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

the.scapegoat.dev

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

#351

Post by lazyasciiart »

larve wrote: post #328
throwawaylinux wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Asking clarifying questions is engaging with them as best as I know. To me, it's the gracious, honest, polite, and professional thing to do. You are wrong about that though. In the way you are asking, anyway. > I can't just make up an answer (say, that performance is what they are thinking about) and then riff on that. It wasn't making up an answer or presupposing his intention. He asked whether you should switch,…

How do I even know we should switch or not though? A good reason could be "we are moving the office to the UK, and we were only able to find react developers there". That's a pretty good reason to switch, if not an easy one. I do think this is a strategy to try, although I'm pretty sure it's really not about the words, but about body language, timing, whatever... But it is really puzzling to me that you shouldn't ask…

You can give him some information along with your questions, just like any social interaction. "It could help with performance if we are having issues there, but I personally hate the React ecosystem. Why do you ask?" That way you're both getting information as you go, rather than you making him wait until you've fully understood the question to get any response. That makes the conversation way more efficient too - if his underlying thought was "you seem bored, maybe this would be fun for you", then you've answered it completely already.

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

#352

Post by v64 »

jjk166 wrote: post #236
petercooper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can be wrong about factual things, which can be verified. We need to be careful, though, to not adopt black and white thinking even around "facts." Often, multiple contradictory factual things can be true at the same time and all pass verification. Illusions are a lighthearted example of this that helped me appreciate this point. For example, the Yanni/Laurel audio illusion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann…

So when I say it's Yanni, and you say it's Laurel, which of us is supposed to admit we're wrong? Neither of us are wrong, it's just a difference of opinions.

In this case, the recording was of a person saying the word laurel as part of a collection of reference pronunciations. If you don't hear the word laurel, you're the one in the wrong, having been deceived by an audio illusion.

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

#353

Post by SilasX »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #161
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 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 correcting a misconception in the first place. That's a pretty low level of communication skill.

I can definitely imagine a manager who might (unhelpfully) say "Should we rewrite in React?" to mean "I want the team to move to React for reasons I can't [or don't feel I have to] rigorously justify, I expect you to defer to me here, and now is your chance to alert me of big gotchas that we'll have to handle in the process".

Such a manager has failed to communicate what they actually want, and unless they can "correct" the listener to the desired interpretation, they're going to be frustrated when said listener takes their surface level meaning seriously. It sounds like that's what the OP was doing here (as the listener).

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

#354

Post by asmithmd1 »

chrismarlow9 wrote: post #343

You might be right about the ultimate outcome, but I think the questions you ask may be wrong. In the example of changing the checkout to React I might ask myself would it increase development trajectory and look for numbers related to that. Things like how many features were delivered last quarter and what was the scope size of those features? How might these things fit into a react framework and does it improve del…

but I think the questions you ask may be wrong

Exactly this. You asked one question that you summarized dismissively as "...because they had read a blog post about another company doing it."

You could have stroked their ego a little by saying that you don't have the breadth of perspective that they do, before asking questions about what they perceive as the advantages of switching to React. Would it help get the team more visibility or credibility? Would it help advance their work goals?

What they should have asked you is: How long will it take to switch? What is your technical opinion of making a switch? They are not asking for push back about what concrete problems need to be solved. There are infinite ways to implement a solution, for some reason a manager focused on this way to create a solution, they want to know how long it will take and if you are interested in doing it, or would hate doing it.

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

#355

Post by SilasX »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #351
larve wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I even know we should switch or not though? A good reason could be "we are moving the office to the UK, and we were only able to find react developers there". That's a pretty good reason to switch, if not an easy one. I do think this is a strategy to try, although I'm pretty sure it's really not about the words, but about body language, timing, whatever... But it is really puzzling to me that you shouldn't ask…

You can give him some information along with your questions, just like any social interaction. "It could help with performance if we are having issues there, but I personally hate the React ecosystem. Why do you ask?" That way you're both getting information as you go, rather than you making him wait until you've fully understood the question to get any response. That makes the conversation way more efficient too - i…

If efficiency was what he was after, he could have just said, "hey you look bored, would you feel more engaged if you were working on a migration to react?" Failing that, he could have clarified what he was going for after noticing the author missed it. Either way, it seems like the communication failures are more on the manager, for not having the awareness to appropriately direct the conversation and understand his needs, rather than the author, for failing to appropriate guess what the manager was obscuring.

This remains true even if allistics are generally better at such guessing.

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

#357

Post by cecilpl2 »

rendall wrote: post #237
larve wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading. I agree, this article is about the times when things escalated, and I didn’t think I was wrong, or more precisely, didn’t even get to the point where I could be wrong. When I’m wrong I just say “oh you’re right, good point” and move on. It’s very easy to do.

I have a girlfriend who believes herself to be on the autism spectrum, and I cannot over years ever recall her admitting that she was wrong or apologizing at any time for anything. We do get along despite that, but I was kind of hoping for insight.

Well, that's interesting. My ex-wife also never once admitted she was wrong or genuinely apologized to me for anything. Her brother was diagnosed Asperger's and I strongly suspected both her parents were as well.

Sadly I don't have much to share in the way of insight.

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

#358

Post by yomkippur »

larve wrote: post #50
gnfargbl wrote: post #25

> I needed to understand why our checkout had to be improved; I explained that technology choices made no difference to the user. However, the manager interpreted my words as outright rejecting their idea. That's an exceptionally patronising position to take. The manager almost certainly isn't a fool, and likely understands the author's point already. It's much more likely that the manager was actually asking if the…

Author here, thanks for reading. That is exactly the first question I would ask. If you ask me to make something better, I need to know what you mean by “better”. That’s where a productive discussion start, when we align the goals (and I don’t really care about them, they all turn into interesting technical challenges) and then discuss strategy (amongst which there is technology). If me asking what the goal is is per…

Sorry but I don't think this is an issue of autism spectrum, but an issue of how much you hold yourself above others, narcissism to be frank.

Narcissists love to deflect blame and assume the world is against them because they believe that the world should revolve around them.

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

#359

Post by jrochkind1 »

> 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 toxic.

OK, yes, but, how about: "I am still not convinced, BUT I realize neither of us are going to convince the other one right now, and I've been wrong before, let's try it your way this time."

This is not appeasing bullies and making the workplace toxic. Sometimes insisting on arguing everything out forever every time you think you are right is what is in fact accidentally being a bully and making the workplace toxic. (And I have definitely been that person; I am not to my knowledge autistic, although some people have wondered sometimes).

I think people can mean either one by "giving in", I am wondering whether the OP, in rejecting "pretending I agree when I don't" is accidentally being the person who "always insists on getting their way every time".

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

#360

Post by mcherm »

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…

> 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)"

That's certainly a message I have encountered in some places, and in the first few sentences of this article I thought that's what I might find here.

But unlike you, I quickly concluded that that was not at all the article I was reading. Rather than argue that they were special because of their autism, this author listed highly specific, clearly explained ways in which other people they interact with fail to understand them.

> If the author reads this, I'd congratulate them on finding the time to do that, but also advice them to maybe read 40 technical books every year, and then read 10 about the topics they clearly do struggle with (social interactions, politics, negotiation, psychology).

Did you read the part of the article where the author explained that they do this reading because they find it enjoyable, rather than simply to get ahead?

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