Is this social justice at work?

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You might be right but I live in the UK, on benefits, so my only hope of seeing a psychologist is if my doctor refers me to one and so far that hasn't happened.

There is a wide variation in types of autism but every individual person on that spectrum either has austism or they don't. They don't sort of maybe have it.


Anyway, to return this thread back to topic, I agree with the points made by the OP.

Your Autism isn't everyone else's Autism.
And contrary to belief, with enough discipline someone can be rewired so to speak.
It is very tempting for me to view things in black and white but self control and discipline allows me not to do that.

I didn't claim that "my autism" is the same as everyone else's autism. I simply pointed out that black and white thinking is one of the criteria which is used to diagnose autism. The logical deduction of that is that I'm not the only autistic person who does think in terms of black and white.

Sorry all this crap happened to you, Jute.

There is a very long topic on black and white thinking somewhere in the General Autism Discussion Forum. If you bump it, you can probably get new input from people who haven't seen it yet, and also read comments from people who aren't around anymore but left their thoughts on the subject.

Interestingly, non-autistic people totally engage in black and white thinking, and a lot of the ideas promoted in social justice are indeed about accepting uncertainty and letting people define themselves. Their self-definition might necessitate making a new category just for them. Inefficient, but probably worth it to show a little respect to someone else's identity if you want them to show some to your identity.

"Respect my pronouns, Nazi" isn't especially nuanced. If your alternate vision of society includes such hypocrisy, it's a no from me.



Are transgender people being denied voting rights? This is comparing apples and blancmanges.

Everyone can become better...autistic people are no exception.

On the one hand, we have people arguing that we should try to accommodate the different and afflicted.

On the other, we have people telling others that they should conform to a wider opinion of what is considered "better".

I don't see how the two ideas are in conflict, unless your idea of helping the afflicted is keeping them in a state of affliction deliberately. Better is complex, but one easy metric is consumption. If being better can make people less afflicted and they get to have or do more stuff they like, you will not need to force it on them. Even a nudge should probably suffice.

Postscript deals in pure black and pure white, at the most fundamental level. Nevertheless, it has a system to create 256 shades of grey for monochrome images and layer multiple sets of such greys to create color images.

The trick is to imagine a grid of elements that can be on or off, black or white, then impose a larger grid on that grid so that each cell in the larger grid contains many of the basic elements. The smaller elements can then be turned on or off in such a way that the larger cell contains all on cells or all of cells or 25% on cells or 75% on cells etc. In such a way the larger cell will appear to be part on and part off elements, a mix of black and white this is how grey is created in a system that can directly process only black and white.

I'm all for accommodating neurodiversity as much as feasibly possible. We have a lot of traits that are actually strengths, even among the ones that are usually ostracized by society as a whole. When this isn't recognized, it's their problem, not ours.

But while "X or Y" thinking can give us pretty strong logical skills, which are useful, it can also be a pretty heavy inhibition. On politics and similar broader social issues, trying to see the world in shades of grey keeps you from getting bogged down in one unchanging set of positions. It lets you weigh others' views more easily and look at things from a more "objective" (really just more multifaceted) vantage point. Fortunately the "black and white thinking" is something that, at least in my personal experience, you can train yourself out of to a pretty big extent. Actively trying to keep an open mind in my mid-teens is what helped me.

Concerning the whole black/white good/evil thinking thing--That's a problem for EVERYONE.

Confrontational tactics as a first resort are not productive. They only ensure that there will be conflict.

At its core PC is really just about being polite and considerate to EVERYONE.

If folks would just talk to each other politely, most of the non-assholes could work things out.

Which part of I don't choose to think in black and white, I know no other way of thinking can't people understand?

What is better? I've been told at least twice on this thread I can make myself "better" but nobody has bothered to explain what better means in this context, even though I asked. Who says that I want to be "better" even if I could change my way of thinking, which I've already stated that I can't.

As I've already mentioned I have aphantasia, I can't "visiualise" anything, including grids of black and white squares.

I simply made a comment about how black and white thinking is one of the criteria for diagnosing autism. I didn't ask for personal improvement tips and I didn't ask to be described as being "afflicted." I have nothing else to add to this thread or in fact to this entire forum. I'm quitting.

That's the problem with PC-- not EVERYONE will follow suit. There will always be one asshat that gets his jollies through conflict, and if the PC crowd just accepts him and is "polite" with him, he'll just overrun the entire group like a virus. I'm all for being civil, but when there's a clear problem person, the PC crowd will try and talk to him and "convince" him that non-aggression is better. Sorry that doesn't work, that type of person needs blasted in the face before they understand why it's best not to start conflicts-- it's the only language they'll understand.

That's black and white thinking.



Immediately taking offence to something someone says, on the basis that you personally find it offensive, is confrontational.



No, it's not. It's about trying to persuade people to censor their speech in order that whatever preferred group of the day doesn't get its panties in a bunch. It completely ignores the possibility that asking people to censor their speech is offensive in and of itself to many, many people.



That is also black and white thinking.