5 ms·

Well, there are quite a few people who lack empathy to such an extreme extent as to be quite cruel to others. We all want to avoid these people, so we expect t

Well, there are quite a few people who lack empathy to such an extreme extent as to be quite cruel to others. We all want to avoid these people, so we expect those we interact with to express strong empathy-signals, and distrust them if they won't. It's absolutely normal for autists to be inconvenienced by this, since - their empathy-ceilings being lower, as a rule - they have to pay a higher personal cost than most to send these reliable signals. But this is not in principle different from any other problem that may be experienced due to having autistic traits. It's surely better than the alternative of being distrusted, or else of enabling cruel abusers.

watwut 7y ago
I meant that people on the spectrum can come across as cruel or abusive or hurt others without intention to and regardless of what they feel inside. That is not about signals only. I mean the impact on others is there. Unintentional, but real. Then it leads to retaliation which in misunderstood and whole thing may lead to escalations and at worst bullying. That is more then inconvenience.
- 0815test 7y ago
  Retaliation is a strategic last resort that is intended to deter cruel people from hurting us, when appeals to empathy are expected to be ineffective. If someone hurts you accidentally, and you can tell (because he can reliably express empathy), you won't retaliate; you'll ask for an apology. If someone hurts you out of cruelty, expecting an apology is actually counterproductive; you'll either get the authorities involved, or if you're in an especially shitty situation where no authority will back you with force, retaliate swiftly and perhaps at disproportionate cost to yourself, so that whoever hurt you understands that it was a bad idea - and so that, ex-ante, even the cruel aren't tempted to hurt you in the first place.
  - PaulHoule 7y ago
    That was a problem for me in childhood. The teachers just didn't get that I had a right to be free of harassment. They didn't punish the harassers, but they did punish me when I fought back. So they were implicit in the harassment and this was a deadly part of the curriculum.
    - watwut 7y ago
      That is something I understood only after I became adult and had kids. It is not that they don't get it. It is that they prioritize lack of visible disorder over fair resolution and don't want things to escalate to even bigger disorder. Dealing with bullies is hard frustrating long term work. Forcing victim to be silent is easier and gets "result" faster. Moreover, they can convince themselves that they at least made victim act well behaved. It is just easier and more comfortable to blame the victim, really.
  - TheOperator 7y ago
    Okay. So if you're autistic and upset somebody have a choice now. Tell people you're disabled so they don't take offence but stigmatize/patronize you instead. Or tell people nothing and let them be pissed off at you. They will jump right to retaliation like you say for seeing you as cruel. No matter what you do. You always lose. The only escape is withdrawal. Temporary or permanent.
    - 0815test 7y ago
      Wait, what? If you show that you're willing and able to take responsibility for what you did, and engage in compensation as needed, no one will be offended. Indeed, many will be favorably impressed because this is not something that antisocial people do often - as a rule, such people tend to be highly entitled, and have trouble with the whole idea of engaging in a successful negotiation with others. There is no quicker way to encourage the stigmatization/patronization of autism, than allowing the term be used as an excuse or a get-out-of-jail-card for bad behavior!
      - watwut 7y ago
        That is not how it works for many reasons on both autistic and non-autistic sides. First, not everyone is as forgiving and willing to engage in difficult conversation over this or that, especially not after being treated badly or seeing someone he likes treated badly. Some people hold grudges, some are cruel, etc. Yes people will take offense. The performance needed for effective apology or "show of responsibility" is not something autistic person can easily do. It requires skills they don't necessary have. It requires knowing what you have done wrong and they often don't know. It requires being good in politics. Also, when you tell people diagnoses, they may discriminate. They may start avoiding you and may interpret everything you do as autism - meaning you will be dismissed and your opinions ignored even when they would not otherwise. On other side, the issues in communication are not just about not understanding super subtle cues, but also in the communication overall becoming abusive - think senior developer micromanaging junior with all the negative consequences on junior that micromanagement has. Or insisting on my way and claiming everyone else is incapable or blocking the project unless everything is my way. Or treating junior with contempt every day or repeatedly claiming that colleague done shit job when colleague is not present because of basically disagreement. Simple apology wont make people forget those and moreover, autistic may be utterly confused over what it is that come across as micromanagement and contempt to junior. The harm is done, the cause is inability to put himself from other peoples shoes, but they will interpret it as hostile action and proceed to protect themselves by attacking your credibility back.
  - watwut 7y ago
    Retaliation is something people do. Sometimes as last resort, oftentimes as warning or attempt to look like bad target to pick. Yet other times out of habit. Plenty times it is done out of anger not as thought out strategy. Also, people do not see inside other people. Not just that, but when you are causing someone harm, you not meaning to will become irrelevant after certain treshold. That person will move to protect himself or his friends will mve to protect him.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
I think it shouldn't go unmentioned that at the same time, the reliance on those signals is a huge vulnerability that is massively being abused by manipulators? I guess you could say that is how authoritarian leaders get into power. So, it's not so obvious it's actually a useful mechanism. Rather, it seems that it maybe works better in small structures and/or for short time horizons, but regularly leads to catastrophic failures in the long run/in larger groups.
- 0815test 7y ago
  It is being abused, but not "massively"; it's working just fine in many other cases which are just not explicitly salient to us. Only the very best manipulators are able to fool others about being sufficiently empathetic and even then, only just barely; many, perhaps most people can see through the ploy but go along with it for all sorts of recognizable reasons. (By and large these are not good reasons, of course.)
  - Nomentatus 7y ago
    Remember, this is one of those situations where you don't have to outrun the lion - just the other guy. But here, the other guy has advantages over someone who's neurodiverse. Asking every autistic person to outmimic sociopaths (with fewer diverse traits) who dedicate their lives to such mimicry is asking the impossible. Psychopaths aren't rare, violent psychopaths are rare.
Nomentatus 7y ago
Wow, you're assuming that the neuro-diverse can mimic these signals so much better than sociopaths that any citizen will cheerfully hand them a (false!) "yes quite empathic" sticker. And that they can do so at little cost! Not so and not so. The usual result of this strategy is that in return for their heroic efforts, the neuro-diverse person appears "very plastic" and falls heavily into the "uncanny valley." This can result in extremely intense antipathy to them.
- 0815test 7y ago
  > Wow, you're assuming that the neuro-diverse can mimic these signals so much better than sociopaths Given how little we know about the inner mental states of sociopaths (as opposed to their outward behavior), I don't think we can simply assume that they're closer to the neurotypical ideal than autistics. (There's even some speculation that they may essentially be "emotional Reptilians", with an emotional palette that's essentially restricted to relatively basic drives - and that their consistent manipulation of others is in fact driven by the resource-acquisition drive.) There may even be multiple dimensions of viable empathy-signals; one kind may be especially cheap for neurotypicals, whilst a different kind may be cheap for the autistic.
  - Nomentatus 7y ago
    I don't think we're disagreeing much about the background. But as for results: I've known both - the sociopaths were much better in my experience. More repetitive, granted, but with far fewer obvious misfires and much less strain.
    - 0815test 7y ago
      I mean, the repetitiveness itself should be kind of a tell-tale sign, shouldn't it? And for that matter, I'm not even convinced that sociopaths have that highly-developed of a TOM (Theory Of Mind) either. Their manipulations seem to be skin-deep, and they have deeper problems with succeeding in negotiation and letting go of entitlement attitudes, even when they would stand to gain significantly from doing so - that are hard to explain other than via a defective TOM. (It might even be possible to explore these things via formal research, such as by enticing/incenting sociopathic subjects to play properly-specified games/puzzles that require them to manipulate someone in just the right (and increasingly complex) ways, and looking at their outcomes.)

watwut 7y ago

I meant that people on the spectrum can come across as cruel or abusive or hurt others without intention to and regardless of what they feel inside. That is not about signals only. I mean the impact on others is there. Unintentional, but real. Then it leads to retaliation which in misunderstood and whole thing may lead to escalations and at worst bullying. That is more then inconvenience.

0815test 7y ago
Retaliation is a strategic last resort that is intended to deter cruel people from hurting us, when appeals to empathy are expected to be ineffective. If someone hurts you accidentally, and you can tell (because he can reliably express empathy), you won't retaliate; you'll ask for an apology. If someone hurts you out of cruelty, expecting an apology is actually counterproductive; you'll either get the authorities involved, or if you're in an especially shitty situation where no authority will back you with force, retaliate swiftly and perhaps at disproportionate cost to yourself, so that whoever hurt you understands that it was a bad idea - and so that, ex-ante, even the cruel aren't tempted to hurt you in the first place.
- PaulHoule 7y ago
  That was a problem for me in childhood. The teachers just didn't get that I had a right to be free of harassment. They didn't punish the harassers, but they did punish me when I fought back. So they were implicit in the harassment and this was a deadly part of the curriculum.
  - watwut 7y ago
    That is something I understood only after I became adult and had kids. It is not that they don't get it. It is that they prioritize lack of visible disorder over fair resolution and don't want things to escalate to even bigger disorder. Dealing with bullies is hard frustrating long term work. Forcing victim to be silent is easier and gets "result" faster. Moreover, they can convince themselves that they at least made victim act well behaved. It is just easier and more comfortable to blame the victim, really.
- TheOperator 7y ago
  Okay. So if you're autistic and upset somebody have a choice now. Tell people you're disabled so they don't take offence but stigmatize/patronize you instead. Or tell people nothing and let them be pissed off at you. They will jump right to retaliation like you say for seeing you as cruel. No matter what you do. You always lose. The only escape is withdrawal. Temporary or permanent.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    Wait, what? If you show that you're willing and able to take responsibility for what you did, and engage in compensation as needed, no one will be offended. Indeed, many will be favorably impressed because this is not something that antisocial people do often - as a rule, such people tend to be highly entitled, and have trouble with the whole idea of engaging in a successful negotiation with others. There is no quicker way to encourage the stigmatization/patronization of autism, than allowing the term be used as an excuse or a get-out-of-jail-card for bad behavior!
    - watwut 7y ago
      That is not how it works for many reasons on both autistic and non-autistic sides. First, not everyone is as forgiving and willing to engage in difficult conversation over this or that, especially not after being treated badly or seeing someone he likes treated badly. Some people hold grudges, some are cruel, etc. Yes people will take offense. The performance needed for effective apology or "show of responsibility" is not something autistic person can easily do. It requires skills they don't necessary have. It requires knowing what you have done wrong and they often don't know. It requires being good in politics. Also, when you tell people diagnoses, they may discriminate. They may start avoiding you and may interpret everything you do as autism - meaning you will be dismissed and your opinions ignored even when they would not otherwise. On other side, the issues in communication are not just about not understanding super subtle cues, but also in the communication overall becoming abusive - think senior developer micromanaging junior with all the negative consequences on junior that micromanagement has. Or insisting on my way and claiming everyone else is incapable or blocking the project unless everything is my way. Or treating junior with contempt every day or repeatedly claiming that colleague done shit job when colleague is not present because of basically disagreement. Simple apology wont make people forget those and moreover, autistic may be utterly confused over what it is that come across as micromanagement and contempt to junior. The harm is done, the cause is inability to put himself from other peoples shoes, but they will interpret it as hostile action and proceed to protect themselves by attacking your credibility back.
- watwut 7y ago
  Retaliation is something people do. Sometimes as last resort, oftentimes as warning or attempt to look like bad target to pick. Yet other times out of habit. Plenty times it is done out of anger not as thought out strategy. Also, people do not see inside other people. Not just that, but when you are causing someone harm, you not meaning to will become irrelevant after certain treshold. That person will move to protect himself or his friends will mve to protect him.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago

I think it shouldn't go unmentioned that at the same time, the reliance on those signals is a huge vulnerability that is massively being abused by manipulators? I guess you could say that is how authoritarian leaders get into power. So, it's not so obvious it's actually a useful mechanism. Rather, it seems that it maybe works better in small structures and/or for short time horizons, but regularly leads to catastrophic failures in the long run/in larger groups.

0815test 7y ago
It is being abused, but not "massively"; it's working just fine in many other cases which are just not explicitly salient to us. Only the very best manipulators are able to fool others about being sufficiently empathetic and even then, only just barely; many, perhaps most people can see through the ploy but go along with it for all sorts of recognizable reasons. (By and large these are not good reasons, of course.)
- Nomentatus 7y ago
  Remember, this is one of those situations where you don't have to outrun the lion - just the other guy. But here, the other guy has advantages over someone who's neurodiverse. Asking every autistic person to outmimic sociopaths (with fewer diverse traits) who dedicate their lives to such mimicry is asking the impossible. Psychopaths aren't rare, violent psychopaths are rare.

Nomentatus 7y ago

Wow, you're assuming that the neuro-diverse can mimic these signals so much better than sociopaths that any citizen will cheerfully hand them a (false!) "yes quite empathic" sticker. And that they can do so at little cost! Not so and not so. The usual result of this strategy is that in return for their heroic efforts, the neuro-diverse person appears "very plastic" and falls heavily into the "uncanny valley." This can result in extremely intense antipathy to them.

0815test 7y ago
> Wow, you're assuming that the neuro-diverse can mimic these signals so much better than sociopaths Given how little we know about the inner mental states of sociopaths (as opposed to their outward behavior), I don't think we can simply assume that they're closer to the neurotypical ideal than autistics. (There's even some speculation that they may essentially be "emotional Reptilians", with an emotional palette that's essentially restricted to relatively basic drives - and that their consistent manipulation of others is in fact driven by the resource-acquisition drive.) There may even be multiple dimensions of viable empathy-signals; one kind may be especially cheap for neurotypicals, whilst a different kind may be cheap for the autistic.
- Nomentatus 7y ago
  I don't think we're disagreeing much about the background. But as for results: I've known both - the sociopaths were much better in my experience. More repetitive, granted, but with far fewer obvious misfires and much less strain.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    I mean, the repetitiveness itself should be kind of a tell-tale sign, shouldn't it? And for that matter, I'm not even convinced that sociopaths have that highly-developed of a TOM (Theory Of Mind) either. Their manipulations seem to be skin-deep, and they have deeper problems with succeeding in negotiation and letting go of entitlement attitudes, even when they would stand to gain significantly from doing so - that are hard to explain other than via a defective TOM. (It might even be possible to explore these things via formal research, such as by enticing/incenting sociopathic subjects to play properly-specified games/puzzles that require them to manipulate someone in just the right (and increasingly complex) ways, and looking at their outcomes.)