Getting rebuked with "it's common sense!!"

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common sense rebbutals aere what people use when they feel they should be right but cant really put their fingers(or thoughts) on why it is so.

trite and irrelevant is what it is.

I've had more than a few occasions similar to this! What it comes down to, by my reckoning, is the AS lack of instinctive ability to "see the big picture", being very task and detail-focused - not realizing that other aspects of the environment need due attention so you should be expected to know that the task at hand should just be "quick and dirty" (not literally dirty, that's just an idiom). It could also be a lack of executive function. Of course, anxiety and worry over how we're being perceived by others only exacerbates these challenges

What I've found can help mitigate these challenges is using a "clearing statement", such as "OK, when you ask me to do X, do you also want me to do Y?" or "OK, I assume you'd like me to just do X in such-and-such manner because of Y circumstance?" Most of the time people are reasonably nice about it and will appreciate that you didn't assume, but a few, unfortunately, can be kind of perverse about it, retorting with "What do YOU think?" or "isn't it obvious?" Of course, some of those people may just be bullies who sense our challenges and react beyond a legitimate frustration. I had one former boss who used these lines with me and then after I gave a rationalized response, she would say yes but that unnecessary time has been wasted in "over-analyzing" things.

I'm sure a lot of people use common sense as a weapon in this manner, but it only proves their idiocy further because what they say isn't necessarily common sense at all.

My husband often thinks that I should know how he feels or thinks about something....kind of an emotional common sense. Apparently I don't have that sort.

lol almost sounds like empathy (or telepathy, depending on how you look at it), although I can't imagine not having empathy to some degree.

The clearing statement is a good idea except that sometimes I don't even realize there is a situational factor that might effect how the task is done. Sometimes I think there might be and am not sure so in that case the clearing statement would be useful.

Yeah that really is ignorance to call it wasting time in over-analysing.....if you didn't "over-analyse" you would not have the social intuition or TOM or whatever the H E double hockey sticks it is that other people have to understand what you needed to do at all!

What we can infer from all this is that common sense is very contextual. For example, you may be working in a bureaucratic public organization with lots of processes and procedures that don't conform to common sense, and you may recognize this, but it doesn't mean that you should speak out about it BECAUSE the org culture silently prohibits it. That's the "emotional common sense" referred to earlier. Using ToM and seeing the bigger picture, one would infer that criticizing the apparent lack of common sense in your organization would piss people off b/c they would worry that their jobs would be made redundant (e.g. instead of having 5 people perform a certain process, you could do it with 2, and what have you).

Yeap same here. I think a lot of people want you to "read their mind".

Same for me, just change "obstinate" to "idiot."

BTW, while anyone who can't understand why I might do something a different way might be perplexed, it's usually other obsessive types types who seem to have a problem with it.

Common sense is not common.

People with autism don't pick up on, or have difficulty with non verbal communication, so often they don't interpret the message correctly, or take it too literally.

I'm reminded of this from a Red Dwarf episode:

I'm a programmer, and programming is basically breaking something down to a sequence of very basic steps. Computers aren't very smart at figuring out what you want them to do. However, give them the right instructions and they can outperform anyone.