neutrally to establish common ground before diving into such details. That's why "What are the goals?" types of question are seen as positive and cooperative. That you would like to engage in dialog and explore ideas together.

You put all those elements together in one question, and I can easily see how the other party would feel that they are being blocked. It's almost like some martial arts move where a precise combination of movement and posture is turning the conversational momentum against itself.

I'd also like to point out an ironic twist in your closing lament that "getting upset and shutting me down helps exactly no one here". Unfortunately, such implied tone and emotional content is decoded subconsciously and immediately. The emotion hits concurrently or even before the denoted factual information is fully understood. It can be just as difficult for an NT person to _not_ perceive some of these signals as it is for you to recognize they are being sent. Frustratingly, the same experience between two NTs, if chronic, might be seen as abusive or where the idea of "gaslighting" would come up to describe the perverse torture where the one feeling hurt is told they are mistaken in their feelings.

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

#504

Post by lazyasciiart »

SilasX wrote: post #493
lazyasciiart wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but just because he's not being optimal doesn't mean the author can't try.

The author was trying! His response revealed how he was interpreting the question; it's then on the manager to clarify.

If he's happy with the results of his efforts, then he doesn't need to take any advice. If he's not, then perhaps he will be interested in suggestions that he can implement, rather than "make your manager better".

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

#505

Post by thingthatwas »

apricot13 wrote: post #472
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like the "asperger's" person who we are in the process of offboarding from our team. One can have asperger's and still be nice to people. These things are not mutually exclusive. I see too many people who find it convenient to be a toxic, rude bully, and don't know that they are, and use their condition as an excuse to be a jerk.

Just fyi: > In 2013, the DSM-5 replaced Autistic Disorder, Asperger’s Disorder and other pervasive developmental disorders with the umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

It's still widely used as a term, given the people diagnosed with it retain their diagnosis. There's also a lexical lacuna without it for "autistic, but close to neurotypical-presenting", so it fills a need there in a way "autism" and even "high functioning autism" don't.

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

#506

Post by intended »

shlant wrote: post #220
engineeringwoke wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a common trope, playing out the "manager" or "business person" as an idiot when in fact often times there are bigger things at play. Looking down on people who aren't like you is not generally a positive. Understanding them is the source of empathy.

to be fair I am seeing very little empathy for the author in a lot of these comments

Yes. OP is being raked over the coals for this, and people are working hard to assume many things about him, be uncharitable. Once that is done, people circle around and then accuse OP of arrogance/narcissism/know-it-all-ness.

Some people want OP to have proven that he knows how to take criticism in his article - a strange ask, given that many seem to not even have finished reading the article in the first place.

It looks like many people here dont know what makes them tick - the things they accuse the OP of, are things they can see themselves do, and so see it in the OPs behavior.

Maybe it is simply that people cant imagine the world OP inhabits.

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

#507

Post by intended »

morelisp wrote: post #110
roflc0ptic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think pinning this on autism is misplaced. Willingness to engage in exploratory conversation is a combination of intelligence and learned habits of mind. If your boss (anyone, really!) comes to you with an idea and he misunderstands the first thing out of your mouth as a rejection, then you probably should work on how you communicate that thing. Or just surround yourself with smarter people. Also if your bos…

> consider shopping for a new boss. Autism really is orthogonal to that situation sucking. The boss is doing absolutely the right thing here! Asking a trusted domain expert for an opinion about whether some technical investment would benefit the business. The alternatives are a) the boss hears the podcast and the next day "rewrite it all in React" is at the top of the backlog, or b) the boss never polls the team abou…

The boss is doing the minimum of being a good boss.

Its poor communication from the person who should be good at communicating.

The alternatives you’ve outlined are simply worse management - a threat that things could be worse, therefore the least is sufficient.

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

#508

Post by cocacolacowboy »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#509

Post by throwawaylinux »

SilasX wrote: post #494
throwawaylinux wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He was responding to what the manager actually said; your advice was that he should have replied to one "correct" interpretation that was not explicit. But in any case, the author's response revealed what he understood the ask to be, allowing the manager to redirect. So if the interpretation is bad, the error is correctable. In contrast, the manager just seems to be flailing around, unable to clarify. That is not cor…

> He was responding to what the manager actually said;

And that's what I was responding to. I'm not going to respond to the manager because he's not reading this.

> your advice was that he should have replied to one "correct" interpretation that was not explicit.

No that was not my advice. I gave an example of a response which acknowledges the question, provides an answer "no", and gives the opportunity for the manager to come back with something if they really did have some valid case it might help. All in fewer words flailing about with a bunch of questions that still didn't answer the original.

My example remains valid even if the interpretation of the question and whether it matched the manager's intention was wrong, it still works.

The correctness I'm talking about is not in the answer to the technical question, it is how to go about having a polite interaction with others, which is what the author's stated goal was and what they got wrong.

> In contrast, the manager just seems to be flailing around, unable to clarify. That is not correctable.

I don't know what you mean by "not correctable". Correcting the behavior corrects it.

> Only one of these people was ruining the interaction and thus needed advice.

No, both do, and the manager isn't here, hence my comment.

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

#510

Post by brainwipe »

Beltalowda wrote: post #254
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.

That is essentially saying that autistic people can't learn. That's not really the case. Furthermore everyone has to adjust to the people around them, often causing untold stress for everyone . This is one of the aspects of the neurodivergency movement I am less impressed by because I feel it's just handwaving away any issues as "suck it up, not my problem, deal with it". I've worked with a few people like this over…

No, that's not what I'm essentially saying. Of course autistic can learn - it's called "masking". Masking causes trauma. Not just "finding co-worker annoying" but "not being able to go outside, not sleeping for 4 days in a row, stimming to the edge of self-harm, etc". Trauma. Not just being "stressed".

Neurodivergency isn't a movement, in the same way that blindness isn't a movement. Or deafness isn't a movement. It's not a choice. It's an invisible difference, one that society finds it hard to understand. I avoid "disability" because that suggests that neurotypical society is the only right way and anyone else that doesn't fit into it is just wrong somehow. They can't help it any more than a blind person can.

The way their brains are wired aren't their fault and yes, the rest of society is going to have to change. Autistic people exist, so it's up to the rest of us to learn how to deal with it.

Properly understanding the difficulties faced by the neurodiverse is a journey I thoroughly recommend. It's coming, get ahead of the curve and maybe you can be part of the team's stress relief.

Post reply on HN