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Comment by jgilias | Hacker News Reader

I have a question about autistic experience that I've had for some time that I'd be very happy if someone could answer from their perspective.

The (highly functioning) autistic people I've known in my life all have this issue that they don't seem to be able to acknowledge when they are wrong. To the point of denying reality if it doesn't correspond to their mental model of whatever it is that they are wrong about. Is this common and related in some way to being on the spectrum, or just a coincidence?

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I can't speak for everybody, but I have high functioning autism, and according to others I have difficulty admitting when I'm wrong. I actually believe the opposite and think that I'm very good (better than average) at admitting when I'm wrong and I actively seek out additional information to form a better understanding of the world around me. If I truly do believe that I am correct, I am more than willing to engage in a protracted conversation/argument until I fully understand why the other person believes me to be incorrect, and I am happy to accept additional evidence contrary to my viewpoint as long as it is evidence and not merely anecdotal or personal opinion.

At least for me, the main issue I have is that many people I interact with use "gotchas" to try to "prove" that I'm wrong in conversations/arguments, which eliminate significant amounts of context, nuance, or stretch the bounds of reality. Alternatively, many situations involve people, and people don't act rationally, so a model which assumes rational actors will often be violated by the behavior of others in practice, which doesn't necessarily mean that the model is wrong or the expected behavior wouldn't have been more optimal, it's simply not what the person chose to do.

When there is sufficient evidence based in reality that my model or my understanding is incorrect, I freely admit to it and work to get even more information so I can update my model of the world and improve my understanding. I am rarely incorrect, because I am nearly obsessive about learning more and more information about the world around me. Sometimes when I am legitimately wrong, it is because I have forgotten a detail and when corrected admit to this, but it is unsatisfactory for the other person because they are expecting me to completely change my entire world view rather than simply saying "You're right, I forgot about that, but did know that, so yes ... X".

This is awesome and underscores something I've had to repeat a lot recently:

Theory of mind is a two way street. The assumption that "you're wrong because I don't get what you're saying" is always predicated on peoples assumption that the thoughts they are experiencing are factually correct. The idea that you (the autist) might know something they don't is seen as offensive and disrespectful... when in reality the autist just spent a lot of time studying something and actually is factually correct.

It's stunning, dehumanizing and depressing how many times I've had people wield a social cudgel against me because they didn't like the facts I presented. It's infuriating to be mocked as a "know it all" when you are educated and knowledgeable on a subject and incompetent people are dead set on proving you wrong and shaming you for your disobedience.

> It's stunning, dehumanizing and depressing how many times I've had people wield a social cudgel against me because they didn't like the facts I presented. It's infuriating to be mocked as a "know it all" when you are educated and knowledgeable on a subject and incompetent people are dead set on proving you wrong and shaming you for your disobedience.

This is huge reason why I actively try to seek out teams and organizations where I am surrounded by people who are more knowledgeable, more competent, or just outright smarter than I am. I hate being the "smartest person in the room", because mostly it ends up being a series of futile efforts followed by watching predictable negative outcomes without any control to fix it. Because I seek out these situations, I'm highly practiced at admitting I'm wrong or seeking understanding by learning from others, despite the impression some people have of me that I am unwilling to admit it when I am wrong.

Contrary to what many people likely believe about me after meeting me, I take no joy whatsoever in being "smart", I just want to know enough to constantly be improving myself and the world around me, and that happens to require a large amount of knowledge to have any meaningful chance of correctness. If we're not moving the world forward as a species to better things in the future compared to now, what even is the point of being alive? We're only special in some ways as compared to other animals, but our basic reason for living is the same, to carry on, to procreate, and to ultimately continually improve.

This 100% aligns with my own experience and reasons for switching teams in the past.

One example of right/wrong I was talking about was appropriateness of using a particular English phrase in business communication. The person criticised someone for using it when the usage was completely in line with the dictionary, but conflicted with their understanding of the direct implied meaning of the phrase.

Like... It's in a freaking dictionary.

(All L2 English speakers)

Depending on the word, there may be very good reason to push back. For example, many people do push back against the definition of the word "literally" that means "figuratively" (e.g. Stoner: "I'm so high right now I'm literally in space."), because if that definition becomes common enough it impedes communication where the word literally is intended to be literal.

I'm not sure what word your are referencing, and if there is any good reason for such pushback in this circumstance.

Offtopic, but i never understood why people seem to think that what the dictionary definition of the word "literally" is the part that determines whether or not it is ok to use it figuratively. Every other word is allowed to be used figuratively, and it has nothing to do with its definition.

Plenty of people do use it figuratively.

But then one of the main uses of the word is to be clear that you are not talking figuratively. If it is widely deemed acceptable to figuratively use a word whose main purpose is to clarify that you are not talking figuratively, it defeats the purpose, and leaves people with no easy way to be clear that they are being literal rather than figurative.

Its not so terrible when the situation is sufficiently clear that the primary definition could not be possible, but becomes a lot more problematic when used as in intensifier in figurative statements where the literal interpretation is also possible/plausible.

> It's in a freaking dictionary.

It is, but you're appealing an authority that isn't seen as authoritative.

Dictionaries are factual and lack the social context that can completely change the meaning of the word. Business communication has its own jargon that can often be nuanced and sometimes indirect.

For example:

"Forecast" is an expected due date that may change due to circumstances.

"Estimate" is how long something will take, regardless of circumstances.

When possible, you want to use the word forecast for longer-term projects (especially one spanning multiple quarters) and but use estimate for shorter term projects.

Effective communication is a pain in the ass.

There's more to whether a word is appropriate than its dictionary definition. It could be the wrong level of formality. It could have innapropriate connotations. It could have subject-matter specific meanings that aren't included in a general purpose dictionary.

I think "they" just don't care, or they working in an operating regime where facts or engineering principles don't necessarily matter. Workplace politics has much stronger influence over their decisions and action because it has direct impact to salary and/or promotion which is the whole entirety of their motives at work.

Maybe it could also indicate that you are wrongfully mixed into normies with level of intelligence that matches your social skill levels, not overall or technical levels?

> Theory of mind is a two way street.

I've seen quite a few articles of late on something called the Double Empathy Problem which I think encaptures this.

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

This sounds like something I'd write, this same thing frustrates me endlessly about people.

Sometimes an autistic man seems to pick fight in an overspecified context or over topics that seems to yield no benefit to him. That incentivize adversaries to shut down the conversations and those seems to be some of places where "There, gotcha!" could happen.

Autism is overrated too, and everyone(including themselves) has preconception that autistics are always logical and intelligent. That could lead into a tunnel vision that their words spoken by them are explicitly chosen unaffected by anger or frustration, and sometimes that could lead to silly situations as well.

To me I think that it is often just the case that I am not completely convinced yet. Debating something with someone can be a rather stressful social situation. Maybe I am not able to explain my point of view well, and just want to get out of this stressful situation. Also, when you actually think you might be wrong about something, you are expected to admit you are wrong, which basically feels like being pressured to announce that you have just changed your worldview. Making a decision like that, on the spot, in the middle of a stressful social situation, while you are not even sure about it yet, can be a very anxiety inducing situation.

Maybe it sounds a bit extreme to see admitting you are wrong as announcing you changing your worldview, but it just kinda feels like that for me, even if it is about something small.

Also, for me at least, I have this weird anxiety that, whenever I tell someone I made a decision, that I could never go back on that decision. It feels really weird to me. For the longest time I felt like I couldn't let anyone know I wanted to live a healthier lifestyle, because it somehow felt like, if I told anyone about it, I could never go back to comfort food and stuff like that. Not sure what that is all about, even my psychologist didn't understand it.

That is very well put. I used to have this anxiety of never going back too, just like you described. Now I think I may have somehow changed perspectives and consequently changed my whole worldview and convinced myself that the cost of keeping all that up is too high, and embracing change and it's tingly-itchy feeling is the way to go, so I naturally feel slightly more inclined to change and not look back.

Once you grok duality, you can hold two opposing worldviews in your head at the same time. Many people are always shocked when I pivot to the opposite of what I just said, and expect me to be embarrassed. The thing about worldviews is that they’re malleable and context specific.

> Also, for me at least, I have this weird anxiety that, whenever I tell someone I made a decision, that I could never go back on that decision.

To me, especially in technical contexts, I've always been afraid of backing away from a point I strongly defended before - because I want people to trust and what I say and not be afraid of relying on it, which is undermined by admitting fault.

However, admitting that you're wrong (and maybe even more so, admitting that you might not be right) is actually quite freeing: Nobody should expect you to be 100% perfect, and regardless of your technical prowess, if you challenge yourself you will sometimes fail. Communicating clearly when you are unsure about something, or when something made you reconsider your opinion, is just as valuable to how people perceive you as "always being right". As a bonus, it also helps keep you humble to admit to yourself that you won't always be right.

Maybe they were right? On a serious note, though, and I am diagnosed if it adds any value to my response; anecdotally, I tend to hold strong opinions only upon strict testing (usually internalised argumentation) and, therefore in such cases, maintain extreme bias when judging against alternative ideas. Furthermore, in many cases I will only speak if I have something to say. In that sense, if I understand I am wrong, it makes sense to just accept it and does not look necessary to communicate it. Similarly, in the realisation that the person I am having argument with will not be convinced, I may still not discuss further, even though I still think I am right, just because I do not see the value of convincing. Understandably, in the context of my previous statement, they might infer this as an indication of me being wrong. The last few years, I have started telling clearly that I am wrong, when I think I am, not because I think it adds any value, but because it looks like people are really passionate about proving themselves right to others, when I mostly just care about being right. Telling people you were wrong seems to make them happy and therefore more prone to accept your position in future disagreements.

that all sounds like well-functioning, pro-social behavior to me.

autism, like many "disorders", is keenly overdiagnosed, to create a sociopolitically-mediated norm from which deviance (like "high-functioning" autism) can be classified and, where desired, ostrasized, for the sake of control. it's a classic hammer looking for a nail issue, but with coercion as its central aim. biology is very unlike computers and populations of anything biological will exhibit a fascinating array of variance and an enormous range of biologically valid (but perhaps not sociopolitically valid) "normal".

> autism, like many "disorders", is keenly overdiagnosed, to create a sociopolitically-mediated norm from which deviance (like "high-functioning" autism) can be classified and, where desired, ostrasized, for the sake of control. it's a classic hammer looking for a nail issue, but with coercion as its central aim.

Relevant quote from The Jargon File (http://catb.org/jargon/html/weaknesses.html):

"Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a tendency to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in personality, especially those variations that make life more complicated for authority figures and conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue tend to be among those questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist; and if so whether they are really ‘diseases’ rather than extremes of a normal genetic variation like having freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case, they have a sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-diagnosed and over-treated. After all, people in authority will always be inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly, intelligent individualists — thus, any social system that depends on authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize and drug such ‘abnormal’ people until they are properly docile and stupid and ‘well-socialized’.

So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said, most would also concede that some hacker traits coincide with indicators for non-hyperactive ADD and AS — the status of caffeine as a hacker beverage of choice may be connected to the fact that it bonds to the same neural receptors as Ritalin, the drug most commonly prescribed for ADD. It is probably true that boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of clinical ADD among hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5% (AS is rarer at 0.4-0.5%)."

the likes of foucault and nietzsche would be better source material than random internet opinion for this sort of thing. this is sociopolitical push-pull between the average and the relative outliers--as old as time, just with different jargon.

> the likes of foucault and nietzsche would be better source material than random internet opinion for this sort of thing

This is Hacker News. The Jargon File is a quite famous document of the hacker scene: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jargon_File&oldid...

i know what it is. it's still random internet opinion rather than academic research.

The medical field has been moving away from autism as a pathology to a more nuanced understanding of neurodiversity as a multidimensional spectrum. While stigma very much functions as a societal cudgel, a diagnosis can actually be extremely positive and liberating because:

- it gives access to a community of people that share your life's experiences. Seeing how alienating society can be to people on the spectrum, finally finding a peer group is life-changing.

- it allows us to put names on certain things we experience, and communicate those things to the people we interact with. Being able to frame some of my experiences and behaviours has resolved pretty much all the conflicts we used to have in my relationship.

- it deconstructs shame. We are now not just "lazy" or "stupid" or "creepy" or "weird" or "emotionless" or "stunted" or "distracted".

- it frames the fact that autism is a disability mostly as a problem with society not being accomodating to our neurological fabric, not the other way round. It allows us to ask for accomodation in a professional setting, for example

you're exactly describing medicalization, where relatively common human variation is pathologized so it can be separated and treated, without asking to what ends?

a diagnosis becomes an excuse for the inconvenience of having to deal with differences among ourselves. it's ok that we have to deal with discomfort and even (some) conflict. that's an essential part of life, otherwise we may as well be robots.

Neurotypical people are often lying to you when they pretend to acknowledge they were wrong. Autistic people are less likely to follow the social ritual of being polite to your face before going back to doing things the way they were before.

Also, the autistic mind does not handle change very well. So it's usually not an ego thing about being wrong like a neurotypical person, it's a panic attack inducing psychological response to the world not working according to the mental model.

There are at least a few possibilities here I think:

1) They weren’t actually wrong, but you didn’t understand their context

2) They experienced discomfort with an incursion into their worldview, and you didn’t compellingly convince them they were wrong, so why bother to switch

3) Along with autism seems to come a predisposition to narcissism as individual understanding frequently outstrips peers, and an under engagement with social skills mean they don’t get as much from those interactions

In my experience the denial is usually temporary unless they are malignantly narcissistic.

I have similar questions. There’s one person I frequently come into contact who… for a lack of a better explanation… doesn’t seem to understand other people have had a different life experience. I’m going to butcher explaining this.

Someone will talk about their experience doing some task and they’ll pop in (uninvited) to say things don’t work that way. Their way is the only way things are done… or perhaps should be done?

Talking to other people who know them, they’ve been doing this their entire life and can’t understand why this upsets people. No attempt has made to learn. They just walk away and come back to do the same thing. This has been happening for decades.

The my initial thought is: This is incredibly aggravating. At some point after many decades of extremely poor social interactions, isn’t it reasonable to assume someone would learn to accept their experiences aren’t the only ones?

My second is: is this just behavior neurotypical people do all the time and are just nice about it?

I find it difficult to understand. I’m not autistic, but on the surface I deal with a lot of the same problems.

From my own background, I deeply struggled with social interaction until I learned everything by rote memorization until I could form a logical model of human psychology. I know people the same way I know computer programs.

My mental model of humans does handle most autistic people I’ve met. If my model was off, I’d notice the inputs and outputs wouldn’t match. I can usually tell when people are faking things because they have a less complete mental model of humans. The gaps are pretty glaring to me.

But I can’t figure this person out. My model’s conclusion is this person is severely impaired in a way that affects how they form mental models. Or… they are capable of learning but would rather feel bad than change how they relate to people. Whatever the problem is, it doesn’t feel malicious. But whatever it is, it’s gone on for decades.

I don’t like assuming either of those.

Edit: I should note, they seem like a decent person and I’m inclined to believe they are. Their friends wouldn’t tolerant or defend someone with bad intentions.

Sometimes people are just bad at things, even things that seem easy.

I think the difference is that an autistic person will see reality like this:

  |   O                                  O   |
  | -----  ( inner landscape (fact) )  ----- |
  |   |                                  |   |
  |  / \                                / \  |

While the non-autistic person will see it like this:

  |   O                                                            O   |
  | -----  ( inner landscape (fact) ) ( inner landscape (fact) ) ----- |
  |   |                                                            |   |
  |  / \                                                          / \  |

The non-autistic person will always assume that there are two inner landscapes at play, in any given social situation, two versions of reality, if you will, and two sets of facts. And they will assume that the other person sees it in the same way: They will assume that the other person also allows for two versions of reality, and two sets of facts.

The autistic person will, instead, view it as if there is one big unified shared reality between him and the other person, and one true fact, in any given situation. He will also assume that the other person sees it in the same way as himself.

The "double empathy problem" is that neither of them can see how the other person views the world. The non-autistic person cannot comprehend that the autistic person sees a single shared reality, and a single fact. Likewise, the autistic person cannot comprehend that the non-autistic person sees two different realities and two sets of facts.

Probably just a coincidence or, just guessing based on where we are, a byproduct of most of the autists you know being software developers.

Personally when I find out I'm wrong about something it's a relief. Usually when my understanding of something doesn't line up with everyone else's, the cause is much more complex and disturbing. Me just misunderstanding is the most benign possibility and one I am happy to accept.

This is familiar to me. I've known people so like this and once an idea gets into their head it would take dynamite to shift. To them it is right at an emotional level and facts will be ignored when presented. It's right, so they bulldoze on getting angrier and more resentful as the facts build up.

I'm starting to finally[1] learn just to give up when I see this as trying to change such minds becomes a self-damaging time sink.

[1] yes, finally. Taken me a long time. Perhaps there's a touch of them in me, I do wonder sometimes.

I think that NT people are more likely to notice that they are taking it too far and let go of being right in order to maintain a good social atmosphere. I think that autistic people often won’t notice when they should concede. On the other hand, in text based discussions both NT and autistic people don’t know when to stop. I would suggest the hypothesis that this is because the social information that NT people use so heavily has been lost

My take on this (as ND):

Why concede if the topic is not a topic of taste? And who should concede to whom? I personally can't tell you that you are right if I think you are wrong. That is lying and disingenuous.

I have learned to just walk away.

> I have learned to just walk away.

That's what I mean by conceding, just saying "fair enough" and shutting up

That's not an option in a professional context, usually. If you are coming to me asking for an opinion about a project, say, what is the point of walking away? In those cases I won't let it go, since I'm here to build a product, not play mind games.

Wrong. Your job is to play mind games, because that's what keeps you getting paid and puts you ahead in line for raises and promotions.

The mind games are so structured that a product may hopefully emerge from them, but if you want to keep food on the table, never forget what comes first.

If you fail to build a product, the team takes collective responsibility and they can RCA that and design more effective mind games for the future. If you fail to play the games, you will be singled out and fired.

This is where I walk away. There are work environments where this is not necessary. I would also point out that your whole post illustrates what we have been talking about in this thread. I have a different context. It might not fit your reality, but there are better words to use than "wrong".

Yeah you may walk away, but exactly what I'm suggesting is that autistic people do, and NT people don't, because the latter are willing to concede, while the former are pearl clutchers

I don't see what that has to do with pearl clutching. I entirely understand that people are ok "conceding" for political reasons, in order to further their career or "keep the social peace". That is different than admitting that you are wrong (you are not).

I very much prefer to stand by my professional opinion (as in, I am professional about my craft), and not compromise, even if it has career consequences. This is not "wrong", nor "pearl clutching". I just operate in a different context. and am not antagonistic either.

What is however antagonistic and bullying is being so certain that what I care about is "wrong" and "pearl clutching" and dysfunctional. The stated goal of a company is to build a product that generates revenue. At an individual level you might want to play a different game, and make the person you report to look good so you can score your next promotion. I don't really care about scoring my next promotion.

What I care about is building good products, and don't see why I would "concede" and compromise on my skill building said products. Otherwise, where do I draw the line? Do I just concede as soon as someone disagrees with me? After 5 minutes? If it's my manager? If the person is taller than me? If they are louder? If they start calling me a pearl clutcher?

I might do it once or twice, sure. But then I'll walk.

I’m saying that autistic people are more likely to stand up for their principles to the point of detriment, while NT people are more likely to give in for the sake of maintaining social order

> Otherwise, where do I draw the line? Do I just concede as soon as someone disagrees with me? After 5 minutes? If it's my manager? If the person is taller than me? If they are louder? If they start calling me a pearl clutcher?

I would say that the fact that you do not have an intuitive sense of when to concede is a symptom of autism or at least of not being NT. It is clear to NT people, we generally don’t have to rationally handle it directly, it’s intuitive

replying here because of depth, but your latest response is a much more charitable and productive way of stating things, and one I fully agree with.

The problem here is that the default position in society is: "you should just know intuitively what to do, and if you don't, it will be detrimental to you and your career". As you point out, being ND is not being able to intuit what is typical behavior, which means being faced with a catch-22. I can make up rules by which to play the game, but then I am by definition not intuitively handling situations. I have no way of knowing when to deviate from these rules and when not.

If you tell me "our goal is to build a great product", which is what I thoroughly enjoy, yet I am expected to play some nuanced game of kiss up to your manager, then it is no surprise that I am going to at some point call out the bullshit and leave. It is not wrong nor dysfunctional.

As illustrated by some of the responses here, NT people are not very proficient at understanding that people might play by different rules than their own either. Because are the majority, it is expected for ND people to "concede", and not the other way around.

This is where we can all make progress. Part of the more widespread recognition of neurodiversity is that it provides more tools and knowledge for neurodiverse people to work within society, but similarly, provides neurotypical people more tools and knowledge to reduce discrimination and communicate with their fellow humans.

For example, as a manager, being able to gracefully point out that the discussion is not productive, and either tabling it, or learning to listen better, or respectfully pointing out what might be going on and how to better approach such topics, rather than calling people pearl-clutchers, wrong or antagonistic, and ultimately firing them or demoting them. No-one benefits here, except maybe the manager's sense of being right.

While some aspects of being ND are handicapping by themselves (say, sensory sensitivities), operating under different assumptions and models is only so when they lead to discrimination and backlash, instead of acceptance and accomodation. As a ND, I accomodate and mask pretty much 24/7 already.

I honestly would not expect NT to stop emphasising such things due to the existence of ND people. It reminds me of someone I spoke to who is upset that they were criticised for sounding monotonous when presenting but it was due to their non native English accent. I’m sorry but it isn’t realistic to expect that people are going to rewire their entire social framework in order to cater to the social differences of a small minority. If you behave inappropriately people will call it out. That’s a tough problem for those who can’t distinguish when something is not appropriate

That is pretty much the problem, right? "We are in the majority, so we won't really make an effort to accommodate you, too bad."

Thankfully I actually see things changing.

If you think it's fair to criticize people for their accents and then admonishing them for being upset, you might want to work on your empathy and social skills too.

I think it’s as impossible to accept someone who breaks social barriers because they aren’t aware of them as it is to accept a murderer into the group. People are hard wired to dislike rude people. If your rudeness is caused by being ND that’s a shame but it is going to be almost impossible for people to ignore your rudeness anyway

This is a fundamental difference between ableism and things like racism, often with the former there really are differences that cause problems. For example I have depression and I find it very difficult to work, but society does not accept that and nor do I expect it to. Similarly if you are autistic and take arguments too far because you think you are right, you will piss people off, and I don’t think you can expect otherwise. I would actually say you are lacking empathy here

It absolutely is. IMO a big part of being autistic is thinking that it isn't. NT people recognise that you can bullshit or give up in every situation. Autistic people hang on out of "principle"

It's hard to give concrete insights into the people you encountered, but the fact that you say that "all autistic people you've known" don't admit they're wrong gives me pause. What did "wrong" mean in this context? What does "denying reality" mean? Did you maybe realize that you think those were all the autistic people you encountered because you define autism as not being able to admit you are wrong? Not only do a lot of autistic people not know autism explains how they feel, but most of us pass so well you will never know we might be on the spectrum. It's not something people broadcast loudly.

I often get told by a certain class of people that I can't accept when I am wrong. I feel personally that I am one of the extremely open-minded, constantly learning, seeking out new answers, curious. I love listening to end-users and distilling their way of thinking about their domain to make left-field technical changes, for example. Here are some of the explanations I could come up why "all the highly functioning people you have met in your life don't seem to be able to acknowledge that they are wrong":

A simple reason:

- I am actually right, and you can't recognize it, either because you don't hear me out, or you assume that I am wrong from the start, or you just don't understand the model I am operating under. "Denying reality" is just shortcode for "operating outside of/denying my model of reality".

Concrete example, very close to situations I've had in real life:

You are my manager at an ecommerce company. You might think the checkout on our website is bad, and needs to be rewritten. I know we don't even have any analytics set up, so will question why you think the ecommerce page is broken.

If you can't come up with a satisfying answer (I would often get something like "I read an article about how they use react at airbnb, we should do that too"), then I will not back down from me questioning the purpose of the change.

I understand you think that, as a business savvyy person, you are keeping track of what the industry is doing, and that's indeed valuable.

But you have to trust me that

- a) the technology used has nothing to do with what the user perceives. This is absolutely obvious to me, but you might just have realized that there is such a thing called web frameworks, and that they are a big deal, and that people can be very opinionated and forceful about them. It's going to take me a while to explain it plays no role whatsoever for the end-user.

- b) we need analytics to understand if checkout indeed needs an overhaul. Analytics are not easy, data lies very easily, data needs work. The statistics are not easy, the causality of things is not easy, it is going to be hard to get a good signal.

- c) our current stack, team, software, technical debt, feature prioritization is the thing determining the technology choice. Many things come into play here, and each of them can be incredibly subtle (maybe it's hard to incorporate react because our SSR framework works entirely differently, etc...). It's going to take me a while to explain why certain tech choices might be good, might be bad.

- When I'm wrong / don't know enough, I will just keep quiet and learn and figure things out on my own. You will just never realize it, and thus think that I "never" admit I am wrong, when in fact, I do so almost daily. Understanding that people think very differently, that I shouldn't bring it up, that I need to adapt to the 95% of normal people out there, is what makes me highly functioning.

- You don't understand how I communicate. You think I might just argue about something you know is wrong, when I am actually asking questions and trying to understand what you are saying. I can't have a conversation if I don't understand what you are asking for in the first place, and you might not be used to the level of rigor I require to state an actual opinion. This turns into a circular dialogue where I will ask questions, you will think I question your premise and reject the question outright. I will either get frustrated (see next point), or usually just stop early, because I don't see the point, and have been in situations such as these countless time in the past.

- I will only forcefully argue about something only if I deeply care and have put in the countless (thousands! tens of thousands!) of hours to learn more about the topic. Many people don't realize how absolutely obsessively I will research and learn things, nor how good I have gotten at learning things.

Spending 14h a day learning about things and trying things and writing and designing and building really adds up. I don't really have hobbies or friends or chill out days or spend much time with family. Instead, I have known I wanted to be a programmer since I was 6. In the 35 years since, I have been away from my computer once for 7days, and never not had a programming book in my backpack. I enjoy computers and programming and software and anything related to it to a level that is I think completely alien to more neurotypical people.

While people think individuals might maybe have one area of expertise, because they studied it and maybe held a job in that area for 15 years, adding up to say 20k hours of practice, a lot of it probably quite distracted / uninterested. I might have maybe accumulated 100k hours in the same 20 year span, a lot of it in obsessive single-minded pursuit. Probably only my wife knows what that looks like.

- Because I care so deeply about these topics, there is indeed a tendency to overcommunicate / not realize that I need to police my speech and boil things down to a more "human" level. I also spend most of my time in the areas of the internet where people are similarly obsessive about a single topic, and communicating this way is actually my normal. You might not realize it because I have gotten so good at masking it.

Wow, this response really resonated with me. Especially your last point.

> Because I care so deeply about these topics, there is indeed a tendency to overcommunicate / not realize that I need to police my speech and boil things down to a more "human" level. I also spend most of my time in the areas of the internet where people are similarly obsessive about a single topic, and communicating this way is actually my normal.

The other critical feedback I receive from people relatively often is that I "talk too much" and that I "never answer their question" because I grew up, for the most part, on the Internet in circles of people who are highly engaged and educated. In most cases my communication is focused on establishing context first, and then making a statement, assertion, or answer. A lot of people tend towards just skipping the context, which I think is sometimes reasonable if you can assume context is shared, but my experience in work/business is that /most/ miscommunication is due to lack of shared context. I often get interrupted when answering someone's question, where they came to me /specifically/ because I'm an expert on the topic, because they think I'm not answering their question, where from my perspective to be able to truly answer their question I first need to establish shared context, and teach them a deeper level of understanding of the topic so they can even understand my eventual answer.

What's interesting is I am now in a role not as an engineer, but as a product manager, in part because I've gotten very good at distilling complex topics down to be understandable to others and teaching other people (I also guest lecture, give conference talks, and do internal classes at companies I work at), and most of my life has been focused on reading and writing, so I am very good at writing, which at least in business matters as much or maybe more than talking. So, obviously I've adapted in some way that's successful to perform my job function successfully, but I still face these challenges primarily in personal relationships. It's not really clear to me that my methodology is inferior to the alternative, and I mostly think that other people simply lack any reasonable attention span because of the current situation with social media / our distraction economy. If someone wants to learn something from an expert, they should be prepared to listen to the answer, but I have friends who've told me this is arrogance on my part to believe this way. I see it as a two-way street though, and despite preferring reading to listening/watching, I've spent hours listening to experts when they've been willing to give me their time.

Thank you for the very valuable in-depth insight!

What I had in mind was actual, demonstratable instances of being wrong. Such as assuming a parameter in a function of a library works a certain way based on how it's named, and what _should_ be the _correct_ way such a parameter should work leading to a subtle bug that I then helped to debug. And then the uphill battle being trying to convince the person to try to use the parameter the way its documented, going against their understanding of how it _should_ work.

That's an interesting example. I think one thing to keep in mind is that meta-disagreements and disagreements are not the same thing, although they may appear the same. Are you certain this person is saying the function doesn't work the way the documentation says? Or, are they rather being forceful in arguing that the bug is in the function, not in their code, because it behaves in a way they see as being wrong? Those are two different disagreements, but my appear to be the same to outside observers.

Obviously neither myself nor the parent you were replying to are the person you had the disagreement with, so we cannot tell you what was in their mind.

I'm curious if you've ever put substantial thought into how human relations on planet Earth could be improved? To me, this is the sort of thinking that seems almost entirely absent among those who organize affairs - to me, it seems like people aren't even trying to make things better (on a more absolute scale, not the relative scale that people tend to use).

I think this might be a compliment? If so, thank you :)

I have given it some thought in as far that the best I can do is get better at thinking and writing, so that I can publish my thoughts and insights on my blog. If reading them resonates with a few people, and helps them lead a better life, I will have achieved something meaningful. (I just linked my writing outlets in my profile). I also hope that openly writing about neurodiversity and mental illness will help deconstruct stigma, and I don't mind enduring whatever consequences this might have on my career.

I don't think improving relations between humans is something I'd be good at at all, nor does it really interest me. However, the topic of doing good is becoming increasingly relevant to me as I just turned 40, and I am discovering that systems thinking deeply resonates with me. I will try to pivot into agritech or another climate change related topic soon.

On a more prosaic level, hopefully I will become confident enough in my writing to try to distill what I learned about programming in the near future, and this might help people make a clearer point in technical debates here and there :)

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