do you always have to be accurate?

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I look where the item is at, play the game of ispy and if I don't see it I ask 'Where over there?'



I give them what I consider a few

What time would you like to leave? "Oh, it doesn't matter,...whenever"
etc.....[/quote]

I pick the time and decide when we are leaving.

That's how you handle it.

If I wear my digital watch I will say the exact time except for the seconds. If it is a clock with hands I will also do the same. When it is close to the hour changing I will say almost 10:00. Lately I have been using military time. In most IT jobs and time cards military time is used. I do not bother with telling the seconds. That is impossible. By the time you say 10:25 and 30 seconds it is no longer 30 seconds. It may be 33 or 35 seconds while you are saying it. The seconds become the past very quickly.

I like to be accurate in most things, telling the time very much so, but unfortunately arriving on time, well, not very good at this one!

But saying that, it's important to work out what's crucial and when close enough is OK - you can waste a lot of time getting non-crucial things accurate.

Much of the time I feel I have to be accurate, and I "expect" it from everybody else too ("expect" in the sense that I know they'll botch it but I still feel freshly surprised and annoyed when they do).

I used to be more of a precision snob than I am now, but luckily I was taught about error while studying physics and statistics - I was at first annoyed at the idea that any error at all was considered tolerable, but I saw that perfect accuracy was impossible, and then I liked the idea that although a measurement has some uncertainty about it, at least I could be certain about the amount of the uncertainty. I became comfortable with the "mean, maximum and minimum" way of expressing values, and saw that it was more accurate than simply expressing the mean, and had less scope for deception. I wasn't quite so happy about standard deviations, because they only show that it's (e.g.) 95% probable that a value lies between two points.

I still tend to express numbers to more decimal places than is significant, just to be on the safe side. The received wisdom is that if the figures are not significant, then why cite them? I can't argue against that, but it hasn't changed my behaviour much.

It annoys me that even the experts can't assess a person's UK income tax to within less than a few pennies. Tax should be an exact science, but apparently it's not, quite.

When I cook, I have to weigh everything as perfectly as I can. It's not just to be precise. It's so I can repeat an unexpected good result. Oven temperature tolerances (between ovens) are criminally wide in my opinion.

I hate the fact that modern computers don't do exactly the same thing every time I do exactly the same thing with them. It wasn't the case with the first generation of personal computers. So how did they screw that one up? I was amazed when a user replied to complaints about the slight non-repeatability of a computer music program, "it's not a science."

I like to know the time very accurately, and it annoys me that computer clocks aren't programmed to correct the time by using the Web. They may be quartz clocks, but they drift, and that makes me feel uncomfortable, though not so bad as to start manually correcting them every day.

I'd love to know why I "need" stunning accuracy. I'm sure perfectionism comes into it, but sometimes I pursue the "perfectly imperfect" as a goal, e.g. getting a dirty sound from an electric guitar, or singing with pitch imperfections that make the song sound better, or partially randomising the timing of perfectly-timed musical notes when using MIDI on a computer to try to get rid of that boring "stiffness." That's art of course. I struggle with art, even though I love it. In non-artistic pursuits, and in most artistic ones, accuracy is still an obsession. I love the adage that if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and although I respect the notion of "90% of the result for 10% of the work," my brain doesn't like it.

I seem capable of being in an "accurate" mood or a "broad strokes" mood, and when it's the latter, I feel I'm growing. It's been that way since before I knew what autism was, so it's not just a curebie thing.

Maybe pathological honesty comes into it too. Accuracy and honesty are quite similar concepts. And rigid thinking could be part of it - 99% done is not really done.

But what it's all about in terms of brain wiring, as lack of mirror neurones may help explain our difficulty with empathy, I have no idea.

I'm like this, too. I'm well aware that most people are not as fanatical about precision as I am but if they say 9 o'clock that's when I'm ready. More annoying than being late is when they're early. They seem to think that's better somehow than being on time. So I have to try to allow for a window before and after which is mentally taxing and wastes more time than necessary in waiting.

I'm not that precise about things like telling the time. Actually the opposite. Like if it's 20 minutes to 5, I will probably just say it's almost 5 o'clock.

However if someone asks me a more subjective question, like whether or not I like something, I might have a hard time just saying yes or no. I have the urge to give a thorough explanation of all aspects of how I feel about it.

Or if I tell a story about something that happened, I might go into way more detail than anyone cares about.

I like to do certain things at a certain hour and on the hour, like go out for the afternoon at 1:00. But if I'm too busy with something and it's closer to 1: 13 I may wait until 2 before I finally leave. I have a problem with the number 13. Not because of superstition, but because it's an odd number. I have a problem with odd numbers with a few exceptions - 5 and singular 3. I read that Walt Disney liked the number 7 (the seven dwarfs), and it's called a lucky number for some reason, but I don't like it. I could go into that joke about how 7 8 9, but I won't. Maybe it's because 7 is so pointy and angular, like the number 4, which might be also why I prefer 5 because it's more round. Kind of looks like it has a round belly that's sticking out. I'm 41 now, and that feels a bit off because it's an odd number. Weird, huh? I guess I'm off-topic now so I'll stop.

Actually, learning to tell time was hard for me as a kid. I was maybe 12 before I was finally able to tell time on a non-digital clock. Back then digital clocks and watches were just becoming popular and I found them easier to read but it got confusing. Also my parents would say half-past something instead of something-thirty, or a quarter-after something instead of something-fifteen. They didn't like it when I read time the way it looked on a digital clock, they wanted me to know the "real" way to say the time. Math was the bane of my existence and often still is.

No, I dont, but I am NT, and I see it as part of a bigger problem with some people on the spectrum, and that it can be quite off-putting. In particular if people loose their original focus (e.g. two people arguing about what a low income is under which conditions, while the original topic had been introduced by the one with the lower income and had been his suicidal younger brother who had accused his elder and equally depressed brother of leading a crappy life.). Or if they dont realize that something the other had said before (plus what they project on him) has made them angry and that their motivation for correcting the other is bad.

I agree with slave that being right with details has a strong compulsive component, and bears some link to obsessions about numbers, dates or data in general.
The reasons are the same like with all OCDs.
1. Controlling what you can control, because you feel a lack of control in other areas, and anxieties.
The lack of control is real: as an Aspie you dont foresee peoples reactions like NTs do, nor do you manage very well to give a surprising reaction either some kind of label "truly strange or weird" or understand it retrospectively. This need for control gets more freakish the more unpredictable your parents behavior had been during your early childhood.
2. A second reason is that you feel criticized and criticize yourself so often, that you need at least sometimes be more right than others. Also heightened if you were less accepted by your family. Or if other family members favored an over-correct way of reasoning and had this habit of "always wanting to be right" (habits are contagious) and . In an Aspie friend s family this is quite obviously a bad family habit.

According to the threads, a lot of us are tangent monsters, and I'm sure it can be infuriating when it's an important subject.


Apart from the bold bits, I'm sure that's correct. I'm sure such passive aggression goes on, but I doubt it's particularly an Aspie thing. Personally I often worry when I disagree, in case it causes anger. When I think to myself, my natural style is that I get an insight and then see if I can knock a hole in it, to work towards better accuracy.


It's often harder for an Aspie to forecast the emotional results, yes. What's out of control?


Can you clarify? I don't understand what you're saying there.


I think it's often difficult to know what people really feel, and maybe more difficult to know what Aspies feel. For all I know you could be right about the Aspie friend / family you know, but it seems risky to generalise it.

I am far less often surprised by the reaction of a person than my Aspie friend is, because I see it coming. I am better at judging what kind of behavioral person I have to do with, and I see much more in what emotional situation that person is. If I see it coming I am able to work against it, if I want, and have more time to get prepared in case of a bigger outbreak. I have more possibilities to influence the other and can limit the power others have on my own emotions. Being able to exert more power on what is happening makes that I am less at the mercy of others than I would be otherwise.



E.g. my Aspie friend often asks me if I think that this or that behavior is strange or not, or as I help her with some custody and other legal issues, how this or that is meant. She is not very sure about many things, and whether the motivation of the other parties is good, bad or neutral. Even if something unforeseen occurs, I am able to judge whether there is a possible good explanation with it or whether all the explanations are unsatisfactory, and either more clarification is needed, or whether it is just some nasty or idiot or faulty act or remark, and if it is nasty, HOW nasty it is.

Some of what I said above is very general, and some depends a lot on the family, the community and the state you live in, I actually made the difference, but even for the latter, there are some tendencies in many AS families and in basically all cultures that allow generalizations in terms of probabilities or risks. Often certain features get accumulated over several generations.
I think reason 1 is much more important than reason 2.

Yeah, get used to it. You could do something 100% accurate/correct/right and there will always be some asshat that will try to knock it down just because they can.

I pick the time and decide when we are leaving.

That's how you handle it. [/quote]

I'm the same way and if people don't like what I give them or what I decide about plans, then I don't really mind because if they are indecisive or act like they don't care then it's their own fault if things aren't don't exactly as they wanted-- they shouldn't have given me control over the situation/outcome.

I'm very precise and expect others to be that way too. Obviously that doesn't usually happen but u still remain the same. Maybe our home planet's etiquette included being precise?

I like to be accurate when I can be but I accept that it's not always practical.

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