5 ms·

I can't help but wonder if there's something about the tendency to black-and-white thinking characteristic of autism that makes it hard for people on one end of

by smeej 3y ago

I can't help but wonder if there's something about the tendency to black-and-white thinking characteristic of autism that makes it hard for people on one end of the autism spectrum to appreciate that the experiences of people on the opposite end might be very different from their own. My sister was a special education teacher and had a theory about autism that she described with a metaphor. Imagine riding a tricycle. Neurotypical people are along the fairly limited spectrum of "healthy children riding tricycles." Some are a little better or a little worse, but most can do it, and the skill variation isn't that high. People on one end of the autism spectrum are more like adults trying to ride a tricycle. They're too big, too powerful. It doesn't work now, but if they try really hard or come up with creative workarounds, they can sort of do it. People on the other end of the autism spectrum are trying to ride a tricycle with a jet engine attached. There's way too much power. The tricycle can't handle it. There's no way to ride the tricycle with a jet engine on it that will even vaguely resemble a child riding a tricycle. Maybe if you're an adult riding a tricycle, you can argue you don't need help. You'll come up with something. You might have to ride with your knees over the handlebars, but you'll still get where you're going. It would just help if people would leave you alone and stop staring at you while you do it. But if you're trying to navigate a jet bicycle, that's not really going to help. You might need really severe intervention to keep you from crashing and hurting yourself. Maybe that's picking the trike up off the ground or something so at least it's not crashing, even if the heat is still a lot to handle (it's a metaphor; it's not perfect). Might it be nice someday if the world had the capacity to handle jet-powered tricycles? Maybe, but that's not going to happen immediately enough to help the people already on them when the whole world has been built around children on trikes, whereas the world might be able to change fast enough to accommodate adults on trikes, since that would mostly mean not looking askance at the people riding in different ways. It might be a spectrum, but many things considered opposites are on a spectrum. Light and darkness are on a spectrum too, but what works in the light may not be any use in the darkness, and vice versa.

drewcoo 3y ago
You claim autism is characterized by thinking of things in binary. That seems to be a trait of humans, especially humans in distress, not autism. You see an n-dimensional spectrum as having two sides. Assuming you're neurotypical, that helps prove my point.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  It should be obvious that what is meant is that binary thinking is more common in autistic than neurotypical people. This is patently obvious if you spend time around many autistic people, though certainly isn’t true of all cases.
- smeej 3y ago
  I chose the word "characteristic" pretty intentionally. I did not mean that difficulty appreciating nuance is exclusive to autism, nor that it is the only characteristic of autism.
giantg2 3y ago
"I can't help but wonder if there's something about the tendency to black-and-white thinking characteristic of autism that makes it hard for people on one end of the autism spectrum to appreciate that the experiences of people on the opposite end might be very different from their own." I don't think it's specific to autism. This type of bias is extremely common in everyday life, especially if you see yourself as the victim of some failed activity (this, other therapy, failed medical procedures, or any compulsory thing in schools that someone was bad at or got hurt doing). There tends to be an overreaction when anyone figures out that some preferred/standard action is not what they were led to believe when thier eyes are finally opened, usually through an injury.
klodolph 3y ago
I think it’s more explanatory that the autism spectrum is itself a very wide spectrum. I’ll make a comparison. When we talk about conditions like ADHD or bipolar, there’s a whole spectrum which makes the discussion hard to work with. There are a few different flavors of ADHD and people with these different flavors have very different experiences. Like, did you not do your homework assignment because you put it in your backpack and forgot about it? Or did you not do your homework assignment because you took it out, knew you needed to do it, but just stared at it. Both are symptomatic of “ADHD” but I question whether these to things should be given the same label. Then—once we’ve talked about the spectrum of ADHD and bipolar—there’s a spectrum of people who have, like, 60% ADHD and 40% bipolar, a diagnosis of neither condition or both, and different experiences. My impression of autism is that the “size of the spectrum” is much larger than the size of the spectrum for, say, ADHD or bipolar.
- zackmorris 3y ago
  I have sort of deliberately not done a deep dive on ADHD and autism, mostly because I don't want to appropriate conditions that I maybe don't have. But deep down I feel that I had stereotypical Bart Simpson ADD in the 80s, before it was widely known or medicated. I simultaneously got my name on the chalkboard with 3-4 checkmarks every single day, while acing exams and daydreaming out of the window because I was so profoundly bored. I was hyper then, but today am more on the inattentive side. Anyway, I'm curious if others have had luck rewiring their brains. I discovered drinking and partying in the late 90s at college and became a different person. Then spent nearly the entirety of the 2000s in such a deep dark depression that my psyche had to reboot my physical brain and body to save itself. My belief systems have changed so many times that this feels like roughly my 7th life within this incarnation. It's like being an alien on Earth, or constantly reliving the shin conditioning scene on The Accountant (I can't find a YouTube version): https://coub.com/view/1to75k https://coub.com/view/1to75k My experience of daily life now is performative. From the time I wake up until I go to bed, I'm in motion when I want to stop and rest. I'm talking when I want to remain silent. I'm silent when I want to talk. I'm interrupted constantly when all I want peace. I'm so terribly alone in the company of others. I'm thinking about transcendence when discussing the weather. It's an unending onslaught to the senses, a yearning for beauty in an ugly world, an exhaustion and boredom when I should be having fun. A separation between what my life is and what it could be that is so vast that the only things that saved me were silencing all internal monologue and just being in the now in gratitude of conscious awareness. Because my main association with the 3D material world is pain and suffering. And yet, maybe I've just arrived. Novelty in the world seems to be on the rise again. We're going through a flipping where victims are being lifted above their attackers. The meek seem to be inheriting the Earth. The powerful are looking increasingly weak in a spiritual sense, out of touch, like they haven't aged well in this new era. Where I'm going with this is, can our position on the spectrum be changed? Or are we where we're at for life, unable to integrate with the mainstream if our "condition" is too fringe? Is that adaptability what distinguishes ADHD from autism? Or do I have it backwards, that autistic people are capable in ways the rest of us can't even imagine, and maybe we're the ones who can't adapt?
kelseyfrog 3y ago
> I can't help but wonder if there's something about the tendency to black-and-white thinking characteristic of autism that makes it hard for people on one end of the autism spectrum to appreciate that the experiences of people on the opposite end might be very different from their own. You've quite succinctly described the Double Empathy Problem[1]. Personally I find it more strange that allistic[2] people can't understand autistic people. The supposed ability of allistic people to pick up on people's body language, social cues, and subtext, somehow doesn't extend to autistic individuals. Utterly baffling. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem 2. Allistic - not affected by autism
- smeej 3y ago
  I don't know if this helps at all, but I think allistic people are able to pick up on each other's body language, social cues, and subtext because they instinctively use the same ones. If an allistic person is tapping their foot while I'm talking to them, for example, I will be accurate more often than not if I assume they're growing bored with the conversation, because that's what would cause me to take the same action. If an autistic person is tapping their foot while I'm talking to them, there is every chance it has nothing to do with me, or that it might mean they're extremely interested in what I'm saying, and this is how they are coping with the excess energy of that excited interest. If I assume they're growing bored, I'll probably be wrong. I'm no more surprised by this than I am when monolingual people have no trouble understanding someone speaking their own language, but are completely incapable of understanding someone speaking a different language.
  - deleted 3y ago
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by smeej 3y ago

drewcoo 3y ago

You claim autism is characterized by thinking of things in binary. That seems to be a trait of humans, especially humans in distress, not autism. You see an n-dimensional spectrum as having two sides. Assuming you're neurotypical, that helps prove my point.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago
It should be obvious that what is meant is that binary thinking is more common in autistic than neurotypical people. This is patently obvious if you spend time around many autistic people, though certainly isn’t true of all cases.
smeej 3y ago
I chose the word "characteristic" pretty intentionally. I did not mean that difficulty appreciating nuance is exclusive to autism, nor that it is the only characteristic of autism.

giantg2 3y ago

"I can't help but wonder if there's something about the tendency to black-and-white thinking characteristic of autism that makes it hard for people on one end of the autism spectrum to appreciate that the experiences of people on the opposite end might be very different from their own." I don't think it's specific to autism. This type of bias is extremely common in everyday life, especially if you see yourself as the victim of some failed activity (this, other therapy, failed medical procedures, or any compulsory thing in schools that someone was bad at or got hurt doing). There tends to be an overreaction when anyone figures out that some preferred/standard action is not what they were led to believe when thier eyes are finally opened, usually through an injury.

klodolph 3y ago

I think it’s more explanatory that the autism spectrum is itself a very wide spectrum. I’ll make a comparison. When we talk about conditions like ADHD or bipolar, there’s a whole spectrum which makes the discussion hard to work with. There are a few different flavors of ADHD and people with these different flavors have very different experiences. Like, did you not do your homework assignment because you put it in your backpack and forgot about it? Or did you not do your homework assignment because you took it out, knew you needed to do it, but just stared at it. Both are symptomatic of “ADHD” but I question whether these to things should be given the same label. Then—once we’ve talked about the spectrum of ADHD and bipolar—there’s a spectrum of people who have, like, 60% ADHD and 40% bipolar, a diagnosis of neither condition or both, and different experiences. My impression of autism is that the “size of the spectrum” is much larger than the size of the spectrum for, say, ADHD or bipolar.

zackmorris 3y ago
I have sort of deliberately not done a deep dive on ADHD and autism, mostly because I don't want to appropriate conditions that I maybe don't have. But deep down I feel that I had stereotypical Bart Simpson ADD in the 80s, before it was widely known or medicated. I simultaneously got my name on the chalkboard with 3-4 checkmarks every single day, while acing exams and daydreaming out of the window because I was so profoundly bored. I was hyper then, but today am more on the inattentive side. Anyway, I'm curious if others have had luck rewiring their brains. I discovered drinking and partying in the late 90s at college and became a different person. Then spent nearly the entirety of the 2000s in such a deep dark depression that my psyche had to reboot my physical brain and body to save itself. My belief systems have changed so many times that this feels like roughly my 7th life within this incarnation. It's like being an alien on Earth, or constantly reliving the shin conditioning scene on The Accountant (I can't find a YouTube version): https://coub.com/view/1to75k https://coub.com/view/1to75k My experience of daily life now is performative. From the time I wake up until I go to bed, I'm in motion when I want to stop and rest. I'm talking when I want to remain silent. I'm silent when I want to talk. I'm interrupted constantly when all I want peace. I'm so terribly alone in the company of others. I'm thinking about transcendence when discussing the weather. It's an unending onslaught to the senses, a yearning for beauty in an ugly world, an exhaustion and boredom when I should be having fun. A separation between what my life is and what it could be that is so vast that the only things that saved me were silencing all internal monologue and just being in the now in gratitude of conscious awareness. Because my main association with the 3D material world is pain and suffering. And yet, maybe I've just arrived. Novelty in the world seems to be on the rise again. We're going through a flipping where victims are being lifted above their attackers. The meek seem to be inheriting the Earth. The powerful are looking increasingly weak in a spiritual sense, out of touch, like they haven't aged well in this new era. Where I'm going with this is, can our position on the spectrum be changed? Or are we where we're at for life, unable to integrate with the mainstream if our "condition" is too fringe? Is that adaptability what distinguishes ADHD from autism? Or do I have it backwards, that autistic people are capable in ways the rest of us can't even imagine, and maybe we're the ones who can't adapt?

kelseyfrog 3y ago

> I can't help but wonder if there's something about the tendency to black-and-white thinking characteristic of autism that makes it hard for people on one end of the autism spectrum to appreciate that the experiences of people on the opposite end might be very different from their own. You've quite succinctly described the Double Empathy Problem[1]. Personally I find it more strange that allistic[2] people can't understand autistic people. The supposed ability of allistic people to pick up on people's body language, social cues, and subtext, somehow doesn't extend to autistic individuals. Utterly baffling. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem 2. Allistic - not affected by autism

smeej 3y ago
I don't know if this helps at all, but I think allistic people are able to pick up on each other's body language, social cues, and subtext because they instinctively use the same ones. If an allistic person is tapping their foot while I'm talking to them, for example, I will be accurate more often than not if I assume they're growing bored with the conversation, because that's what would cause me to take the same action. If an autistic person is tapping their foot while I'm talking to them, there is every chance it has nothing to do with me, or that it might mean they're extremely interested in what I'm saying, and this is how they are coping with the excess energy of that excited interest. If I assume they're growing bored, I'll probably be wrong. I'm no more surprised by this than I am when monolingual people have no trouble understanding someone speaking their own language, but are completely incapable of understanding someone speaking a different language.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]