“Autistic people can’t acknowledge when they’re wrong” • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #355

lazyasciiart wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hi…

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

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

#492

Post by cthalupa » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

As best as I can tell, only the first point seems related to autism.

All of the questions listed in 2 are things that an allistic person might (should) ask. Plenty of allistic people care more about doing their work than politics. Plenty of allistic people have their knowledge underestimated in the situation presented.

Even #1 happens plenty with allistic people, but I do understand that this is more likely to occur when an allistic and autistic person are interacting.

In my personal experience, I find it is difficult for people to admit when they are wrong. I've never found it to be particularly correlated with being neurotypical or neurodivergent, however.

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

#493

Post by SilasX » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #491

SilasX wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hi…

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.

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

#494

Post by SilasX » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #375

SilasX wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corre…

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 correctable.

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

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

#495

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #478

selcuka wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, it is not your job to make that kind of technology decision. You can offer advice, but it is your manager's job. Err, no: "A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React [...]" > You wanted to frame the entire conversation around, "Does this checkout form have a concrete problem that needs fixing?" Your manager's thinking is going to be about very differe…

> Err, no: "A manager came to me asking if we should rewrite the checkout of our E-Commerce platform using React [...]" This in no way contradicts what I said. This is a normal way of asking for opinions on a decision that needs to be made. And organizationally the decision IS the manager's. In practice a wise manager will take (and usually follow) advice from their developers. But still it is the manager's call. > T…

It seems that this is an issue that is close to your heart ("As a parent ...") so I apologize if this comes off as harsh: you should take a closer look at the assumptions you are making about @larve, a person whom you have never met.

> The problem is that you come across as ...

> And the fact that you do this AGAIN ...

> My experience of people on the spectrum says that the poster ...

I do not know precisely when, but it seems that at some point you started ranting to your child.

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

#496

Post by xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:24 PM UTC

antasvara wrote: post #462

xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want them to prepend every paragraph with "I know I'm wrong sometimes"? What does that achieve? The article is nice, concise, and gets the point across beautifully. Everybody's wrong sometimes, but some people are genuinely very rarely wrong in their area of expertise, and I'm willing to believe this guy is one of them. I'm glad he doesn't give in to the petty workplace politics, and I wish more people would.

The frustrating part was that this was framed as "any time I'm wrong, it's simply a miscommunication." The author barely acknowledges that they can be wrong in the first paragraph, and it's phrased in a way that makes it seem like a legal disclaimer. It's not phrased in a way that implies the author ever believes that they're wrong. Because of this, the entire article is colored by the attitude that any time an autis…

If anything, the reactions to this article highlight how embarrassingly bad the average person is at interpreting communicating that is written in an (arguably) slightly unusual way. I feel bad for the author for having to withstand this barrage of hopelessly nitpicky readers. I dearly hope this doesn't discourage them, because it definitely would discourage me.

Or maybe the specific scenario presented in the article triggers some sort of a "it's not me, it's them autists!" reflex in people who visualized themselves on the other side of these interactions; I honestly don't know any more. I'm not (diagnosed to be) autistic, but fucking hell, I'm having a ridiculously hard time empathizing with these reactions, so maybe I should get that checked out...

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

#497

Post by Tronno » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

throwaway1777 wrote: post #400

narcraft wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for neurotypical girlfriends

Haha, indeed. The wife is never wrong.

Pretty disappointed to see these boomer-style "wife bad" jokes on HN.

Have you considered that being comfortable admitting fault is a skill which some people never learned while growing up, regardless of gender? And can you imagine a world where men do the same thing, but you don't gripe about it because you're not in a relationship with them?

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

#498

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:05 PM UTC

krageon wrote: post #431

jrochkind1 wrote: post #359

> 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 tox…

> This is not appeasing bullies [...] It is though. It's a way of saying "maybe I'm wrong, and we're going to act this out by pretending that I am". This means that whoever put pressure on you gets their way, which motivates them to do it again. That is toxic.

> This means that whoever put pressure on you gets their way, which motivates them to do it again.

While I don't think this is a ridiculous take, it is a rather uncharitable one. I'd think the only reasonable time this should be believed is after it has shown itself to be a pattern.

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

#499

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:36 PM UTC

Beltalowda wrote: post #450

puffoflogic wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is essentially saying that autistic people can't learn. That's not really the case. Autists cannot just learn to act more like an NT in the exact same way that a blind person cannot just learn to see better. Your rejection of this extremely basic fact is an all-too-common combination of ignorance and/or bigotry.

This is clearly not true. I was diagnosed with autism in high school, struggled with many things for many years, and nearing 40 now I've learned a great many things since then. My previous comment you're replying to was very much written from personal experience. I didn't mention this because I didn't think it's necessarily all that relevant. Of course not everyone is the same, and things are different for other peop…

[deleted]

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

#500

Post by spiralx » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

sleightofmind wrote: post #369

cookiengineer wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: ausplaining I've learned the hard way that caring too much about work related topics doesn't contribute to your happiness. Company men will replace you if they can do their business math for justification, because they cannot see the technical complexities of the things they are "wanting to be built" for the company. Even when you can see dependencies of complexities that will break the plan a year ahead of time,…

"... strategival disadvantage... " I thought at first you had invented a clever new word combining strategy and survival. Then I realized that v is just very close to c on a qwerty keyboard. Oh well.

I though it was combining strategic and drivel, a combination that definitely exists :)