Why do many NTs over-simplify so much?

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They don't really believe it is the answer. They don't know the answer, because there is no one simple answer, and they damn well know it. Life is just too complex and uncertain for that. But to avoid those feelings of doubt and uncertainty, they tell themselves something simple that feels good. It's an emotional thing.

Yes. it's one thing if they just say they don't really have any advice other than just keep trying. I don't mind that so much because they aren't actually telling me that it's a solution. But it seems 99 percent of the time, they think that if I'd just put more effort in then it would solve all my problems.

And I know I'm not paranoid about it, because I have asked them before, "So you think I'm just being lazy and not trying hard enough?" and they say yes, or avoid the question.

I guess I just look that way to others but I don't know what it is that I'm doing to look lazy.

Yes I'll back the hypothesis already stated by another poster, we NTs (yes I'm one) tend to rely on cognitive short cuts or heuristics. In comparison to aspies and auties who compulsively analyse their environments or information presented to them, we NTs tend to gloss over details and deal with big picture stuff.

Sometimes this is cogitive laziness on our part, we tend to focus on big picture stuff and jumping from one thing to another in our busy world trying to be busy bees.

Looking for the 'right' answers would take too long, and a simple answer that give us an answer we like feels better

"Try harder", "put in an extra effort" etc. are statements that mentally drive me up the wall. They are an indication of complete ignorance, made by people whose only special interest is social compliance.

You could nearly use these statements as a test to determine who is neurotypical. I would never utter such statements. They only make sense to people who are not intrinsically motivated, and who react positively to extrinsic motivation. My default assumption is that people, especially aspies, already do whatever they can do.

I find that I do solve more problems what I put in eggstra effort.
The problems that I need to solve are usually verry merry berry hard, and not solved before, so I need to ramp up to the next level of brain function and task eggsecution to make small progress in them.
I have a problem that I have been trying to solve since July, but so far, I haven't solved it yet.
However, I believe that I can solve this problem one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, and this belief in me being able to solve this problem drives me to continue working on this problem, trying different angles, in search of a definitive solution.

I know this question was for OP, but I have a view on that so... What's wrong with it is that if you can't do it, no amount of trying is gonna make any difference.
I've always struggled with math and the harder the math got, the more I lagged behind. In high school I had such holes in my understanding of math that I had no hope of getting through it. In the last high school I went to I was really motivated and I tried my absolute best. I read in the math text book at home trying to understand the stuff we went through in school and I tried to do the tasks but I just wasn't able to. I didn't have the faintest idea how to solve them. To use an expression we have here: I could stand on my head and crap at an angle, but I still wouldn't be able to do those math tasks.

And of course the same would be true for anything else a person isn't able to do as well.



Yeah, that would actually be as close to a perfect test as could ever be (short of a brain scan).

Most of the Aspies you've ever met are online in message boards. A place where analytical people are known to gravitate towards. A great deal of that Aspie community is of average intelligence and suffers from the same behaviors you've observed in NTs. To futher elaborate, only 3% of ASD individuals have IQs above 115, 28% have average IQ[1], we'll exclude the rest. If we compared the top 3% of ASD individuals to the top 3% of NTs, you'd be astounded at the analytical capabilities of the NT community.

I believe in the idea that one can overcome their natural limits. It takes an almost insurmountable amount of effort and creativity but it's well within the realm of possibility. That doesn't make it a plausible outcome. I'm also not sure everyone is endowed with that ability as it has a requisite amount of cleverness.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21272389 [1]

Most of the NTs I know are overanalyzers.
I found that believing in oneself being able to do things and keep trying/trying hard is not autistic vs. neurotypical thing, but personality thing found in both populations.
One of the lessons I have learned over the past several years is that a lot of things in life are simple, if I go ahead and try to do them instead of psyching myself out before I tried anything.

Maybe the reason I find it so offensive is because their definition of trying is different than mine. I see it as an on/off switch; either you are trying or you are not, there's no in between. So saying "try harder" to me is like saying, "The problem is that you are not trying. You are just being lazy." I don't know what meaning it has to them if that isn't it, but apparently it's something that is beyond my ability to understand. I look for the most effective solution to problems by discovering/eliminating options, and "try harder" isn't a solution, so it doesn't help me.

This advice can be damaging. If you are asked to "try harder" to do something you are unable to psychically or mentally do instead of helping your self confidence it will hurt your self confidence.
The advice is given with the expectation that you will succeed in doing something you thought you could not do more often then you will fail thus overall increasing confidence. In the case of NT's giving this advice to Autistics to try harder to be more NT like we will 1. fail 2. Accomplish what was asked of us but the process will be slow, uncomfortable, and exhausting more often the unexpected success. We see the results here in so many members being miserable, depressed, and suicidal.

http://whyifailedinamerica1.wordpress.c ... /attitude/

Here is an incident that happened in my life. Btbnnyr, for me it wouldn't been so much better if people would've sat down with me and analyzed with me what I was doing wrong when switching lanes. Instead of telling me what I needed to do in specific terms I received the same thing the OP did. For me, it would've been far more useful to go into the step by step of switching lanes instead of focusing on my attitude. It wasn't my lack of confidence or negativity that caused me to have problems with switching lanes and driving. I was lacking a key piece of information? Guess what Btbnnyr? My attitude turned positive and confidence soared because of the concrete and specific instruction.

I think you're right though. I think personality may play a factor.

Yes, this is what I was trying to say. They think I have a defeated attitude, and that it's all in my head, but that isn't the truth. They tell me to try harder, I do my absolute best, and still fail. And they keep telling me to try again and I keep failing, but they won't listen when I say I think I need a different approach.

One example has been getting schoolwork done using a planner. My dad would insist that if I just made a schedule and wrote everything down it would work. It made sense, except that whenever I tried making a schedule, I would get extremely overwhelmed and stressed by it, and would spend hours making it right. I would try to keep track of things and I would always miss something, and because I was counting on getting everything scheduled, when that happened I would flip out and hit myself on the head (now I know that's called a meltdown).

That is why I don't like scheduling. But my dad wouldn't listen, he seemed to think I was just choosing to be overly frustrated about it, and just told me to keep trying. That is the main reason I failed at college, there was too much to keep track of and I was constantly stressed, and I ended up totally shutting down for the last couple of months. But for some reason they don't see this as a sign of a problem out of my direct control, because they still ask me, "So do you think if you went back you could just do it this time?"

L. Holmes, I know where you're coming from. You're sitting down trying to figure out how to make and plan the plan for hours. This is why scheduling does not work for me either.

Yep. This kind of thing really frustrates me. I mean not with driving a car, but other things.


I don't know how anyone can see the 'big pic' if they're too busy to look at details ~ if I looked at them so fleetingly, & then (based on the little I'd seen) made decisions that would impact their life I know they wouldn't like it. That 'busy busy' ness makes doctors miss symptoms, teachers withhold the relevance of what they're teaching, and politicians unable to rid the world of poverty. # Giving that pic a little depth... I love dub and salsa (coz their rhythm literally takes my mind off bad stuff), but, unlike at dub venues, people at salsa venues expect you to be able to dance with a partner, so I went salsa classes. But (getting to the point) I often get my left and right mixed up, and I get really disorientated if I'm spun more than twice ...so I couldn't lead, and could only dance with a lead that wouldn't get carried away doing turns. That I am otherwise putty in the hands of a [consistant] lead 'made' the instructor believe I could teach ~ despite my being totally lost if my dance partner broke contact during our routine! Then, 'because' I helped someone with two left feet figure out how to do a particular step, the instructor said I should at least help her with some of her classes ...until I'm confident enough to teach by myself! The more I explained my physical limitations the more she 'concluded' I was "afraid of success". Truth is she wasn't listening to me (and / or didn't believe me), but when I said that to her she got offended; she had 'put alot of effort into improving my skills and that work was going to be wasted if I didn't change my attitude' ~ truth is, she was such a subtle but effective lead that she made me look better at dancing than I am. And she didn't want to admit that she should have chosen someone else to be her project ...someone who could lead. I wouldn't have minded staying in her classes to help other dyspraxics, but my instructor could never appreciate that because she was unable / unwilling to get to know me. # Unable to tolerate alcohol gases, I've long since stopped going to clubs (got tipsy at a poetry reading once because other people were drinking wine! & that wasn't a good thing coz the 'come down' was awful), but loved ones are free to take the lead, at home, when I'm in a salsa mood ...coz it's one of the few 'social' activities I really enjoy! # End note: I think that at least some of the people who insist "anyone can do anything" are just trying to convince themselves of that ...so they can cope with the competitive (elitist / prejudiced) environment which often actively excludes 'feeble' / 'lazy' / 'hopeless' people...because deep down they know no-one's perfect and they're scared of being found out. That might even be why some people prefer to cuss you for not knowing how to do something than admit that they don't know how to help you.