People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect#Counter_examp...
even wikipedia has updated saying
Counter example
In 2019, a large international cultural anthropology study analyzed 219 street disputes and confrontations that were recorded by security cameras in three cities in different countries—Lancaster, Amsterdam, and Cape Town. Contrary to bystander theory, the study found that bystanders intervened in almost every case, and the chance of intervention went up with the number of bystanders; "a highly radical discovery and a completely different outcome than theory predicts."[68]
This study is the first large-scale test of the bystander effect in real-life. Up until now, this effect was mainly studied in the lab by asking study subjects how they would respond in a particular situation. Another striking aspect of this study is that the observations come from three different countries including the violent country of South Africa where intervening in a street dispute is not without risk ... Nevertheless, peacemakers do draw a line according to a follow-up study ... In the case of armed robberies, bystanders intervene far less.[68]This is not an ideal setting to analyze the bystander effect. People are drunk. People know each other. People may have just met but started bonding over alcohol (and cigarettes, if we are outside the bar). Seems more like a study of the behavior of drunk people than anything else.
Fair warning, I'm not great at interpreting statistics nor reading sociological studies, I prefer to read about medicine. I'm open to being corrected.
So you might say that if the theory didnt take alcohol, nights and all your factors into account, then it was as useful as considering investors as rational in an econ theory and predicted nothing worth predicting.
When I saw the title of this piece, my first thought was an emergency situation (eg - automobile accident, building on fire).
Did the study even determine whether bystanders were independent individuals or had a prior relationship to the belligerents? If the second one then it feels like the study is invalidated.
Doubtful it represents most real bystander situations where you actually need to make a choice, like situations in daily life where you are busy going about your business (rather than being in a bar literally for this sort of fun), or low key stuff like bullying, harassment, etc etc.
It's like a study concluding that depression doesn't exist by studying a bunch of people who are medicated for depression.
But I have a story of a pretty horrible case of bystaderism that I saw 10+ years ago. A man suddenly had an epileptic fit, or something of that effect, in the street. I was about 30 meters away and saw hos this man just fell to the ground suddenly. On a busy downtown street in Sweden's 4th largest city. People who were walking behind him literally stepped over him and kept walking while I ran towards him to see what was wrong.
But I wasn't the only one who ran to him. The stand out thing was specifically a couple who were walking at his pace behind him and just stepped over him and kept walking, a young couple too in their 20s. Very strange and forever stuck in my head.
But both me and several others rushed to his aide and stayed with him, held him in the side position, until he regained consciousness.
Anyways, about 10 years later I find out I have mild autism.
The Bystander was a huge problem in China as recently as 10 years ago, until Chinese authorities made changes to the law.
It's still an issue in India today. (https://www.outlookindia.com/national/explained-delhi-teen-m...)
Quite oddly, the bystander effect is biggest in countries that celebrate collective action, and the smallest in countries with strong individualist bents.
At some point, this included one of them regularly attempting to rescue babies from baby trolleys, which they considered a prison. Fortunately, the would-be rescuer was only aged 3 at the time.
Yesterday I literally had to stop myself from sending photographs to the police of a guy walking his dog off leash in a park that has signs forbidding it. And my reason for wanting to call the police is because of my compassion for the dog or for anyone the dog to hurt. Not so much that it was only that the man was doing something wrong. And I think that’s what gets missed in those of us with ASD, there is still a strong, empathy and compassion that motivates us.
It feels like something is going wrong here in your connecting a dog being off a leash with somehow empathy for the dog.
I read your impulse to act here as your mind being hijacked by the sign-maker to conscript you into their preferred system of rules.
Evaluate all signs, rules, commands in just the same way you evaluate the most average sort of person reading these things out in front of you. Who are you? Why? What do you want? and so on
The rule, in the abstract, can be given some plausible 'social good' defense -- many rules can, even the most insidious. No doubt, on extreme averages, dogs being on leashes marginally improves the on-average saftey.
But this 'on-average' is a radical abstraction. What it says is that the dog's freedom, enjoyment, and that of their owner must be Brought Into Order to fit with a system of values which discounts that entirely.
The sign is a symptom of this system of disciplining people; it conscripts them into a value system which may routinely be against their benefit and that of many others.
The sign doesnt tell you this; the sign gives you no critical autonomy to engage with its system of values --- in the way a conversation would.
That is how I diagnose this commenter's issue: his critical faculties are not being triggered. Rather the sign is seen transparently as a command to be followed.
There are no Commands to be Followed. There are only people commanding, and following them is advised only if it is advised.
What you’re saying is, we should have no laws and do whatever we want. We should have no rules and do whatever we want. I’m an anarchist and I don’t even agree with that.
I would feel the same about the dog off the lease whether the sign was there or not. Dogs can be dangerous animals and if I don’t know them, I should be afraid.
If a sign is seen as a 'strong suggestion', as 'advisable' or a 'please do this' then there's no issue -- that's what signs are.
But you didnt see the sign that way; and that's what i'm responding to. Your impulse was to bring the disciplinary arm of the state to bare to enforce someone's opinion of how a park should be run.
This is quite the opposite of being critically engaged with the nature of signs
Your assumption is that my “wanting to bring the disciplinary arm of the state“ is based on the rules, and not on my compassion. That’s where you’re wrong. I was using the rules of the state to enforce my compassion, not to enforce the rules. in this case, the rules aligned with my compassion.
And in fact, I would not call police if I saw someone shoplifting. And that’s what people don’t understand about those of us with Asperger‘s. It is a sense of right and wrong not based on rules, but based on right and wrong.
The sign couldve been a poster of a dog off a leach running around with another dog, having a good time. That, I imagine, would likewise trigger a positive emotion in you.
What i'm advocating for is more of a gap between the sign and the emotion. I dont think the sign would be as effective if it were a command read out by 'some average looking person'
the sign here has a special quality in triggering an emotional response, because the usual moderating triggers are absent: those of the falibility of a person
A Sign does not trigger an emotional response in me. My emotions were triggered by the action of the person walking their dog without a leash design told me that other people were compassionate, just like I am.
To conduct a genocide, one needs compassion. In the way people are here having fantasies of dangerous dogs biting children, likewise similar fantasies of danger abound -- compassion for imagined victims driving overwhelming oppression.
I dont consider this morality, quite the opposite. Morality is deliberative, it takes into account the particular, it is a response to the concrete reality not the imagined.
But I think I see. I think I see your mistaking compassion for the self as compassion for the other. It’s easy to cause a holocaust if you cause people to only have compassion for themselves or their own kind. It’s very hard to create a holocaust if you have a universal compassion for all humans.
So your answer is “well let’s get rid of all compassion” instead of making our compassion even greater.
You see the germans imagined the jews a threat (and of course some were, as some of all people are -- just as some dogs are dangerous). Now all you need to do is make headlines of all the times a jewish person murdered someone and the like. Indeed, imagine it on youtube: all these videos of jewish criminals. Now you have waves of compassion for the victims of these criminals. It's trivial.
I take it in this case people here are making an identical argument that were made by those racists who imagined so much danger.
Of course when looking at the actual stats the german jews were no less or more violent than anyone, indeed, often a little less -- and often a little more patroitic in fact.
How here do we imagine dogs? Well 56 deaths from dog attacks in a decade -- far less than from people in that same time, of course.
Dogs, it seems, are incredibly well-behaved compared to people. Perhaps we should leash young men, or ban them from parks. That would have a much more dramatic impact
Fear has no place in compassion.
When you have compassion for victims, that makes you intolerant of their attackers. And if you imagine victimhood, then the anger and intolerance is just the same.
Compassion is an incredibly dangerous emotion for this reason; and is at the heart of a great amount of war and conflict. If people were afraid of an enemy, the won't attack them. But if they have compassion for their (possibly imagined) victims, then my god: they'll punish them to the ends of the earth.
Emotions are not moral things. Actions are. Any given emotion leads to both moral and immoral outcomes: anger is moral when it enables self-defence; fear is moral when it enables protection; compassion is moral when it enables protection to the needly.
But as with all the others, compassion becomes a profoundly immoral force when it motivates a desire to protect non-victims from their non-attackers. This "protection" is a form of self-righteous oppression -- and vastly more common than sociopaths pulling strings.
It is trivial to form a mob to lynch whomever you like if they feel it would protect some innocent -- it is compassion which drives the excess of all mobs
Water is good for you yet too much water will kill you. This is what the poster meant.
For this reason using a leash is not only a recommendation on a sign but the law in many locales.
I've no objection to the rule. My issue is with how the rule is being interpreted. If someone were to ask, 'please keep a leash on' i'd expect people to be polite enough to do so.
But that's the gravity of the situation here. In almost no universe is the guy we're talking about one of these fringe youtube dog owners you're having some fantasy about.
This is the problem with these abstractions: they invite people to have fantasies of catastrophe rather than engage with the reality in front of them
And what are these fantasy scenarios but just another mechanism by which a brutal system of values comes to be imposed?
Consider the police coming out here and enforcing such a value on this guy walking his dog. Concretely, which is worse: police discipline or a dog in a park ?
In this case, the discipline on the person who would be a fine. What do you think they’re going to do? Beat him and throw him in jail?
As I said, I’m an advocate for anarchism, so my view on the police should be clear. But we do not live in an anarchistic society, and this is all I have to work with. unlimited freedom for each individual is untenable. That’s what you are looking for. I’m going to make the obvious observation that you’re probably a libertarian.
The truth is that the dog owner was not being compassionate to other people, rather he was focusing so on himself. He was being selfish, and that to me was the moral failing here, it had nothing to do with the rules, as I said, but the rules aligned with my moral beliefs.
That is how the country is run.
You can, if you so wish, steal from peoples houses with impunity. The crime will very rarely be investigated, you're unlikely to be caught, etc.
This system of black/white rules that you perceive exists, does not. This misperception lies at the origin of what's trigged your impulse to imagine some threat (which then triggers compassion).
Rather social reality comprises a series of negotiations whose moral content lies in how that delicate interaction takes place. Reducing this down to a chessboard-like system with presumed violent enforcement is itself immoral. It deprives people from living in this negotiated space where morality can take place.
In general, someone breaking into a house is a present dangerous and serious threat. On that basis I would call the police, etc.
If someone opened the door, saw a mobile, grabbed it and ran off -- then i'd maybe leave a note with the neighbor
- Hospital episode data for England also reveal an upward trend in the number of attendances for dog related injuries in the past 15 years. There has been an 88% increase in attendances, from 4699 in 2007 to 8819 in 2021-22.
- BBC News - Dog attacks: 34% increase recorded by police in England and Wales (2023). Last year, there were nearly 22,000 cases of out-of-control dogs causing injury. In 2018, there were just over 16,000.
But hey, you weren't a witness to any of this, so I'm sure it never happens. If you are trolling well played. You might as well argue we don't need seatbelt laws since you've never been in a crash.
My point is about the role of such signs and rules in policing people's behaviour in the abstract.
If, in the situation so-described, the owner and their dog were in any way an actual danger, then they should be reprimanded. If they werent, then let's observe that they werent.
56 fatal dog attacks in a decade is perhaps lower than what i would have guessed anyway. I would have bet higher.
I just dont see why when invited to imagine that on some sunny day in a park, a person walking their dog without a leash, is precipitating the 57th death. This is absurd.
Removing all the information from the situation and reducing down to a fantasy of possible violence is the pretence here for 'preventing harm'. This prevents no harm in the particular situation involved.
I have no doubt dogs are dangerous, as is almost everything. I have extreme levels of doubt that some random guy in a park with a dog off a leash has anything to do with any marginal changes to the safety of people in that park.
My concern is how this snowballs in people's imaginations away from the concrete reality into some abstraction where there are victims involved.
But it’s irrelevant. Because you’re just thinking about people being in danger and not the dog being in danger or not if it is disturb the other animals that also have at the park like the squirrels in the birds.
You’re only seeing the dog owner as the victim in the circumstance.
And all that doesn’t matter either, because we as a community created this rule, this law, that your dog needs to be on a leash went in this park. If you don’t like the law, you could push to overturn the law. Or if you don’t like the law, you can move to a place that doesn’t have these laws.
We have decided that the risk of even a slight chance of a dog hurting someone is more important than the slight inconvenience of someone having a dog on a leash. Of all people you in data science should understand risk benefit. What is the harm of a dog being on a leash?
It's about people who deputise themselves in the service of these rules, and who imagine risk, and appoint themselves enforces of a social order of values that is insensitive to particulars.
There are many things I dislike, take littering. I would find it very obnoxious for a person to litter in a park, and to ignore the signs against it.
But I feel no compulsion to go discipline them, or involve myself in their disciplining, or deputise myself as a member of some social police force. Were they to be murdering someone, that would be different.
I am not a person who 'thinks of the children', quite the opposite. I think of a world designed for children, and would then go out of my way to destroy it.
I am unsympathetic with these 'daily oppressions' which constrain people's lived freedom, in the service of radical abstractions with marginal effects; the service of imagined dangers, and the like.
I would much prefer a society in which people occasionally littered to one in which no one dead out of fear of some reprisal.
The problem with "what's the harm" thinking is its aggregation. When you have disciplined people's daily lives to that degree where all these "what's the harm"-level rules are in operation -- then you're living in a nightmare.
It is for this reason I took against ever living in america. Where 'neighbourly policing' seems everywhere; and 'city bylaws' run amok
There is no magical effect of some cadre of people trying to enforce some silliness onto the general public, there's a reason behind these laws.
I'd prefer to visit a park with unleashed dogs than one where busy-bodies were constantly on the look out for rule violations.
The second one feels more unsafe to me; more repulsive; more invasive.
A busy-body is a much worse creature than a dog
She turns and says "please get away from me" in a way that made it obvious she was irrationally fearful, no idea why but I can guess. Most people would not have reacted in that manner.
My point is this: Go tell the victims of dog attacks they're being busy-bodies by wanting dogs leashed in the park.
If you wander around the world engaged in these fantasies, and police everyone around you such, then you're creating a nightmare for people to live in.
Do you imagine teenagers attacking people, and then keep them out of parks? They're vastly more dangerous than dogs.
Do you imagine so for everything? For knives and forks? For trees? Why! Trees do fall and kill people, we must be ever vigilant for the person with a tree on their property who has not put signs up warning people.
Yes, the world has some minimal danger to it; and people are routinely injured one way or another. If you spend your life in fantasies of this danger you'll only make the world doubly unbearable -- as unsafe as it ever was, and now with self-appointed social police making sure no one can enjoy it
If there's a dangerous dog in a park, that's a problem -- and call the police; make laws against it; make it a crime to own a dangerous dog.
But if there isnt, if you're just having this fantasy that some random guy walking some random dog is endangering the people in the park -- well, I dislike you much more than I dislike that dog. And I'd like a sign to keep you out of the park.
But people who make signs arent the kind to make that one; they're the busy-bodies.
It's about whether the appropriate response to rare events of danger, imagined in abstract circumstances, should be met with 'fantasy compassion' where people go around policing each other.
An unleashed dog in a park is safe as people in the park, indeed, much more so. More people are attacked by other people in parks than by dogs.
If we're going to police society to this level, it'll be a nightmare.
If there's a dangerous person in the park: call the police. Likewise if there's a dangerous dog.
I find it a certain moral sickness to go around in a fantasy that people are all dangerous, or likewise dogs are, or anything else. This is just some internal emotional licence to appoint yourself a police officer.
In the comment i replied to above: why was that woman afraid? Because of a dog? No. She reacted to another person. Another person hurt her.
People are dangerous. I guess we should have a sign 'no people in the park' -- then we can really enjoy it
It was about dogs.
As far as the topic goes, the topic is about how emotional disregulation in autistic people can lead to feelings of injustice and concequentially hostile behaviour.
Dogs and their owners are just an illustrative case.
I classify it into three tribes, using neutral language: the organisers, the dreamers and the demystifies.
Organising autistic people are highly conscientious, motivated by (often disregulated) compassion, rule-imposing, morality is quite personal and imposing, etc. -- board games, civil service, etc. They feel controlled by others having too much freedom, their unexpected behaviour makes them feel unsafe.
The dreamers do not follow any rules, create rich fantasy worlds, like fiction, like high moral principles -- morality is monkish, self-imposing, sacrificial. They feel controlled by too much detail, too many tasks -- they want to live in a removed space.
The demystifiers are ultra pragmatists in many areas (but not all), like non-fiction, are suspicious of 'moral formulas', are suspicious of fantasy, and so on. They feel controlled by others trying to define the bounds of acceptable behaviour. They want to live in a space where everyone is maximally accepted for their invidual preferences.
We're all mixtures, but I find I cannot abide people of the first tribe -- and my friends belong to the other two. That I also have ADHD means I tend to sit across the latter two, depending on the area.
But in general, i'm ruthelessly sceptical of the imaginary worlds people create to make meaning in the world; very sceptical of abstraction in morality; very sceptical of lack of abstraction in philosophy; and so on.
In otherwords, i'm very sceptical of certain emotions (compassion, wonder, ...) and very fond of others (irony, say, esp.).
I think having ADHD also makes you more likely to be in the latter two tribes -- i think the classical popular presentation of autistic personalities lie much more in the first category.
Despite your protestations to the contrary, this is about unleashed animals in the park. It's not about trees, it's not about weapons (although most parks also have prohibitions against weapons), or teenagers. It's about dogs and why people want them to be leashed.
Joel Spoelsky coined a term years ago, architecture astronaut.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect...
> When you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don’t know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don’t actually mean anything at all.
> These are the people I call Architecture Astronauts.
It's kind of like those people who didn't believe covid existed until their family members started dying of it. It's really easy to hold such views when the idea of a dog attacking is an abstract idea. When there isn't a real understanding of the level of danger an attacking dog has.
What I'm saying is that you're holding this opinion due to your ignorance.
Some people clearly want to walk their dogs without leashes. Some people want all dogs leashed. Now, what's the moral standard at work? How do you determine the level of danger?
If you want to constrain people, limit their ability to lives their lives as they wish, you need to have an answer you can defend without bias or prejudice. That you don't like unleashed dogs cannot be grounds for limiting another; there has to be more than your mere preference.
To separate out people disguising their irrational fear from a genuine moral position, one needs to establish that moral position. 'Whatabout' here applies exactly, in moral philosophy its called casuistry: arguing from cases.
So if your moral position is that at a certain level of risk, one must put up signs and start socially policing people -- then ok, let's hear it: what level of risk? what's the principle at work here? (Or does your mind leap to imagined danger in one case, but not another: are you a bigot?).
My view is that I want to live in a society much more tolerant to risk for the sake of avoiding social policing. I dont want to go to parks where people are 'watching out for rule breakers'.
You, presumably, want to live in that society? This is the question.
If you do, so be it. I am not taking a stand against leash laws one way or another. I'm taking issue with a particular mechanism of enforcement of social rules by which emotional busy-bodies go around clutching their pearls and calling the police.
The issue of dog leashes is just one trivial example of this general phenomenon -- and it is this that I am talking about. I have no care whatsoever about what the law should be in the matters of dog leashing.
I gather people in this thread are unable or unwilling to engage in the argument I am making which is at one level of abstraction above the issue around dog leads.
> Was babysitting a family members Pit Bull mix. Her family believes the fatal attack occurred while attempting to stop a fight between the Pit Bull and her 2 Chihuahuas.
...
> Bitten by the family dog while playing outside with adult supervision, later died in hospital.
...
> Was at home to check on his daughters dogs when they attacked him.
...
> A 6-year-old boy was killed by the family dog, a pit bull mix; the boy was severely injured and died in hospital the next day.
---
this isn't abstract or theoretical, this is reality. These are dogs that killed _family members_ in 2023, the list of dogs that injured _people_ is much larger.
The signs aren't abstract and the people who put them up aren't doing them for abstract reasons, but for some reason you want this to be an abstract debate while at the same time complaining that the signs were put up.
That's not how it works.
The question is whether a particular person, in a particular park, on a particular day, with a particular dog is causing that situation. It is an absurd level of paranoia to suppose they are.
Dogs kill people. People kill people. Everything is harmful to someone at somepoint.
The question is whether we should go around replaying 6olds dying by dogs in our heads when we're wandering around in a park.
I think we shouldnt. And it is a moral and psychological sickness to do so.
That you're still only able to evaluate my position in terms of the saftey of dogs tells me you have not understood it and are making no efforts to.
It seems like you're arguing in bad faith, perhaps because you usually deal with people you can brow-beat into losing arguments by appealing to extreme cases.
You can point to all the murdered children you want; that isn't going to work with me. I'm not an idiot.
At that on one particular 4-way with that one particular car with that one particular driver, they successfully ran a red light without causing an accident, therefore, we should all just ignore stop lights because they're an authoritarian construct designed to cow us into submission.
Or perhaps it's those authoritarian posters telling young people to use condoms. Because in that one particular bed in that one particular house with that one particular young couple they had unprotected sex without transmitting any STDs or getting pregnant, therefore we can conclude that signage telling people to use condoms is purely a social construct with no long term real world consequences.
But by all means Don Quixote, you keep fighting the good fight.
Perhaps it's my inclination against speciesism, and my seeing people much closer to dogs than not -- but I think the regulation of the behaviour of animals, against their natures, is a moral matter.
A convention around how to drive isnt.
As far as STDs go, again: no idiotic blanket rules, indeed. Morality occurs in the negotiation between people in particular circumstances.
Sometimes not wearing a condom is exactly what one should do -- if one wishes, one's partner wishes, and one thinks that this sort of intimate sex is more interesting -- and a core part of a life worth living.
I fear greatly the life painted by how regulated people "ought" be in these trivial matters: how they walk their dogs, how they have sex, and so on. This is very far away from a life which any human animal ought live. It's a life full of petty regulations on behaviour to create the illusion of a safe world.
An illusion which comes at an extremely heavy price: that of enjoying life. A cost I do not want to pay.
That has life-changing consequences, and yet here you are waxing on about the morality of placing a leash on a dog.
Are you sure the issue isn't that you dislike people?
Imagine for a moment a person like you, with your impulse to constrain and regulate, was in charge of you
Imagine they did not agree with how you should live your life
What then, would you say to them?
For any issue they wil have their data about marginal changes to safety
You want to do X? why, 0.y% of times X happens, bad things happen!
this is a universal feature of life, and so any idiot can appeal to it
now what do you say to this overbearing regulator of your enjoyment? this person who denies you what you wish to do?
i cannot imagine you are so naive to suppose that what you enjoy is unimpeachably safe
i don't think you have anything to say
rather i read this line of thinking as just moral hypocrisy: you allow yourself to enjoy whatever it is you enjoy, despite these marginal risks -- but when you get no enjoyment from it --- Ah! well then it can be banned
I’m not sure the reason behind the rise, but my anecdotal experience is that people are more likely now to keep their dog on a lead than they were in the past.
We have seen a rise in poorly bred and poorly socialised large breed dogs over the past few decades, the latest being the XL Bully. My guess is they are contributing significantly to the rise in attacks.
Also speaking as someone who always keeps their dog on a lead in parks, the lead is really more of a suggestion for a big dog. If a Bully, Doberman or even a Husky wants to attack, a lead won’t stop it.
This largely disqualifies all your subsequent opinionation. I could tell you some stories about the ups and downs of owning/training large working dogs, but instead I'd urge you to reflect on whether your elaborate critique of abstraction is grounded in anything firmer than your assumptions.
Is it awareness and an application of injustice, or awareness of certain rules that are being applied only partially - the rules could go further.
Because justice and riles are assuredly not the same thing. Who knows the truth to determine what is just for others?
Ultimately, justice is best expressed by the golden rule: Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.
Dogs are at a different level to people too, so that is a further 'justice complexity' to be navigated by the individual.
Perhaps autistic people struggle with some of the nuances, and prefer the rules rather than the idea of justice or doing right. I think most people are like that.
It’s wrong for someone to walk around with an animal that could be dangerous or could harm other people or itself. In this case, the rules aligned with my moral understanding.
Ashan sense of right and wrong is not based on outside rules, but it are internal perception. This is why many of us have anti-authoritarian tendencies.
https://neuroclastic.com/autism-and-responding-to-authority/...
> Autistic children in school are somewhat notorious for finding it hard to adapt to the authority of teachers– some teachers more than others. This is not because they’re evil little ragamuffins, as some teachers would have it, but because their natural state is to assume equanimity. Autistic students (and I speak from long experience) will not bow to authority for authority’s sake.
Great! The reverse speaks to the problem that I think is common place - people going along with behaviour that they know to be wrong/immoral. Eg coding software that will restrict and restrain others for money. The last few years gave so many examples too.
In all honesty, if this really is the common case, perhaps autistic people might be the best of us - there is no governance structure in their heads, just reasoning.
If that's it, I hope that some autistic folk also do not settle very easily, but continue to research the state of play, refuse to trust 'authority' or conventional knowledge, investigate what their philosophical outlook is, work out what they really know personally.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072756
cheers
You know what also doesn't care about the rules of ordered society and the potentially deadly consequences of breaking them? Animals.
Disagree? Only a fool spitting into the wind would permit me to unleash my seemingly subservient Dobermann into the "reality" of instinct for just a minute while we had that hot debate in a public park. I care about its life---and the lives of peaceful strangers there to also enjoy the public space, and the lives of birds making a pitstop on a long migratory journey, and the lives of squirrels that call a resident tree home, and even your life when you decide to raise your voice in a way that may or may not be perceived as threatening---to recognize the unabashed arrogance of doing so.
That's the empathy perspective you're missing.
> You know what also doesn't care about the rules of ordered society and the potentially deadly consequences of breaking them? Animals.
You say that like it’s some curse word. Hate to break it to you, but doesn’t matter how many rules you create and try to enforce to “civilize” humans, humans are animals. Always have been, always will be. I would say that developing an understanding of why rules might be implemented and correctly evaluating the “harm” (societal and to any given individual) of breaking it is what being a functional adult human is. Similarly owning the consequences if your rule breaking behavior resulted in some harm is also called for.
Heck, you’re on a website with close ties to YCombinator, an accelerator for Silicon Valley startups often famous for “disrupting” by blatantly ignoring old laws and seeing if they can grow and corner the market before the regulators catch on so that they get entrenched as the incumbents once the regulators do do something.
The leash in public areas is to be able to control your dog. If you want your dog off of the leash go to private property or a dog park where a gated leashless area exists for those willing to assume the risk.
I've seen military trained dogs with training worth tens of thousands of dollars disobey orders. I simply do not care how well trained people think their dogs are.
Most adult dogs are not OK with being approached by other dogs they don't know. This is absolutely fine so long as all dogs are leashed, and so long as unleashed dogs are limited to private property and to dog parks (you can just not take your dog there if it doesn't like other dogs).
But then some jackass lets their dog loose in a place when you walking your dog on a leash ("It's OK! My dog is good with other dogs!" they shout while running after their dog making a beeline for yours). It gets in your dog's face, your dog warns it to back off, and then you have a dog fight on your hands -- a fight which your dog has the lower hand in because it's leashed.
It's not uncommon for leashed dogs to be mauled or even killed by loose-leash dogs. This is probably one of the most common scenarios where one dog kills another. Sometimes the leashed dog's owner is mauled or killed trying to protect their dog.
Responsible dog owners are extremely familiar with the hazards posed by off-leash dogs in on-leash-only spaces. Only thoughtless owners think otherwise and should be harshly denounced, but please don't paint ALL dog owners with the same brush when most of them would agree with you.
Just because you think your dog is OK doesn't mean that other dogs are OK with your dog; they don't know your dog, and I don't know your dog.
I hug my friends, but if a strangers runs up and hugs me, I will interpret that as assault and respond accordingly -- so don't ever let your dog do the canine equivalent of that, because any consequences (and they may be severe) fall entirely on your shoulders.
Most people who let their dog off-leash in on-leash areas do not have that kind of control (even when they think they do), and for that reason, I am in favor of the law coming down very hard on this.
(At the same time, I am strongly in favor of more designated off-leash parks. As much as I hate off-leash dogs running around, a fair percentage of this is due to a lack of dog-friendly spaces, and fines can only do so much to mitigate it. I would be in favor of all earnings from off-leash fines having to go toward building and maintaining local dog parks.)
If that dog bites someone it dies, how is that not empathetic?
dogs are typically required to be on leashes in parks and public areas for a reason.
I think laws (the kind we're talking about, anyway) are best seen as a tool for maintaining public order. If police encounter something dangerous or immediately disorderly, they can express their reasons for intervening in terms of laws. If you run open headers on your car and cause an actual disturbance, you can be cited. When that relationship between order and law is inverted, the result is cops nickle-and-diming the populace when there was no actual underlying problem.
The real application of law requires, you know ... nuance, discretion and situational awareness. That's the standard we should hold police to, not throwing every single page of the book at people all the time.
How does that make sense?
This is an excellent example of 'ridiculous government overreach' that actually makes perfect sense and some people just don't like.
In a word: discernment. If it's a miniature poodle, you can probably chill. If it's a big dog, it's probably worthwhile to enforce the law.
It actually is a pretty good example of overreach insofar as you're advocating the removal of any judgement call from the equation. That is the surest way to build a relentless bureaucratic machine that makes everyone miserable without actually protecting anyone.
The human in the loop is a feature, not a bug.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2021/may/...
Now consider why it is you didn't know this?
You respond with a strawman.
He eventually explained that he grew up in the poor neighborhood, where people keep large, poorly trained "guard dogs" that occasionally escape and roam the streets. As a child he had to evade roaming dogs several times, including one occasion where he genuinely believes he was running for his life. Apparently it fucked him up pretty badly. Poorly trained dogs (especially those that are bread for aggression) are no joke, even to full grown adults.
>Maybe take a step back and realize that it's perfectly ok when people disagree with you about stuff on the internet.
Exactly what of what I said implies that I have a problem with disagreeing with people? All I said was "if you do these two things, your behavior is incongruous". That's as politely as I can disagree with someone. Maybe your problem is that I said anything at all, in which case I think you're the one who has a problem with disagreement.
That risk lessens significantly if dogs are mandated to be leashed.
unleashed dogs are regularly picked up by the city and if they're not claimed by someone w/i a specific amount of time, they're euthanised.
This isn't actually helping your case.
We shouldn't outlaw murder because some people will murder anyway. We shouldn't outlaw rape because some people will rape anyway.
You have no leg to stand on here, you're grasping at straws.
If not, I'd be careful with how loudly you proclaim ignorant opinions without consideration for people who might have a wider experience than you. Wisdom is knowing when to shut up and listen, sometimes.
This is like saying it is okay for good drivers to drive through stop signs, because they’re there for the bad drivers. Just moronic.
If you want to be somewhere where you can behave however you want, move away from other people. Pretty straightforward.
> In a word: discernment. If it's a miniature poodle, you can probably chill. If it's a big dog, it's probably worthwhile to enforce the law.
Your whole argument is “judgement is an important component of the law” but what that leads to is differing judgements on what we can do. What individual is so far above reproach that they should have the right to discern whether the situation calls for applicability of a black and white law?
raping a 5 year old should be illegal and there is no grey there.
Go on, explain to me why I'm wrong.
I said that we should not empower people to decide when laws are and aren’t applicable, because what they judge as applicable may not be the same as what others judge as applicable. That’s the whole point.
Black and white laws are black and white, you can’t just decide stop signs don’t apply to you because you are a safe driver. You can’t just decide your dog is safe to be off leash in a place where the law requires it. Not sure why this is hard.
I don't have to be "beyond reproach" to conclude this.
your problem is trying to apply one to the other, it's an equivalency issue.
jaywalking is not equivalent to murder, and it never will be.
I don’t know why you are latching on to this scenario when it aligns with my point. It is illegal to rape a child, you are agreeing with me. This is black and white.
Now, there is some person out there who thinks this is okay, are they allowed to judge this is okay, break the law, and do it because in they judged the child is mature? No. Okay. We agree.
That same exact reasoning applies to other laws that we, as a society, have deemed necessary for public life. Because you don’t get to judge those laws as inapplicable. If you do not like them you can try and have them changed or you can leave to a place that has different laws.
Where I live it is illegal to have a dog off leash in public places, this law exists for a reason. People should not decide the law doesn’t apply to them because they “discern” their dog is not a threat. If someone cant accept that law, they need to move somewhere where they can have the lifestyle with their pet that they want.
Just because something likes to do something does not mean we should let it do it.
(coming back to this I realize that laws and rules are what put people on leashes.)
And this would mean the owner who don’t put their dogs on leashes are also the problem.
Also
“More than 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year in the United States”
That’s a lot…
https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/pet-owners/dog-bite-pre...
This is not what people mean when they talk about people getting bitten by dogs.
It's really irresponsible to walk a dog unleashed, especially in populated areas.
In my experience dogs are less stressed without a leash. The primary reason for using a leash is that I feel compassionate about people who are afraid of dogs or don't like them. Seeing a leashed dog makes them feel more secure.
But using a leash is part of the domestication process. I can tell you I was at a national park this year, and two off leash pitbulls and a Labrador charged at me. If it wasn’t for my knowledge about dogs, I probably would’ve been bitten.
So yes, having a dog on a leash makes me feel less stressed.
I fully agree. Yet animal shelters are crammed after the pandemic. Adopting an animal can improve their live.
It's a safety issue for the dog. I recently saw an off-leash dog get freaked out and run out into a busy road. (The dog didn't get hurt luckily, but it was a horrifying experience for all involved.)
Sure, your dog might be "better" than that. But it's not a risk I'm willing to take with my dog.
It's very annoying how people anthropomorphize and refuse to take responsibility for their animals.
Guess what, your dog isn't a person and if it gets agitated and attacks someone, that's your fault. If it decides to chase a squirrel he sees across the street and gets hit by a passing car in the process, that's your fault.
Barring all the worst case scenarios, consider that other people don't like your dog jumping up on them nor do they want it pissing and shitting on their property, which is what most dogs do if left to their own devices.
Often people who won't leash their dogs claim that the animal is trained well enough to not need it, but this is rarely true. In reality, such dog owners usually just don't care about others and will readily blame anybody but themselves when their unleashed dog gets into trouble.
This has been universally unconvincing to those dog owners who walk their dogs off leash. They don’t—in my experience—actually care if it puts their dog at risk, any more than they care about putting anyone else at risk. Anecdata still, but my experience tells me that whether a dog is leashed or not is mostly an indicator of whether the dog’s human is more concerned with the dog’s safety, or with their own selfish convenience.
It's not because they don't trust their dog. It's because they don't trust OTHER people's dogs -- especially because a good 80-90% of people with off-leash dogs don't actually have control of their dogs. They just really like the aesthetic of an off-leash dog and, by golly, they're going to do it--even if they haven't put in the gruelling training it requires, and even if it means their dog is endangered by other dogs. They don't care or think about it because they don't actually have a deep bond with their dog and value it; it's an accessory.
If it's true it kind of says more about non-autistic people than autistic people.
Consider that narc'ing people for victimless crimes is something that can be done to you as well, and you definitely will make enemies and earn a reputation by casually reporting people to the police... so maybe just "leave people alone" is a good default policy.
For example, I nearly gotten murdered on an Amtrak train once, because a man was talking loudly, and I asked him if he could please be quiet because he was clearly disrupting everyone and no one else was speaking up. I spoke up, and he followed me off the train and I had to run into the station to get help.
He didn’t seem to like that.
However I saw him on the trail with the same dog a few days later on the leash
So I’m not sure why this is a problem other than if people are worried that people won’t like them.
I don't read other people's feelings so well. But I still care a hell of a lot how I make them feel. At least the ones I care about which is the default for people I meet. Though once someone is a dick to me they can die in a fire and I wouldn't help them, there is that side too which is not as pretty.
However most people respond with kindness to kindness so I end up caring about most people as a result.
The lack of reading them drives my behaviour a lot because I start pre-empting how my actions could make people feel. And usually going from the worst outcome option so I tend to be a bit withdrawn, going for the safest option.
So my social withdrawal tends to stem from caring. It's weird.
Ps another thing I notice is that autistic people generally tend to be really open-minded and non-discriminating. Because not really feeling part of a group also means not really feeling the need to set your group apart from other groups. We're all just individuals on a journey through life. It doesn't matter what colour, sexual orientation, etc people have, they're just other people <3
Sometimes I wonder if this is why silicon valley is driving diversity so much.
That's not to say they're more or less empathic than others, that's just as variable as with non-autistic people (basically just because you're autistic doesn't mean you're incapable of being an asshole). However because autism partially includes a stunted social growth, the decision making process that might prevent a normal person from say, commenting on someone being rude in public (ie. Not causing a fuss, not wanting the attention to be focused on them) just... isn't quite there. That can both be good and bad depending on the situation.
At least that's been my experience having been a cashier (a couple years ago now) and having had customers who were really obviously autistic. They tended to lean towards being really expressive/opinionated, just... not especially caring if expressing that opinion is appropriate. That can be amazing if you're dealing with an especially frustrating Karen who tries to haggle prices in a fucking supermarket because she didn't bring enough cash (no cashier wants to risk putting their foot down and that blowing up in their face but in supermarkets you do not haggle the total, it's just not a thing), so having another customer back you up feels very solid/helps when management inevitably has to be called. And it can equally be frustrating when they start counting out the VAT that the cashiers computer calculates and they decide the rounding isn't to their liking/when they figure out there's a discount on a product and it isn't applied and then they try to get the cashier to correct it instead of customer service.
In many cases those are understood just fine, but with the caveat that they're not optimal for every situation. There are times when it's appropriate to ignore those criteria (eg to prevent an injury or mitigate some immediate risk), and the people wringing their hands about what to do are unhelpful or even in the way.
More than once I've seen bystanders weirded out by an unpleasant situation stand there repeating 'someone should call 911' over and over without being able to complete the thought and do it themselves. I have enormous respect for the people who are sufficiently present to evaluate and situation and act in the moment, even if their actions are not always perfect; I have negative respect for the people who revert to infantile paralysis or try to dissuade others from acting int he absence of a recognizable authority figure.
But…
I manage several neurodivergent people and to be honest they are the best thing about our company.
They lead in areas that neurotypicals do not which often is being one of the few to speak out when something appears to be wrong or is wrong.
Specifically…
- issues that impact women, ethnic minorities & lgbtqia
- issues that impact healthcare coverage for pay
- issues that impact compensation for themselves and others
we about had a riot when they found out our org was not matching inflation.
I did things similar to what the kids you mention do, and I think it was out of a very strong desire to "make incorrect things correct" rather than "make unjust things just". Both of those urges are out of the mainstream, but if a person acts in a way that matches both, then there's strong social pressure on everyone else to treat it positively.
Maybe it’s my neurodivergence talking but that seems pretty straightforward advice.
Sometimes you aren't skilled or knowledgeable enough to help, and you'll just do more harm than good if you try.
Sometimes by helping, you'll cause more harm to yourself than you'll prevent in the other person.
Etc.
The only difference is when I see unfairness or injustice, then I feel like I have to do something about it. But it usually isn't about the person, it's about the principle.
For me, justice is fulfilment of obligations between people, that we either take explicitly (as promises or contracts), or a very limited number that should be implicitly upheld by all — about aggression and property. But while helping others is a good deed, I don't think anybody thinks you have an obligation to anybody except your own conciseness or g-d, if you believe in one.
And about random chance — that's your relationship with nature or g-d (again, used here not out of religious sense, but just a very useful rhetoric device), and they're not subjects to justice, because they're not people. Surely, you don't expect other people to have an obligation to correct nature or g-d's perceived mistakes or injustices?
That does not contradict my point in any way. I do experience this "obligation" too, and help others, but I don't think this word fits here. But that's just an emotion — that's not a real obligation that I actually owe somebody except for myself.
Emotions are my own volition — I'm free to experience whatever I fee like. Real obligations are not; I have to respect them regardless of my internal emotional state.
oddly enough, autistic people can have an extremely heightened sense of empathy and moral justice compared to the average population. this seems to me to personally have some very distinct upsides and downsides.
When I was in school, I was in the office as part of something else when another young girl began throwing up in the waiting room. There were between five and ten people in the room and the mouth of an adjacent hallway, most of whom noticed before me, because I was reading in the hallway. When I realised what was happening, I ran over to her and held her hair, helped her stay clean, asked the office ladies for a bag and help cleaning up so she could get to the sick bay without slipping, and generally did my best to comfort her. It was very distressing because I got some of the vomit on my hands and had to deal with that for a long time until I could wash them properly. This was not a gender thing because I wasn't the only girl among the students and the office ladies were female. Later that day when school was ending, I was in the office waiting to be picked up and one of the office ladies came over to tell me she thought I was very brave and selfless for having helped that girl. This made me really upset and I asked her why she and the other people hadn't done anything until I asked her for the bag, which got me in a lot of trouble for talking back to admin staff. The guidance counselor at school told me later that they didn't act because they were shocked, which didn't make any sense because they all learned before me so they should have had more time to recover from any potential shock and help, and it didn't make that much sense in the first place that someone just vomiting around them would put every single person into a state of shock.
That is the first incident I can remember where I felt this specific type of anger, but it happened many times in different contexts over the course of my life (once I started watching the news, it would happen very often because of the events depicted there). When these studies started coming out, it explained a lot of things to me and was honestly a huge relief. I had gone through life thinking that a lot of people who were otherwise kind were (apparently at random) cruel, or selfish, or prioritised doing the "normal" thing over other people being hurt, and I didn't understand why they didn't just do the right thing, especially in cases where it's not even hard to do. Specifically, it was reassuring to know that there was probably some neural or developmental difference that was causing them to act this way, and that it wasn't an intentional choice. I know being diagnosed as autistic and learning about autistic patterns of behaviour that I fit helped me feel less bad about how often other people complained that I had made them feel bad for responding to their emotions incorrectly, using incorrect emotions in a given situation, or making people afraid if I had a meltdown. It helped me not because I felt like it gave me carte blanche to just do these things which made other people uncomfortable or hurt, but because in understanding what was happening I could try to find ways to manage the effects on other people and counteract the parts that were anti-social when it mattered, for example by making sure to explain my tone and emotional affect explicitly in circumstances where I suspect someone has misunderstood it. My hope is that as more of this research comes out on why people who aren't autistic often do the wrong thing, it can help them to do the right thing more often and manage more effectively the consequences that their not-autism can have on other people, in the same way as learning about autism helped me to manage the negative effects that my autism could often have on other people.
Yes, and the people who believe that this is not how things should work are, in a word, wrong.
Polities and societies who believe this tend to be very economically prosperous; GDP per capita has a positive correlation with this concept (countries with common law but no meaningfully codified negative rights come a relatively distant are second, civil law countries come third, and despotic regimes a distant fourth).
Immigration patterns of high-skill/high-educated workers follow this correlation as well; all high-achievers want to live in the US, those who aren't quite as autistic land in Canada or the UK, Continental Europe is not a meaningful destination for high-skill migration, and people will die trying to get out of China.
The problem with autistic-minded people, when operating under the notion that society has rules, tend to leak an outsized amount of political power into that society. A society that successfully prohibits itself from trying to capture that power prospers; a society that does not eventually becomes corrupt and devours its own ability to properly motivate those people to bother driving it forward.
The future is Wall-E...
I remember one time I got off the plane in Italy and I was walking with my girlfriend to customs.
At one point we branched off from all the other passengers and she was like "hey we're going the wrong way, everyone is heading there". And I said nope this is the EU passengers exit, look at the sign.
She couldn't believe it was right because the plane was full of others from our EU country. All those people couldn't be wrong, right? I explained I guessed they were all just dumbly following the herd without looking which wouldn't even occur to me. I don't really have that autopilot herd-following program in me. Even when I'm in a group I'm navigating as if I were alone.
So we got to the end and there were 6 free booths in front of us and all the other passengers were queuing up for the 2 unmanned non-EU passport booths :') a security guard had to let them into the right queue.
This applies to the bystander effect too. I'm not surprised about this conclusion at all.
It’s a surprisingly useful heuristic.
I could not live without that sense of freedom.
another example: queueing to board the plane. other than to fit in, why on earth would I stand there and compete to spend more time in a sweaty uncomfortable seat packed with 400 other people? plus, if you get on last, you can take advantage of empty rows before anyone else
NOW you have to check in your carry on. And waste time waiting for your bag at the baggage claim. If it even makes it. Your bag has much higher chance of being lost if checked in late.
And I actually like sitting in my window seat a lot more than at the gate.
your unreason will become apparent when you check that bag and stroll completely unencumbered through the vast distances twixt curb and plane (x2 departure and arrival)
baggage claim really doesn't take that long, and you can come up with something zen to do for 5 or 10 minutes, make a phone call or two, talk to family or friends. Life is better when you stop inconveniencing yourself and creating a rat race when there isn't one. Let everyone around you fight over the overheads.
Sure. Just recently picked up my partner from SFO on a late night arrival. It tooke THREE HOURS for the bags to start arriving on the belt. Who knows why. Zero information given to the hundreds of angry people standing there. A very miserable time.
Yes, that's not typical, but it happens. If you carry your bags, it can't possibly ever happen.
Also, gate-checked luggage is given to you at the gate when you land. So no baggage claim.
Spend some time at the window seats at the gate looking at earlier flights and how gate-checked luggage is handled.
It gets thrown down this chute that drops hard some 20ft to the ground. It also gets very carelessly thrown in there, so a bunch of the bags miss the chute and just drop straight down to the concrete. If you had anything other than clothes in there, ouch! You'll get back a back full of destroyed fragments.
I, at least, sure as hell feel dumber for the rest of the day after a six hour flight. Usually that's accompanied by a fairly debilitating headache.
> another example: queueing to board the plane. other than to fit in, why on earth would I stand there and compete to spend more time in a sweaty uncomfortable seat packed with 400 other people? plus, if you get on last, you can take advantage of empty rows before anyone else
what? people are following direction, and the way the plane boards is actually important to how fast it loads, so youre messing with that because its a mild convenience to you and you consider that intelligent behaviour?
cpg grey has a video on this i suggest you take a look https://youtu.be/oAHbLRjF0vo?si=jv00xanestDfodPt
What direction? The only time there were more directions than just "priority" vs "non priority" was on my flight to Korea a few years ago. Most smaller flights in Europe, sadly, do not do that.
Even on the flight from Helsinki to Bangkok there was only priority vs non-priority distinction, even though the tickets had different seating groups. Could have saved us all some convenience, but no, we all had to board the plane very chaotically.
Which is why I am usually the last one to go to the boarding, I can chill on comfy seat for 20-30 minutes instead of standing in chilly or boiling hot weather/boarding tunnels.
if this had been the case even once on the tens of flights I've taken in recent years, then I would have participated in that. in reality however, boarding is almost exclusively two naturally-formed queues, priority and not
the tone of your comment sounds to me like suppressed embarrassment. it's okay, you're not an idiot for queueing for boarding, it's just not a behaviour I'm going to participate in for no real reason
Plus I almost always have a window seat, so getting there first is the most convenient for myself and my row mates. I don’t do this on flights that don’t seem full.
There's an increase in potential negative consequences. More people with guns, more chance for "security" to pick on someone they don't like. If you go off on your own and you're right, you don't gain much - if everyone gets on the wrong plane or goes through the wrong gate or what have you, there's not much they can do. If you go off on your own and you're wrong, you might get beaten up, kicked off your flight, held without charge until you dehydrate, banned from the country...
Umm wut? You live in North Korea or something?
Here in Europe things are pretty mellow, there was a while after 9/11 when the security was pretty heavy-handed but luckily things are back to normal and we are now again innocent until proven guilty. We have things like rights here.
But beaten up because you walk around in the wrong public area of an airport?? That did not happen even then.
> But beaten up because you walk around in the wrong public area of an airport??
Sure, but if you take a wrong turn you're suddenly in the private area, and even if there weren't any signs, well, why did you wander off on your own, no-one else did.
Wonder if you have flown in recent years?
Flights are now set up so that the last several groups who board have zero space for carryone luggage. So if you board after all the space is gone you are in for a very bad time. For a while it started to become an unspoken rule, and now they even announce it on the loudspeaker: if you are in group N or above (N depends on airline) you won't have any space left.
Which is a really good thing IMO.
A week ago I returned to America from abroad and, by reading the signs at SFO, I downloaded the CBP app and abandoned the gigantic line in favor of the completely empty line. I am evidently in the top 1% of sign readers, but I don't know if I am autistic.
No but it's partly defined by the lower ability to form part of social groups and thus follow others on autopilot. And thus being more aware of situations.
The story was not really a definition rather than a symptom. One that can be caused by more than one thing.
So, just looking at the final result they ended up in the right place ?
Assuming the security guard made that adjustment because they were so many of them, the strategy seems to be paying off in that specific case.
On the other hand, for many people, having to talk to a security guard and move to the lane on the other side is a non-event, and they might have tried to talk to the guard even if there was absolutely no need for it, if they felt it wouldn't be an issue for the guard (not too busy, looks bored etc.). Efficiency could be super low on their priority list, if it wasn't they'd be paying a lot more attention to the signage in the first place.
In my mind if I'm an adult person in an airport and I missed obvious signs and just went with everyone I'd be genuinely thinking about this for days and softly beat myself up, look up the airport floorplan and for years after in every airport I would think about this.
This is not a hypothetical for me because it has happened and I'm still triggered about it to the point that's years later and I'm here typing about it.
GP was only saying that going with the herd is most of the time a more successful strategy, and even if I don’t follow it, I’m not blind to my selection bias to say it doesn’t. As he stated, it wouldn’t have been selected otherwise.
I'd rather be wrong on my own decision than on one I blindly followed from someone else :)
And it's not about going against the grain. It's about making conscious decisions rather than blind following. The outcome can very well be the same as everyone else's of course.
Insofar as a a spectrum of impairment is referring to a spectrum of diificulty in socializing and a deficiency of adeptness at neurotypical theory of mind
One reason why a lot of things are comorbid: generally, few mental things have "a single gene" but are manifestations of many gene differences and nature.
One reason why a lot of things are comorbid is just that more people are a little something than a lot something, and people who get diagnosed for one thing are more likely to have resources and reasons to be diagnosed for another something.
After rereading your msg, I'm concerned you're looking for some sort of thing like "If I'm sufficiently good at X I can't be Y"
I don't think these things work this way. Many folks on the spectrum share some social skills weaknesses, but social skills challenges are not really what makes them on the spectrum.
In all, all models wrong - some models useful. An attitude of viewing these things from the lens of asking if they help you understand yourself and navigate the world is probably best. I was really worried with labels before I kept repeating to myself 'all models wrong, some models useful'
Depression, ADHD, autism, all models. All 'wrong'.Still, useful sometimes. They aren't meant to be the be all end all though, and they only sometimes (maybe often) accurately represent reality, which is a bit of a silly statement, since there isn't one reality to it all.
There we go, I got more confusing sorry :)
Besides that, I think, generally, traits will be "a combination of reasons."
For example, even before stimulants folks w/ADHD had bursts of energy and attitude that can be similar to stimulant-driven quirks. Those quirks are probably just more common w/meds
My understanding of the term 'spectrum' in this context is less "a scale from 0-100%" and more "a collection of traits which, if you have enough of them, would suggest you fit into this larger category".
In terms of being being able to navigate social situations, look up 'masking'. Many people on the spectrum learn to behave (sometimes very effectively) in 'normal' ways in social situations but it's a set of learned scripts and behaviours rather than being instinctive.
I'm pretty sure that's not mathematically possible. If W people have both, X people have only autism, Y people have only ADHD, and Z people have neither, can you provide values for W, X, Y, and Z that would make that claim true?
Our assumption is that the ratio of people with autism and ADHD to people with just autism is greater than the ratio of people with ADHD to people in general. Using your variables, that is: W / (W + X) > (W + Y) / (W + X + Y + Z). This simplifies out to the constraint that ZW > XY.
We want to show that the ratio of people with autism and ADHD to people with just ADHD is no greater than the ratio of people with just autism to people in general. This is: W / (W + Y) <= (W + X) / (W + X + Y + Z).
We can recognize that this is almost the same as our assumption, just exchanging the roles of X and Y. (I guess that's obvious from the problem statement.) That means our goal is to show that ZW <= YX, which is immediately just the negation of what we're assuming. That would be a contradiction.
So, indeed, this is mathematically impossible!
(EDIT: It's surprisingly hard to write these formulae down in English without getting confused.)
I think something that would be possible is that having ADHD if you have autism is more likely than having autism if you have ADHD. For instance, "being older than 20 if you're older than 30 is more likely than being older than 30 if you're older than 20" is just obviously true, because one entails the other.
General chance of being in either group: 50% (10 people with autism, 10 with ADHD, 20 total).
Chance of having autism if you have ADHD: 50% (9 with autism, 9 without, 10 total).
Chance of having ADHD if you have autism: 90% (9 with ADHD, 9 without, 10 total).
This is wrong. With your numbers ("W (9), X (1), Y (9), Z (1)"), 18 people would have ADHD, not 10.
People with autism are highly likely to have comorbid ADHD.
People with ADHD are more likely than normal to have autistic traits, although nowhere near as commonly as the first statement.
It is worth taking note of what other people are doing though. Maybe not so much at airports that should have everything running like clockwork, but some places communication of new information is poor, done verbally so not everyone hears. It is worth asking people "why you doing that" sometimes.
This ring true to me about my whole life, both in a good and bad senses.
Bluntness != correctness.
We have the normal emotions and human flaws, they're just expressed differently.
NTs want others to perceive the best possible picture of them. That makes talking about ones strengths loaded with things like suspiction etc.
Edit: fixed mixed up shortcuts
It's the same kind of tradeoff in autism vs neurotypical people as you would have in frequency vs momentum with particles, or resolution vs distance in wavelengths. This is because the autistic brain has much less information filtering coming in, so the brain is less 'biased' towards certain things, but also gets completely overwhelmed with information more easily.
I believe that the reason that many autism traits and cPTSD traits are similar is because they are one and the same -- that they are an emergent result of autism as a result of culture and the world, etc, and are not necessarily inherent to the condition. They just appear that way I believe because the mean/median of our cultures and how they interact with the condition tends to create a fixed point where those symptoms generally tend to arise.
This makes some sense if one considers that in cPTSD, it is many, many accumulated little 't' traumas of sensory overwhelm where tiny bits of the experience 'overflow' and aren't properly encoded in the memory system (EMDR, and misc therapeutic techniques attempt to soften this feeling so that those sensations can be re-integrated).
As far as day to day life goes, I believe I am a superb hard problem solver, but conversely, the day-to-day 'normal' things, I find quite challenging and overwhelming. I can buffer them some with supplements, reducing sensory input (having routines, things with little extra Shannon information, etc), to keep me in that valid range of not hitting information overwhelm. But I find life significantly harder due to my autism, despite the few gifts it provides.
There's not really 'autism without intellectual impairments', really only an inverted U curve of sensitivity to information -- which absolutely is an impairment depending upon the situation. I have a few narrow areas of exceptional gifting, due to my brain's sensitivity to information, and also will be shut down for up to hours from a single screaming baby at a Costco for the same reason.
It's all a balance, there's always tradeoffs, and one can certainly move up or down that curve a little bit with suppelements depending upon their personal 'sweet spot'. NAC I've found for me suppresses the symptoms some, and aspartame quite strongly magnifies them for a day or two. I use both, oddly enough, though I greatly prefer NAC for a few reasons.
I hope you found this comment informative and interesting. I am happy to discuss further and am willing to answer any questions and/or thoughts. <3 :')))) :')))) <3 Thank you.
Something I once heard an autism specialist therapist say was she didn't believe there were any autistic adults without cPTSD. That growing up and entering the world autistic in any of our societies is inherently traumatic. And that one of the big projects for autistic adults is figuring out how to differentiate their autism features from their ptsd symptoms.
It's a pretty hot take and I came to realize it as more of a therapist's practical starting point than a literal fact about EVERY every autistic person. But it's given me a lot to think about and use over the years.
According to https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2016.0030..., crystallized intelligence is reduced, verbal skills and comprehension and coding (psychomotor speed, ability to absorb new material, visual motor speed, drive for achievement) are reduced. However, some other factors like image rotation ability, attention to detail and visual search are enhanced. There might be more "deliberative" decision making that tends to reduce biases and errors. According to https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.02.21265802v..., autistic individuals with exceptional ability suffer disproportionately from high anxiety and low self-worth.
It's a mixed bag with tradeoffs and imbalances, but thinking that normies are disabled just shows that you're overvaluing some factors while undervaluing others.
Fast forward to this century. I've had full conversations with successful people, who announce that they're autistic.
Which austism is this article talking about and how exactly is it diagnosed?
Have a look at the DSM or ICD diagnosis criteria
https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/diagnos...
That is a weird thing to say. He was misdiagnosed. He has FG syndrome.
The reason you see more "normal" for a lack of a better word people with autism these days is because we've gotten better at diagnosing the less visible issues. Someone who's non-verbal is pretty easy to spot. Someone who's verbal but doesn't show facial expressions "correctly", doesn't understand sarcasm, has a strong sense of justice, and overly detail oriented might be a lot harder to spot at a glance. Indeed most people would just mentally file such a person under "bit of an oddball".
Take me for a more concrete example. I've got autism, but most people are rather surprised when I tell them, even if I've known them for years. I tend to not tell people before they know me very well, because I find it taints their perception of me.
I'm generally fairly successful. I've got a home, a job, and a dog. On the other hand I struggle almost daily with identifying feelings I have. I'll often not even notice if I'm stressed for example, until I start getting random sore muscles because I've been tensing them all day. I'm super nervous in social situations I've not been in before. It feels like being part of a play but having never gotten the script and the audience is ready to laugh at any tiny mistake. I'll often misinterpret open questions, to the point where these days I'll often just refuse to answer without clarification. I'm quite picky with expectations, especially regarding food. I'll often talk over people without noticing. This sometimes upsets people, but if I try not to I just end up never getting a turn in conversation. I never know how long to keep eye contact. Do I look away too much? am I staring? I don't like getting touched unexpectedly. A simple touch on the elbow to get my attention is jarring to me. I'm often unable to ignore repetitive noises, especially if there's no pattern to the noise -- the clanging of the pipes the dishwasher generates is currently the bane of my existence. I try to plan everything into excruciating detail, which generally doesn't work anyways. I need to carefully pace myself to not run out of energy halfway through the day and have all the symptoms get worse for the rest of the day. Rooms with echo or reverb tire me out in a hurry. I'm frequently annoyed by people trying to "interpret" what I say instead of taking it at face value.
I could go on and on, but my point is that it's entirely possible to seem perfectly normal outwardly and yet have a lot of hidden problems. I -- and a lot of other autistic people -- have been trying to fit in with "normal" people all my life, it's hardly surprising I've gotten good at seeming normal.
These characteristics tend to be correlated, as well as with neurological differences. But it's important to remember that they are blurry distributions, and also that every autistic person will lie in different points along these characteristics. It's even somewhat conceivable for two people to be autistic and share no autistic traits.
Autism is not by itself a pathology. However, if an autistic trait is especially pronounced, it might cause clinically significant impediment to a person's ability to take care of themselves or integrate with society (especially modern society — more on that later). We can then speak of ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, which is a clinically recognised diagnosis. Many people with ASD also have a learning disability, but certainly not all.
While many difficulties autistic people face are intrinsic to autism, a significant proportion also come from stigma. Modern society is conformist, especially in the working world, and the natural needs, behaviours, and mannerisms of autistic people can conflict with expectations of professionalism or convention. So, high-functioning autistic people have a tendency to consciously or unconsciously learn to imitate neurotypical behaviour, sometimes at great expense in terms of energy and self-identity. This is called "masking".
It's a matter of definition whether we use the word "autism" to refer to this cluster of traits or the clinically significant disorder. Indeed, I think the word used to refer exclusively to the disorder, and it remains controversial. Many people, especially carers of people with low-functioning ASD, feel that saying autism is not an illness trivialises the genuine difficulties they experience. I am very sympathetic to this, but ultimately, I think that without this word "autism", many otherwise fully independently functioning people who fall under the umbrella are left with a void to explain their feeling of difference and social exclusion, and it is bad for society as well, as it pushes autistic people to suppress traits that could potentially be extremely valuable. So, I advocate for this autism vs ASD distinction. But reasonable people can disagree.
I hope you found this useful as a primer on autism, or at least of this autistic person's understanding of it!
People often change a lot over the years. I know people who had serious difficulties as a child who now function "normally" within society.
As with any term that has become too wide to be useful, it needs subdividing. There used to be autism and aspergers, high functioning autism and low functioning autism, etc. Each classification had its problems but the general idea wasn't wrong: there has to be a term for people who need support and can't function without it, to differentiate between them and the high flyers (or even just "getting by OK") and to my mind "high needs autism" is the right term.
The definitions of autism as I understand them are.. interesting. The reason a highly successful person can be diagnosed is because the diagnostic criteria - usually the triad of impairments - specify a person must have difficulties but tend not to describe a way of categorising the level of those difficulties.
By way of example, I might have difficulty knowing what to say to a person (social interaction) in an unfamiliar setting (social imagination) which could manifest itself as me awkwardly interacting in a way that isn't called for, but which is recognised as social awkwardness. Some autistic people may freeze - sometimes in terror - and simply stop responding while they try to work out what to do. Imagine how it feels to be lost for words, and then some. To my knowledge, both examples above fulfil the criteria because they're both social difficulties.
I'd recommend reading more about the diagnostic criteria and interrogating the range of problems people can face. To me, the dividing line is independence. I'd suggest starting there in your thinking, but not forgetting that autism can also be a hidden disability insofar AW support needs might be invisible to the people around.
In any case, it really isn't right not to differentiate. Refusing to do so fails the people who need a voice most of all.
https://news.weill.cornell.edu/news/2023/04/four-different-a...
It's a survey of 67 people. Could have been online even. Nothing I'd take seriously.
I mean I get it, it'd be a colossal pain to verify all that medical data, but it also makes for bad science.
Mind you, this is assuming that the sample has been taken in an unbiased manner (nigh impossible in a voluntary survey like this) and that any conclusions you draw are applied only to the population you took the sample from (e.g., if your sample is undergrad psychology students at a particular university, your results apply only to undergrad psychology students at that particular university, not to the general population).
The issue is not the sample size. It's the sampling method. Even if you do a study on 1 billion people, your are liable to get an incorrect result if you don't take the sample correctly.
Of course, the other issue here is that we are claiming something that the study didn't actually cover. The researchers did not look at whether the subjects succumbed to the bystander effect or not: they just looked at how the subjects answered questions. These are two extremely different things! This is bad experiment design.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aur.3012
I'll save you the read, in light of the replication crisis, this is the important bit: 33 autistic participants
I don't think that means this should be dismissed entirely because you accomplish what you can with the data available to you. It's extremely hard to conduct studies of specialized populations and if we waited for the perfect conditions nothing would get done. We should just be careful not to make any strong opinions based on this study alone.
Do you think this is somehow a point in their defense? Corrections for multiple comparisons reduce the significance numbers of your results; probably they found that if they corrected for multiple comparisons their p-value was above 0.05 and they wouldn't be able to publish their paper, so they undid it. (Alternatively, they were lazy, so they skipped it).
Being enamoured by famous individuals is another. Fame being defined by the number of eyeballs that is on the object. Down to the guy who garners attention by singing in the local dive bar band, who lectures seniors on medicare coverage at the local assisted care facility, or who reads scripture at church once per month. A negative example would be famous popular criminals.
This carries over to social causes and more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity
There are interesting other connections as well, for example, men have been found to exhibit less conformity than women.
But autistic people tend to be much less sensitive to that.
You're not pessimistic, you have depressive realism[1]
Real life is not a movie or television show. Much like women complain they don't like the "manic pixie dream girl"[1] trope of films like Garden State[2]... men don't like, or need the "sullen cherub dream boy" trope you see in movies like Perks of Being a Wallflower.
To be a dissident is a forever decision and if you stray from the narrow, socially acceptable path of back and forth that brought forth our present... global situation... you will wake up one day trying to remind yourself that while your name is not in Wikipedia or IMDB, at least you had an effect on society, that there are people you cannot name or describe, situations you've been in that... moved the needle in the sense you saved a life, or many of them, in ways hard to articulate or prove.
There's an essay I'm struggling to track down that years later, an... let's call her "ex-girlfriend" showed me during my summer in San Francisco post Snowden about the hit Showtime series "Californication"... it talks about how despite being Bukowksi-esque it was actually incredibly feminist, in as much as a sex heavy Showtime series can be...
And rather than actually discuss my life, I'll do the autistic thing and give an example from tv/film... on the show, Hank repeatedly connects with "Trixie" -- she doesn't just "do porn -- she's a full on prostitute, and they have... a banter.
Much like my ex and I... they keep meeting at parties. Hank, the main character... is in love, and even if he wasn't, he doesn't pay for it... and Trixie is forever being "saved" by Hank -- sometimes from rudeness, sometimes from much worse things.
Anyways, when you're autistic, you often meet people who want... a relationship minus the sex. They want to BE the manic pixie dream girl, to embrace life with a dark, brooding intellectual sidekick who can protect them if things go astray. They tend to treat folks like us like a prop, to be discarded when they've gotten their fill (or simply when the summer ends and their "primary" returns), and when they notice this pattern is tipping you towards extremism, they often choose to medicalize the response and blame the victim rather than... call a metaphorical time out and get you out of the cycle of proving oneself smart enough for the good leads.
If you're autistic, and not a jerk... you'll wonder if it's worth the predicaments it got you into, worth the gaslights and gunshots and all the things folks have said, running through my head on nights like these, if you don't have some nest egg to fall back on if the shitstorm your not standing by generates lasts too long.
Anyways, I apologize for the wall of text but... it's true. We're less likely to stand by, and we're more likely to be ostracized for it. I know I felt unwelcome in many infosec spaces because I did not hide the fact that I wasn't a fair weather feminist, and I didn't like how they would treat folks.
People oft conflate autistic and pendantic for a reason -- because they want certain dynamics to persist.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
[1] Film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term in 2007... talking about [redacted]'s character, he said "[redacted] embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. [This character] exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures."
This is another point for me getting some kind of assessment, because I have a very strong anti-bystander effect that seems almost not in my control.
Good re-testability, and they're part of what they use for a formal diagnosis.
Autism and responding to authority (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38072756
I saw someone getting bullied up at the workplace, eventually got fired. Wanted to do something but I was afraid for my own job. Lo and behold, it didn't matter how good or succesful I was at my job, the circle of shit came back around eventually to where I was on the business end of things. I got what I deserved.
I do my best to avoid people and situations in general that might end up in me witnessing this kind of shit again but I don't think I can not do anything that way again.
I don't think being averse to cowardice makes you autistic though. What's the purpose of these articles and research? Find more ways to label and box people in so they can be more easily dismissed?
"Oh, we're not a bunch of bullies and cowards, that person is just autistic or 'on the spectrum'?" Is that it? Shouldn't everyone resist the bystander effect? Isn't this research doing more harm to that effect than good?
Well that's just bad situational awareness... you can keep an eye on hands, pockets etc when confronting injustice, and if you've taken martial arts you know how to stop a knife attack.
if you see a knife, run the fuck away.
They told us what the person below says for a gun -- just give them what they want if it's not your body.
If someone is standing, making threats, blocking your exit, and you've had training, there are techniques to use to disarm them.
I know this because I've done it at least once in the real, and many times in practice before I stopped doing Tang Soo Do.
The key is to keep an eye on their hands/pockets and move in close, get control of the hand, and then either twist until their tendons are gonna snap or... jam their own knife into their leg/side.
It wasn't a smart move, but I had a lot of people block the door and abuse me when younger, so nowadays when someone does it I'm not inclined to de-escalate them one iota.
"at least" once? sounds legit.
> The key is to keep an eye on their hands/pockets and move in close, get control of the hand, and then either twist until their tendons are gonna snap or... jam their own knife into their leg/side.
More cap than a lids store.
All you folks who think you’re ready to step in and play captain white knight save-a-hoe are in for the rudest of awakenings when you try this in a situation you have inevitably misjudged.
They have their own substack and medium feeds that are unshackled by conventional reporting standards and frequently contrast deeply against regime narratives, be they COVID, Ukraine, Jan 6th, etc.
They have their own social circles, which they ideologically police to make sure that those holding regime viewpoints are not invited to private social events.
The way you've described the culture of dissidence in the USSR and Russia sounds eerily familiar, taking a look at US dissidents today.
How times change. I can't speak on places I've never been, but in my homeland I have organized events in my home for folks from Russia and other places. I had a reputation as being a "milquetoast neoliberal" right up until the moment some old comrades saw me standing next to a crowd with my backpack despite always being the one who stood by the door, opening it only if it seemed certain it would be broken down to demand a warrant as folks filed out the back.
In modern times, activism seems performative -- lots of people who retweet and reshare things not attached to their real name, while a much smaller number took incredible risks -- financial, social, personal... to change the very architecture of the internet to make resistance more possible.
But I didn't bust a window during the G20 or write "ACAB" on my Tinder, so I'm not cool enough for the local collective.
It's ok to be VOCAL, as in... go to a protest. But if you do it performative, not with the expectation this is the beginning of a slow suicide... you're a fool.
We've got a generation that forgets things like the original members of one of the few true Russian punk bands I've encountered did not speak English, were thrown into a literal gulag, then had the name carried on by another generation as they rotted in the worst types of jail.
The "ulterior motive" you mention I oft see is oganized crime... they hate "the state" so they can keep young women (and men) addicted to drugs, pimped out, and, if they get out of line, scooped up by "the state" they claim to hate as they go muck about in so called civil society, stymying progress that would bring about true change such folks could live in harmony rather than scam credit cards and hook folks on overpriced black market drugs that if legalized, would still cause issues, but be more like alcohol in terms of issues created rather than a pathway to white slavery.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: to be a dissident is a forever decision, often a form of slow suicide, and no one should be shamed for taking another path, for life is precious and not everyone is suited for this work.
(I wasn't. I made bad decisions, and I'm stuck with them.)
I'll definitely render help as long as I find it possible.
Young Sheldon was probably very aware that he's not the best at communicating complex thoughts to a broad audience due to his unique, or atypical world view.
He also had a very high bar of personal excellence and would probably feel like a fool if he exposed himself and failed to meet that bar.
There is nuance in "caring about the opinions of strangers". He probably didn't care at all when he was happy about his performance - i.e. it was on them to not understand what he was saying after great thought and probably a very carefully crafted delivery. He probably did care how the others felt when he felt like failed himself by not being up to his own standards.
But push me to stand up and talk about something and I will freeze and act like a total spaz.
Being on a stage means a lot more people see what you do, and what you do wrong, and you'll get a lot more bullying.
And if you're also a perfectionist and feel like you've failed over the tiniest mistakes, this can get even worse.
I — myself autistic — am close to thirty now and I still suffer from extreme social anxiety and stagefright due to the bullying I experienced in school.
If you rescue someone, that's all about that person's safety - which has got just about zero to do with getting on a stage and making something all about yourself.
A large portion of the autistic community is very against this phrasing. Autism is not a disease you carry, or something you “have”.
It should be used as an adjective to describe a person:
“Autistic people less likely to succumb to bystander effect”
Edit: If you follow through to the actual paper referenced you can see they use the correct phrasing.
I am an empathetic person.
IMO, the point in these cases is more that a certain phrase has obtained a negative connotation, and should be avoided, but it is framed in some Sapir-Whorf-like style.
If one cannot analyze words to w/i an inch of death, what is one to do on the internet other than speak in the 3rd person?
The fact is that anyone can copy and paste "offense" complaints and insert any grammar that they want into ad-lib spaces.
What the ASD community could use less of is individuals utilizing it as their political arena.
If that's the clinical standard, why didn't the cited paper use it that way? From the research paper:
> autistic individuals
> autistic employees
> autistic participants
The peer reviewed research paper uses this standard. Only using "with" in reference to diagnoses.
It is "Science Daily", a news site, who skirts the standard by changing the paper's wording.