Hacker News Reader

Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

As an aspie myself, quite a few of these are accurate, but a number of them are just plain apologism. For example, Empathy (and pragmatism!) allows face-saving, but from an informational point-of-view, it contaminates the database and aspies are more dedicated to keeping the record clear and accurate. If you are an aspie or are good friends with one, you know this is in no way a dedication to objectivity, because it ends at our own skin. We are not good at accepting criticism, especially valid and accurate criticism. We feel humiliation very, oftentimes unreasonably, strongly.

Being different from most people does not mean all our differences are disabilities, but at the same time it also doesn't mean none of them are. Stop romanticizing it and recognize that explanations are not excuses for being an asshole. We are not tragically misunderstood ubermensch and the world would not be a better place if everyone was like us.

View on HN

There's a thing that shows up with animals, where the most vicious, aggressive species tend to be the ones with poor eyesight, because they can't tell harmless movement from threatening movement, so they have to treat everything as a threat and attack "back" preemptively.

I think something similar is going on with aspies and criticism, where poor social judgment forces them to treat every criticism as an attempt to attack their social standing.

Though also, disagreement with feedback can look like inability to accept criticism when people aren't actually looking for acceptance but submission. Call it 50/50.

edit: oh I read the article and it refers to criticism of others by the aspie. Nevermind then!

Hmm, are you sure you're not making an ironic meta-error here? It seem like the author is allowing "aspies"[1] to save face by saying their behaviour is well-intentioned i.e. "dedicated to keeping the record clear and accurate", but not actually excusing that behaviour.

And taking into account what you wrote about criticism, I hope this doesn't come across too harshly.

[1] I'm not completely sure how acceptable it is to use this particular term

> We are not good at accepting criticism, especially valid and accurate criticism. We feel humiliation very, oftentimes unreasonably, strongly.

I'm not sure why you are using plural, as autism manifests in various different forms and traits are not universal. I know a few people on the spectrum, who are pretty good with criticism and does not feel humiliation the way, you described it. So please don't do it as autism is spectrum and people on the spectrum can be very different. Using plural form leads to stereotyping and however it seems society would prefer to put "aspies" in a box, most of the people sticking out from the box left and right. (My favourite example is one of my excollegue, who is an extrovert aspie)

>We are not good at accepting criticism, especially valid and accurate criticism.

That's not quite how I would characterise it. I am not particularly good at accepting valid and accurate criticism if nothing actionable follows from the critique.

Thanks for the information. I already know all that you've told me about myself. I just don't know how to fix it (and I've tried a bunch of things that you are likely to recommend next).

Said differently: I have no tactful way of telling you that your feedback is worthless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com