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Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

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Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#51

Post by BizarroLand »

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…

One of my best friends is autistic. He's definitely a weirdo at times (I mean that in a positive way, for instance he likes old movies and watches them constantly, but when he says a movie is good he has never been wrong) but he's a good guy, would never betray anyone and is always social and fun to be around as long as it is inside of his comfort zone.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#52

Post by seba_dos1 »

rackjack wrote: post #32
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…

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.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#53

Post by whatshisface »

rajin444 wrote: post #24
Puts wrote: post #17

The ironic part is that the non-autistic people wont trust autistic peoples valuable non-biased opinions because of their bias against non-conforming people.

I had an autistic coworker who could not understand using pronouns outside of the already established ones (he/she). She was otherwise very “progressive” but didn’t consider herself such. It had to do with he/she mapping to (99% of the time) defined biological features. It was a very awkward lunch.

Yeah, imagine getting upset when someone with a disease almost defined by being slow on the uptake and honest about it hasn't acquired a cultural change that happened during their adulthood.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#54

Post by wayoutthere »

nicoburns wrote: post #39
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…

Autistic people can have trouble accessing emotions, but a lot of the reason for that stereotype is just that they communicate their emotions and emotional reactions differently and/or that their emotional reactions to certain situations are different to those of neurotypical people: not that they're not actually feeling emotions at all.

It’s less about being unable to access our emotions than our emotions being frequently influenced by sensory (over)stimulation — we learn to ignore them because they often tell us things that aren’t useful.

My main trigger is light — too bright, bad color, too much flicker, all of which can cause me to get “irrationally” angry in a conversation about any mundane topic. I’m not really that passionate about most of the things I get overwhelmed by, so my heightened emotional state because of some sensory stimulus is not useful.

All my anger/sadness tells me is that it’s bright and I need to either put on some sunglasses or turn off the lights. I have learned over time not to blow up at other people about it because it’s not their fault, and they’ll think that I think it is if I have a meltdown in front of them.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#55

Post by kragen »

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…

Oh, it's obviously true. I have a lot of experience with "high-functioning" autistic people, and the rationality is like the most obvious thing to me. Or maybe #2 after sensory overload.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#56

Post by paganel »

_ea1k wrote: post #42
paganel wrote: post #20

I've stopped reading at the Greta Thunberg cameo, up to that point I was still hoping for a decent article.

That doesn't sound like a very rational choice.

It seems very rational to me to stop reading once I see how the author tries to instrumentalize the medical condition of a "famous" child.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#57

Post by Zenst »

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…

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 diplomatic word dancing more than not and with that, Greta Thunberg does some good examples of that.

One finally aspect, my thinking is more wider in scope still as a child and with that, will happily ask that awkward question and equally see things from a perspective others tend to overlook.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#58

Post by bayesianbot »

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 their logic and.. just go on with their lives without exploring it further? I always had a meltdown if I was asked to do something that could not be logically explained to me, and questioned my parents and peers for day or weeks if I learned some things about the world that nobody could completely explain. It felt like I was accidentally born on wrong planet with different species with completely different thought processes that I couldn't understand.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#59

Post by fragmede »

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…

Pre-Godwinning the discussion doesn't raise discourse, it dumbs it down. Yes that's the history of the term but it was also the accepted term until after its removal from the DSM in 2013, and not everyone that grew up with that term is as plugged in as you and gotten the memo to moved over to the new term yet. It's fine to be angry at neurotypical people who use it as a slur, but you won't win many converts attacking people who aren't, especially using an anecdote about how you don't use the word as supporting evidence. Btw, the plural of anecdote is not anecdata which is not data.

Re: Autistic people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality

#60

Post by tonguez »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #47
rajin444 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an autistic coworker who could not understand using pronouns outside of the already established ones (he/she). She was otherwise very “progressive” but didn’t consider herself such. It had to do with he/she mapping to (99% of the time) defined biological features. It was a very awkward lunch.

Judging from how I was changing my opinion on similar matters when I was growing up, I guess she simply lacks the insight into why someone would feel the need to reject the established pronouns - she probably doesn't feel that need herself, so she doesn't have any frame of reference to be able to consider that until someone explains it to her, which makes her naturally gravitate towards seemingly unambiguous and clea…

"For me, it only "clicked" once I understood that gender and sexuality are completely arbitrary and subjective social constructs that try to describe a whole spectrum of multidimensional behaviors and (potentially repressed) feelings, so there's little point in trying to objectively categorize them - it's all about the subjective impression of the person themself"

Sex is a fundamental property of living organisms; it is not determined by thoughts or feelings.

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