Could someone explain this for me??

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I was browsing through a few random "layperson" sites on Aspergers - or semi-layperson, I guess you could say...basically discussion boards on Aspergers with postings by neurotypical people who had some grasp of AS, and came across this sentence which had me wondering:

"They can learn by observing and mimicking the behavior and responses of others, but they can't recognize the cause/effect dynamic."
http://www.datalounge.com/cgi-bin/iowa/ ... ad,9502058

What does this mean, the cause/effect dynamic (in relation to mimicking behaviours and responses)?? Is it saying that we have no capacity to understand how what we say will affect other people? That seems to be like an absolute statement, and it's ironic that neurotypicals would call US the black-and-white thinkers. I think it would be more accurate to say, "they have diminished capacity to recognize the cause/effect dynamic". For me, it's often time-related; if a spontaneous reply is expected in a given situation, I don't have the intuitive faculties to instantly see "the big picture" and how my response might be taken the wrong way, or the other person will tell so-and-so that I said something about them, or whatever. But many times, I HAVE recognized the cause-effect dynamic, and told the other person "I'd rather not do / say such-and-such because of how it might be perceived by so-and-so." recognizing that there different mind-sets out there.

But maybe there's something more to the "cause-effect" dynamic than my explanation?

Hmm.

The 'can learn' part of that sort of just.. creates this ehhhh affect.

As if its implying that although those with/affected by ASD can learn behavior and responses, but can't learn the cause/affect dynamic? Everyone is different, some people can and they're more adaptable.

This rather describes what I have been coming to see in myself. It's like being given a code to translate spanish to french, but I only know english. I use the code extremely well though-I see what other people want, I know what they want, I act the way they want, I put 2 and 2 together, I even have a very nuanced understanding of it things, often beyond what people who experience them seem to have, because my brain just works that way, fits things together. So well that I fool myself and others that I don't actually know either spanish or french. Because I don't 'get' it, and I have no more understood this until trying to describe myself. I find that I'll be using a word to describe myself, will feel that it doesn't fit well or will feel like I have not described myself well, then I out of the blue connect the same word to how I use it to describe someone else, and the same word used in those different contexts have so far in my head been unconnected. Like pulling a string from the left of me then the right of me and pulling just enough to see that it's actually the same string that's been wrapped behind me the entire time, but because one was left and the other right, they were viewed as different. One side is my own self-understanding, the other side is my understanding of everything else.

This is something I've said before and I think it is relevant here.

We simulate an identity in our conscious thought while NTs filter everything through an elaborate identity that runs in their subconscious.

You are the person I closest relate to here, Olympiadis. Are you officially diagnosed?

Yes.

Ok.

So it seems to me like I do what you say, you simulate an identity. But I'm really f*****g good at it, to the point that some of it, not all of it by any means, becomes unconscious. But it is still not attached to things like my own emotions, not in real-time.

What a lot of people on this site seem to do is not simulate an identity, or rather, do a very poor job of simulating one, and then they find they don't fit in.

When I try to attach what I perceive as some other underlying identity, the one that experiences emotions, somewhere underneath all this other stuff, I find I cannot.

In a way I feel like a lot of other people are better than me at this stuff because they're actively trying to put themselves into their social experiences, while I generally do not. They, while maybe being slow, clumsy, and awkward, are not hiding themselves, while I am.

This is all very messy and ill-understood to me. Like the definition of 'identity' is changing in my mind even as I write this.

Like, part of me thinks that because I was simply unaware that I was wearing this mask, that that's actually what NTs do all the time, and makes me wonder if the only difference between someone with autism versus not is how much they perceive of everything that goes on; like, autistics have an extra perception that there is a separation between the 2, but the difference between them and an NT is not that there IS a separation but rather that they just perceive the one that exists for everyone.

But another part of me thinks that NTs do what most people on this cite claim they do, which is attach something underneath it all to their actions and states and don't have a problem pieceing it all together cohesively and the difference is what it more or less seems to be, that they do not perceive a separation because there is no separation.

So what is it? Is there a always a separation and NTs just don't perceive it, or is there not a separation if you are NT but there is an actual one when you have an ASD?

Or is this a stupid question that is actually rooted in philosophy to which the answer is 'yes' to both?

I reckon this has a high wisdom-per-word ratio.
So many times I've thought (sometimes said) things like: "aaaarghh why can't you just step out of your little frame for JUST ONE FKN SECOND and see it from another point of view?"

Also, making a connection with the "empathy" issue - you know, where NTs think spectrumites have little / no empathy, whereas to me it often seems the exact opposite. Perhaps both are true, in that NTs have strong empathy but only with those whose "identity" is close enough to their own, while spectrumites empathize more equally with all sorts of people / animals, including those who are very different from themselves.

NTs generally have very poor metacognition, so they would rarely perceive any internal separation of mind functions.
To them, their identity is second nature like riding a bicycle. They do not have to construct it consciously.

Their brains are constructed such that the socially shared algorithms that they collect in their subconscious self-assemble into their identities. It's very similar to the process of practicing to learn to ride a bicycle until it becomes second nature and requires no conscious thought. The primary difference here is that identity is a collection of memetic codes, and not a collection of muscular and sensory interactions like riding the bicycle.

NTs engage the world through their identities. They filter everything through it.

It would be like me imagining I'm some character like Captain Kirk, and as I engage the world I have to think what Captain Kirk would do, say, or look in situations as they come up. All of this would happen automatically in the subconscious. I wouldn't know any difference. If someone asked me who I was, then I would believe that I am Captain Kirk. Of course I would use my own name, but the person I reference would be the imaginary character.
That is self-referencing.

Some people have said that autistics do not self-reference, but of course we are a spectrum, so many autistics will. Autistics are also not all good at metacognition. There are many variations.

Generally speaking, autistics engage the world a bit more directly and use a consciously constructed simulated identity for social interaction, or in the case of some lower functioning autistics, use no identity at all.
Higher functioning autistics construct identities because they are forced to as a child by parents, other people, and their environment.

Yes, it's like speaking different languages due to the different perceptions of reality.
"those whose identity is close enough to their own" <== I refer to this as the hive mind.
It's an enormous set of self-assembled and self-perpetuating algorithms that evolve over time "memetics".
NT brains work as extremely efficient copying machines and provide a host environment for aggressive self-perpetuating memes.

One of the primary purposes for these algorithms that the brain hosts is to sort everything into hierarchies for purposes of selection or rejection. It's a process of binary logic, and a mathematician friend of mine tells me that "logical trees" are the primary structures the brain uses for hierarchies.
Hierarchies are the logical structures behind the process by which social creatures "stratify" themselves within a group.
The NT brain is geared for acting as a unit within a larger structure, and represents a system intelligence like a herd of sheep or a school of fish.

The autistic brains represent individual intelligence, and make very poor hosts for the hive-mind algorithms.
We are still bombarded with aggressive memes, both consciously and subliminally, but they rarely self-assemble in our subconscious, and so do not become second nature, or intuitive for us.
Navigating the social world requires great effort for us, just as would be riding a bicycle for the first time.

You're right that NT empathy is based very much on similarity, and shared perceptions of reality.

I find this so much with NT people that they often get angry with me for being "Devil's advocate" or always arguing for the other side of any issue. From my perspective, I'm simply trying to balance perspective and offer a possible alternate, because their perspectives are so incredibly one-sided. Not to turn this into a political thread, but I had this conversation tonight if anyone is interested. There was a news item about an 18 year old boy who had allegedly plotted a terrorist attack, saying he hated this country and would gladly die for ISIS. My very NT companion volunteered "yeah, I'd like to help him with that."
I replied that he is just a dumb kid - what he and everyone else would likely benefit from is understanding and education. Someone else backed up the original speaker with "but they kill you." Bypassing a paranoid rant on media manipulation campaigns, I replied "yes, but what you're overlooking is that he dies too. He never has the chance to grow up and wise up."
They seem unable to understand anything that is not them. That is not uniformly in line with their personal morality and perspective. Individual bias colours everything. As a sort of defence mechanism in response to this "other" concept, they relegate the issue into simply hating it, so they no longer have to think about it.
It's very interesting this idea of the absence of hierarchical thought in autistic people seems to come up a lot. Is it really such a strong persuasion in the NT population? I disbelieve binary thought altogether - I am seemingly unable to understand the competitive nature of things that require "taking a side." I can't see the use in it. Understanding requires no "sides," no adversarial separation. Indeed, it seems to impede real understanding.
As to the original quote, I perhaps misinterpreted that as stating that autistic people are unable to forward plan, and have any conception of what effects their actions will cause. Which is ludicrous. Even speaking with a highly intelligent, highly educated, very NT therapist, his analysis of the consequences of action, or the many possible consequences of action, is less thorough than mine. So much so that he tells me I think "too strategically." Where he would have reacted emotionally and immediately, I hadn't reacted at all, as I had already analysed the possible seven or eight steps that action/reaction would lead to, and had concluded in the difference engine my mind often is, that it was not worthwhile. The only way I could think of this being any way correct is if they meant we are sometimes insensible of how other people think and feel, so we may say or do something not intending to be rude, but just because we can't think like them and understand how they feel?

Great, so my new-found self-awareness is like me becoming autistic, instead of me having autism and not knowing it.