The Autisnob

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Ok, first of all i'd like to say i'm really impressed by the way you put that across. I understand alot of what you said, and alot of what i've been saying is wrong. The fact that you made me see that is a big deal for me, nobody is ever intelligent enough to do that. You're clearly a very intelligent person, exactly the kind of person I was refering to when I said I would like a challenging conversation.

What i'd like to point out is that time has made me arrogant and disillusioned. I know I am intelligent, and I still believe I am more intelligent than the vast majority of people I deal with, but sometimes that's a bad thing. Nobody corrects me when i'm wrong.

Now, I understand what you're saying about it being my problem, and not theirs. I disagree on the point that my problems aren't everyone else's fault, because despite the fact that it is my problem, my own personal hell I have to face on my own, it is a hell that could easily have been avoided if other people, even just a few of them, posessed higher abilities reasoning. That being said, hating them for it wont solve my problems. I openly admit it's a classic case of transferred aggression, which i'm going to do my best to understand.

I genuinely and truly do not blame neurotypicals for my problems. And I can't reiterate enough that I don't believe autism makes me better than them. I have blamed other people and their lack of intelligence for my problems, not just the NTs, and that was wrong of me, but not, i'd say, unjustified.

When I made the "shiny things" comment, I was refering to NTs, but only in the sense that only an NT would require an explanation of what Autism is. I would have made that "shiny things" comment about anybody over anything.

You are right about my lack of explanations. Whilst i do value my ability to explain things, I do have a tendency to forget how much is only in my head, and explain things with the assumption that they know the staple facts that I do. That is entirely my problem, because if I were truly an intellegent speaker I would be able to adapt to my audience.

I'm going to add something about what Daewoodrow is saying as well:

People not understanding what you have to say does not mean they are more stupid than you. It just means they don't have a particular set of knowledge that you happen to have.

I actually know what it's like to reflexively assume people are "stupid" when they don't understand what I mean. It is a shortcut that I ironically learned from some particular, usually non-autistic, people that I grew up around, who considered me stupid every time I couldn't understand them.

They can often get away with calling people who don't understand them stupid, because they are in the majority. They do not have to work as hard to communicate with each other, because even when they encounter extreme misunderstandings, they still share similar cognitive/processing styles in some respects (even if they are different in others), and so there is certain work they are not used to doing in interactions. Work that they don't even always notice they have to do when they encounter someone who doesn't understand them. So some of them will always just assume that they are smarter than someone who does not automatically understand them.

This is wrong of them. And many either do not do it or try not to do it. But they can get away with it to a great extent because they don't usually have to put out the huge amount of work it takes to cross certain neurological barriers. Instead they can simply find ways to avoid anyone who thinks so differently from them that understanding is difficult.

Unlike the previous poster, I also don't think you're the only one with the problem here. I don't think the issue is that you have a "neurological disorder" and the other people don't. I think the issue is that you and they have an inherent mismatch in some combination of neurology and prior knowledge, that makes communication difficult. In both directions.

It's not because of a communication deficit specifically on your part and not theirs, but it's not because of one specifically on their part and not yours either.

It is most likely because of a communication deficit that is common to both autistic and non-autistic people. Which is that of having trouble comprehending and communicating outside of a certain realm of neurological familiarity. And of each blaming the other ones as being the only ones with the deficit because they don't understand how to communicate with you (this runs both ways).

If you think it's just because they are stupid, you are taking the same shortcut that a more neurologically standard person can more easily get away with taking with an autistic person.

They don't understand you.

But you clearly don't understand them, either.

It's a two-way street.

Neither of you calling the other stupid will actually help anything, nor will it be accurate: Not understanding someone else, or not understanding a specific topic, doesn't make a person stupid.

You're possibly at a slight advantage, because you know you're autistic and at least part of what that means, and other people don't. You've been doing this (dealing with people that different from you) your entire life. They might not have been. Having that edge doesn't make you inherently smarter than them or superior to them, it means you've adjusted to being in a neurological minority, and they don't have that experience to draw on.

Your arrogance and stubbornness on this issue is very much neither logical nor useful. But it would also not be logical or useful to assume you're the only one with a problem comprehending. Both you and they have problems comprehending and communicating with each other. I know it can feel like they're just stupid, but it's no more than than it is that you're stupid.

Edited to clarify that this is a response to Daewoodrow, and not anbuend-- that post came through while I was typing this one.... And then I caught a UBB code error.

Yeah, somehow I got the feeling your problem was one of communication and not of actually being a snob. I think we've both violated some basic internet message board rule by acknowledging that phrasing does not mean intent, and that it's possible one might be wrong.

And I would like to say that I am impressed by your response! Now this conversation can move out of the "argument" phase and into "comparing perspective" phases... because what goes on below is "perspective" as opposed to "objective fact." I have a tendency to confuse the two myself. In point of fact we have reached common ground, or at least a healthy understanding, barring all but this one statement.

I can see your point here, even though I don't agree with it. I would suggest:

[*] The avoidance of your personal hell is not the responsibility of other people, especially ones who do not have the perspective (not logic, but perspective) to understand what they are doing "wrong".

[*]The "transferred agression" is complicating your adjustment to dealing with people, making them uninterested in letting you get to know them well enough that you see that there are people out there you can talk to.

What really needs to happen for us and for them is for each subset to walk a mile in the other's shoes-- but it will never happen because the shapes of our feet don't match.

Thankyou. Personally i'd like to think of it as less of an argument and more a "consistently loud discussion". I clearly have alot to think about on my approach to things, and teach myself the difference between knowing what caused a problem and knowing how to fix it. I'll leave that thought for tomorrow however, because I just realised I have been sitting in the computer room for six hours and it's now quarter to four in the morning. I was wondering why I kept making typos!

Thanks for the discussion, more on that later.

anbuend, I agree with a lot of what you are saying... but....

Wrong? I am assuming from context that you are saying that this is a moral failure, and I think that's overstating it. See below.



I am assuming that the "previous poster" refers to me. Not taking this personally, of course.

The problem here is very much ours.

The Neurotypical individual is using a system that works for him. While he may lose the benefit of enriching himself by my scinitillating presence, the truth is, he's not going to see it that way. In fact, he can continute to go about his merry way and be happy, never considering that he has a "problem." He won't need support from other people who don't understand autistics. He won't even remember the issue.

Second of all, the deficit is with us. We do have a neurological disorder. And yes, it is a disorder, because there are many important things that we find difficult or impossible, and it makes our lives difficult. Would you suggest that the entire world eschew verbal communication in favor of sign language, because it would be "wrong" to accidentally talk to a deaf person? Is it "wrong" to speak only English when there is someone who speaks only French nearby? Is it a moral failure not to learn every language on Earth so that nobody is ever inconvenienced by your failure to understand them? Or are we simply obligated to learn the language of anyone who attempts to communicate with us?

The Neurotypical has no moral obligation to alter his actions to make us happy, and what's more, he's probably not even aware of what he could do. Furthermore, accomodating us can be an utter pain in the ass... ask my wife!

Most of the arguments about the "immorality" of Neurotypical behavior are based on the notion that we expect them to accomodate us, which is selfish and unreasonable. What few are left-- for example, bullying kids-- are null and void.

The Neurotypical are only now becoming aware that we're here. It will be decades before a majority of them have any idea what makes us tick, especially since we, the autistic, are still figuring it out ourselves. Any expectation that they are going to go out of their way is illogical and counterproductive. And any attempt to assign moral values to such is as much a waste of time as an amputee demanding that they put a wheelchair ramp on those ancient Mayan temples with the tiny steps.

In addition to seeing some of these type statements here, I have been attending meetings with aspies @ the MIND Institute 3 of the last 4 months. It's the first time I've knowingly been around aspies. There is one individual (out of 15 or so) who has come in with the "next stage of evolution", aspies uber alles attitude of Aspie superiority. Everyone else at this meeting does not go along with it and does not seem to perceive any benefit to telling the majority of society which DOES include our own family members that they are all untermensch. I'm not sure that I agree with the 40% figure that you guesstimate NeantHuman but I agree with the general thrust of your post. One reason I think that we don't agree on the % may be where we each choose to draw the line between venting and expressing hatred/disdain for NT's. Anyway for the aspies who think they've gotten a raw deal from the rest of society, think about the possibility of an aspie writing a treatise on aspie superiority ( even as a joke ) and what the sensationalist news media would do with that. Yeah, that'll sure make everyones life better.

Well, yes...

Yep, I'm some kinda smarta$$, all right!

Catalyst, just going to chime in here and say cheers for explaining a few things I think I've been doing slightly wrong here too in terms of communication!!

I think NeantHumain deserves some props for starting this thread. I get the impression a lot of us are happy to see it, and it looks like it has actually produced some meaningful results!! !!

Again, I think we've violated some unwritten rules of message boards by talking like adults and learning stuff, but hey......

It isn't like that. If the problem is all with autistics, then the problem is all with deaf people. Yet when people who can hear meet a deaf person, they try to communicate some other way, with writing or gestures or exaggerating their mouths. They don't just keep talking at the deaf person - or if they do, they're wrong. If they want to interact, they have to adapt to the non-standard communicator as best they can, because if they don't adapt it's more than "inconvenience" but is instead shut-out (and two-sided frustration). You don't need to know how someone works to learn it a bit, if you can read people any or listen to what they say. Meanwhile the non-standard communicator has already been adapting and trying to understand the whole while, if they can even begin to find an opening or a familiar piece.

It is illogical to expect them to go out of their way, but that's why there's so much frustration (unproductive as it might be). NTs expect, and autistics cannot. I am not speaking from an X Is Better perspective; if you see that, point out where and I will clarify or correct.

But why the talk about immorality? That isn't what I read at all, at least not in the way you say it.

We'll leave the "they're wrong" for the end.

The analogy isn't perfect; what I was trying to illustrate is that our difference does not create an obligation for everyone else to create a system that accomodates us.

Upon closer examination, it breaks down. When hearing people meet a deaf person, they are usually able to pick it up pretty quickly. Plus, they can immediately recognize where the communication breakdown is and can compensate because, while they may not be able to relate, they can at least understand what's wrong.




Hmm... not entirely true. NTs don't "expect" us to go out of our way. They have no idea that there's a problem, and when they do, they often assume it's a personality problem. NTs "expect" to be dealing with someone who is wired the same way they are, because that's what they deal with regularly. NTs "expect" autistic people to be like Rain Man, because that's what they know of autism.

As a general rule, NTs do not, and cannot be rationally expected to, understand even what the problem is. Furthermore, NTs are not the only ones who have trouble communicating to Aspies. We run into the same issues communicating with ourselves.



Nope, didn't see any of that. I'm disagreeing with your points, but you're expressing them fairly.



The talk about immorality came because, in talking about how NTs behave, anbuend said "This is wrong of them." I inferred from context that this was a moral statement, and anbuend did not correct me. But even if we are talking about wrong from a procedural standpoint, it's still too strong a statement to my ear.

Similarly, when you said "They don't just keep talking at the deaf person - or if they do, they're wrong." I would say they were stupid, but wouldn't use the word "wrong."

It all boils back to the core of the thread... some Aspies have an expectation that the world should adapt to us and NTs are "wrong" not to understand. "Wrong" here implies either that they are failing to meet a moral obligation, which is entitlist hooey, or that they are failing to follow a procedure correctly, which is also entitlist hooey, because it's ridiculous to expect them to know the procedure.

You misunderstood my intent entirely.

I didn't say that non-autistic people automatically should drop everything and understand autistic people etc. (insert whatever baggage you have about something other autistic people might have said but I haven't here).

I said that when communication fails between a non-autistic and autistic person, it's usually because both sides have trouble understanding each other. Not because of the innate social deficits of one side or another.

And that happens to usually be true: Non-autistic people usually have no inherent "social skill" for understanding autistic people, and autistic people usually have no inherent "social skill" for understanding non-autistic people. Both have deficits in understanding the other, but because of sheer numbers, one sort at the moment usually has to deal with being regarded as the only one with the deficit, and that makes no sense.

You are talking about, practically, who ends up having to pick up most of the slack, and I would agree that it usually ends up having to be the autistic person because non-autistic people aren't going to know much of anything about doing the reverse (at least not at first).

But that's totally different than what I was trying to address.

You're addressing a practical question of who ought to be expected to pick up the slack for this communication gap.

I'm addressing an understanding-related question of what the communication gap constitutes.

And, yes, the communication gap often constitutes no specific lack of social skills on one side that are not lacking in some mirror-image form on the other. But the person in the neurological minority does have to do most of the work socially regardless. These are not contradictory statements. One of them describes what the situation is, the other one describes who usually has to solve the situation. This description of the problem is to some extent backed up in science, I didn't just pull it out of nowhere to make autistic people feel better about themselves.

If you want to use the analogy of different languages, I am doing the equivalent of saying "French and English are both languages, and any communication gap between a French and English speaker has to do with the French-speaker not speaking English equally with the English-speaker not knowing French. But the French-speaker in an English-speaking country is going to have more practice with bridging that gap because they're in the minority, so they're more likely to know at least some English than the English speakers in that country are to know at least some French."

And you are saying, "No, if that were true then in English-speaking countries everyone would have to drop everything and speak French for a French speaker. Because of this, French people have a language disorder and French is not a true language, whereas English is a true language and English-speaking people do not have a language disorder. Anyone French who thinks French people aren't language-disordered by definition, must just have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement."

To use the wheelchair analogy, I'm saying "The problem with a wheelchair user entering a building is a combination of the fact that they're in a wheelchair and the fact that the society they live in has planned only for people who can climb stairs and not people who can't. It's not just the walking-deficit of the wheelchair user that makes this difficult. If society were run by wheelchair users, then the problem would be that people who did not use wheelchairs would probably have to duck to get through doors, and would not have their own seating available everywhere they went, and these would present barriers to walking people."

And you are, in return, telling me that in order to believe what I said, then I have to expect any and all buildings (including those where it's impossible to renovate them, but also including ones where renovation can happen but would just take awhile) have to be renovated immediately by tomorrow.

We're addressing two different aspects of the situation. They are not necessarily causally connected in the way you think they are (it's not necessary to believe autistic people are the only ones with social deficits in order to believe that autistic people are the ones who are going to need to bridge that social gap).

You also seem to be reading into what I say, things that I don't mean, but that other people must have said at some point. Which gets back to the original poster, who posted many things that are truly autistic-supremacist points of view, alongside many things that are not but that get taken to be. Among them was the idea that autistic people and non-autistic people might actually have equal social skills, just applied to different sets of people -- something that has nothing to do with either autistic superiority or the notion (which is separate from autistic superiority) that non-autistic people ought to magically know how to communicate with autistic people. But you for some reason seem to take it as a given that this has to follow, just as the original poster did.

I think the medicalized term for it is "emotional reciprocity", and there is science to back up the claim that it's not always the ASD individual that is lacking in it.

I found this gem of a video from a link on a posautive video on youtube ( I'd cite the specific video, but I can't remember which one it is) http://psych.wisc.edu/lang/video-reciprocity.html I was thrilled to see scientific studies done on the fact that it may be NTs that are lacking in emotional/social reciprocity just as much if not more than those with ASD.

Oh, also, my particular take on who ethically ought to be bridging these gaps, is this:

Each person ought to be doing the work they are capable of to do so. If one person has more trouble with it than the other, then the second person ought to pick up the slack.

To a person who believes that non-autistic people inherently have something called "social skills" and autistic people inherently don't, this could be (falsely) taken as meaning that non-autistic people ought to do all the work.

But that isn't my belief. And there's two important things it doesn't take into account:

• That part of being more able to do so, is being able to recognize that there is a gap in the first place.
• That part of being more able to do so, is having more practice in doing so.

Autistic people are more likely to recognize the gap, and thus may end up with more responsibility for bridging it, at least in the short term until the non-autistic person learns what the gap is. But then autistic people are also more likely to have extensive practice in the particular social skills involved in communication between two very different neurotypes, so also are more likely to end up with somewhat more responsibility to do this.

And yes, I think that non-autistic people should eventually learn to communicate across different neurotypes, because taken as a whole, neurologically typical people are going to encounter neurologically atypical people on a daily basis. The rate of autism is somewhere around 1 in 150 (probably less), which is very common, and there are tons of different neurotypes besides autism that are going to add up to a fair chunk of the population having something other than the most standard neurotype.

Because of this, communication across neurotypes (something that neither autistic nor non-autistic people tend to be born with more skill in) ought to be among the social skills taught to all people, because even if it's not an autism-specific situation, there are still plenty of skills to use to navigate these situations in general that will benefit everyone involved. And these are the same skills that will often benefit people in intercultural communication situations.

As with many so-called "accommodations" (a lot of disability scholars believe barrier removal is a more accurate term, given that doing these things isn't supposed to just be a "favor" that can be retracted at any time), learning this particular social skill helps far more than just one set of people (those who happen to be considered disabled, or even more specifically, autistic people). Just as wheelchair ramps are also more usable by people who don't use wheelchairs but have trouble climbing stairs, people pushing babies in strollers, people pushing their groceries or laundry home with them in a wheeled container, in some cases people writing bicycles, etc... the social skills involved in cross-neurotype communication can also be used in cross-cultural communication, and even in developing better communication skills within a particular neurotype (but among people who differ in other ways). The benefit of learning them does not fall entirely to autistic people, any more than the benefit of wheelchair ramps falls entirely to wheelchair users. (Except that in this case, most of the people benefiting from learning these particular social skills won't be autistic.)

Just FYI and all, I cannot understand other people with autism any better than those without it; when I see an autistic person sitting down, looking at the ground, all I can apply to said situation is my own thoughts and how I think when I'm doing such.

The individual might be counting things on the ground, but applying myself to said person, I'd assume that he/she was overwhelmed being around people, and was trying to withdraw into the safety of the shell.

If a "normal" person smiles at me, I know what a smile means. In a way, I understand normal people far better than those with autism; all I feel is false assumptions [on my part] and sympathy for individuals with autism who appear how I do.

There is no generalised aspie is better than NT. There is only average aspie is better than average NT at such and such a task. And at the same time average NT will be better than average aspie at some other task.

It's like comparing Stephen Hawking to Haile Gebrselassie. One will quite literally be leader of the field while the other's batteries will probably have gone flat, but that doesn't make the long distance runner better than the quantum physicist.



The diagnosis states "average to above average intelligence". NT's also fit in the below average intelligence category. Intelligence is typically the one thing we get that's positive about A.S., and yet most NTs treat us like we're ret*d.

It's almost impossible not to end up with a superiority complex concerning your one major strength, when most people you meet respond to your offers to assist them using said intelligence, not by accepting the offer, but declining it for reasons of incomprehension, superstition or whatever else compels NTs to think everyone else is as limited as themselves at solving complex tasks (in a large part down to other NTs lying and BSing about their abilities).

When people take the time to get to know me, and I to know them, I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge them as equals with differing skill sets. If I have to acknowledge the areas in which they are superiority, while they deny mine, then they're just stupid and ignorant, and deserving of contempt. I'm not going to deny my own abilities to satisfy someone else's expectations of how I should be. For starters it would cause a lot more psychological problems repressing something like that.

I don't see why being different has to be a one way street. I didn't choose to be different from the majority, so why should I be blamed for it and expected to make all the effort? Why do I have to accept their way of being if they refuse to accept mine?

And I'm going to be a damned inconvenience to those who unfairly inconvenience me.