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Because the explicit query was, "What's your favorite episode?". It's frustrating to be accused of disordered thinking on your part when the actual issue is dis

by yterdy 2y ago

Because the explicit query was, "What's your favorite episode?". It's frustrating to be accused of disordered thinking on your part when the actual issue is disordered expectations from the other party. What they actually should have asked was, "What happened during your favorite episode?", which might have produced the response given by the sibling. It's not like neurotypical people don't also experience this frustration with having to divine what people actually desire in any given quantum of communication. I would even offer that people speaking with those on the spectrum might be primed to be less generous and forgiving with that anticipatory instinct; they jump to, "This person is weird," instead of considering the ways in which their own communication style is wanting. The reason they can get away with it, and autistic people can't, is simply a matter of how many people like them are around to validate their subjective experience. See your given CS department/TTRPG club for the flipside of this dynamic. EDIT: Might also explain the phenomenon of smug, "What you ACTUALLY wanted was-" responsed on SO. We've trained people with precise thought to assume that anyone coming to them with questions doesn't actually know what they're trying to accomplish. We've created monsters.

notahacker 2y ago
The query explicitly didn't include "Despite asking you about your preferences, I have no interest in why you prefer it so please refrain from commenting on that. Please don't waffle or ask me anything back, simply provide me with the title, and I will have all the information I need", so I don't think it's "disordered expectations" to assume that message wasn't conveyed by the question... Neurotypical communication 101 is that a casual conversation question about your favourite things is probably a cue for you to be enthusiastic and effusive about things you care about rather than a prompt for you provide names only, especially if the interlocutor is unlikely be evaluating your preferences using their own expert knowledge of the field. Sure, if nobody else steps in to provide further context any [neurotypical] interlocutor ought to be able to continue/rescue the conversation by asking followup questions about what happened in an episode and what is it about that episode that you like, but staccato answers offering a bare minimum of information is a communication preference (occasionally appropriate, more often not) rather than something inherently demanded by the question. (I'd agree that people probably judge responses slightly differently if they already know the person on the other side of the conversation is autistic, but in a situation like this it can work in their favour, since if I assume the person providing only names, titles and one word answers to my open and friendly questions is neurotypical, I'm going to assume they're subtly signalling that they dislike me...)
- yterdy 2y ago
  No, I do think this is still an example of disordered expectations. What you're pointing out doesn't strike that notion as valid; it expands it from "an expectation of a response to an entirely different question, " to, "an expectation that you will pretend to be and behave as a neurotypical person to suit my comfort even though I know that you're not." Which is probably worse. As the other reply mentioned, there is an empathy (double empathy) problem, but the answer is not for one party to have to assume responsibility for the other's comfort entirely by having to guess all of their unspoken emotional desires for the conversation. "The query explicitly didn't include [...]" is kind of a ridiculous thing to expect someone to respect or even predict. Also, I don't mean to pick apart your comment, but: >Neurotypical communication 101 is that a casual conversation question about your favourite things is probably a cue for you to be enthusiastic and effusive about things you care about rather than a prompt for you provide names only I don't know that this is true. If anything, doing this seems to get on their nerves.
  - notahacker 2y ago
    > What you're pointing out doesn't strike that notion as valid; it expands it from "an expectation of a response to an entirely different question, " to, "an expectation that you will pretend to be and behave as a neurotypical person to suit my comfort even though I know that you're not." No, it changes it from "if you would be interested in hearing anything other than the briefest and least informative answer, it's your responsibility to explicitly state how much information you expect and in what form" to "of the vast set of theoretically possible answers, those which take into account what will be meaningful to the other person are generally better, although it's entirely understandable and expected that autistic people might not be able to do this". And the article here wasn't insisting autistic people should make conversations flow or that neurotypical people shouldn't ever modify their expectations or followup questions, it made the simple observation that the high-functioning autistic twin has actually learned to do this, pattern matching well enough to provide additional context on behalf of his brother (who apparently regularly struggles to form sentences, presumably even when the question explicitly demands it). I think the conclusion that this is because one of the autistic identical twins has developed better communication skills than his brother (who quite possibly has other learning difficulties) is correct, and it definitely isn't an example of his brother being trapped in a world where all human communication except children's TV is just too imprecise for him. > I don't know that this is true. If anything, doing this seems to get on their nerves. There is a happy medium between staccato answers and relating the entire plot of the episode or insisting that all other shows pale in comparison with it, and a difference between bringing up $nichepursuit because someone asked and bringing it up because they were talking about something else. And yes, this happy medium is going to be more difficult for people on the autistic spectrum to recognise. But even excessive enthusiasm about something most people find extremely boring is more endearing than repeated one or three word responses that technically answer the question.
roywiggins 2y ago
> the actual issue is disordered expectations from the other party. There is something called "double empathy problem", referring to the idea that there is a mutual difficulty communicating across neurotypes. Neurotypical people struggle to understand autistic people because of a sort of "language barrier" even without a deficit in neurodivergent communication skills per se. After all, if neurotypical people are universally great communicators, they would be better at communicating with autistic people than autistic people are, but that's not how it works at all. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/double-empathy-explained/ https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/double-empathy-explained/
- yterdy 2y ago
  Here is me encountering the pitfalls of speculation as a layman: the phenomenon I stumbled upon is already well-documented. Thank you for the link and explanation.
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    It wasn't well-documented until recently: afaik, it's largely due to Dr Damian Milton that academia takes this idea seriously. Most academic research about abnormal people is just the rampant pseudoscientific speculation of a respected academic, which has become Accepted Truth because it's published in a serious scientific journal. This has been getting better over the past decade: I think increased access to science is making it easier for the subjects to learn about the "research" and say "hang on, this is nonsense". On the flipside, though, bigots have increasingly been picking the worst theories from the literature and using them as an excuse to do bigoted stuff. (e.g. you still see lots of people claiming that autistic people "have no theory of mind", because they don't understand that ethics are suspended when nobody's looking)
giantg2 2y ago
"It's frustrating to be accused of disordered thinking on your part when the actual issue is disordered expectations from the other party." The expectation isn’t disordered, it's carrying with it implied social expectations (technically it would need to go against these to be disordered). The problem is that neurodivergent people tend to not pick up on the implied expectations and neurological people don't tend to notice that they need to be more explicit with thier expectations. "What they actually should have asked was, "What happened during your favorite episode?", which might have produced the response given by the sibling." Why is that what they should have asked? The initial exchange is technically correct. The asker should have said they didn't know that one and asked a follow-up question of what happened in it. Asking what happened in their favorite episode as the first question isn't necessary and isn't the general social flow of conversation. I do agree on the second paragraph.

by yterdy 2y ago

notahacker 2y ago

The query explicitly didn't include "Despite asking you about your preferences, I have no interest in why you prefer it so please refrain from commenting on that. Please don't waffle or ask me anything back, simply provide me with the title, and I will have all the information I need", so I don't think it's "disordered expectations" to assume that message wasn't conveyed by the question... Neurotypical communication 101 is that a casual conversation question about your favourite things is probably a cue for you to be enthusiastic and effusive about things you care about rather than a prompt for you provide names only, especially if the interlocutor is unlikely be evaluating your preferences using their own expert knowledge of the field. Sure, if nobody else steps in to provide further context any [neurotypical] interlocutor ought to be able to continue/rescue the conversation by asking followup questions about what happened in an episode and what is it about that episode that you like, but staccato answers offering a bare minimum of information is a communication preference (occasionally appropriate, more often not) rather than something inherently demanded by the question. (I'd agree that people probably judge responses slightly differently if they already know the person on the other side of the conversation is autistic, but in a situation like this it can work in their favour, since if I assume the person providing only names, titles and one word answers to my open and friendly questions is neurotypical, I'm going to assume they're subtly signalling that they dislike me...)

yterdy 2y ago
No, I do think this is still an example of disordered expectations. What you're pointing out doesn't strike that notion as valid; it expands it from "an expectation of a response to an entirely different question, " to, "an expectation that you will pretend to be and behave as a neurotypical person to suit my comfort even though I know that you're not." Which is probably worse. As the other reply mentioned, there is an empathy (double empathy) problem, but the answer is not for one party to have to assume responsibility for the other's comfort entirely by having to guess all of their unspoken emotional desires for the conversation. "The query explicitly didn't include [...]" is kind of a ridiculous thing to expect someone to respect or even predict. Also, I don't mean to pick apart your comment, but: >Neurotypical communication 101 is that a casual conversation question about your favourite things is probably a cue for you to be enthusiastic and effusive about things you care about rather than a prompt for you provide names only I don't know that this is true. If anything, doing this seems to get on their nerves.
- notahacker 2y ago
  > What you're pointing out doesn't strike that notion as valid; it expands it from "an expectation of a response to an entirely different question, " to, "an expectation that you will pretend to be and behave as a neurotypical person to suit my comfort even though I know that you're not." No, it changes it from "if you would be interested in hearing anything other than the briefest and least informative answer, it's your responsibility to explicitly state how much information you expect and in what form" to "of the vast set of theoretically possible answers, those which take into account what will be meaningful to the other person are generally better, although it's entirely understandable and expected that autistic people might not be able to do this". And the article here wasn't insisting autistic people should make conversations flow or that neurotypical people shouldn't ever modify their expectations or followup questions, it made the simple observation that the high-functioning autistic twin has actually learned to do this, pattern matching well enough to provide additional context on behalf of his brother (who apparently regularly struggles to form sentences, presumably even when the question explicitly demands it). I think the conclusion that this is because one of the autistic identical twins has developed better communication skills than his brother (who quite possibly has other learning difficulties) is correct, and it definitely isn't an example of his brother being trapped in a world where all human communication except children's TV is just too imprecise for him. > I don't know that this is true. If anything, doing this seems to get on their nerves. There is a happy medium between staccato answers and relating the entire plot of the episode or insisting that all other shows pale in comparison with it, and a difference between bringing up $nichepursuit because someone asked and bringing it up because they were talking about something else. And yes, this happy medium is going to be more difficult for people on the autistic spectrum to recognise. But even excessive enthusiasm about something most people find extremely boring is more endearing than repeated one or three word responses that technically answer the question.

roywiggins 2y ago

> the actual issue is disordered expectations from the other party. There is something called "double empathy problem", referring to the idea that there is a mutual difficulty communicating across neurotypes. Neurotypical people struggle to understand autistic people because of a sort of "language barrier" even without a deficit in neurodivergent communication skills per se. After all, if neurotypical people are universally great communicators, they would be better at communicating with autistic people than autistic people are, but that's not how it works at all. https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/double-empathy-explained/ https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/double-empathy-explained/

yterdy 2y ago
Here is me encountering the pitfalls of speculation as a layman: the phenomenon I stumbled upon is already well-documented. Thank you for the link and explanation.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  It wasn't well-documented until recently: afaik, it's largely due to Dr Damian Milton that academia takes this idea seriously. Most academic research about abnormal people is just the rampant pseudoscientific speculation of a respected academic, which has become Accepted Truth because it's published in a serious scientific journal. This has been getting better over the past decade: I think increased access to science is making it easier for the subjects to learn about the "research" and say "hang on, this is nonsense". On the flipside, though, bigots have increasingly been picking the worst theories from the literature and using them as an excuse to do bigoted stuff. (e.g. you still see lots of people claiming that autistic people "have no theory of mind", because they don't understand that ethics are suspended when nobody's looking)

giantg2 2y ago

"It's frustrating to be accused of disordered thinking on your part when the actual issue is disordered expectations from the other party." The expectation isn’t disordered, it's carrying with it implied social expectations (technically it would need to go against these to be disordered). The problem is that neurodivergent people tend to not pick up on the implied expectations and neurological people don't tend to notice that they need to be more explicit with thier expectations. "What they actually should have asked was, "What happened during your favorite episode?", which might have produced the response given by the sibling." Why is that what they should have asked? The initial exchange is technically correct. The asker should have said they didn't know that one and asked a follow-up question of what happened in it. Asking what happened in their favorite episode as the first question isn't necessary and isn't the general social flow of conversation. I do agree on the second paragraph.