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Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

psyche.co

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Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#141

Post by guerrilla »

zepto wrote: post #122
guerrilla wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, well I can't agree to that part. It all depends on your goals and some people are less able to accomplish their own goals than others due to those traits from the spectrum. There's no need for conceiving of utility to others to speak of grades of functionality.

Sure, but the point is that the thing that is ‘severe’ isn’t ‘autism’. An autistic person can be severely disabled, but the disability is itself a trait they only some autistic people have, so it doesn’t make sense to call the disability ‘autism’.

That doesn't seem like a useful place to draw the distinction. If someone has more autistic traits, they can be considered to be more autistic but not necessarily more disabled.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#142

Post by seba_dos1 »

guerrilla wrote: post #140
seba_dos1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it narrows down specificity. My point is that in today's society, it seems mostly useless to me. Most of the time I don't need to narrow it down this way at all. This may have been different in a world where people were segregated by sex so intensively that half of the population didn't even have the right to vote, but today I fail to see the usefulness of it.

> but today I fail to see the usefulness of it. Then you fail to see the usefulness of specificity and efficiency in speech, which is both weird and explains why it took you so many words to say that.

If I'll want to refer to you and this conversation when talking to someone else, I don't need to refer to your gender at all. Just like I don't need to refer to your race, your social class or color of your hair. Stopping to consider whether I should use "he" or "she" (or maybe something else) is the exact opposite of efficiency in speech.

It seems to me that it's actually you who misunderstands the usefulness of specificity. It's not useful to be overspecific.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#143

Post by gjs278 »

solarmist wrote: post #88
Zenst wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who sits upon the autistic scale, I personally have a deep rooted ethic of fairness, even if it means I yield an advantage, I'm just as uncomfortable being unfairly treated as I am being over fairly treated and to empathize I just look at the others position as if that was mine and how would I feel about that, at least that is how I empathize. Also tend towards common sense slanted bluntness over diplomat…

Yup! One time during an exit interview I pointed out (some concrete feedback they could take action on, aaah, how naive of me) how bad the DevOps team had it (80+ hour weeks, constant weekend work, all hours on call, etc) as one of my reasons for leaving and the CEO could NOT understand why I would care about this at all. His response was about how our team (BI) had it so good, which we did, so why would that matter!…

No post body was provided.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#144

Post by gjs278 »

mherrmann wrote: post #16

My girlfriend was diagnosed with autism 3 weeks ago and we had a related conversation just today. She said she feels more open-minded / less biased than other people. I thought it was because her different experiences were invalidated by society throughout her life. But this makes it sound like there's more to it. Very interesting.

No post body was provided.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#145

Post by bobthechef »

solarmist wrote: post #94
akvadrako wrote: post #3

It takes a while to get to the point, but this is what the page is about: As we explained in a recent review paper, researchers have repeatedly found evidence that Autistic individuals are, on average, more consistent, less biased, and more rational than non-autistic individuals in a variety of contexts. Specifically, many Autistic people seem to be less susceptible to cognitive biases, and therefore better able to m…

I have what you would deem mild Autism and it CAN be a beneficial adaptation, but it's is highly context-dependent. I think it's only in the last couple of decades when that's become true, specifically information, knowledge work, or science. Think of the cartoons where the "nerds" are trying to fight/play sports and are trying to calculate optimal trajectories, etc. The additional rationality slows down coming to co…

No post body was provided.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#146

Post by guerrilla »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #142
guerrilla wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but today I fail to see the usefulness of it. Then you fail to see the usefulness of specificity and efficiency in speech, which is both weird and explains why it took you so many words to say that.

If I'll want to refer to you and this conversation when talking to someone else, I don't need to refer to your gender at all. Just like I don't need to refer to your race, your social class or color of your hair. Stopping to consider whether I should use "he" or "she" (or maybe something else) is the exact opposite of efficiency in speech. It seems to me that it's actually you who misunderstands the usefulness of spe…

Obviously it depends on your goals and the context. Both specificity and generality are useful. To ban one is foolishness. They coalesced into short words for a reason: people use them, a lot.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#147

Post by serverholic »

emptybottle wrote: post #19

It's good to see appreciation of different neurotypes for their strengths. Many people with ASD put a lot of time and effort into learning and altering their natural behavior in order to better understand and interact in a way that is perceived as normal by nerutotypical people. I'm hopeful the inverse will happen more over time as well, neurotypicals putting effort into learning and adjusting their own behavior to b…

More like, people will just learn how to pretend to tolerate us. Nerutotypical people will never fully tolerate our weird behavior.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#148

Post by seba_dos1 »

guerrilla wrote: post #146
seba_dos1 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'll want to refer to you and this conversation when talking to someone else, I don't need to refer to your gender at all. Just like I don't need to refer to your race, your social class or color of your hair. Stopping to consider whether I should use "he" or "she" (or maybe something else) is the exact opposite of efficiency in speech. It seems to me that it's actually you who misunderstands the usefulness of spe…

Obviously it depends on your goals and the context. Both specificity and generality are useful. To ban one is foolishness. They coalesced into short words for a reason: people use them, a lot.

We can exchange truisms all day ;) But that doesn't change the fact that in my experience specificity related to gender pronouns is needed (or even helpful) only in a very tiny minority of everyday contexts.

For the record, my native tongue is much more gendered than English (it has gendered nouns, verbs and adjectives; not just pronouns) - I don't understand how it's useful at all, I don't miss it in English.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#149

Post by serverholic »

solarmist wrote: post #76
bayesianbot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might sound strange but I'm autistic and first time I really noticed something was "wrong" was when I started school, met new people and noticed that all the adults and children think in a really different way - in my mind they couldn't explain their actions or thoughts logically, and it made no sense to me why they were fine with it. Why were they happy to have a conversation where I found a gaping hole in thei…

I never really had the "meltdowns" that I hear about autistic people, unless particularly bad temper tantrums when I was 2-5 years old count, but I also agonized about how little sense "social rules" made. I would spend a lot of time pondering and thinking about these things. So I completely get this and empathize.

I don't have meltdowns either but I do get unreasonably upset about stuff that seems illogical to me.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#150

Post by Jensson »

zepto wrote: post #123
rackjack wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I suspect the fact that Autism reduces a person's ability to relate emotionally and socially to themselves and others allows them to dedicate more brain power to thinking rationally. In a mild enough case, with a supportive tribe, they could be a useful advisor. No autistic members = tribe has trouble making good collective decisions. Too many autistic members = tribe can't collaborate. That's just my armchair…

> I suspect the fact that Autism reduces a person's ability to relate emotionally and socially to themselves and others This is not a fact. It’s a now discredited stereotype.

Or maybe it is still a fact, but the definition of autism/Asperger changed so it is no longer true with the new definition?

There seems to be a great bundling going on, where people with a wide range of various problems gets bundled under large umbrella terms like "ADHD" or "Autism". Before Autism and Asperger was different, now they are the same etc. and some even argue that ADHD and Autism are the same thing.

Edit: Btw, there was one stereotype that was never true, that Autists didn't have empathy. Autists always felt empathy. What they were said to lack was the ability to read people, not feel empathy for people. Not being able to read people can be said to reduce "a person's ability to relate emotionally and socially to themselves and others", so that statement wasn't wrong with the old definition/understanding.

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