"I don't understand" never elicits an explanation

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^Thank you for taking the trouble to explain your thoughts.

I just wanted to add, sometimes when one does not understand something, and they seek clarification, it does not matter how often one tries to meet them half way, making an effort to get an explanation, the other person can simply be a prick about it it. I've always responded the same way. I always smile, thank them for their time, but my thanks are less heart felt as the time and effort they spent was the absolute minimal. I have my reasons for attempting to be courteous. I always value the time someone spends with me, because time is the one thing we can ask for that cannot be renewed. It's finite.

In my thirty-six years as a programmer, I've known three people like that. The time they spent depended on your job title. The lower your job title, the less they cared about it. In a department where roughly half the people were on the spectrum, being autistic had nothing to do with it. The worse person had Asperger's and was a bit anti social to anyone who was not an administrator (network or database). On the other hand, he was very blunt and called out people that did not know what they were talking about or when the director made a bad technical decision. That was refreshing. That has been my experience. I imagine it can be very, very different in areas where the aspie population is smaller and there is little understanding or patience.

NT plus Arrogance can utterly useless.

When I write stuff like this, I always come away thinking "I believe this to be correct, but it is or maybe complete diarrheic nonsense." That is why I appreciated your comment, bee33. You did not judge what I wrote and true or not, but thanked me for my thoughts. In the end, that is all they are.

A common trap is to presume that the person is capable of explaining what he/she said. Then you think really hard and long about how to ask for the explanation, but nothing works because the person is incapable of explaining what he/she said. Quite often a person (especially an NT person) does not actually understand his/her own statements and expressed opinions.

NT people say such things for social reasons such as trying to boost or maintain their social ranking by saying nonsense that is intended to sound intelligent. In these cases, it's pointless trying to get an explanation, because regardless of how nicely you ask for the explanation, the person doesn't even understand his/her own statements.

If the person becomes angry or annoyed (emotional) when you politely ask for an explanation, this is a strong sign that the person is incapable of explaining his/her own statement. We ND people need to constantly remind ourselves that the various statements and opinions from NT people cannot be interpreted literally, and often cannot be interpreted at all. Many NT people are extremely vague in their thinking, thus when you ask for an explanation, they become aware of the low level of intelligence in what they said, and thus they become angry or emotional.

For example, some parrots have the ability to speak a limited number of words and short phrases. However it's useless to try to politely ask the parrot for an explanation. The same is true of a significant percentage of NT people.

Another thing is...when you look and act puzzled...folks will double down and repeat what they said...BUT...they only repeat the part you already understand and NEVER address the part of the story that you dont understand.

Had that with a foreign-born lady supervisor. But because she is foreigner you have to cut her slack. I suppose.

But you wanna snap at them and say I "dont tell me the part that I already know ...tell me the part that I DONT know!".

Saying you that is too vague for most people to help you.

Most people aren't smart enough to figure out another explanation on the fly.

What you may be able to do is to break it down into pieces or a more modest lesson.
See if you can zero in on what you don't understand. And maybe you need to learn that later.

As an analogy, you may not be able to run an entire mile on your first day of Physical Education.
So maybe instead your instructor gives you the choice of running half a lap and walking the rest of the way back or running half a lap and running the way back.