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It's odd how people on the spectrum supposedly struggle to pick up on unspoken rules to fit in & empathize, meanwhile people not on the spectrum show just as much inability to recognize these context free logical processes in order to empathize with people on the spectrum

Put someone not on a spectrum in a society of people on the spectrum, & you'd be labelling the person not on the spectrum as having a mental disorder. Who the hell asks questions they don't want the answers to?

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It's not odd if you interpret the social issues in autism spectrum as partially a difficulty in learning unspoken social rituals taught from a young age. In this case, a human that is well-socialized having difficulty expressing empathy for a human with social difficulties makes total sense- the well-socialized human has not been taught how to be empathetic to another human that does not follow social rituals.

It is my understanding that part of autism advocacy is to establish new social rituals among the neurotypical populace that allows the neurotypical human to learn empathy and acceptance for autistic behavior in the way a neurotypical human generally learns- social cues and hierarchy and peer enforcement.

In some instances, how does one distinguish between social rituals vs managers taking advantage of employees - e.g. in a toxic office culture where every employee overworks vs it's a good office that really has an emergency vs maybe one manager who "nudges" emplyees to overwork to look good.

Unfortunately there are a near infinite number of factors involved with the learning of social rituals and each human only has developed the skill of social ritual compliance to specific extends. There is, as far as I am aware, no universally accurate evaluation algorithm I can provide you in this case.

This is a good way of looking at it

People on the spectrum aren't less empathic, they're lacking rituals which help hide one's lack of empathy

My son is on the spectrum and I've observed that he doesn't have less empathy but he in fact has an overabundance of empathy to the point that it causes him to withdraw and he has learned to ignore his empathy because society is not accepting of how he engages with them. His empathy is not the problem, it is his ability to communicate with others that do not share his sensibilities.

Oh, dear, what a strange, cynical take.

If you define "empathy" as "care very much about the feelings of others", then, yes, my experience is that people on the spectrum have no shortage of empathy. My daughter is a very warm-hearted person who intensely wants the people around her to feel good.

But if you define it as "able to easily and correctly read the feelings of others", then, no, it really is a challenge for people on the spectrum.

It's not that they don't want to hear the music, it's just that their radio doesn't tune into it very well.

(Disclosure: I have ASD.)

Just a FYI, I agree with your post and your parent, and I don't find them at odds; your post is complementary, and a nice addendum. Both of you describe an symptom of autism. It is important different symptoms of autism get described, and that the general public gets to understand these instead of tunneling on a few symptoms. No autistic person has the very same symptoms as severe in the very same way as the other.

This is sort of a funny observation, but also sort of a wrong one.

It's not just that people on and off the spectrum have two different but equally effective communication styles and we have arbitrarily chosen one as "normal".

All humans, across all cultures, communicate rich sets of information at multiple levels using word choice, prosody, timing, tone, and body language. There is text and subtext and subsubtext. While different cultures have communicate different things, it's universally true that human interaction is high bandwidth. There is a lot of data coming off a person.

People on the autism spectrum struggle to both process the data they receive and to effectively broadcast that data on multiple levels without putting an intense, draining amount of energy into it. It's not just a stylistic difference, it's a more fundamental difference in quantity of information.

People with poor social skills have lower social status than those with better social skills (management). If you are high status you can basically ignore rules at your will and it is accepted by the society.

This is blunt but largely true. If you have better charisma and social skills people will naturally like you more than otherwise. That's how you end up in management where social skills often outweigh technical ability (which can be delegated).

It’s not only about management. There are basically three levers of power in any organization - relationship, expert, and role. In that order of importance. A manager that doesn’t know how to build relationships is much less effective than an individual contributor who has built both the right relationships and is well respected.

It's a double-edged sword. One of the goals of putting someone with better social skills in the management position is that they should be using that to get information they need. You can have the greatest socialite in existence as a manager and still fail because they were not able to correctly identify what is most important to pay attention to at the time. There needs to be a balance.

Think about people arguing about politics while drunk, for example, and you will see that often a lot of absolutism and hypocrisy will come out just to win that single argument. Well, put in a context where you may feel that it has to be "someone's fault" (e.g a failed project or late task), the ego/hypocrisy/pride (you name it) will take over empathy.

I think it has nothing to do with employee/manager or inside/outside spectrum, although those will probably exagerate the phenomenon, but it's just social dynamics in a stressful environment. I'm sure the manager is happy to have his high performing "techie" when things go right and the techie is happy to have his manager happy.

>Put someone not on a spectrum in a society of people on the spectrum, & you'd be labelling the person not on the spectrum as having a mental disorder.

You could still argue that non-spectrum people are more "naturally" normal. Competition among societies has selected for groups where non-spectrum individuals are more numerous, possibly because this ratio leads to less conflict and more cooperation.

I wonder if groups are selected for a prevalence of 2 to 4 individuals per thousand [1] because these types of individuals have been responsible for technological progress in some way.

1. https://www.aane.org/prevalence/

It's an interesting thought experiment, but it's hard to say whether a low prevalence was specifically selected for, or just not harmful enough to a population to select against.

Though in either case, I agree that society today is probably better for having some autistic people around.

There are a lot of problems with group selection as a hypothesis.

Human groups don't reproduce in pairs and undergo selection, but individual humans do. It's hard to find any examples of genetic material of a group being lost when that group was outcompeted by another group.

>Human groups don't reproduce in pairs and undergo selection, but individual humans do.

Under a sufficiently low population density, genes among splintered groups will diverge. Groups with genes that promote expansion and/or adaptation will eventually out-compete groups that don't. Does this process not occur?

>It's hard to find any examples of genetic material of a group being lost when that group was outcompeted by another group.

Isn't the extinction of other human species an example of this?

> Under a sufficiently low population density, genes among splintered groups will diverge.

Yes, and this occurs.

> Groups with genes that promote expansion and/or adaptation will eventually out-compete groups that don't.

For some definition of "eventually". Selection over genes competes to determine outcomes with "selection" over culture and with chance.

> Isn't the extinction of other human species an example of this?

Yes. And that's a disputed hypothesis.

Granting that hypothesis, how many such gene-selection events occur per ten thousand years? Not many.

How much of observed gene distribution is best explained by selection pressure from these rare events rather than by individual selection operating continuously? Very little if any.

> meanwhile people not on the spectrum show just as much inability to recognize these context free logical processes in order to empathize with people on the spectrum

But that's not the meat of the difficulty. It's not "context-dependent logical processes" vs. "context-free logical processes." That's be trivial to address.

It's "context-dependent, often (mostly?) irrational responses to complex social dynamics", vs. "context free, often (mostly?) irrational responses to complex social dynamics which may get erroneously re-interpreted as logical processes."

So your switcheroo isn't just a twilight zone world for the person who isn't on the spectrum. It's a vastly different type of problem of coping with the stress of complex social dynamics for the entire population, plus a higher risk of depression for the one person who would seem to have an uncanny ability to notice, predict, and thread complex social dynamics (probably similar to the way people with Hyperthymesia go through life).

I want the answer to the question. "Would you like to coordinate the next software deployment?" is a genuine question but it also shows deference and ... deference is expected in return. A flat "no" defies social expectations; a "no" with deference and reasonable context is probably fine.

Many people ask questions they don't want the answers to. The question "How are you?" is a specific type of social interaction where there is an expected answer and that isn't to actually explain how you are. There are a lot of unspoken rules (such as saying yes when a person in authority asks/tells you to do something). A person with functioning social skills recognizes that a different approach is needed if they actually need to say no to their manager. Or that they need to seek guidance to see if they should be placing that higher on their priorities.

> The question "How are you?" is a specific type of social interaction where there is an expected answer and that isn't to actually explain how you are.

Then why ask it??? To fake empathy, perhaps? If a person doesn't want to hear my answer to a question, I suggest they just don't ask the question. Saves everyone a lot of time, and avoids plenty of confusion.

Otherwise I'm just going to continue answering questions in a logical, honest and forthcoming manner, perhaps appearing (to some) as lacking "functioning social skills".

It's funny, because that question "How are you?" is never really phrased that way when I talk to friends and family, because I already know what's going on in their life, so I ask specific questions like "How's that promotion at work going?" or "Are you feeling better since that last sickness?". Same goes when they ask me about something.

The only people who ask me that question in that specific way are strangers, mostly during solicitation calls or any other calls where they have to read from a script.

As per your suggestion, next time I get a marketing call, I might just start delving into the details of my life for 10 minutes, explaining exactly just "how I am" :P

I've found that making a bit of small talk about exactly how I am is a great filter for people who have actual empathy vs people who view other people's lives as distractions from their own.

The social ritual exists to create and maintain a connection or relationship. We greet each other for the same reasons that other primates greet each other. We don't grunt or bark like dogs but instead now we say some words so we don't have to grunt. The words are not there to carry meaning.

Speech is not merely a rational exchange of information. If you try to understand every speech act in terms of the information content being exchanged through the surface meaning of the words, you're going to be confused by a lot more than just greetings.

"How are you?" is an idiom. Just like "what's up" isn't a question about what is currently in the sky. It's unfortunate, and I wish it didn't exist, but it does. It functions as a politeness marker, and in some settings (i.e. nerdy programmers) politeness markers are seen as unnecessary and pointless, but in others they are seen as necessary.

As to why it exists, the answer is the same for just about every other linguistic feature: nobody really knows.

>What's up?

Positive on the Z. Fight me.

In all seriousness though, nothing drives me more nuts than asking questions you don't actually want the answer to, or are just asking to fill the silence. It's gotten to the point I ask people if they are really interested in the answer, or are they just looking for small talk,

Generally, I'm happy to talk with people, but I am not a big "small talker", because I'm generally a "communicate to problem solve, otherwise do" type of person. Building a relationship with someone requires over time I consciously build and try to track conversational contexts to facilitate faster, more efficient communication.

The process of doing that requires a significant investment of time not just to speaking, but to listening, building and working through conjectures, and familiarizing myself with how they approach problems, and determining how differently they do so from me

All this information rides along in my head all the time. The friendships and working relationships you build through such a process are unmatched. However, it takes significant effort, and it can lead to some awkwardness when you start actually noticing where the rougher edges are on who you're talking to.

I'm not one to leave a rough edge unsmoothed, but committing to help someone smooth out a part of their character in a way you can actually productively help is also a non-trivial task.

Some level of all of what I've described goes on in every encounter.

This makes people who ask questions they're not really looking for a true and substantive answer to incredibly annoying. It paints the picture of a person using me as a means to soothe their own discomfort with doing whatever they need to do. It's...trying on the patience.

It is not an idiom. Idiom conveys a meaning even if not literal. "How are you" plays a social role, but doesn't have any meaning. There is a linguistic construct called "phatic expression" and it seems much more accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

Phatic communication:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

It should be noted that asking "How are you?" while not expecting an actual answer is largely limited to English speaking countries. Someone from outside the Anglosphere would see this ritual as being ridiculous, which to be fair, it is.

Indeed, I moved to Finland. If you ask a Finnish person "How are you?" they will answer, and would expect you to do so too. If you don't care you don't ask.

And misunderstandings like this can be awkward, but sometimes they also lead to very good discussions.

When someone says "How are you?", I simply have it difficult to just say "very well thank you", if I'm just anticipating a root canal treatment, or whatever.

We Finns can indeed appear a bit autistic; it's not meant to be rude, but may feel like it.

I enjoy Finnish people, but I'd rather describe them as either terse or blunt.

It's not universal, but it extends far beyond the Anglosphere.

If one is in France and says "Ça va, Michel?" -- odds are one expects a little more diversity in the answer than "How are you?" expects in the US... but really, one still expects "Oui, ça va." or "Ça va bien" and not really "Ça va mal" or "Ça va pas."

Does everyone on the spectrum act in the same way?

As much as people not on the spectrum act in the same way

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