4 ms·

>thoughtless / mean / an ass This is precisely what people with autism tend to be like because of the difficulty people with autism have empathizing with other

>thoughtless / mean / an ass This is precisely what people with autism tend to be like because of the difficulty people with autism have empathizing with others and seeing things from other people's points of view.

Avshalom 6y ago
I know a lot of autistic people and they're all scrupulously kind and emotionally intelligent. The idea that autistic people are assholes is an artifact of every other gamer on the internet self diagnosing themselves with aspergers in the 00s and then using that as an excuse to be un-introspectively cruel to each other.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  Autism is very different for everyone who has it. No one is saying that autistic people are assholes, but that stallman may not see or understand how his comments are taken or why people will get upset when the comment is factually correct.
  - Avshalom 6y ago
    Literally: >>thoughtless / mean / an ass >This is precisely what people with autism tend to be
  - howinteresting 6y ago
    Speaking as an autistic person, that really does not matter. Even though I don't believe in free will, I do believe that a functioning society requires people with power (like RMS, in his capacity as a free software leader) to be held responsible for the harm they cause regardless of how neurodivergent they are. What about all the other people who were excluded from the movement because RMS was an ass? A common human fallacy is to overindex on the contributions of assholes, while ignoring the potential contributions of those who were excluded by their actions.
    - bobsled 6y ago
      How does one accurately quantify hypothetical contributions by people who may or may not exist?
      - howinteresting 6y ago
        Most things in life aren't quantifiable, unfortunately. In our field we're spoiled by how many things can be reduced to numbers, but when it comes to interactions between humans it's essentially impossible. So instead, we have to use subjective evaluations. My subjective evaluation, having met RMS in person and looked at the consistent patterns in his behavior, is that he is "below replacement value" -- he has overall caused far more harm than the average person in his position would have.
        bobsled 6y ago
        Thank you for the clarification. Please understand that I don't mean to be pedantic.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        I agree with the sibling that there are many things in life that we just can't reduce to numbers. Sometimes you can't make a decision based on hard, irrefutable data. You just have to go by what you think will or won't happen based on the possible choices. In this case, though we actually could, if we wanted to, find some data. We could go around and ask a bunch of people if they wanted to get involved with the FSF but didn't, and see how many of those people were turned off by RMS. Another option could be to look at the demographics of people getting involved in the FSF before and after RMS had been outsted, and compare. None of that is perfect, and especially the second option would only give you a correlation, not necessarily causation. But, again, our data will always be incomplete, and you just have to go with what your experience tells you will or won't happen.
- gizmo686 6y ago
  Diagnosed asperg here; would probably be autistic if I got diagnosed today. If I appear scrupulously kind to you, it is because I am compensating. If I appear emotionally intelligent to you, it is because I had to learn what is literally instinct to most people. At least for me, I am able to compensate effectively and pass in most social situations, but it is exhausting. When I read RMS's writing that lead to the conflict in question, it struck me as an entirely reasonable piece. When I read the responses to it, the message I got, loud and clear, was "my thought patterns are not welcome here"
  - Avshalom 6y ago
    Not to be like a patronizing son of a bitch here but: that you choose to be kind does not make you less kind. that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real. that you willingly exhaust yourself exercising those skills is absolutely the opposite of being an asshole.
    - seba_dos1 6y ago
      I would say the point is that it's extremely easy to unwillingly appear as an asshole if you have to put an extraordinary amount of effort into not appearing as one just because you don't operate based on the same social constructs as most of other people do by default.
    - gizmo686 6y ago
      As I said, I can pass. My point is that other people making me put in the work to pass are being assholes. The irony of them doing so in the name of diversity and inclusion is not lost on me. > that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real. That is a rather technical statement, that would be dependent on exactly what you mean by "emotional intelligence". Relying on general intelligence to do tasks that most people accomplish with more specialized brain power is certainly different, regardless of if you want to classify it as emotional intelligence or not.
      - 6y ago
- denton-scratch 6y ago
  Ah. I did that (self-diagnosing as an aspie). I'm not. It's not a special preoperty of spectrum people that they have to learn what neuro-whatsit folks know "instinctively"; we all have to learn these things. Socialisation is learned, not instinctive. You don't have to have a disorder to have poor social skills. It could be that your poor social skills are the result of inadequate experience or training; it might be that you don't care much (not because you don't care about others, but just because the approval of others doesn't matter much to you, and expending energy on gaining that approval is wasted energy). Not needing the approval of others isn't a disease; it's a mark of psychological health.
kelnos 6y ago
There's a difference between your perception of someone and what they are actually like. The asshole is thoughtless because they believe others to be less important than themselves. The person with autism is (may be) thoughtless because their brain isn't wired to be thoughtful. Or they actually are thoughtful, but don't know how to express it in a way that others can understand.

Avshalom 6y ago

I know a lot of autistic people and they're all scrupulously kind and emotionally intelligent. The idea that autistic people are assholes is an artifact of every other gamer on the internet self diagnosing themselves with aspergers in the 00s and then using that as an excuse to be un-introspectively cruel to each other.

SilverRed 6y ago
Autism is very different for everyone who has it. No one is saying that autistic people are assholes, but that stallman may not see or understand how his comments are taken or why people will get upset when the comment is factually correct.
- Avshalom 6y ago
  Literally: >>thoughtless / mean / an ass >This is precisely what people with autism tend to be
- howinteresting 6y ago
  Speaking as an autistic person, that really does not matter. Even though I don't believe in free will, I do believe that a functioning society requires people with power (like RMS, in his capacity as a free software leader) to be held responsible for the harm they cause regardless of how neurodivergent they are. What about all the other people who were excluded from the movement because RMS was an ass? A common human fallacy is to overindex on the contributions of assholes, while ignoring the potential contributions of those who were excluded by their actions.
  - bobsled 6y ago
    How does one accurately quantify hypothetical contributions by people who may or may not exist?
    - howinteresting 6y ago
      Most things in life aren't quantifiable, unfortunately. In our field we're spoiled by how many things can be reduced to numbers, but when it comes to interactions between humans it's essentially impossible. So instead, we have to use subjective evaluations. My subjective evaluation, having met RMS in person and looked at the consistent patterns in his behavior, is that he is "below replacement value" -- he has overall caused far more harm than the average person in his position would have.
      - bobsled 6y ago
        Thank you for the clarification. Please understand that I don't mean to be pedantic.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      I agree with the sibling that there are many things in life that we just can't reduce to numbers. Sometimes you can't make a decision based on hard, irrefutable data. You just have to go by what you think will or won't happen based on the possible choices. In this case, though we actually could, if we wanted to, find some data. We could go around and ask a bunch of people if they wanted to get involved with the FSF but didn't, and see how many of those people were turned off by RMS. Another option could be to look at the demographics of people getting involved in the FSF before and after RMS had been outsted, and compare. None of that is perfect, and especially the second option would only give you a correlation, not necessarily causation. But, again, our data will always be incomplete, and you just have to go with what your experience tells you will or won't happen.
gizmo686 6y ago
Diagnosed asperg here; would probably be autistic if I got diagnosed today. If I appear scrupulously kind to you, it is because I am compensating. If I appear emotionally intelligent to you, it is because I had to learn what is literally instinct to most people. At least for me, I am able to compensate effectively and pass in most social situations, but it is exhausting. When I read RMS's writing that lead to the conflict in question, it struck me as an entirely reasonable piece. When I read the responses to it, the message I got, loud and clear, was "my thought patterns are not welcome here"
- Avshalom 6y ago
  Not to be like a patronizing son of a bitch here but: that you choose to be kind does not make you less kind. that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real. that you willingly exhaust yourself exercising those skills is absolutely the opposite of being an asshole.
  - seba_dos1 6y ago
    I would say the point is that it's extremely easy to unwillingly appear as an asshole if you have to put an extraordinary amount of effort into not appearing as one just because you don't operate based on the same social constructs as most of other people do by default.
  - gizmo686 6y ago
    As I said, I can pass. My point is that other people making me put in the work to pass are being assholes. The irony of them doing so in the name of diversity and inclusion is not lost on me. > that your emotional intelligence was learned rather than instinctual does not make it less real. That is a rather technical statement, that would be dependent on exactly what you mean by "emotional intelligence". Relying on general intelligence to do tasks that most people accomplish with more specialized brain power is certainly different, regardless of if you want to classify it as emotional intelligence or not.
    - 6y ago
denton-scratch 6y ago
Ah. I did that (self-diagnosing as an aspie). I'm not. It's not a special preoperty of spectrum people that they have to learn what neuro-whatsit folks know "instinctively"; we all have to learn these things. Socialisation is learned, not instinctive. You don't have to have a disorder to have poor social skills. It could be that your poor social skills are the result of inadequate experience or training; it might be that you don't care much (not because you don't care about others, but just because the approval of others doesn't matter much to you, and expending energy on gaining that approval is wasted energy). Not needing the approval of others isn't a disease; it's a mark of psychological health.

kelnos 6y ago

There's a difference between your perception of someone and what they are actually like. The asshole is thoughtless because they believe others to be less important than themselves. The person with autism is (may be) thoughtless because their brain isn't wired to be thoughtful. Or they actually are thoughtful, but don't know how to express it in a way that others can understand.