The NT Has No Clothes

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Coming soon to a home near your.

The NT in the Living Room.

( With apologies to all the Elephants in the room.

Yes, making the implicit rules explicit exposes the hypocrisy of some the the official rules. Writing and talking about the things that can't be mentioned can improve the playing field for minorities in general, not limited to autistics.

There are quite a number of social activists who are actively de-constructing the myths keep established institutions and cultural norms in power. Just don't expect these change agents to receive much coverage in mainstream media.

Anyone who is working in an educational setting has a huge opportunity, and I would argue responsibility, to create and propagate an active culture of thinking (excellent book: http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle ... 74603.html), and to go beyond teaching the mix of facts and myths prescribed in standard curricula.

I am not a professional teacher or educator, but I am collaborating with universities, using a combination of lectures and workshops to cover tools for critical thinking, as well as examples of how these tools can be applied to transform organisations and their services to minimise social and economic "externalities".

On the one hand, the world is getting better every year.
On the other hand, everything is going to end.

Unfortunately, I have no idea if our delusions now are going to interfere with developing a solution to the end. If there is no solution, i don't mind all the delusion.

I don't understand this post. What do you mean?

The OP is discussing a perception of reality where they see great ugliness in humanity, and went on at length about neurotypical delusions. I somewhat disagree in the sense that the world as a whole is improving (by my standards of improvement), albeit slower than I would like. But these successes are overshadowed by the heat death of the universe looming in the future.

I do not know if there is a way to escape this heat death. But if there is not, I do not mind neurotypicals having their delusions.

Oh OK I get it now, thanks.

I don't think too much about the end of the universe but sometimes consider the end of our world or the beginning of new ones, a fate much much closer to us in time than heat death. SStill, we have so many more immediate and pressing concerns to focus much on these concepts. I agree that it helps to think about all the ways our world is improving.

I'm much more worried about the survival of our species during the lifetime of Earth (not looking good)-- solve the first problem first.

No problem!

Yeah, sometimes I get caught up in the 'the world could end at any moment' thing, but you are absolutely right that we have so many other hurdles to overcome before we even get to some of the future ones. I get really bummed sometimes that I will probably not live long enough for us to develop uploading our consciousness into computers, but I am glad that we will have that opportunity in a handful of generations.

Uploading our consciousness, hmm... I imagine that would change our perceptions, illusions, delusions, everything, more than we could imagine. We're so used to our physiological emotions and sensations. I wonder what we, as individuals and as societies, would do without them. Would we still have all these diverse ways of thinking and communicating? Would we start socializing and making decisions based on pure intelligence? Would we do very little, due to the loss of motivation? Would we create some means of preserving these emotions and sensations? And if we did that, would we modify ourselves so that we didn't have mental health disorders anymore? I know, too many questions, but as a sci fi fan, I couldn't resist.

Yes, I do find them hypocritical but I also accept that it's been my choice to be with them. I think some are worse than others. I just seem to be attracted or I attract this kind. One of the problems I see is that perhaps an Aspie may not see that the NT is not genuine until the NT has used abused and betrayed their Aspie associate. If you assume House MD is an Aspie then you can see NT's showing their contempt while House seems unaware, or is used to it. Go figure!

I feel a temptation towards humour.


I think it would be wrong to fire the person. They have a Neurological condition which is a pervasive developmental disorder. They are a person with neurotipicality, which is sometimes called Xenotistic Spectrum Disorder. It is I.important to explore what could be done in the area of reasonable adjustment or some extra support.. ABA might help them, little key phrases like "Quiet Mouths" or STFU to discourage the random vocalising which make other people annoyed. Perhaps some patient coaching around a special interest he could take up to divert attention from excessive socialising which is reinforcing his Xenotism. Perhaps his brain works too quickly. There are therapies available privately using a controlled dosage with heavy metals like mercury which could help.

Sorry if I am intruding in another branch of this discussion, but I was struck today by the accuracy of certain observations in Androbot's op and Fnord's 3 points, because the NT behaviors they describe match recent events in my life.

I think it comes down to this:

Neurotypical people perceive social cues that create a conceptual layer around their interactions that reflects things like rank, dominance, authority, success, etc. When they hear another person talking they evaluate the content of the speech based on the information in that social conceptual layer.

People with autism are perfectly well aware of those social factors as concepts, but don't necessarily perceive them directly and don't observe social interactions or hear speech through that social conceptual layer, or if they do perceive it, may perceive a much weaker version than that perceived by NTs.

So, if you are in a meeting with someone who has a certain title and they say something that doesn't make sense, then you don't assume that it really does make sense just because the speaker has a certain degree, position or is perceived as a celebrity or success, etc.

When the autistic person violates the social expectations of people who are immersed in that social conceptual layer, it's can be seen as anything from awkward (at best) up to a very serious violation of social rules akin to public lewdness, inappropriate nudity, etc.

In certain situations, the shared social conceptual layer that neurotypical people experience makes them support "conventions" that fly in the face of reality. A rich and powerful person may be excused for minor criminal behavior or sexual misconduct, for example, because of "who they are."

An autistic person may be less susceptible to "going along" with the conventional view because they don't share that conceptual layer. This is the case where deficits in social communication may seem like an enhanced ability to perceive reality.

I suspect that while some autistic people may be susceptible to manipulation through promises of social acceptance, autistic people are generally less susceptible to "peer pressure" than neurotypical people.

This might not be true, but it seems logical to me and would explain some difficulty I am having communicating with the child study team and various special ed people at my kid's school.

Well, I've been trying to avoid going back to read my op for fear that I was incoherently ranting, but I stand by what I wrote; maybe with a little less anger.

One thing Fnord wrote strikes me:

I really think he is right about this. Image or "shortcuts" seem to be more important than substance and I still find it frustrating.


Care to share the details?

For some people on the autism spectrum this might be true, but how about the very-high functioning ones that have been quite successful at imitating neurotypics for most of their lifes? Wouldnt they be more likely to go after appearance, because they feel in any case not very authentic, or have more interest in protecting their image, because it differs much more from how they would normally behave? Or wouldnt their rule-based thinking, their need for compensating a minority complex, their unawareness of the harm done to others make them clinging much more to what you call the social conceptual layer?



From my experience I would assume that people in a "child study team and various special ed people" are on the spectrum rather than not. I mean who is studying psychology or pedagogy or gets particularly interested in children with sepcial needs, and for which reasons?

I will be deliberately vague about the details, because I don't think would be ethical to share my kid's personal business with the world. If they want to do that when they are adults, that will be their choice to make. I don't like the parent bloggers who expose every intimate detail of their lives with their children when their children are too young to give meaningful consent to such exposure.

There was a problem at school. Various people involved in providing special ed/inclusion services proposed a solution that did not make sense to me. Let's say if the problem was a broken left femur (thigh bone), the proposed solution was a cast and sling for the right radius (part of the forearm). I explained to the gathered team that this did not seem to be a solution to the problem and it was implied that I should just consent to the bad solution because it was proposed by someone who had a PhD and someone who ran a program to provide services to special needs kids.

I am entirely ready to hear a reason why this proposed solution is appropriate, despite it's total lack of apparent connection to the problem, but their titles, certificates and positions do not, to me, constitute such a reason.

I think they are surprised by my focus on the issue and indifference to the displays of authority and achievement that they think should entitle them to a presumption of correctness or infallibility. Maybe something else is going on that I don't understand, but they seem quite surprised that I am really focused on the actual problem and a relevant solution when they have assured me that irrelevant solutions will somehow "help."

I'm sorry I can't put it more plainly, but I think that conveys the relevant gist.

I think I am such a person, but I think one of the areas I have never been able to compensate for is not seeing some of the things that most people see. So I say things that are not properly politically calculated or socially appropriate. In fact, I know there is whole world of office politics in which I am a non-player. I am only dimly aware of it. I deal with it by trying to stick to things which I know are technically correct and useful to my superiors. \

In some ways, I don't feel very authentic, because I have been trying to lie low and not draw too much attention all my life--but that doesn't mean I can properly respond to the subtle social stuff that most people are exchanging all the time. I can't go after the appearance I don't see or protect my image when I am not very aware of the image I have. I know others don't see me as I see myself, but I don't know what they do see. Sometimes I get a clue about this from things they let slip and that can be an unpleasant experience.

I am not sure if I am explaining this well or clearly.



I am 80+% confident that one person who worked with my kids in middle school was on the spectrum. Once I had learned about it, and the person who first recognized it in me explained what she saw in the other autistic people at work that made it apparent to her, I think I got pretty good at recognizing autistic traits in others.

I am fairly confident that the school administrator, child psychologist and independently contracted specialists from a business designed to profit by providing "innovative clinical programs for districts seeking to reduce costs while increasing the quality of their in-district education for students with emotional and behavioral problems." are not autistic.

It's possible that the school psychiatrist is, but I don't see it. In any case, he seems to be accustomed to deploying his degrees in lieu of explanation or justification for the steps he recommends and seems surprised by my disinterest in those credentials and focus on the specifics of the proposed steps.

Since my kids were diagnosed and then I was diagnosed, I have been surprised by how little in the way of specialized training for autism most of the therapists and psychiatrists I have encountered actually have. There are things that I would have thought were common knowledge among such professionals that they seem wholly ignorant of.

It may be that their ignorance is feigned and part of a "parent handling" technique they learn as a way of managing the families of their patients/clients, but their approach seems to be based in social levers that don't transfer pressure to me: things are implied or insinuated and so I ask them to be specific and clear and they are taken aback. I don't change my approach when people talk about their credentials, and again they seem taken aback.

My hypothesis is that the reason they are surprised is that they don't understand autistic people and the reason their mode of communication or manipulation is not very effective is that it's based in neurotypical perception and response. Perhaps this is wrong, but there must be something to account for the difficulty we have had.

You are supposed to "put yourself in their shoes" to understand this kind of thing, but it doesn't work for me. When I imagine myself in their position, I would behave completely differently. If a parent questioned my proposed interventions for a specific need of a student, I would explain the reasoning behind the intervention, not talk about my credentials. If the parent provided good evidence that the proposed intervention was unlikely to achieve the desired result, I would propose a new intervention based on that information.

I don't understand why someone in that position would be in anyway disturbed that a parent had questioned their proposal. This maybe "theory of mind" stuff. I do have a hard time seeing that other people won't eventually see things as I do. I do think my perspective is somehow natural and should be shared by most others. I know that's not actually the case, but it "feels right" to me. Perhaps that is also part of the problem.