Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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)

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com