A scoop of Dunning-Kruger, sprinkled with a little Asperger’s and topped with ADD syrup makes for a good banana boat
To sum up what you’re saying: straight men are emotionless robots, while women and gay men are “totally emotional”. 
That kind of world view is part of the problem of the topic of the day. Ridiculous.
To sum up what you’re saying: straight men are emotionless robots, while women and gay men are “totally emotional”. angry That kind of world view is part of the problem of the topic of the day. Ridiculous.
No, I’m responding to an assumption.
The assumption is that in order to be a good engineer you have to be emotionless and therefore gays and women are excluded.
I tried to combat this assumption mentioning two examples of emotional and good engineers.
I saw, in another post, a parenthetical observation to the effect that Asperger Syndrome is a “spectrum”, and that the “more severe” it is, the closer it is to “autism”. This is not really correct.
I feel I should be briefly pedantic (FWIW, I’m autistic):
“Spectrum” is not “continuum”. It’s not “more severe asperger syndrome is closer to autism”. In fact, the distinction between them was artificial and has been dropped from the more modern diagnostic criteria.
The thing the word “spectrum” is intended to communicate is that there’s a large number of possible manifestations, symptoms, traits, or whatever, and that they aren’t particularly strongly connected. You don’t necessarily have “more” of all of them or “less” of all of them. One person I know who is a fairly clear and insightful writer and makes a living as a programmer happens not to be able to speak. She can write clearly and lucidly, she’s totally fluent in English and in a few programming languages, but she can’t make noises with her mouth that sound like words. I talk cheerfully and fluently. But that doesn’t mean she’s necessarily “more” autistic than I am; just differently.
It is perhaps also worth noting that, by and large, the social problems you were talking about (feigned surprise, etc.) are usually social problems that autistics tend to resist and mitigate, for a number of reasons. For one thing, things like feigned surprise just seem weird. Of course, there might be more inclination to express surprise without bothering to conceal it, but then we’re also usually assuming the other party will take the information at face value. Also, going through life being very good at some things and very bad at others makes you a lot more inclined to be tolerant when other people are better or worse than you expect at a particular task. I remember being unable to do single-digit arithmetic reliably (I still can’t, I might add), so I flunked third-grade math, because one of the requirements was being able to do a page with 100 single-digit multiplication problems without errors. So you might think I’m bad at math. Well, maybe, but at the same time I was learning calculus successfully. It does not surprise me all that much when people find some things easier than I do, and other things harder.
Mostly just wanted to point out that “severe” is probably the wrong axis on which to consider autism-spectrum things. There’s a lot of subtleties to the variance there.
I also feel I should point out that autism doesn’t imply lack of emotion; autistics do, however, tend to express emotion differently from other people, which can result in people failing to perceive it.
I know some of these responses are kind of old, but the amount of vitriol aimed at those of us with Asperger’s/Autism is saddening. I’m glad that some that have responded are more understanding and/or accepting.
@Chris - People like you are the reason a great many of us on the Spectrum have a hard time keeping jobs, despite not being disabled enough to qualify for social aid programs. People like you bully us out of otherwise good positions, because you can’t fathom the idea that someone might just not be capable of handling the office politics (and yet, it’s us who supposedly have no “theory of mind” or ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes).
There is, in fact, a major difference between just being “socially inept” in the manner you’re talking about, and being essentially blind to various social cues. Most of the non-verbal subtexts and inferences the people convey in everyday conversation are registered and processed subconsciously by the neurotypical brain. You don’t have to consciously think about whether the person is getting bored with what you’re talking about, or whether they even want to talk to you (or like you), or even when it’s your turn to talk. Those things became subconscious for you when you were a young child. That is not the case for me and others like me. And no, it’s not for lack of practice.
Do you really believe that spending 6-8 hours a day, five days a week, for nine months out of the year for fifteen years, surrounded by upwards of 40 people wouldn’t provide us with sufficient practice to be at least basically socially literate? Do you really believe that then spending countless hours on a college campus and in a corporate workplace wouldn’t provide those opportunities (or rather, force such “opportunities”) to gain even basic social skills? Do you really think such environments are anything but “outside of our comfort zones” for those of us for whom our way of thinking, perceiving, and processing the world has made such environments a hell of sensory overload?
Do you tell a blind person that they just have to practice more at seeing? A wheelchair-bound person that they’re just not trying hard enough to walk?
It’s very similar for an Autistic person with social skills. Some of us can handle some social interactions some of the time, but at best, such things are usually very conscious and very exhausting. Conversations, especially face-to-face, require paying conscious attention to body language, “turn” cues, interpreting people’s speech – both the literal meaning and going through the mental data stores of potential hidden meanings (ie - we have to consciously and deliberately read between the lines) – and so on. This actually creates a sort of “processing delay,” not unlike the single-threaded applications where the UI would stop responding when a lengthy process was running. In fast-paced conversations, conversations among more than two people, or in environments with distractions (TV running, other conversations going, etc) this makes it extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible, to keep up in any kind of meaningful way.
This is further exacerbated by all of the seemingly (to Autistics, anyway) nonsensical and contradictory social rules. For example, we were always taught that it’s rude to interrupt, and, in fact, it’s often been enforced on us, drilled into our head like a jack-hammer. Yet, when we go out into the world, interrupting is often required in order to be able to voice anything. However, what makes it even more confusing is that there seems to be unspoken times when it’s “okay” to interrupt and when it’s not “okay,” and only neurotypicals instinctively know these times. When an Autistic tries to emulate the neurotypical behavior, they’re met with anger or some version of scorn at the fact that they interrupted, despite it looking to the Autistic that everyone else does it.
You’re right, this is a “social world,” it’s also a world built around straight, white, able-bodied men. It’s built for those who can see, and those who can walk. Yet people are or have moved away from “just deal with it,” and – at least for these obvious differences – toward accepting them and accommodating them where needed, with ramps, talking crosswalk signals, Braille signs, interpreter options, nursing rooms, and elevators, among other things.
Regarding promotions – honestly? Most of us just want financial security. We want to be able to work at a place where we’re valued as an asset for our ability to perform our job, instead of seen as a liability, because we can’t play the office politics game. We want to do what we love – be that fixing computers, writing software, pouring through medical research, crunching numbers, or painting – and get paid for it. Most of us could care less about “climbing the corporate ladder,” or being managers or Chief Whatever, and would be happy doing whatever it is we love doing. For many of us, we just want to work and support ourselves, and not be dependent on our country’s social aid programs.
It’s also people like you who keep diagnostic rates of not just Autism/Asperger’s diagnostic rates low (they’re actually abysmal for adults and often misunderstood as a “childhood disorder”), but also the diagnostic rates of other disorders (for lack of a better term), such as ADHD, Bipolar, Depression, and Anxiety, in the gutter. Such asinine responses make people ashamed and scared to get help or accommodations, for fear of being bullied out of their jobs or not being able to get a job, which is exactly what they need on top of trying to find a doctor (who, a lot of times, are just as clueless as you, so it’s very often a fight just to get tested) to help them, and even just trying to cope with their issues on a day-to-day basis.
@codinghorror - Thanks for posting this. It’s good to have people speaking out in favor of things like Asperger’s. I hope you can write a few other posts on such topics, or bring to light any you may have already written.
1 Like
You’re awful. Do you know what the rates of unemployment and suicide are among people with ASD? The high suicide rate is partially due to bullying, so you should think a little bit more before you say stupid things. Computing is one of the rare fields where people with AS can excel and earn respect in society.
The trouble is, working with slightly autistic people can drive other people crazy mad. I know that autistic is not guilty and has biological reasons for how he acts. But, the whole “sometimes says inappropriate things” is euphemism for “constantly insults you, publicly mocks you every time you make a mistake and insist on telling you how superior he is every other interaction”. Eventually non-autistic get tired of being abused too. Bullying back is wrong solution obviously, but ranting on the internet or somewhere can be downright necessity.
It is that working with autistic puts a lot of limits on other people - he throws major temper tamtrum when you interrupt him or whenever plans change. He simply cant work when things are not exactly his way in many tiny details and will never compromise with other peoples ideas. The whole “struggle working with people” can be euphemism for “the team dynamic is getting increasingly toxic and they are large contributors to that - whether aware or not”. People do get to the point where they really want to punch them. Obviously correct solution is not to punch, but to put autistic on position where he does not have to cooperate.
Likewise “have trouble working to deadline” is euphemism for “refuses to implement minimal viable feature insisting in building cadillac instead - even when customer dont want cadillac”. It may mean insisting on non-essential refactoring few days before deadline. It may mean arguing with business over requirements despite not knowing much about business. Every time new requirements come.
There are ways how to manage the above problems, but “be more tolerant” is simply not it. That will just make you submissive to autistic and trust me, that position is pure hell. Quite the opposite, you need to assert boundaries very directly and very clearly - the way that you could not with non-autistic.
Asperger here. I am very obsessed with programming. i have learned almost all mainstream programming languages by now. I have to say programming is happiness. It feels great to create something of your own and solving things alone for almost 14- 16 hours daily. It is amazing how far i have come in spite, i had no idea i have this syndrome until recently when i had continuous troubles with life. Now i can rest peacefully because i know why i am different.
I’ve probably replied on here but occasionally something happens that makes me think back to things like this.
People must have in mind that while Asperger’s always means social impairment (or would be meaningless otherwise to classify as a deficiency or disability) that not all social impairment is Asperger’s. It’s unfortunate that many people suffer social impairment to a serious degree that could be registered as an impairment that can be quite serious. It’s not a social norm however to go and get diagnosed as socially impaired despite that when it comes down to it that’s ultimately why Asperger’s was considered purposeful in the first place.
Social impairment can arise from both conditioning and biological development. Either can be permanent or not permanent with varying degrees of flexibility in between. It can be extremely hard to tell. There are some false notions that it’s a lost cause but this isn’t the case, you can’t know without trying in nearly every case.
Social impairment no matter the cause is self reinforcing. Whatever the original cause was, be it nature or nurture, it will usually result in more nurture in that direction.
If there’s only one playstation and there’s a contest, the best players get to play through to the end, they get to play the most and also get the most practice meaning the better get better while the worse get worse. Equivalents of this play out with socialisation such as the best socialises sticking together and forming hierarchies.
People with social impairment are also aware of this and much more reluctant to involve themselves in social activity.
Programming itself can lead to social impairment as to reach a fair skill level it requires a fair amount of time engaged with the computer and not with other people. It’s not a very social activity. To make a program the most efficiently, while it might require some coordination between people, the best thing is to just sit there and get it done (once you’ve learnt to be fluent, there’s a moderate window where pair programming works).
It can be extremely frustrating. I’ve been working in one particular problem in programming and I keep finding things fall short of expectations in terms of quality. It’s made far worse by constant cultural pressure sometimes to the point of bullying to adopt certain trends usually by people that are idiots (specifically not because they don’t know a lot but because they don’t know a lot and then dictate to others).
I’ve found an issue that it appears out of some millions of people only a few have noticed it and I seem to be the only one that’s fully analysed it. I am constantly confronted with people that are rude to me then accuse me of being the one that is rude. I do sometimes struggle to work out their train of thought and what they’re actually referring to when they’re not specific. In a display of mirroring I’d automatically assume other operate the same inside. So I have the habit of saying the same thing in many different ways. Each thing I say or write, I have a very poor ability to sense that it’s been absorbed and understood.
There is a point however where it becomes apparent that the problem is not people’s understanding. There is some other problem happening in their brain where they cannot accept something even if it’s correct.
At this point I do wonder if these people are socially normal or not. The surprise is I get no impression of their stubbornness and resistance to change originating from an abnormality. The problem seems to be that they are hyper normal with all the faults that brings with it. This becomes clear with their behaviour and arguments. They will rely heavily in social arguments rather than technical arguments. They will sometimes even lie. While all of the behaviours are adverse, they’re still highly social which betrays that they’re very social people and that doesn’t match with Asperger’s. Perhaps it is possible to have a social impairment while still being social. Someone could be bad at writing, someone could be good at writing but use it for bad.
At this point what can I do? If people want to keep writing inefficient, insecure and unstable code because it’s fashionable and to be ignorant of defects in the tools they’re using. They can be details shmetails all they like. I’ll be happy when I hear a story of something big breaking because of that.
That’s no relief for me. The same defect is imposed on me from multiple sources and I have to jump through a few hoops to be able to produce quality software without the constant worry.
1 Like
Not everyone is like that but I’ve met a few like that. It’s particularly awful if they’re bad to the point they can’t not have things some way even if it’s broken. There’s the “My way is better.” kind (which I tend to be with a fair bit of flexibility) and the “It has to be my way no matter what.” kind. If you ever encounter the latter you’ll need to go for therapy.
1 Like