23 ms·

Autism and responding to authority (2019)

• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• PaulHoule 3y ago
  As a schizotype (probably most self-diagnosed "autists" are schizotypes as a condition that affects 5-10% of people has been erased) I learned to develop a "false self" where I reflexively go along with authority in in person situations. It helps to be white, but so often cops let me drive away without a ticket because I listen to so receptively to their explanation of how people don't like me driving fast in their residential neighborhood and I won't drop the slightest hint that I like street racing on Sunday mornings in a certain residential neighborhood. I'll occasionally catch the eye of a dangerous person if I'm being inattentive but I can generally convince them that I'm uninteresting. I cultivated the art of being attentive while looking inattentive and practiced "invisibility magic" where I'd sometimes walk past security guards as if I wasn't there, bypass a quarter mile long line at the Moscone center by manipulating my (and by extension an observer's) attention and such. An falling back on being sheepish and a little bit slow would get me out of trouble if it didn't work.
  • ruiisnwn 3y ago
    [dead]
  • neontomo 3y ago
    Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but why are you talking about manipulating situations in ways that would hurt others as a positive learned trait? Skipping a line is beneficial to only one person, you.
    • PaulHoule 3y ago
      Sure, but before I developed this trait school was hell. I failed the Turing test in Kindergarten and wound up graduating from elementary school the way Ender Wiggin did. I would say for the most part I have that behavior under control (except for a time when I developed bad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_situational_narcissism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquired_situational_narcissis...) and might do things that are slightly antisocial and that only harm others in a minor way, such as that cutting in line. Maybe the state really needs the money for the traffic ticket but I would not be in the slightest resentful paying for it I'd gotten it. I'm sure the cop had a better day than if he had to deal with somebody who gave him crap about it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_the_Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_the_Self for an analysis of the "False Self" that is quite different from the earlier analysis of Winnicott. I've come to the conclusion that I have a neurobiological difference that makes development of a "True Self" impossible so I make the most of what I can, even if that means putting on the skin of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune in my imagination (no, I am not a furry, I'm a kemonomimi)
      • progne 3y ago
        > ... wound up graduating from elementary school the way Ender Wiggin did You killed a bully and got shipped to another school in outer space?
        • pas 3y ago
          Uh, you didn't? Why would you end up on Earth otherwise?
        • PaulHoule 3y ago
          He threatened my life. I told the principal that if he couldn't protect me I'd have to kill the bully before he killed me. I think he did survive but at that time I would have accepted any punishment if it meant an end to the abuse. I wound up being homeschooled for about two and a half years as a result.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • atlas_hugged 3y ago
      I read this the same way. I didn’t know I could recognize punchable faces via text.
      • PaulHoule 3y ago
        Whatever. I have an intact superego. The third to last time I saw a therapist I was misdiagnosed as "adjustment disorder with conduct concerns" in the first session but the therapist took that back when he got to know me and realized I do have a reasonable moral sense (it is one thing to cut in line, it is another to steal money, do property damage, deceive people, etc.) Now the second to last time I saw a therapist we got along well but she got kicked out by betterhelp. The last therapist I saw unfortunately did meet my evil twin who was out at the time and I would say my behavior was over the line at that time but it was part of an extraordinary situation that didn't last very long and I can't imagine being repeated because I discovered what my secret was within a year of that crisis breaking. She fired me. I haven't gotten a real diagnosis for my schizotypy because it is so bad in 2023, my primary care doc gave me 10 referrals, none were taking new patients, I emailed people who'd written review articles and books on schizotypy for referrals, they said they'd get back to me but they didn't, etc.
        • c22 3y ago
          > I do have a reasonable moral sense (it is one thing to cut in line, it is another to steal money, do property damage, deceive people, etc.) You said yourself you cut in line by manipulating people's attention (deception). Also, the people who are ahead of you in line got there before you did because they left their house earlier, or didn't spend so much time fucking around in the dairy aisle, or whatever. When you cut in line you are stealing time from them that they could otherwise use on something else before they run out of it and die. How is this more acceptable than damaging physical property, which some social frameworks would contend can't even be "owned" by individuals? Your moral framework is not self-consistent.
        • RoyalHenOil 3y ago
          In my experience, people who are assholes in small ways are almost always also assholes in very big ways as well; they just don't know it. They don't have a strong ability to reason ethically and consider the risks and ramifications of their actions, so instead they learn a lot of social rules (e.g., it's wrong to steal, it's wrong to hit women, etc.) and think it means that they are a moral person where it matters. However, when good behavior or bad behavior is not directly spelled out to them like that, they cannot easily differentiate between them and often select the bad behavior. When I meet someone who is an asshole in small ways, I quietly put them on the list of people I do not trust or respect. I make sure they do not know I feel this way about them (due to not trusting them), but I take steps to undermine their ability to do harm in the world: I subtly discourage mutual friends from becoming close to them, I subtly push against them being promoted into managerial positions, I subtly warn friends who have crushes on them, etc.
  • bdamm 3y ago
    Probably easier to just call it being manipulative and maybe sociopathic.
  • c22 3y ago
    You're not a ninja, people just have better things to do than call you out on your bullshit. I also walk past security guards all the time, and it's because I have places to go.
  • neilv 3y ago
    > I won't drop the slightest hint that I like street racing on Sunday mornings in a certain residential neighborhood. Please don't do this. It's much-much-much worse than the other things you mention.
    • PaulHoule 3y ago
      You're right. To my credit, I haven't in years. It's an example of the "splitting" at the root of "schizo" which helps me be able to be a member of two contradictory groups at the same time until the contradictions build up and I get expelled from both. It is not so much about being deceptive but about sincerely seeing the humanity in everyone and trying to play both roles, though there is a way you get drawn into increasing levels of duplicity if you go down that route. It's also a demonstration of how the "false self" comes out of having the experience of having to hide a vulnerability from people. (I really was prone to paranoid ideation, but the way I was treated in elementary school "proved" they really were out to get me. Boy was I furious at a friend of mine who showed contempt for the private school he went to because my parents were able to get me into private school for just one year and I was treated like... a human being and actually made some friends.) Schizotypes can oddly be very cagey sometimes yet they struggle to avoid random offputting statements that get them in trouble. When I hear "I was bullied as a kid", I can't help but think of https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/0415066654 https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/... and the interpretation of that book in https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experimental-Psychopathology/dp/1606238655 https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim... and wonder if Asperger's is just a fad diagnosis for this.
      • neilv 3y ago
        Sounds difficult. I don't know what expelled means here, but I hope your circumstances only get better.
  • alphazard 3y ago
    A lot of sibling comments expressing distaste for this. I find it interesting that when people intuit how to manipulate others and do it successfully, without self-awareness, it's called charisma, or social intelligence. But when someone has to consciously learn how to do these things, and as a result of the self-awareness can articulate the mechanics to others, it's called sociopathy.
    • neontomo 3y ago
      There is a big difference in influencing people and manipulating them. If you can get a group of people to do things that benefit the group, it's a positive trait and we call it leadership. I guess this is what you mean by charisma in this case?
    • itishappy 3y ago
      I feel the dual of sociopathy isn't charisma, it's leadership. Manipulating others to benefit oneself (Paul's examples) is sociopathy, while manipulating others to benefit all is leadership. I do not believe these concepts to be mutually exclusive. Charisma, meanwhile, is a tool for sociopaths and leaders alike, and it can absolutely be learned and practiced. It's not the only tool to manipulate; power is a common one, but raw technical ability is my personal favorite.
    • pacificmaelstrm 3y ago
      How would you know the difference between someone who has to learn and someone who learns without trying? Maybe that they talk about it. Saying "I learned charisma" isn't a charismatic thing to say.
• nullindividual 3y ago
  Another way to phrase this from an Autistic PoV to an authority figure: You are no better than I. --- That really upsets certain people. The Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene with the peasants debating supreme authority with King Arthur is a good representation of this. NB: This isn't a SovCit situation where one doesn't recognize society around them, nor does it imply resisting authority as a Sovcit might want do. And of course, no autistic person is the same. Symptoms, limits, and so on are different for everyone.
  • candiddevmike 3y ago
    I wish everyone had this perspective. Also the opposite: you are no worse than me.
    • digging 3y ago
      We're both just apes born knowing nothing about the world, doing our best to satisfy the values we learned from other apes.
      • n3storm 3y ago
        An atoms, don't forget we are atoms trying to satisfy any Newtonian and non Newtonian rules
        • digging 3y ago
          No reason to stop there. Unless you believe in some form of metaphysical soul, our entire existence, even our personal inner thoughts, is just vibrations in quantum fields acting according to their intrinsic mathematical nature. I couldn't type this message if the universe wasn't capable of performing self-reflection inside small bubbles of itself, based entirely on its physical nature.
          • n3storm 3y ago
            Metaphysics is just another non Newtonian set of physics
• lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  This may be true in kindergarten, but as he writes: >So another example: an autistic person meets their company’s CEO. They know who they are, but they greet them as an equal. They say hi. They crack a Chandler-esque joke. They are relaxed and unfazed by the massive authority that is shrinking their peers down. >This may be great! The CEO might think, Wow! Here’s a go-getting individual, if they’re nice and positive. But they may also think, Who is this worm with no respect for my status? I didn't make it of high school (still undiagnosed) without the understanding that many people "in authority" are incompetent, vicious, spiteful authoritarians, and best to avoid authority at all costs because I have no ability to kiss ass even if it seemed like a good idea game-theory wise. Not all of us. I have a friend who I swear is ASD2 that waltzes up to CEOs all the time, and he seems to do fine. My mind screams "what are you doing????!!!" at him, like he's standing up in a foxhole, drawing fire. YMMV I guess. Diagnosed last year. In therapy. =)
  • noman-land 3y ago
    The worm is the insincere kiss-ass, not the person who treats people as equals, no matter what anyone says.
    • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      The management class are easy to manipulate and you can either play the game and get ahead, or you can refuse and be angry about the guardrails you erected for yourself. At the end of the day, the only person who is ever going to recognize the sacrifice you made is you, so you better be happy with your choices, because nobody else is going to care.
      • generalizations 3y ago
        What price self-respect?
      • noman-land 3y ago
        You can live an insincere life full of manipulation but pat yourself on the back for "winning". To each their own.
• kelseyfrog 3y ago
  It's closely related and perhaps entirely falls under the umbrella of Persistent Drive for Autonomy. The thing I like about PDA is that it has this framing duality. Depending on whether it's framed by a neurotypical perspective or a neurodivergent perspective the behaviors are either pathological or virtuous. For example, not perceiving social hierarchy, vs dismantling unjustified hierarchies. I stand to be better versed in the topic, but I hope this gives a taste of how framing can pathologize or praise the same behavior.
  • lemming 3y ago
    We're pretty sure our daughter has PDA. It's relatively mild, but when it strikes there's nothing virtuous about it. She would fight us continuously on almost everything from the age of 2.5. After 5.5 or so she settled down a bit, but it's still rough pretty frequently. People would often tell us things like "oh, it's great to have a girl who knows her own mind", and the virtuous framing sort of implies that way of thinking. But that's not it at all - the PDA society in the UK say that it should be treated like a panic attack, and that's basically what it is, at least in her case. It's not her carefully considering the options and rejecting the "normal" one, it's that when a demand triggers it (and not all do, for reasons that we can't work out) her brain completely shuts down due to crippling anxiety. We cannot talk her down, we can't reason with her or apply logic, discipline, bribery or anything else. We basically just have to wait a bit until it passes, and then discuss it afterwards. I know it's more fashionable these days to refer to it as Persistent Drive for Autonomy rather than Pathological Demand Avoidance, but at least in her case it is absolutely pathological. She is now aware that it happens and hates it and the conflict it provokes in her life. She'd do anything to change it but realistically can't, especially since any sort of therapy feels like a demand and is almost impossible to follow.
    • kelseyfrog 3y ago
      It sounds ego-dystonic from her perspective. Sorry it can be so challenging.
• ulrischa 3y ago
  Autism is hard
  • stop50 3y ago
    A fellow reader of "The world behind my shadow" (original: Schattenspringer)?
    • ulrischa 3y ago
      Is this good or bad?
      • stop50 3y ago
        The book series is from an female autist and her expiriences from her yputh to adulthood. Part 1 is her youth, part 2 more about growing up and parts of her adulthood and part 3 about expiriences from other autists. One of her sayings is: if you know one autist, you know one autist. i read it only in a again
• EugeneOZ 3y ago
  “Autistic”, “we” - how the author can speak for everyone if there is no one single diagnosis. There is an Autism Spectrum Disorder, and people might have very, very different symptoms. He even mentions it, but still posts his own impressions to explain what feels and thinks every ASD person.
  • neontomo 3y ago
    You're right that there is a lot of differences in how autism expresses itself, but I would just add a counter-opinion that it is quite refreshing when people are confident to express a view on a topic like this and not adding "maybe", "sometimes", "with certain people" to every sentence. This does however require the reader to digest the content as anecdote and not fact. I am in the process of getting diagnosed and I relate very much to wanting to understand the reason for things before doing them, and will only respect competence and good personality traits, not authority.
    • marttt 3y ago
      ".. will only respect competence and good personality traits, not authority." Thanks for this phrasing. Very much same here, I guess. For me, the added emphasis is really important, though. I tend to feel deep distrust towards competent people without good personality traits. Even though... thinking about it (when they're not around!), I almost always conclude that they probably cant help being arrogant. It seems to be a generic lack of empathy of some sort. But I still tend to avoid them.
      • mindslight 3y ago
        Demonstrating competence requires the ability to discuss and explain decisions. Otherwise someone's actions are indistinguishable from them following a simple flowchart or even a broken clock. So I'd say that arrogance is essentially directly opposed to competence. This however doesn't stop many people (techies included) from using arrogance or other bullshittery as a substitute for demonstrating competence, which seemingly fools enough people due to the authoritarian dynamic described in the original post.
• MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Not sure I entirely agree with that premise. Author paints with far too broad a brush. I'm on the spectrum and I was raised to give deference to authority figures in school settings. I never had run-ins with teachers growing up. Half the problem nowadays is that people have diagnosed everyone with everything and parents are willing to ignore obvious behavioral issues because of a diagnosis rather than handling the thing head-on.
  • digging 3y ago
    > Half the problem nowadays is that people have diagnosed everyone with everything and parents are willing to ignore obvious behavioral issues because of a diagnosis rather than handling the thing head-on. Disagree. Diagnosis is the only tool for properly handling behavioral issues. Diagnoses are more common because more people are getting tested.
    • mwigdahl 3y ago
      So to be clear, you are saying that all behavior issues result from medical causes?
      • digging 3y ago
        No
    • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      Diagnosis is in fact NOT the only tool for properly handling behavioral issues and absolutely never has been, because most children are neither autistic nor on the spectrum. Kids are enrolling in classes today with more behavioral and aptitude issues than ever before because their parents aren't raising them with any real structure. The autistic kids get hurt even worse because they NEED that structure more than regular kids, but millennial parents in particular have largely decided that their kids' school issues are for schools to deal with.
  • pas 3y ago
    A diagnosis doesn't justify the shitty behavior, it's simply a convenient thing that dumbass parents use it as an excuse. They probably would have used something else a few decades ago. (Boys will be boys, etc.) The problem is the untreatedness, not the diagnosis. Everyone was laughing how Americans have too many psychologists, ha-ha. Yeah, also too many MDs too, and that led too many diagnoses of obesity, right? Ha----ha. (Yes, they are not necessarily both true, but maybe it's time to listen to both types of professionals.)
• bena 3y ago
  No, the fact that one autistic person acts like this does not mean that all autistic person acts like this. However, it is a common enough trait among enough autistic people and being able to navigate social interactions with autistic people is a skill neurotypical people should learn. This is a case where maybe we should be using our ears more than our mouths, because it seems like several people in this post want to dismiss this piece of advice with "well, not all autistic people". But that's been the struggle of neurodivergent people from the start, the desire for others to dismiss anything that may make them slightly uncomfortable or inconvenienced.
• fudged71 3y ago
  It feels like this article completely sidesteps the aspects of the trait of “PDA,” which maybe should be a central point. I want to not care about authority, yet PDA and demands make it actually top of mind and debilitating
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
    • mindslight 3y ago
      Just as long as you don't have to Perform Digital Analysis by using a search engine or anything.
• lepus 3y ago
  I haven't seen this as a hard rule in people. My experience of people on the spectrum is they often just want a good clear reason to follow rules that seem like nonsense like bowing to authority. Neurotypical people just intuitively know the pros and cons of certain social rules in a way that might take neurodiverse people more active thinking to get. In geekier cultures you run into a lot of people on the spectrum so if I remember something could be a problem then it's not a big deal for me to explain this kind of thing ahead of time in a respectful way that makes sense ("I bet if we suck up to this guy well enough we'll get more funding for our team") so we're on the same page even if they think it's dumb. It takes effort on both sides to bridge the gap.
  • JohnBooty 3y ago
    My experience of people on the spectrum is they often just want a good clear reason to follow rules that seem like nonsense like bowing to authority. Spot on. I think this is a far more correct observation than any made by the author.
    • Gigachad 3y ago
      Some of the time it’s because the rules can’t be said. “I picked him for the job because he is more attractive and has the same hobby as me” “I want you to do this thing which is illegal to knowingly do but if I don’t explicitly say it then it’s permissible” “I feel like you are faking sick days or being lazy but I don’t have any proof for this accusation so I just want to subtly imply it to pressure you in to changing”
      • JohnBooty 3y ago
        Yeah, that's a great point. Although, sometimes (usually) the benefit to an unwritten rule is so much more mundane and benign, right? Like, "we do it this way because it is just easier if all 500 employees don't make up their own individual rules on how to do it, because that cohesion has its own benefits and now we always know where the mop bucket is instead of looking in 500 different places, some of which are possibly a little more optimal" Generally a lot of jobs are pretty receptive to process improvements (they are a win for your boss, too) but it takes some social skill to sell those improvements and this is an area where those on the spectrum can struggle more often than average.
• interstice 3y ago
  I have absolutely had the issue with being in authority, up to the point of allowing a staff member to work from home for extended time and assuming they were doing everything they said they were doing because why would they lie about it? Later it took months to fix the damage and I realised that some people will absolutely take advantage even at their own future expense.
  • smith7018 3y ago
    In my opinion, that's not really related to autism; that just seems like a new manager's mistake. Every manager will at some point learn that they've had too much trust in their employee and that that trust was taken advantage of. It's unfortunate but true.
    • thih9 3y ago
      Too much trust is relatively easy to spot at least - long term the tasks just don’t get done. Too little trust is harder to spot, silently poisons the culture and in my experience leads to people quitting and generally is worse for everyone.
• JohnBooty 3y ago
  This article is a bit maddening. I find the beginning encouraging.... I’ve written before about how autistic people often struggle to know how to act around authority figures. Actually, that’s not true– we don’t seem to *care* how we act around authority. I like the distinction between unknowing and uncaring. I like the level of personal responsibility that this suggests and I wish the rest of the article continued in this vein. It makes us *really weird* to neurotypical people, who seem to accept authority happily. This is not correct at all in my experience. I don't think anybody loves submitting to authority just for the fun of it. Certainly there is a lot of personal calculus that goes into whether or not we accept a given authority. Cost vs. benefit. Whether we see a reason to respect the authority. Whether we see value in it. Social pressure. Of course this calculus will be different from person to person and from situation to situation, and of course neurotypicals and folks on the spectrum will tend to have a different view. But, "seem to accept authority happily?" Yeesh. It seems to imply an absence of thought rather than different criteria weights.
  • digging 3y ago
    I suspect the author meant something more like, "neurotypical people live contented lives holding the belief that arbitrary authority actually exists." But I can't truly speak for them. Even before I fully reasoned it out, growing up I always knew that arbitrary authority doesn't exist for me. Sure a SME should be given more weight discussing their subject, and a parent understands dangers of the world that their young child literally can't comprehend. But many of us experienced "listen to me because I said so" as children, and continue to experience that in school and into adulthood in the workplace. It's meaningless, but many neurotypical people neither notice that it's wrong or understand why it's wrong, perhaps because their brains aren't wired a way to unconsciously detect those red flags.
    • avgcorrection 3y ago
      I don’t understand how to interpret this comment. Are you neurotypical or not?
      • 3y ago
• alphazard 3y ago
  Not idolizing, but respecting authority, is just a trait of smart people. The article doesn't provide any references linking it to autism? And common sense would suggest that knowing what others can do to you and how to treat them is a kind of social intelligence.
  • riversflow 3y ago
    > Respecting authority, is just a trait of smart people. Is it though? I thought drug experimentation was linked to people with a higher IQ. [1] That would sort suggest the opposite. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/high-iq-kids-later-try-drugs-more-11-11-22/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/high-iq-k...
    • alphazard 3y ago
      The way I would apply "not idolize, but respect" to drug use is that the people who made the drug laws don't have your best interest in mind. So you shouldn't factor their wishes/opinions into whether you personally use drugs. They don't know better just because they are an authority. However some drugs are still illegal, and there are people paid to find people in possession of these drugs and ruin their lives. You would do well to respect those people and their capabilities. I don't see many smart people smoking weed in front of cops. Although I would guess many smart people have experimented, as you suggest.
  • Ographer 3y ago
    The article is saying that autistic people DO know how they should respect authority, however they won't necessarily do all of those things just for the sake of boot licking (feeding the authority figure's ego). For example, when I got a new boss and all the underlings went to them and start chatting about the boss's favorite sports teams and hobbies to get on their good side. I refused to do that. I'll be friendly, like any other new hire. Another example might be if an officer asks for your ID, most people might blindly give it to end the situation. An autistic person may choose to refuse based solely on the morals of the situation. If it isn't legally necessary to present an ID, then one shouldn't have to, and they will have lost respect for the police's authority because they are not playing fairly and didn't earn it.
• QuercusMax 3y ago
  "They crack a Chandler-esque joke" - RIP Matthew Perry :(
  • supertofu 3y ago
    Oh no!!
• interstice 3y ago
  This may explain why I lasted less than two years as a programmer with a boss and have spent the remaining 10 without one. I absolutely could mot stand being told what to do by someone who didn’t earn respect and didn’t give it where it was due.
• Ographer 3y ago
  When my respected boss retired and was replaced by an outside hire, I had a lot of issues accepting the authority of the new guy at face value which may have contributed to me being fired later. The other engineers would go by his office to make small talk, chat about great projects they're working on, and sports they both like. I never did any such thing and stayed in my office working. Then when we all went out for drinks at the end of the week, I chatted as I normally would but I felt like the new boss kept shutting down my stories to get a laugh from the others. I felt like I was already being judged. That's when I reached negative respect for this new guy. Over time I would see him going to all the other engineers' offices to chat and catch up on projects, but never mine, and that further cemented the feeling that this guy doesn't like me. I felt that if my boss isn't going to make any effort to get to know me or respect me, then I'm not going to kiss his ass to make him like me. I'm sure he felt the same way, especially since he previously held a position of authority in the US military so he probably saw boot kissing as mandatory. Once performance reviews came, even though I had met all the quantitative goals that were set, he gave me a bad rating because of qualitative reasons which I felt were injected into my review to make it negative to match his bias. Once the pandemic hit I was fired, but I have a better job now. It doesn't pay as much, but is more interesting and is work from home, so suck it Scott!
  • nicoburns 3y ago
    > The other engineers would go by his office to make small talk, chat about great projects they're working on, and sports they both like. I never did any such thing and stayed in my office working. > Over time I would see him going to all the other engineers' offices to chat and catch up on projects, but never mine, and that further cemented the feeling that this guy doesn't like me. So... you took it as a sign that he doesn't like you when he didn't come and talk to you, but you don't consider it reasonable that he took it as a sign that you didn't like him when you didn't talk to him?
    • sophacles 3y ago
      Managers should put in effort to reach out to their reports, even ones who don't initiate chatting/small talk. People get nervous about the new boss - would the chatting be viewed negatively (wasting time or whatever)? Further: > Then when we all went out for drinks at the end of the week, I chatted as I normally would but I felt like the new boss kept shutting down my stories to get a laugh from the others. I would take that as a sign he didn't like me.
• toasted-subs 3y ago
  This is why I hate psychologists. They place labels on people then use those labels to bully people. It drives me more made when neurologists find evidence of these peoples inability to understand the brain and do nothing about it.
  • sublinear 3y ago
    > This is why I hate psychologists. They place labels on people then use those labels to bully people. The bullying is usually done by politicians and the public, not the psychologist.
    • toasted-subs 3y ago
      The bullying is done by the people who use the leash that psychologists place on innocent people because they think differently. Whose to blame? The people doing the bullying or the people who put the leash on the disabled individuals?
  • oreally 3y ago
    Would be worth expanding the worldview. It's the people that suck, the psychologists are in an effort to categorize this condition so they can talk about it better and develop techniques to address it. Can't blame them. But yes it's a misanthropist view, I know.
• labrador 3y ago
  As someone who is non-neurotypical, it's not authority I have a problem with, it's arbitrary rules. The extent to which authority is heavy handed in enforcing the rules is the extent I have issues with authority. A big contributor to my divorce was my wife's objection to me not following the rules. She became an authority to me. I don't think I need to go into the senseless rules that govern our lives and social interactions, because the 'rules and order' people won't see them and those who know what I'm talking about already know.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • Loughla 3y ago
    I learned early in my life that passing as typical was important. Learning to pass is all about learning which arbitrary social constructs people value personally. You can learn that by paying attention to their mannerisms. You can then tailor your behaviors to that person. It also helps to establish a reputation as a boundary pusher who will maliciously comply with stupid rules. Higher education is a great field to work in, because everyone expects a certain amount of that sort of thing from you anyways. Right or wrong it has kept me gainfully employed for decades. Ethics and personal identity are very funny things when you have to eat.
    • MichaelZuo 3y ago
      > arbitrary social constructs people value personally Can you list a few examples? I've never encountered a bonafide example before on HN that did not serve at least some purpose(s)/benefit some group(s)/etc..., after a careful analysis. So I'm a bit skeptical as to the claim.
      • user_7832 3y ago
        Not the person you're replying to, but I think they're referring to situations similar to the "classic" case - an inquisitive student in class may learn it's "better" to keep quiet in presence of an unreasonable/angry teacher, than to ask questions. A neurotypical kid might quickly pick up that asking questions get you scolded. Or worse, saying the teacher is wrong gives you detention. A neurodivergent kid may fail to understand that these actions hurt the teacher's ego. (Teacher can be replaced by parent/adult). All this leads to masking.
• permo-w 3y ago
  >It’s not that we’re deficient, after all. It’s more that this authority business is a neurotypical notion that we don’t seem to share, and thus we tend to ignore it. I'm neurodivergent and always find it off-putting when people talk of things like "neurotypical values". neurotypical people are no more of a monolith than neurodivergent people. I've personally met plenty of neurodivergent people with a sense of hierarchy or authority, and plenty of neurotypical people who don't. if you want to make claims like this, at the very least back it up with a study. don't just say how you feel and assume that applies to everyone
  • doktrin 3y ago
    Likewise on all counts. The (over)confident arrogance on display in this thread is off the chain.
    • catlover76 3y ago
      Welcome to HN lol
• more_corn 3y ago
  This is also true of neurotypical students who grew up in equitable households. Having been told that “respect is mutual and earned” is not conducive to a child respecting authority figures in school. None of the school authority figures try start off by earning respect, efforts to enforce unearned respect will understandably be met with resistance.
• COOL_DUDE_2112 3y ago
  This is a handle I used as a teenager, revived for serious Devil's Night discussions. I'm autistic. I was also diagnosed with C-PTSD once I escaped my home state, C-PTSD instilled by teachers and paraprofessionals who'd engage in who'd engage in malicious compliance, poised to punish, because they believed I was "faking" -- I'd be told I'm so charming, I must be a sociopath. I'll share with HN when I told one of them who was so bald as to show up and try to disrupt my open mic in a show of intimidation: >OK honey... let's say every professional with more education than a middle school teacher's assistant is wrong, and I'm a bald 160lb sociopath who might crash the internet and/or greater civil society because he feels his precarity is engineered by those with more means and less lateral thinking than himself. Why would you disrespect such a person, when if it is truly "Bellum omnium contra omnes" he's shown you how much can shown and told within two weeks of a man like me using his free expression to it's fullest, without firing a shot? In my experience, if I'm not parroting the ideals of neurotypicals, or lifting others more diverse than "just" being a queer, lower middle class abuse survivor, people will coflate "being autistic" with "being pendantic" or "difficult" as an excuse to keep you precarious. Meanwhile, those same people will turn on their TV and whine about mass shootings and other horrors by those more mentally ill than you or I, shootings that often stem from a sense of anomie and precarity that feels engineered in a society bordered by one with universal health care and respect for the declaration of human rights. My own pet theory is that many cases of "autism" where one is "high on the specrum" are actually just generalized anxiety or C-PTSD, because no one is gonna tell a parent "Your kid is constantly traumatized by you and your Opus Dei weirdo woo woo friends", so it's put onto the child to de-escalate folks less rational, sane, or smart than themselves, and by the time you can articulate this... you're an adult, denied the childhood others good, forced into wage slavery if you don't want to rely on abusive "allies". A lot of people carry the kind of slaveowner mentality they have when speaking to a barista or bookstore clerk into every interpersonal interaction -- they conflate being "threatened" with feeling so when someone responds with the spirit and vigor they communicate THEIR annoyances. (Just my two cents.)
• tristor 3y ago
  As an autistic person, my problem with authority figures throughout my life has always been that authority figures were generally incompetent for the role they were fulfilling and they behaved in arbitrary and capricious way. Ironically, my best relationships in my childhood were always with adults who were competent authorities in their particular field, and I had zero issues whatsoever following their instruction, but I was labeled as "oppositional defiant" and "having a problem with authority" because most of the authorities in the school system and elsewhere were low IQ petty tyrants. At no point have I ever felt that authority or hierarchy or rules are meaningless, in fact I revel in the clarity of well-written and reasoned rule sets and often wished for some clearly documented guidelines of behavior in many situations. I appreciate when authority originates from competence, and I am brutally introspective about my own areas of competence or lack there-of, and immediately submit and cede control if I encounter someone significantly more competent than myself in the situation of the moment. The problem has always been that authority is mostly exercised for authority's sake, to stroke the ego of petty tyrants who are incompetent and mean.
  • malux85 3y ago
    Wow this resonated with me so much, I’m exactly the same.
  • whatilearned 3y ago
    I agree. I remember spending significant effort on a creative essay in highschool. I had been a high performance, motivated student who was willing to jump through every hoop and do the work. My english teacher took the essay, gave it a C. I asked them for clarification about the logic of how they gave me the grade. They simply couldn't answer. There was no explanation. It seemed to me that they just picked a random grade out of a hat and couldn't explain why (probably more than likely). My teacher blew up and accused me of "grade grubbing." At that point I realized that the grading criteria was arbitrary, probably based on how they felt and if they like you personally and decided that school didn't matter since there was no actual standard for grading. I never recovered my ability to care about school and stropped trying. My reasoning was: "Well...if I try really hard and do all the work, they will give me a random grade based on how they feel anyways so this is a waste of time." It was entirely a disagreement and disrespect for institutional authority. Likewise, I have had constant struggles with VPs and Directors and CEOs I have worked with, challenging them on their behavior and lack of analysis, strategy, deep thinking. Pretty much I need to work for myself, it is usually only a matter of time. God help you if you try to tell me what to do from an authority position and I don't agree with your plan. I just start fighting with people, can't stand it.
• keithnz 3y ago
  This doesn't seem like actual research? This seems wrong. Autistic kids tend to like rules and structure and tend to be very worried about breaking the rules. They are more likely to "tell" on people for breaking the rules. Miscarriage of justice (ie, getting punished when you haven't broken the rules) is hugely upsetting. Rules that don't make sense and seem really arbitrary also are upsetting. But authority figures tend to be secure anchor points. My son is Autistic and this is often talked about by experts and through support groups.
  • seabass-labrax 3y ago
    I don't think your view and the article's are mutually exclusive. I think that one of the article's points is that a lot of non-autistic people will go along with a rule that is clearly nonsensical if an authority figure tells them to, break a rule if an authority figure tells them to, and even do whatever they want if they think that nobody is watching. But for the autistic person, the pre-existing rule is possibly much more important than the authority figure, which makes miscarriages of justice, as you mention, upsetting. The autistic person is perhaps more likely to question an act or rule made by an authority figure if that act or rule violates some more fundamental rule.
• reactordev 3y ago
  Ugh, you just explained my 20 year career. It’s not that we don’t see authority, we do. It’s that we don’t see the trust yet that the authority sees us. Too many times we were told we’re failing to meet expectations or we aren’t good enough when we go above and beyond what is required. In school this is often helping others or tutoring or being that kid in computer club who figured out how to interface with the dot matrix printer, in the teachers break room, from the computer lab in the library. We are curious. We are confident in our ability. We heard good things about you but until you show us you can be trusted with authority, you’ll always be on the outer ring. Come to think about it, I think a lot of us are just traumatized from their experience growing up to ever blindly accept authority. Mainly because authority figures have lied to us.
• b800h 3y ago
  There are a lot of Asperger's sufferers on here talking about their jobs; meanwhile my cousin with autism doesn't have a job because she can't form sentences properly and is unable to navigate any relationships at all. I find the DSM V alterations to the terminology jarring; they seem to have somewhat erased the original autists. It's a bit like if mild epilepsy suddenly became fashionable and the people having callosotomies had to sit in hospital watching TV stars talking about how their fugue states gave them special powers. None of this makes anything in the article incorrect, of course.
  • destroy 3y ago
    I have a cousin in exactly the same boat. I think people don't realize that a third of actual autistic people functionally can't speak and 75% of them are unemployed. They would rather have a normal life, and probably don't enjoy hearing about "quirky" celebrities who got diagnosed by some monkey psychiatrist. I don't think the DSM-5 is unreasonable. Seems like it's just misapplied. https://depts.washington.edu/dbpeds/Screening%20Tools/DSM-5(ASD.Guidelines)Feb2013.pdf https://depts.washington.edu/dbpeds/Screening%20Tools/DSM-5(.... Even under DSM-4, how many of these Tiktok diagnosees would qualify as Aspergers? https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/autism/case-modules/pdf/diagnosis/DSM-IV-TR-Diagnostic-Criteria-for-Pervasive-Development-Disorders.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/autism/case-modules/pdf/... lists the same kind of criteria as is in the DSM-5. The self diagnosers sort of forget that you're supposed to have all of the things listed: persistent communication deficit, repetitive behaviors, symptoms present in childhood, and symptoms that limit and impair everyday functioning. You can't just only have one because it's a "spectrum." Looking at the DSM-5 list: when I was little I made eye contact with almost nobody and refused to go on play structure equipment if there was someone else on it. I still like having a "schedule" all the time and am sensitive to sounds - who isn't? But I don't have autism: I can hold a conversation fine and don't have impaired function in everyday life.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • permo-w 3y ago
    back in the day some of the real stars did have epilepsy. the sacred disease
• alphabetag3ncy 3y ago
  [dead]
• NeuroCoder 3y ago
  I find this article interesting because I've often had a different view on authority and social norms than my peers growing up. I think there's a lot to be gained by identifying what qualities in a leader and society are actually pragmatic. However, I really dislike how it leans into autism vs neurotypical. It sounds like an "us vs them" assessment where "us" is smarter than "them", which is hard to ignore and represented in many of the comments here. Although there are many things I continue to push back on, I've begun to appreciate the value of some norms as I get older. I don't think my acceptance of any of things in isolation is a good indication of how smart I was at any given moment in time.
• DoreenMichele 3y ago
  There are many different things that can add up to a diagnosis of autism. Some people on the spectrum lack prosody and this routinely gets them in trouble with authority figures who literally "don't like your tone." Subconscious tone matching is a means of signaling who is in authority and who is being deferential. If you can't tone match, cashiers and other "servant class" type roles won't care and may think you are wonderful for not being verbally abusive like a lot of their customers, but authority figures -- teachers, police, etc -- will hate you the second you open your mouth and there is no remedy for it. They don't even consciously know what their issue is with you. You just grate on them and they just feel disrespected and can't put their finger on it. No amount of coaching or trying to use more politically correct language fixes this, just like you don't stop being blind or deaf from coaching. It's a disability, a thing you just cannot do, and it can have disastrous consequences in some situations, like when dealing with the police.
  • itronitron 3y ago
    As I have gotten older, only now do I realize that the most effective way in navigating a situation is by 'playing a role'. I need to teach my children this skill as they can then focus on fitting the pattern rather than proposing a conjecture in order to initiate a philosophical conversation.
• itronitron 3y ago
  I don't consider myself autistic and don't think that the traits the author mentions are specific or limited to those of us that are autistic. If you find yourself struggling to understand how to work within an organization then I recommend seeking out the coworkers that are both the most secure and least ambitious and asking for their guidance.
• aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
• dang 3y ago
  Related ongoing thread: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067494 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067494
• jhaenchen 3y ago
  I often have an issue with authority because it tends to be applied at the macro level and I differ from the average so the rules often manifest as oppressive.
• immersible 3y ago
  "Pete is a secondary English teacher who was diagnosed with Asperger’s in 2017 at the age of 34." 'diagnosed'.... Intelligence made into a disease. Diagnose the rest of the population with Cognitive-Autonomy Spectrum Disorder and give intelligent people the proper credit.
  • sazz 3y ago
    Unfortunately majority defines what is normal ;-)
    • immersible 3y ago
      It is normal in the real sense of normativity being the majority. Automatic-Authority-Bowing individuals are the norm. And that is not a problem per-se. Even if it is unhelpful and annoying to more independent individuals. What I consider counter-productive to non-normative more independent individuals, is labelling them with some derogatory acronym and turning independence of thought and intelligence into a disease or disability. It may be a completely different way of approaching the world and everything in it. And it may not be the norm. However, turning it into a disability, makes for large industries and worse, government, to try and 'screen' and 'treat' Independent Thinkers into oblivion. All the while making blind rule-following appear to be the something desirable.