Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 116 posts

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#81

Post by jancsika »

mjburgess wrote: post #23
qoez wrote: post #6

I always had the impression it was the other way around, non autistic 'normal' people personifies non human objects. Anyway I always had a pet theory that the reason some people are fooled into thinking LLM text output is a real human with feelings, and some aren't, comes down to this difference in brains. (Personally I never feel like the LLM is a real human and I'm kind of autistic too.)

I think there's different kinds of autism, which imv, you could spread across a schizophrenia axis -- "low reality" and "high reality" sorts. My own classification system: The more schizophrenic kind imparts a fantasy framing on everything which can give rise to a disorganised imparting of mental capacities that I think is fairly uniform across objects, including people. This appears as "too few mental capacities" on…

> I think quite a lot of "high-engagement culture" (ie., the type which requires a lot of its audience) is really autistic culture of these varieties in interaction.

What is an example of "high-engagement culture?"

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#82

Post by kreyenborgi »

mjburgess wrote: post #23
qoez wrote: post #6

I always had the impression it was the other way around, non autistic 'normal' people personifies non human objects. Anyway I always had a pet theory that the reason some people are fooled into thinking LLM text output is a real human with feelings, and some aren't, comes down to this difference in brains. (Personally I never feel like the LLM is a real human and I'm kind of autistic too.)

I think there's different kinds of autism, which imv, you could spread across a schizophrenia axis -- "low reality" and "high reality" sorts. My own classification system: The more schizophrenic kind imparts a fantasy framing on everything which can give rise to a disorganised imparting of mental capacities that I think is fairly uniform across objects, including people. This appears as "too few mental capacities" on…

Is there anything published on this?

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#83

Post by layer8 »

sctb wrote: post #8

I don't have access to the full text, but based on the abstract I think it's likely that I relate to this phenomenon (I am autistic). My experience is not so much the attribution of human characteristics to non-human objects, but I understand why this might be the only accessible language of expression. For me, if a useful object is damaged or otherwise loses its usefulness through neglect or malice, I experience som…

Object personification is if you would feel that the knife itself is sad, is hurting, etc., and you’d feel for it. If, on the other hand, you’re just sad yourself that the knife is dull, because that’s not how a knife is supposed to be, then that’s not personifying the knife, it’s more an aesthetic judgement about a state of affairs. Similarly for the room example. You feel emotional about the state of affairs that other people haven’t respected it, but you don’t think the room itself is emotional about it.

Another example is if one is sad that a favorite software or service has become enshittified. One doesn’t attribute emotion to the software or service itself, rather one feels emotional about the state the software or service is in.

Those are completely neurotypical emotional reactions.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#84

Post by 1dom »

neilv wrote: post #75

Something I've wondered that's maybe related: How many people "feel" systems? Like, if you're designing, building, or managing a large and complex system, and there are concerns in different aspects of it, and you have maybe a kind of emotional coprocessor about it, e.g., keeping track of all the parts that bother you, and how much they bother you? (Also, parts that you like.) I'm pretty sure that not all people have…

I relate to this quite a lot, and I've met a few different people over my career that I feel have the same gut intuition or instinct for systems.

You know almost instantly when you meet them in the field, often within a few sentences. It's really eye opening moving between areas of high and low densities people like this.

I did used to think it was normal and common but I've definitely come to doubt that as I've got older. I think it's been a hindrance at times though, particularly in some business environments that aren't producing systems that feel nice. Although there's a certain satisfaction and special sense of achievement in making an unhappy feeling system do amazing things.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#85

Post by earnestinger »

seabird wrote: post #56
energywut wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the worst name for the concept when you include "a male" and "a female" as prominent nouns in that noun class. If you adjust your language depending on whether you are addressing a man or a woman (or speaking about a man or woman), then it's definitely also social gender (as well as grammatical gender), even if those two concepts are separate.

Except there's no mandate that "a male" and "a female" are of different noun classes, nor are the nouns for man/woman abnormally privileged in most cases. I know Dutch has fused masculine/feminine nouns into a "common" gender, leaving the language with effectively only the common and neuter genders. If I remember correctly, a similar thing has happened in Swedish and Danish. Some languages have various concepts of an…

Except for all the languages that actually call the grammatical concept: gender

Edit: see German example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender_in_German

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#86

Post by neilv »

1dom wrote: post #84
neilv wrote: post #75

Something I've wondered that's maybe related: How many people "feel" systems? Like, if you're designing, building, or managing a large and complex system, and there are concerns in different aspects of it, and you have maybe a kind of emotional coprocessor about it, e.g., keeping track of all the parts that bother you, and how much they bother you? (Also, parts that you like.) I'm pretty sure that not all people have…

I relate to this quite a lot, and I've met a few different people over my career that I feel have the same gut intuition or instinct for systems. You know almost instantly when you meet them in the field, often within a few sentences. It's really eye opening moving between areas of high and low densities people like this. I did used to think it was normal and common but I've definitely come to doubt that as I've got…

> You know almost instantly when you meet them in the field, often within a few sentences.

Exactly. But don't let the interview people know that, or it will become another ritual that everyone checkboxes and fakes. :)

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#87

Post by impossiblefork »

seabird wrote: post #46
earnestinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot of languages assign gender to objects. One should control for foreign language knowledge.

A lot of languages assign nouns to a noun class. They are (usually) not ascribing a biological gender to an object. "Gender" is a horrendously bad name for the concept.

French and Spanish literally use a contraction of the Latin for he and she for different objects though. This is also done in Swedish.

Hon slår tolv. 'She strikes twelve', referring to the clock currently striking.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#88

Post by metalman »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #37
sctb wrote: post #8

I don't have access to the full text, but based on the abstract I think it's likely that I relate to this phenomenon (I am autistic). My experience is not so much the attribution of human characteristics to non-human objects, but I understand why this might be the only accessible language of expression. For me, if a useful object is damaged or otherwise loses its usefulness through neglect or malice, I experience som…

I relate to this easily. My family finds it so strange that I can look at a flat tire and say something like "aw, poor thing". And I'm half-joking, yet... Well, it gives me an emotional response. I think a lot of people can relate to that example in particular because there is a sort of 'deflated' sense of self most people can experience, but not so much with the dull knife or a rock being split in half. Something I…

my recent experience as an adept tool user/maker and repairer of all things mundane is that my emotional response is sufficient and planing or thinking about what I am doing isn't realy ressesary...unless it's something potentialy dangerous or deadly I am doing, and then I mainly stay out of gravitys way and/or any line of potential failure involving a lot of mass and torque living in a rural maritime area, many objects are personified and gendered, mostly female here,but the pennsylvania side of the family says "he's a good truck!" which is completely different from outport fisherfolk who refer to anything manufactured as a machine, "bring me that blue machine der you" refering to a plastic bucket, which was a common attitude in pre industrial societies that were rubbing up against the manufactured world, where everything in there world was personified by the person (who they know) who made it echos of this, everywhere diagnosible now....

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#89

Post by adamgordonbell »

mjburgess wrote: post #23
qoez wrote: post #6

I always had the impression it was the other way around, non autistic 'normal' people personifies non human objects. Anyway I always had a pet theory that the reason some people are fooled into thinking LLM text output is a real human with feelings, and some aren't, comes down to this difference in brains. (Personally I never feel like the LLM is a real human and I'm kind of autistic too.)

I think there's different kinds of autism, which imv, you could spread across a schizophrenia axis -- "low reality" and "high reality" sorts. My own classification system: The more schizophrenic kind imparts a fantasy framing on everything which can give rise to a disorganised imparting of mental capacities that I think is fairly uniform across objects, including people. This appears as "too few mental capacities" on…

Echoing the other comments here, you should write down your classification system and share it.

Maybe others would benefit from understanding your intuition about this.

Re: Object personification in autism: This paper will be sad if you don't read (2018)

#90

Post by derivagral »

neilv wrote: post #75

Something I've wondered that's maybe related: How many people "feel" systems? Like, if you're designing, building, or managing a large and complex system, and there are concerns in different aspects of it, and you have maybe a kind of emotional coprocessor about it, e.g., keeping track of all the parts that bother you, and how much they bother you? (Also, parts that you like.) I'm pretty sure that not all people have…

> "feel" systems

I used to play a tcg a bit too seriously, and sometimes seeing incorrect game states would trigger something. Part of tracking game states and derivations I guess. Only sometimes helpful in software.

Post reply on HN