Why are ASD people seen as arrogant?

Post Reply New Topic

LOL.....Good answers!

I didn't get back in time to give mine!

But there many times when the seemingly "correct" answer actually is incorrect for the situation. I've had to learn this over many years of making many glaring mistakes in this area.

I've read many syllogisms which seem "logical and correct" at first glance-----but which turn out to be fallacious in actuality.

Joke that relates to the above.

My girl friend tries on a new dress and asks me "does my bum look big in this",
I reply, "your bum looks big in everything, your bum is big.... boom boom!"
yep, this is the kind of joke that gets me into trouble not only with girl friend but
every woman on the planet...

but it is a kind of literal sense of humour that i think has some fun to it.
if only people weren't so serious and so politically correct to the extreme all the time
and learned to laugh at themselves more
then we all would get along a lot better, than if jumping on the hate campaign every time
anyone drops a clanger (especially when it comes to some of the odd aspies such as myself
who do not always gauge the best time to use such humour, which results in some very
unintentionally hilarious results!.... well at least to the onlookers, perhaps not so funny from the inside...

#1 - Common sense. "A happy wife means a happy life". Of course she's beautiful! Extra pounds? I hadn't noticed...

#2 - The better answer is to suggest that the boss send his son to management training seminars to bring him more "up to speed" on the latest management techniques. I would never suggest an unnecessary change in vendors as a smoke-screen, and I would never suck up when there is a personnel problem.

#3 - Men generally think in only 16 colors -- like an early DOS-based VGA monitor -- and while there may be a bazillion shades of green in the real world, it is all just "green" regardless of what some fancy-schmantzy decorator or fashionista may say.

It's exactly this "common sense" understanding about responding based upon expected social reaction as opposed to arguing purely within the boundaries of the conversation at hand that I did not understand until recently.

Learning how to manage these expectations correctly is the key to being persuasive and actually spreading your ideas to others successfully. If you engage their cognitive defensives because they perceive an "attack" on their identity, they will resist any attempts to persuade. The effort in communication gets lost, which is pointless. Why bother with pointless endeavors?


Very much enjoying this thread!

Uhh ... no ... I did not write that.

#1. That's exactly the point. You can be right in a 'common sense' way, even if you are technically not giving the most accurate factually correct answer possible.

#2 - I didn't intent to imply suggesting anything unnecessary. I meant to say, suggest something that will be helpful that will also not cause you any problems. The suggestion still has to be a good idea. The best idea from the perspective of overall efficiency in an objective sense might be to get the son to do better (or be replaced), but it is an unwise suggestion because it is more likely to hurt your situation than be taken seriously and addressed.

#3 - This is just supposed to illustrate how sometimes being too specific is unhelpful, even if it is technically more factually correct.

I am surprised that no one mentioned facial expressions and body gestures. People want you to be engaged and acted interested in what they are saying. When you do not respond properly(face, hands, body, voice, eyes, ...) they get upset and assume you are looking down at them.

Man it is hard when they are truly boring the crap out of me!

That may explain the times I warned people that the actions they were about to take would do them great bodily harm -- they may have thought my "poker-faced" delivery was just my way of joking with them.

I also think that when someone is too intense in a discussion and has bad "soft skills" then the other person will feel he is being antagonistic and his reflex will be to go on the defensive, it ceases to be a pleasurable experience for NT's. That's the difference between pure exchange of information and socializing.

Typical conversation while on duty at sea...

ME: "You are doing it wrong."

HE: "Sod off! I know what I'm doing!"

ME: "You may know what you are doing, but you are still doing it wrong."

HE: "Get lost! I got this!"

ME: "Fine. I'll be at the POOW desk. Call me when you need me."

[* Ten minutes later: sound of electrical arcing, shouting and cursing *]

ME: "What happened? Is anyone injured?"

HE: "You made me f**** it all up!"

ME: "I was not even here. How could I do that?"

HE: "Uhh ..."

ME: "Look, I literally wrote the manual on what you were doing. If you had read the manual and followed what it says you would not have screwed it up ... you did read the manual, didn't you?"

HE: "(... arrogant son of a ...)"

ME: "What was that, mister?"

HE: "Nothing, Petty Officer Fnord."

ME: "Good. Now clean this up and meet me in the Chief's office. You have some explaining to do..."

He had come from a duty station where he was used to giving orders. Suddenly, he had to take orders from someone who didn't give a damn about his fighting skills, his drinking capacity, or how many hookers he could sleep with at once. Just as suddenly, he had to prove himself withing the scope of his enlisted rate. Who was being arrogant and who was just doing his job?

Yeah....you do get this sort of thing on my job.

Damn if you do.....damn if you don't....unless you got the paper trail....

"Log Everything" is the Navy way. It works in the civilian world, too.

What "area" did you make these mistakes in? What were some of these mistakes? Can you give some concrete examples?

I think what you're trying to say is that there are times when speaking the truth or stating a logical deduction are frowned upon by social mores and interpreted poorly by most NTs. Regardless of your good intentions, it wasn't the "right time" to speak such truths, thus say the rules of social convention, and you were therefore scolded or judged to be deliberately being difficult, hence arrogant or an a**hole.

Didn't make those logical truths any less correct.

Am I on the right track here? You're saying you've learned to adjust your behavior to play nice with NTs. You're not really saying that 'things that seem logical really aren't true, I've had to learn this many times. This is such a common thing in my life.'

It doesn't seem fair that aspies have to perpetually pretend to be someone that is more "acceptable" in order to be accepted.

I have this image in my head of all of us having instruction handbooks of how to communicate effectively with us hanging round our necks. "Please read carefully before starting a conversation."

There are times when some one thing can be “correct” in one context...but “incorrect” a few minutes later.

It was pretty well established, in peoples’ minds, in the 1960s, that Pluto had a diameter of around 3,000 miles, and that it had no moon. Now, it is pretty well established that Pluto has a moon almost the size of Pluto itself, and that its diameter is circa 1,000 miles.

There are many instances where the “correct” choice for you might not be the “correct” choice for others.

Many of these instances involve ethics.

Thomas Malthus is correct, especially at first glance, in his theories of population; his solutions are unpalatable to many, though...and moreover, are not correct when the “big picture” is considered.