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People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

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Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#311

Post by wkat4242 »

lmm wrote: post #237
permo-w wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this effect seems to be especially true in airports. they seem to particularly inspire dumb herd behaviour. perhaps there's an increase in perceived danger leading to a stronger desire for safety in numbers? another example: queueing to board the plane. other than to fit in, why on earth would I stand there and compete to spend more time in a sweaty uncomfortable seat packed with 400 other people? plus, if you get on…

> this effect seems to be especially true in airports. they seem to particularly inspire dumb herd behaviour. perhaps there's an increase in perceived danger leading to a stronger desire for safety in numbers? There's an increase in potential negative consequences. More people with guns, more chance for "security" to pick on someone they don't like. If you go off on your own and you're right, you don't gain much - if…

> There's an increase in potential negative consequences. More people with guns, more chance for "security" to pick on someone they don't like. If you go off on your own and you're right, you don't gain much - if everyone gets on the wrong plane or goes through the wrong gate or what have you, there's not much they can do. If you go off on your own and you're wrong, you might get beaten up, kicked off your flight, held without charge until you dehydrate, banned from the country...

Umm wut? You live in North Korea or something?

Here in Europe things are pretty mellow, there was a while after 9/11 when the security was pretty heavy-handed but luckily things are back to normal and we are now again innocent until proven guilty. We have things like rights here.

But beaten up because you walk around in the wrong public area of an airport?? That did not happen even then.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#312

Post by wkat4242 »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #300
vasco wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what I was sharing is that someone like me wouldn't consider that outcome as "works". Someone that follows the herd in this scenario is exactly the type of person that would say "what do you mean, it worked anyway?". In my mind if I'm an adult person in an airport and I missed obvious signs and just went with everyone I'd be genuinely thinking about this for days and softly beat myself up, look up the airport flo…

So you’ve never encountered a situation where going against the grain, even if for completely good reasons, fails? I know I’ve been in that place more than once. GP was only saying that going with the herd is most of the time a more successful strategy, and even if I don’t follow it, I’m not blind to my selection bias to say it doesn’t. As he stated, it wouldn’t have been selected otherwise.

> So you’ve never encountered a situation where going against the grain, even if for completely good reasons, fails? I know I’ve been in that place more than once.

I'd rather be wrong on my own decision than on one I blindly followed from someone else :)

And it's not about going against the grain. It's about making conscious decisions rather than blind following. The outcome can very well be the same as everyone else's of course.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#313

Post by hkt »

raffraffraff wrote: post #292

I'm not even sure what passes for "autism" these days. Back in the late 90s I helped out at a tiny charity that helped out family's of severely disabled kids. They would be utterly dependent on their parents for everything and needed constant supervision. Almost all were non-verbal. Due to the fact that many of them had genetic conditions, they had a bunch of health problems and also looked different to other kids th…

My son is 7 and nonverbal, as in your example, and I share much the same problem with the widening of the definition of autism. My partner - a successful academic - is also autistic, in the manner of your other examples.

As with any term that has become too wide to be useful, it needs subdividing. There used to be autism and aspergers, high functioning autism and low functioning autism, etc. Each classification had its problems but the general idea wasn't wrong: there has to be a term for people who need support and can't function without it, to differentiate between them and the high flyers (or even just "getting by OK") and to my mind "high needs autism" is the right term.

The definitions of autism as I understand them are.. interesting. The reason a highly successful person can be diagnosed is because the diagnostic criteria - usually the triad of impairments - specify a person must have difficulties but tend not to describe a way of categorising the level of those difficulties.

By way of example, I might have difficulty knowing what to say to a person (social interaction) in an unfamiliar setting (social imagination) which could manifest itself as me awkwardly interacting in a way that isn't called for, but which is recognised as social awkwardness. Some autistic people may freeze - sometimes in terror - and simply stop responding while they try to work out what to do. Imagine how it feels to be lost for words, and then some. To my knowledge, both examples above fulfil the criteria because they're both social difficulties.

I'd recommend reading more about the diagnostic criteria and interrogating the range of problems people can face. To me, the dividing line is independence. I'd suggest starting there in your thinking, but not forgetting that autism can also be a hidden disability insofar AW support needs might be invisible to the people around.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#314

Post by mjburgess »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #302
mjburgess wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the victims are. Its those people wandering through parks having this fantasy of victimisation to drive their 'compassionate' impulse to police others. If you wander around the world engaged in these fantasies, and police everyone around you such, then you're creating a nightmare for people to live in. Do you imagine teenagers attacking people, and then keep them out of parks? They're vastly more dangerous th…

The term for this is whataboutism. Despite your protestations to the contrary, this is about unleashed animals in the park. It's not about trees, it's not about weapons (although most parks also have prohibitions against weapons), or teenagers. It's about dogs and why people want them to be leashed. Joel Spoelsky coined a term years ago, architecture astronaut. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-archi…

I have elsewhere defended 'whataboutism' as just another way of asking a person to answer for moral hypocrisy.

Some people clearly want to walk their dogs without leashes. Some people want all dogs leashed. Now, what's the moral standard at work? How do you determine the level of danger?

If you want to constrain people, limit their ability to lives their lives as they wish, you need to have an answer you can defend without bias or prejudice. That you don't like unleashed dogs cannot be grounds for limiting another; there has to be more than your mere preference.

To separate out people disguising their irrational fear from a genuine moral position, one needs to establish that moral position. 'Whatabout' here applies exactly, in moral philosophy its called casuistry: arguing from cases.

So if your moral position is that at a certain level of risk, one must put up signs and start socially policing people -- then ok, let's hear it: what level of risk? what's the principle at work here? (Or does your mind leap to imagined danger in one case, but not another: are you a bigot?).

My view is that I want to live in a society much more tolerant to risk for the sake of avoiding social policing. I dont want to go to parks where people are 'watching out for rule breakers'.

You, presumably, want to live in that society? This is the question.

If you do, so be it. I am not taking a stand against leash laws one way or another. I'm taking issue with a particular mechanism of enforcement of social rules by which emotional busy-bodies go around clutching their pearls and calling the police.

The issue of dog leashes is just one trivial example of this general phenomenon -- and it is this that I am talking about. I have no care whatsoever about what the law should be in the matters of dog leashing.

I gather people in this thread are unable or unwilling to engage in the argument I am making which is at one level of abstraction above the issue around dog leads.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#315

Post by zamalek »

xwolfi wrote: post #248
InSteady wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm reading the statistics in the study correctly [0], most of these 80 incidents (70%) were pulled from CCTV footage at a "night time drinking setting." Groups of 18 people on average standing around bars, presumably outside. In 20% of cases someone de-escalated, 5% of the time a bystander joined in to escalate the violent encounter, and 4% it was a mix of escalation/de-escalation. Presumably the rest of the time…

Yeah but we re talking about the real world. If we re honest, when do most conflicts arise with bystanders ready? When people are drunk at night... (or similarly mentally impaired maybe? why do people have open conflicts in the streets in the first place should be part of the theory). So you might say that if the theory didnt take alcohol, nights and all your factors into account, then it was as useful as considering…

Bystander effect is thought to arise due to a fear of standing out. Alcohol inhibits that fear, which is why it's a social drug.

It's like a study concluding that depression doesn't exist by studying a bunch of people who are medicated for depression.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#316

Post by InSteady »

ddmf wrote: post #293
raffraffraff wrote: post #292

I'm not even sure what passes for "autism" these days. Back in the late 90s I helped out at a tiny charity that helped out family's of severely disabled kids. They would be utterly dependent on their parents for everything and needed constant supervision. Almost all were non-verbal. Due to the fact that many of them had genetic conditions, they had a bunch of health problems and also looked different to other kids th…

Kim Peak wasn't even autistic. Have a look at the DSM or ICD diagnosis criteria https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/diagnos...

>Kim Peak wasn't even autistic.

That is a weird thing to say. He was misdiagnosed. He has FG syndrome.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#317

Post by mjburgess »

Podgajski wrote: post #305
mjburgess wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no, compassion for the other. You see the germans imagined the jews a threat (and of course some were, as some of all people are -- just as some dogs are dangerous). Now all you need to do is make headlines of all the times a jewish person murdered someone and the like. Indeed, imagine it on youtube: all these videos of jewish criminals. Now you have waves of compassion for the victims of these criminals. It's tri…

You see, you don’t even know what compassion is. if people were able to believe that the Jews were a threat then they were not compassionate. They were afraid. And we can be sure if they started killing people they were not compassionate. So you still did not explain how compassionate people can kill other people. Fear has no place in compassion.

No, they were compassionate for the victims of jewish criminals. Ex hyp., they did not feel any fear towards jewish people.

When you have compassion for victims, that makes you intolerant of their attackers. And if you imagine victimhood, then the anger and intolerance is just the same.

Compassion is an incredibly dangerous emotion for this reason; and is at the heart of a great amount of war and conflict. If people were afraid of an enemy, the won't attack them. But if they have compassion for their (possibly imagined) victims, then my god: they'll punish them to the ends of the earth.

Emotions are not moral things. Actions are. Any given emotion leads to both moral and immoral outcomes: anger is moral when it enables self-defence; fear is moral when it enables protection; compassion is moral when it enables protection to the needly.

But as with all the others, compassion becomes a profoundly immoral force when it motivates a desire to protect non-victims from their non-attackers. This "protection" is a form of self-righteous oppression -- and vastly more common than sociopaths pulling strings.

It is trivial to form a mob to lynch whomever you like if they feel it would protect some innocent -- it is compassion which drives the excess of all mobs

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#318

Post by verisimi »

verisimi wrote: post #98
Podgajski wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, the nuance is not about rules, the nuance is about right and wrong. It’s wrong for someone to walk around with an animal that could be dangerous or could harm other people or itself. In this case, the rules aligned with my moral understanding. Ashan sense of right and wrong is not based on outside rules, but it are internal perception. This is why many of us have anti-authoritarian tendencies. https://neuroclasti…

Great article, thanks for sharing and attempting to correct a misunderstanding. I'm going to submit it here actually - I liked it so much. (Except for the singular political snipe - '#AutisticWhileBlack'.) > Autistic children in school are somewhat notorious for finding it hard to adapt to the authority of teachers– some teachers more than others. This is not because they’re evil little ragamuffins, as some teachers…

In case you check, and in case you missed it, the post was here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072756

cheers

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#319

Post by mjburgess »

Podgajski wrote: post #304
mjburgess wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own a dog. And as I've said elsewhere, this really isnt about dogs. It's about whether the appropriate response to rare events of danger, imagined in abstract circumstances, should be met with 'fantasy compassion' where people go around policing each other. An unleashed dog in a park is safe as people in the park, indeed, much more so. More people are attacked by other people in parks than by dogs. If we're g…

I am the OP. It was about dogs.

'this' refers to my position.

As far as the topic goes, the topic is about how emotional disregulation in autistic people can lead to feelings of injustice and concequentially hostile behaviour.

Dogs and their owners are just an illustrative case.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#320

Post by InSteady »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #285
deadbeeves wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying they shouldn't live, I'm saying that if off-leash dogs scare you and you don't want to be scared, you shouldn't be outside. Even if every last dog owner kept their dog on a leash at all times, there would still be some dogs without a leash, and all of them would be outside your house. I assume any person would understand that by the time they reach adulthood and either learn to deal with the fact that…

you've never actually been threatened by a dog off a leash have you?

I never understood why my high school buddy was so afraid of dogs. I would tease him sometimes because when he saw a large dog, even on a leash, he would edge to the other side of me and act nervous. He's a big and typically brave dude so it was out of character. Plus I just never had a concept of dogs as dangerous based on my childhood experiences.

He eventually explained that he grew up in the poor neighborhood, where people keep large, poorly trained "guard dogs" that occasionally escape and roam the streets. As a child he had to evade roaming dogs several times, including one occasion where he genuinely believes he was running for his life. Apparently it fucked him up pretty badly. Poorly trained dogs (especially those that are bread for aggression) are no joke, even to full grown adults.

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