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I read this as writing from someone who has a hard time seeing from other people's perspective. I believe part of the responsibility falls on the author. While

I read this as writing from someone who has a hard time seeing from other people's perspective. I believe part of the responsibility falls on the author. While they acknowledge that they aren't great at communication, their conclusion does not include working on soft skills. It's something I realized when I started tutoring, if a student fails to understand you, it's not their fault for not understanding. It's on you, as the tutor, to communicate in a way that gets through to them. The ability to communicate your ideas easily and concisely is something you can learn. Here's a good list of books, although I have not personally read all of them. https://socialself.com/blog/books-improve-social-skills/#6 https://socialself.com/blog/books-improve-social-skills/#6 At the end of the day though, real world experience is the easiest. Volunteering has been my favorite thing to do to get to know new people and practice my social skills. I do not agree with the generalization of the author about all allistic people having the exact weakness outlined in the post. Effective communication is skill non-neurodivergent people work on to master too. What I'd argue is that allistic people learn more easily because they have a feedback loop they can rely on to self correct and autistic people need more clear examples to learn from. "I don't care much for saying false things to appease someone's ego. In cases like this, I'm not the one who can't acknowledge being wrong." is just a very cold approach to social interactions. There's a time and place for when that kind of clinical approach is necessary, but it's not appropriate for every social interaction.

zamalek 4y ago
> someone who has a hard time who has a hard time seeing from other people's perspective You're blaming someone for their disability - this is basically the equivalent of blaming a paraplegic for not being able to walk. Social skills are almost entirely an intellectual process (as opposed to an instinctual process) for many autistic people. It's not like learning to ride a bike (as it is for neurotypical people), it's like learning algebra. Here are some resources on accepting neurological differences, as opposed to trying to fix them: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/autism/neurodiversity-and-the-benefits-autism https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/autism/neurodivers...
- knaik94 4y ago
  I apologize if that came off as something with a negative connotation, it wasn't meant to. That article was not as helpful as you probably intended. I also didn't realize how gender norms are inherently tied to the theory and diagnosis of autism according to certain frameworks in the article you linked. I don't this it's fair to argue that difficulty understanding other perspectives/lack of empathy is something you should accept the same way you do a disability. It's not the same at all. Knowing how your words will be understood from someone else's perspective is something that can be learned. I had to learn it when I started tutoring. Students with poor performance struggle due to the consequence of failure to teach, much more than a failure to learn. I didn't say it would be easy. Intellectual or instinctual doesn't make a difference as it can still be learned. Autism is very diverse in presentation so I know there are limits to the generalizations I am making.
  - zamalek 4y ago
    > I don't this it's fair to argue that difficulty understanding other perspectives/lack of empathy is something you should accept the same way you do a disability. Just because something is not visible does not make it less real. This is one of the largest hurdles for experiencing acceptance for many people who have a mental disability. Your perspective is also perfectly typical, expected, and human. Neurodiversity gets almost no attention, and it easily follow that innocent ignorance is rampant. And it's not that we don't try, and shouldn't try, it's that we get put into several buckets (as-per the scare quotes in the title) when we inevitably fail. We will never master social skills like a neurotypical person can. Many of us also don't categorize it as a strict disability (depending on the nature and severity of our particular case), there are immense upsides to the condition (depending, again, on the individual). That certainly doesn't mean that we should be expected to (anagolously) grow appendages that we weren't born with.
larve 4y ago
I understand where you coming from, and I do agree. I approached learning social skills as rigorously as I did technology books, and it has helped me grow a huge network of friends of all backgrounds, get married, move continents, get on well with pretty much all of my colleagues. It also ironically made me think I was not autistic for decades, because how could I be since I have such good social skills. But I still have values that I hold on to. If someone adamantly states they are right about something, and turn it into a “social skill showdown” where one has to feign agreement and cave in to some sort of authority, then count me out. I know other people do it, I kind of understand why, but it’s not for me. I don’t think it’s cold at all, it’s just me prioritizing my values. What I’m realizing as I write these articles and am more open about my introspection is that a lot of allistic people, for all their talk about empathy and theory of mind, really don’t try very hard to see things from the other side. Maybe I can’t intuitively chose just the right words to make my question not sound patronizing, maybe I don’t even understand what “sounding patronizing” is. At that point it’s really on that person to put in a bit of effort and skip over the jab and realize the question is probably not meant to patronize. Otherwise it’s like asking a blind person to just look where they’re going when they’re walking into a wall.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- knaik94 4y ago
  With additional context, I think that's fair to ask but I want to believe there's still things you can meaningfully do to make these interactions feel more intuitive. I would argue that allistic people do see from the other side but have a hard time understanding why austic people end up with a different conclusion. People care how other people see them, that's true to a certain degree. People might not change, but everyone feels affected by other's perceptions of them. There's a lot of conditioned connotations that come from how we grow up in society, so it's not a small bit of effort to move on from a jab or patronizing talk. If someone has worked hard to gain respect and not feel insecure about themselves, patronizing talk is hard to move forward from. In that situation it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not. People like other people that make them laugh, so I don't know how helpful this will be but I would say try your hand at incorporating some humor into your speech, if you don't already. Focus mainly on humor that punches up, lean towards the humor of Hasan Minaj and not towards the humor of The Big Bang Theory. It's also not about feigning agreement or caving in to authority. You have to let other people be wrong. It's more nuanced than I can go into here via comments, but I imagine you understand. Letting other people be wrong shouldn't be about prioritizing your values, it's about respecting their learning process as well. If you want to prioritize your values despite understanding that it comes at the cost of respecting other people's learning process, that's a choice you can make. Intent doesn't negate the consequences of how words might affect someone else. I am trying my best to be respectful, I hope I didn't offend with anything I said because that's not my intent. I apologize if I did already at some point. Thank you for the healthy discourse with me, I appreciate it.

zamalek 4y ago

> someone who has a hard time who has a hard time seeing from other people's perspective You're blaming someone for their disability - this is basically the equivalent of blaming a paraplegic for not being able to walk. Social skills are almost entirely an intellectual process (as opposed to an instinctual process) for many autistic people. It's not like learning to ride a bike (as it is for neurotypical people), it's like learning algebra. Here are some resources on accepting neurological differences, as opposed to trying to fix them: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/autism/neurodiversity-and-the-benefits-autism https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/autism/neurodivers...

knaik94 4y ago
I apologize if that came off as something with a negative connotation, it wasn't meant to. That article was not as helpful as you probably intended. I also didn't realize how gender norms are inherently tied to the theory and diagnosis of autism according to certain frameworks in the article you linked. I don't this it's fair to argue that difficulty understanding other perspectives/lack of empathy is something you should accept the same way you do a disability. It's not the same at all. Knowing how your words will be understood from someone else's perspective is something that can be learned. I had to learn it when I started tutoring. Students with poor performance struggle due to the consequence of failure to teach, much more than a failure to learn. I didn't say it would be easy. Intellectual or instinctual doesn't make a difference as it can still be learned. Autism is very diverse in presentation so I know there are limits to the generalizations I am making.
- zamalek 4y ago
  > I don't this it's fair to argue that difficulty understanding other perspectives/lack of empathy is something you should accept the same way you do a disability. Just because something is not visible does not make it less real. This is one of the largest hurdles for experiencing acceptance for many people who have a mental disability. Your perspective is also perfectly typical, expected, and human. Neurodiversity gets almost no attention, and it easily follow that innocent ignorance is rampant. And it's not that we don't try, and shouldn't try, it's that we get put into several buckets (as-per the scare quotes in the title) when we inevitably fail. We will never master social skills like a neurotypical person can. Many of us also don't categorize it as a strict disability (depending on the nature and severity of our particular case), there are immense upsides to the condition (depending, again, on the individual). That certainly doesn't mean that we should be expected to (anagolously) grow appendages that we weren't born with.

larve 4y ago

I understand where you coming from, and I do agree. I approached learning social skills as rigorously as I did technology books, and it has helped me grow a huge network of friends of all backgrounds, get married, move continents, get on well with pretty much all of my colleagues. It also ironically made me think I was not autistic for decades, because how could I be since I have such good social skills. But I still have values that I hold on to. If someone adamantly states they are right about something, and turn it into a “social skill showdown” where one has to feign agreement and cave in to some sort of authority, then count me out. I know other people do it, I kind of understand why, but it’s not for me. I don’t think it’s cold at all, it’s just me prioritizing my values. What I’m realizing as I write these articles and am more open about my introspection is that a lot of allistic people, for all their talk about empathy and theory of mind, really don’t try very hard to see things from the other side. Maybe I can’t intuitively chose just the right words to make my question not sound patronizing, maybe I don’t even understand what “sounding patronizing” is. At that point it’s really on that person to put in a bit of effort and skip over the jab and realize the question is probably not meant to patronize. Otherwise it’s like asking a blind person to just look where they’re going when they’re walking into a wall.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
knaik94 4y ago
With additional context, I think that's fair to ask but I want to believe there's still things you can meaningfully do to make these interactions feel more intuitive. I would argue that allistic people do see from the other side but have a hard time understanding why austic people end up with a different conclusion. People care how other people see them, that's true to a certain degree. People might not change, but everyone feels affected by other's perceptions of them. There's a lot of conditioned connotations that come from how we grow up in society, so it's not a small bit of effort to move on from a jab or patronizing talk. If someone has worked hard to gain respect and not feel insecure about themselves, patronizing talk is hard to move forward from. In that situation it doesn't matter if it was intentional or not. People like other people that make them laugh, so I don't know how helpful this will be but I would say try your hand at incorporating some humor into your speech, if you don't already. Focus mainly on humor that punches up, lean towards the humor of Hasan Minaj and not towards the humor of The Big Bang Theory. It's also not about feigning agreement or caving in to authority. You have to let other people be wrong. It's more nuanced than I can go into here via comments, but I imagine you understand. Letting other people be wrong shouldn't be about prioritizing your values, it's about respecting their learning process as well. If you want to prioritize your values despite understanding that it comes at the cost of respecting other people's learning process, that's a choice you can make. Intent doesn't negate the consequences of how words might affect someone else. I am trying my best to be respectful, I hope I didn't offend with anything I said because that's not my intent. I apologize if I did already at some point. Thank you for the healthy discourse with me, I appreciate it.