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Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

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Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#181

Post by yosame »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #95
wombatmobile wrote: post #82

ADHD people have a different calculus that affects their project management. NonA-DHD typically respond to deadlines with increased urgency, commitment, and re-factoring assessments. ADHD may respond to deadlines by abandoning tasks and starting new extraneous tasks. Is that rational? It’s what happens, and since it is such a dramatic and consequential difference, it warrants a reconsideration of the meaning of the t…

Is it truly transient? I know some people "grow out of it", but it seems plenty of people are afflicted for life. Am I misunderstanding what transient means in this context?

It's not transient, it's a neurodevelopmental disorder that changes the fundamental structure of the brain and how it functions (this is a bit of a simplification, but it's true enough for this context).

People who 'grow out' of having ADHD either:

1. Developed coping methods that lessened the impact of their symptoms, making them functional enough to not be diagnosable (ADHD is only diagnosed if it negatively impacts your ability to function in two or more of the domains of work, social life, and home/family life). Often people who do this are still negatively impacted by their condition, but their problems are invisible and go unnoticed.

2. Never had ADHD to begin with, and instead had one of the many other psychiatric or physical conditions that can impact executive functioning (e.g. depression, sleep disorders, anxiety, malnutrition, etc.).

(wow I used the word impact a lot in this paragraph)

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#182

Post by seba_dos1 »

TOMDM wrote: post #170
seba_dos1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're underselling the importance people find in their gender. Personally I agree, for me gender holds little importance, if I'm being most true to myself I identify as non binary simply because I don't really identify with a gendered label. That motivation has also lead me to being ok with being gendered male, because it just doesn't matter to me. I understand I need to look outside of my own experience to…

To the contrary, I believe that people's gender is usually extremely important to them. What I find less important is having to specify their gender whenever I'm talking about them just because of language constructs. In English it isn't actually that bad, since it's limited to using correct pronouns; but in some other languages I have to be careful to not misgender anyone pretty much whenever I talk about them or to them - regardless of whether their gender is relevant to what I'm saying or not.

So I'm only a grammatical gender abolitionist :) I don't see the point of gendering people when I talk about them unless I talk specifically about their gender. As a happy side effect, this would also massively reduce the risk of accidentally misgendering someone.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#183

Post by seba_dos1 »

PeterisP wrote: post #167
seba_dos1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'll be easier to go on that cheaper trip at a later date than the more expensive one How can you infer that just from its price though? :P

Because in the world I live in, there's a strong correlation between a previous price and a future one. While it's not always the case and all kinds of factors apply, previous price is a quite relevant signal. In the absence of any additional specific information, if I know that ticket to city A was cheaper than a ticket to city B, then it's reasonable to assume that a future ticket to city A is a bit more likely to…

That doesn't answer my question at all - the statement was that it's "easier", not "cheaper" to go to that city at later time. Price is just one single factor that may influence how easy it will be later compared to now.

Maybe a significant chunk of your motivation to visit city A was to see it covered in snow and do some winter sports, so if you cancel it now you'll likely have to wait a whole year to do it again?

Or maybe you booked these trips to see some bands playing life? What if the band playing in the cheaper city is less likely to play again within your reachable area in foreseeable future?

There's a huge amount of reasons why canceling the cheaper trip may not be the best option, and I believe noticing that is what the article was actually talking about.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#184

Post by wavegeek »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #52
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…

That's a bad stereotype. It's far more common for autistic people to have the ability to relate emotionally to others cranked up to overwhelming levels (hyper-empathy), which makes them avoid situations that require relating to others out of severe stress it's usually causing on them - leading to other people perceiving them as unempathetic.

Exactly - the overwhelming nature of these signals (e.g. the searing brightness of eye contact) pushes people away from them. This then produces difficulties as a result of not seeing these signals (and not learning about them). The result is a lack of Cognitive Empathy - inability to read signals - which is often confused with a lack of Affective Empathy as seen in sociopaths.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#185

Post by wavegeek »

ben_w wrote: post #45
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…

> Though those biases probably came about for good reasons, it could be they've become obsolete and are no longer worth it. I suspect (but don’t know how to test the hypothesis) that cognitive biases are why human learning can produce good results with dramatically less data than machine learning. More rational, yes, when you get there; but harder to learn at all.

> biases might help

You might like the book "Simple Heuristics that make us smart" which explores this idea

https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make-Smart/dp/...

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#186

Post by JetAlone »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #161
readthenotes1 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My preferred pronoun is "the majestic one with no time for the nonsense of gendered pronouns". It cannot be combined in a plural; I stand alone.

you know leftists call this "the one joke" because y'all can literally never come up with a different one when someone mentions pronouns.

"What are your pronouns?"

>"Did this person just assume xy possessive adjectives?"

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#187

Post by benjaminRRR »

bayesianbot wrote: post #58
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.

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…

It's interesting, as I have this conversation with my kids - ie actually let them know, there's actually no good reason for this, it's just a societal rule. However, I then try to explain that it is often advantageous to follow these rules even if it doesn't seem to make any sense, because of the advantages you can get by being cohesive in society. It's a good exercise, and also helps me think, there really are some dumb rules, and the calculus is weighing up when to disregard them.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#188

Post by wavegeek »

georgestephanis wrote: post #21
bopbeepboop wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this why there’s a correlation between Asperger’s and engineers? The same kind of logical, exacting thinking necessary for mastery of physical systems is in tension with the kinds of thinking used in social games. Some brains are better at one than the other — and we have disorders at both extremes. I’ve always wondered if autism and dyscalclia are something of “polar opposites”.

Yes hi, "aspergers" is an unfortunate nomenclature and many autistic folks (myself included) strongly resent it. It was named after a Nazi doctor (Hans Asperger) and used to classify autistic folks into "useful" and "non-useful" people -- as Nazis and Eugenicists are known to do. When you think of it, if you could refer to folks on the spectrum as such, without referencing the outdated nomenclature (the DSM-5 replace…

> Nazi doctor

Asperger was never a member of the Nazi party.

I invite everyone here who has stood up against a murderous totalitarian dictatorship at the likely cost of their life to tell us how Asperger should have done better.

> now everything falls under the Autism Spectrum

This is only true in the US. And people who were previously diagnosed as Aspergers retain that diagnosis, even in the US.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#189

Post by wavegeek »

fao_ wrote: post #40
AussieWog93 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Sorry... are you arguing for a term that separates autistic people into "productive" and "non productive" that was created by a literal Nazi? I am autistic, pretty much all of the people I know are autistic, and even most of the people I know through my workplace are autistic (it's explicitly a neurodiverse workplace), and I've pretty much never seen anyone need to use the term "aspergers" in general conversation. As…

> created by a literal Nazi

This is a literal lie.

See the wikipedia article for example.

The fact someone on the internet claimed he was german and a literal nazi is no evidence at all.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#190

Post by fao_ »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #77
fao_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry... are you arguing for a term that separates autistic people into "productive" and "non productive" that was created by a literal Nazi? I am autistic, pretty much all of the people I know are autistic, and even most of the people I know through my workplace are autistic (it's explicitly a neurodiverse workplace), and I've pretty much never seen anyone need to use the term "aspergers" in general conversation. As…

>I am autistic, pretty much all of the people I know are autistic I'm not trying to tell you what words you should and shouldn't use; obviously in your circumstance it's a word more likely to cause a political schism and lead to misunderstandings. Most people, though, live in a NT-dominated culture where the terms "Aspergers" and "Autism" both carry extremely different connotations. One invokes images of an aloof pro…

> Most people, though, live in a NT-dominated culture where the terms "Aspergers" and "Autism" both carry extremely different connotations.

All the more reason to use "autism" and push people to understand it's dynamic nature.

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