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Comment by jolux | Hacker News Reader

I’m autistic too, and I think what happens is that autistic people who also happen to be brilliant are not expected to learn how to interact well with others to the same extent that autistic folk of average intelligence are, so it ends up being on them whether they care enough about being kind and gentle to others to learn how to interact congenially. I know a lot of autistic people and most of them are nice but some of the more clever ones are indeed rude and socially inept. They also invariably believe that their rudeness is an inescapable aspect of their brilliance, but knowing a lot of brilliant people, autistic and not, this is just untrue.

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The other side of this is that some of us do end up trying to fit in, hiding it but not well enough... Just come off as assholes or socially inept and hurting peoples feelings a lot more than if you were obviously on the spectrum,

Yeah I mean I still mess up sometimes but everyone does. Developing a reputation for being an asshat requires carelessness or malign intent.

On the one hand, people should try to fit in with society.

On the other hand, society should try to be more tolerant and understanding of people who find doing so significantly more challenging than the average person does.

I worry that this conversation seems to be focusing on the first point and not paying as much attention to the second.

There's a difference between finding it challenging to fit in and being a bully though, and let's try not to collapse that.

What is "bullying"? Here's one definition [0]: "Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm."

Was Felleisen's behaviour a "deliberate misuse of power... that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm"? I don't know this guy personally and all I've read is some stories about him on these blog posts, but I'm not sure if he was deliberately intending to hurt other people, or merely doing so inadvertently out of social incompetence, deficits in cognitive empathy, emotional dysregulation, theory of mind deficits, difficulties in perspective-taking, etc? Individuals with neurodevelopmental and other psychiatric disorders can sometimes exhibit all of those inadvertent sources of interpersonal harm. (I'm not saying Felleisen has any such disorder – maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, I have no idea, so I must assume he might.)

[0] https://www.ncab.org.au/bullying-advice/bullying-for-parents...

I don’t mean to be crude but it’s kind of irrelevant what the specific definition of bullying is, and it’s definitely irrelevant what his intentions were. Many people find his behavior extremely unpleasant, belligerent, mean, etc, as evidenced by the thread on Butterick’s original post, and the OP in this thread, describing being yelled at and insulted. Having a disorder may be a partial explanation for why someone behaves a certain way. It’s not an excuse for behaving in a way that other people find antisocial, and it certainly doesn’t bind others to tolerate that behavior.

Ultimately even if you actually could not act any differently because of a disorder, others would still not be required to tolerate you. This is a consequence of being social animals, we set expectations for behavior and we enforce them. If you can’t play the game, you can’t exactly expect people who can to stop playing for your sake.

> I don’t mean to be crude but it’s kind of irrelevant what the specific definition of bullying is, and it’s definitely irrelevant what his intentions were.

Why are intentions irrelevant? If someone is hurting me (or others), I do consider the question of whether they are doing so intentionally or inadvertently to be highly relevant to my judgement of their behaviour and how I am going to respond to it.

I think you're mistaking the relevance of his intentions as an excuse for him to continue being toxic. That's not the case at all. I think its very relevant why a person does the things they do. He still has to change and become less toxic no matter what.

If a person bullies because they have some kind of social ineptitude that makes them not realize they were bullying. That person is still a bully. However, its important to recognize if this was the case because the alternative is that he knew better and did it anyways because he knew he could get away with it.

Fair point.

>On the other hand, society should try to be more tolerant and understanding of people who find doing so significantly more challenging than the average person does.

I agree completely. It took me a while to find a place where people didn't just treat me like I'm weird. Kindness, patience, and forgiveness are important things for everyone to work on.

Why don't we just assume that everyone with such an abrasive personality is very high functioning spectrum. Should we cut everybody slack, now? Is there a line where we let some have a pass and others not?

People are simply saying he might have social issues, not declaring it as a fact.

Its a realistic and common possibility in this industry and there's nothing wrong with mentioning it. My parent comment that yours falls under specifically mentions that even if he does have such issues, its no excuse to spend the rest of his life being toxic to people.

I think its probably more likely that he knew what he was doing and did it because he could get away with it as the leader of that project. However, I can't entirely dismiss the possibility that he has social issues because as I mentioned its a common problem.

Who’s “we”? Everyone has their own standards, and they’re in their right to stick by those standards. It’s whether “we” accommodate those standards that makes the difference.

I totally get that and it happens to me too. But I'm just talking about making an effort and the guy from OP didn't sound like he was making an effort at all.

Its possible that if he has social issues like some of us do that he didn't realize how bad his behavior was because everyone was afraid to tell him. But now that he knows I hope going forward he tries to get his anger under control a little more.

Kindness and understanding works both ways. We should also expect people that are naturally good at stuff like empathy and social skills to be patient and forgiving if they see that we try and fail.

Yes, this is really difficult problem. From my experience, doing these three things when being critical puts you in the not an asshole category by the vast vast majority of people: 1. don't raise your voice or yell, 2. don't insult people personally (say "this code is bad" instead of "you are bad for writing this code"), 3. if it is your first time critiquing someone, explain your style of criticism and note that it should not be taken personally.

Of course, there are very sensitive people, and you can't please everyone, but in my experience people will try to be accommodating if you tell them your situation.

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