[ghushn3]

I tend to agree, as an autistic person. And a lot of autistic people hold the belief that, "My autism is not a problem, your expectations that I behave like you do are the problem."

If I need to move a little differently, or not hold eye contact when I speak, the fact that I get made fun of is the problem. If we just accepted, "hey, some people are like that" more, I think we'd have a lot fewer problems.

[devmor]

Well said.

I am not autistic personally but working in tech and being into field-associated hobbies, I have a much more autism-dense social circle than the average person. This was awkward for me at first because it felt like I was either constantly irritated or being irritating to others by following my standard learned social conventions.

Once I changed my expectations to clarify and verify intent instead of derive and assume intent from others, this immediately stopped. Applying the same changes in social interaction with people who are not on the spectrum has actually felt like it leads to less misunderstandings and hurt feelings as well. I’m left wondering if the parts of human interaction that created these standards that autistic people find so frustrating might not even exist anymore and the rest of us have been upholding conventions that ultimately make life harder for us, just because we were taught to do so.

[cookiengineer]

I'm organizing a self help group for autistic/AuDHD/ADHD people and over the years I've realized that a lot of things that bother our members are based on interpretations of social contracts.

"Normal" people (whatever that means) tend to forget things quite quickly, and for us it's really hard when states change and contracts change. Meaning that if e.g. in a discussion 3 months ago we casually agreed upon "I do task X and you do task Y" then this will be the assumed state for autistic people until the end of time, because that's what we agreed upon.

When other people at work communicate their feelings, have a bad day and don't want to do those things, or are just lazy about it... Then this is a breach of a social contract. And dealing with those breaches of social contracts without getting very defensive about it is a huge problem for a lot of autistic people I've spoken with. We tend to spiral quickly into a defensive argument that won't help either involved parties and it tends to escalate into a "mudfight" instead of a rational debate.

I just wish that a lot of therapy would help prepare you for these situations of misunderstood (or misagreed upon) situations more. You can compensate for them to a small degree, but they put a lot of stress and burden on us because it's quite a big deal if the state of assumptions changes without having a discussional part in it.

Additionally, talking in conversations about the assumed outcome first before you get into detail helps a lot. Do you need emotional support? Do you want to feel that we are together in this? Do you need a practical solution? Do you need a change in what we agreed upon?

This way we can prepare much easier for what's about to come in the following discussion, and we realize it's not about critique and rather about finding a mutual compromise that both parties are happy with.

Also don't use sayings like "you always do X" or "you never do X" in those conversations when it is not always, because autistic people tend to interpret these as accusations very quickly because to us they sound excessive and are huge trigger points, because they are essentially lies.

If you say instead something like "I feel like you do never X" or even better "I feel like I am alone doing X, can you help me more with it in the future?" we can realize that it's more about the perception and how to improve our contributions, because we can keep the discussion about the actual topic underneath which is "How to balance each party's contributions to the task at hand".

[laserlight]

> casually agreed upon "I do task X and you do task Y"

Tangentially, I hate that people express hollow intentions, like “We should definitely hang out some time.” Why would you say that, when it's not your intention? Of course, I understand that people say such things because of social conditioning. But, such language tends to upset people regardless of neurotype. One could simply say “It was nice to see you. Goodbye.” It would be all right.

[MangoToupe]

> If we just accepted, "hey, some people are like that" more, I think we'd have a lot fewer problems.

This is how much of the world works. Johnny doesn't have autism, he's just really into trains. It would be incredibly rude to say much more.

[npteljes]

That's more like how the world is said to be working, but not how it actually works. There is a huge difference between how people express their tolerance and expectations and what they actually okay with, with no extra internal feelings. It really would be incredibly rude to say much more, and so it's not said, but it's all there in inside, coded in unspoken feelings and expectations.

I'd like to draw a parallel with disability. I don't think anyone in their right mind would express that they actively work against people with disabilities, and I'm sure most people would express support if asked directly. But this doesn't translate to actually accessible infrastructure and culture. That takes a lot of special work - and regulation actually, without which the work wouldn't have happened.

All this to say that intentions and expressions are a great first step, but there is much more to acceptance than that.

[MangoToupe]

I encourage you to examine how much of this is specific to western culture, and in particular business-oriented western culture. Expectations and tolerance vary widely from community to community even in the US, but I submit autistic individuals are likely to struggle the most in highly atomized cultures. It's a very deep and broad topic so I don't expect you to see much at a glance, but I do believe there's a reason such a label emerged from western, white supremacist culture with a very, very high degree of commodified labor.

Of course, what you point out is universal, so there are limits to this perspective. But in more collectivist cultures, I suspect that the burden of adjusting to people who struggle to conform can be more easily shouldered by more than just the nuclear family, or even celebrated more, erm, naturally.

[aleph_minus_one]

> but I submit autistic individuals are likely to struggle the most in highly atomized cultures.

For those who don't know the term "atomized culture": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism_(social)

[tomjakubowski]

There's a standup comedian's bit about this: "That's José and he likes to sweep."

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCzopOfSWjc/

[npteljes]

That's an interesting intersection that you brought up, I have not considered it at all. I'm sorry that this comment doesn't bring anything to the discussion, but I wanted to give feedback that it made me think.

[pinoy420]

Hacker news (or social media in general) echo chamber

[red-iron-pine]

yeah HN isn't very good about that.

well off educated people looking to rationalize whatever they think about society, interactions, etc. lotta people here living in a bubble.

great tech discussions sometimes, tho.

[wvh]

I suppose, beyond making fun of which is unacceptable, that some behaviour is considered "bad behaviour" if it would come from a "non-particular" person. People are highly sensitive to eye contact, voice tone and other subtleties to gage how the other person is feeling and how much of a threat they are. Similarly, overtaking conversations or appearing disinterested are also faux-pas in normal conversation and may indicate bad will or even a personality disorder.

As somebody who occasionally struggles to fit in socially, I have come to understand that I might come across in ways that do not reflect my inner feelings and that I need to add a bit more context and explanation, and just be more careful in general. You sort of have to help people to see where you're coming from to help them tune their social barometer somewhat sort of speaking.

At the extreme, you'd just start any conversation with "hey, I'm autistic, so if I appear a bit weird..." to hard-reset people's expectations and sooth their inner alarms. That is assuming they're decent folks acting in good faith.

[cardanome]

> you'd just start any conversation with "hey, I'm autistic, so if I appear a bit weird..."

Then people will criticize you for making autism your whole identity.

Which is a silly point to make but people can be pricks. Not saying you gave bad advice, just saying, it a damned if you do, damned if you don't with some people. I think it is generally good to be open about it, if not just to filter out intolerant people faster.

[rizzom5000]

You might even say that some neurodivergence is an adaptive strategy to quickly identify a potential threat.

Many sapiens like to believe they are good people, but they don't like to to think about what that really means. It seems we are talking about a filter that identifies such people very quickly.

[BrandoElFollito]

The eye contact thing is interesting. I hate to make eye contact because I concentrate better when not watching the other person. And then I remember I should and it gets creepy because I am staring.

This is to say that everyone is slightly different and a healthy dose of tolerance goes a long way. After all, some of your behaviour is probably annoying to others and you do not even realize it.

[sandworm101]

I read a paper once about female celebs/models and eyesight. They tend to have poorer-than-average vision. The theory was than poor eyesight increased thier percieved eye contact with stangers. (They could not see the other person and so would not look away.) This made them more noticable by others, which is not a bad thing when trying to get jobs in entertainment. An other theory was that they needed to try harder to focus when talking to people at a distance, say at a casting call, resulting in more eye contact.

Also, at extreem low body fat you start to loose the pad of fat behind the eyes, resulting in that sunken look of many supermodels. This of course can reshape the back of the eye and impact vision.

[BrandoElFollito]

I am short-sighted and when I take off my glasses, I can look at the other person because everything is blurry and I can concentrate better.

A French actor (Christophe Lambert) has a special expression when he looks at the camera. It is because he is short-sighted and does not look exactly in the typical spot other would look at. He could not use contact lenses so there was no way to change that. The people who fought with him in the Highlander series (with swords) said that it was always an adventure because he was not really sure where he was hitting.

[pengaru]

I'm the same way. Removing glasses is an excellent hack, but it also means I'm not making eye contact as I'm just looking at the person's general direction.

Earlier in my career during interviews I'd always tell the interviewer "I'm listening, keep talking, I just need to look at the floor or wall to concentrate or I get too distracted by your animated-ness" and this was in the days before autism entered the zeitgeist. Nobody cared or thought it was particularly odd as far as I could tell. We were accustomed to nerds who sat alone thinking at computers most of the time being quirky, and appreciated the need to concentrate (private offices with doors that close!).

But as I get older it's become more necessary to look at something else while listening to anyone tell me anything I intend to grok. And I'm pretty certain ~everyone now assumes I'm autistic because of it. Never been diagnosed as such.

My interpretation and internal modeling of things is highly visual and genuine visual input is a sort of noise that interferes with my mental reconstruction of what I'm hearing. I have no idea if that overlaps with autism.

[the_other]

My eyesight’s rubbish. I learn very little from looking at people’s eyes. I almost never remember eye colours. It just doesn’t register because I “don’t see it”.

I have to make a special effort to make eye contact, and when I do I feel like my “trying to see better” habits and postures make others uncomfortable. I’ve no idea what “normal eye contact” feels like.

I might also have some autism traits (I’m a coder, after all), so that feeds into it.. but even if I wasn’t coder/austistic, I’d be struggling in this domain.

I offer this as anecdata for your “everyone is different” suggestion.

[TrnsltLife]

The problem is, we are animals, even though we are divine offspring as well. We have an ability to moderate our behavior to a degree, but we are also governed by physiological instinct.

Try making inappropriate eye contact with a human male. You'll probably live to make it to the next experiment, even if you do get punched. Now try it with a gorilla or chimp.

Sexual cues, hunger, aggression/submission postures and responses, whether calls (i.e. communication, speech) engenders trust and connection or mistrust and threat. These things can't be completely overcome, and if they could, our species would have lost the underlying structure and template that allows us to build the greater achievements of self-control and civilization.

[rixed]

Your point is unclear to me. Are we like chimps, or are we not?

[dukeyukey]

Yes and no.

The instinct is still there. Of course it is. We can override it in a way other creatures probably can't, but expecting people to not be influenced by instinct and such is a non-starter.

[rixed]

The baseline for human behavior is set by expectations. Some tens of thousand years ago we also had the instinct to savagely kill whoever lived in the nearby village.

[Shaanie]

Did we though, or did we make a calculated decision that in a place with limited resources it'd be better for us to eliminate the competition?

[rixed]

My point was about the mutual influence between instincts and expected behaviours. But you seem to swap instincts for conscious interest. That would be another discussion, but I don't believe homo economicus ever walked on this planet.

[ryanmcbride]

jumping to a mad level of conclusions here to justify your discomfort with other people