Are people with autism borderline sociopaths?

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Surely some research group has lots of real data on lots of different thinking and that test? Or is all that they know.
NT - cup not intentional, dollar intentional,
AS - both not intentional?

It was an odd result, they're looking for more. It's part of a whole set of questions designed to test not autism but judging of intentions. They have a lot of theories that I think are mostly half-arsed and won't make sense until you integrate the autism stuff. I guessed bpd would be largely 'neither intentional' too but no one is officially testing that, afaik. Everyone has different ideas about why it works. I would be interested in any speculation.

One thing I found interesting in discussions about that problem here on Wrong Planet:

Many autistic people got into discussing why NTs and Aspies might have different interpretations. Some of the NTs who discussed this simply said that any interpretation other than "unintentionally got the cup, intentionally spent the extra dollar" could not be logical.

Clearly its more interesting to debate the different interpretations, and its simply poor thinking to simply say "unintentionally got the cup, intentionally spent the extra dollar" is the logical answer.

But I have to say that mine is the 100% the NT response. Its fascinating. I look at it again and again and I can not truly commit to an alternative to the NT logic. Then at least I do know its flawed not to explore the reasoning from Aspie brains that are generally seen as being more innately driven by logic. Heads gonna explode. Its too weird.

If you're interested, there's a decent discussion about it here: http://www.metafilter.com/76283/Go-ahea ... u-an-Aspie

I think aspies allow the question to frame the scenario whereas NTs use their social assumptions. Sort of like "Since the question of intentionally paying an extra dollar was asked it must have meaning, both answers must be possible, so how can he unintentionally pay extra? Well, if that was never his original intention." That is, we see into the mind of the storyteller, not the characters in the story. I'm not sure if that fits my more ambitious hypothesis but I'm confident it's what's happening.

I can't tell you how annoyed this thing got me. And I still don't know how it works! Need to test other groups of people starting with bpds and sociopaths.

Why can't he unintentionally pay extra? He said he doesn't care how much it cost, so he doesn't care and it wasn't any more intentional than getting the cup.

I agree, but pastafarian sees him paying an extra dollar and can't see how that's not something he's doing intentionally. And it turns out most NTs see it that way. Interesting, isn't it? It's off-topic, except that I can't let it go until I've solved it, and I would like to test sociopaths.

Okay. I didn't mean to overgeneralize. It is probably those with sub-clinical narcissism who have a talent that are more likely to actually be successful. It might give them a competitive drive. The need to see themselves as better than others and worthy of admiration and that may make them extremely driven, even if they aren't genuinely liked by anyone. So it's not strictly a negative. People are willing to put up with a**holes to a degree if they manage to have some useful talent.

However if the NPD traits are so severe that they're intensely disliked by almost everyone they're probably not going to get as far in life. They might even self-destruct and go neurotic if they can't get the narcissistic supply they crave. I can see people like that as sad cases. They're unlikely to get much sympathy even if they're wounded animals deep down. That makes them pretty of isolated in their issues.


Yea, the successful ones must have enough restraint to not sabotage themselves early on. But then there are people like Bernie Madoff who you wouldn't automatically detect.



I guess the thing that stands out about BPD is that it is more of an emotional disorder. It's associated with over-reactive emotions. It also varies with time and can disappear almost completely at an older age. It's not as permanent as the term "personality disorder" would suggest. It may be have some genetic predisposition but is also triggered by stress or trauma.

I was diagnosed PDD-NOS at the age of 5. At that age I may very well have lacked cognitive empathy appropriate for my age level. I don't have access to any psychological evaluations from way back then though so who knows. I was always verbal but I had pretty severe sensory complaints, was an incredibly picky eater, didn't make a lot of eye contact, etc...

I'm not convinced cognitive empathy is not partly a learned intellectual ability rather than an entirely innate ability. I think self-insight and imagination / meta-mimicry are what it mostly comes down to. If you have access to your own range of possible emotions and motives and can abstract them to a hypothetical situation, then you can have cognitive empathy. Don't know if this makes sense to you...

It's possible that this skill doesn't kick in as automatically with people on the autism spectrum because we aren't able to divide our attention between self and other in real-time. I know when I'm talking to someone I'm more likely to be focusing on my own thoughts. But that doesn't mean I can't piece things together in hindsight.


Yea. I feel the same way and it does bother me to feel so cynical. It probably sounds self-absorbed but being more intelligent than average is like a double curse on top of whatever social difficulties I already have due to my ASD. It adds a whole new layer of alienation. It seems like intelligent NTs are able to deal with this. It seems like they don't need to be on the same level as other people to have meaningful relationships.

I don't think I can really use my intellect to manipulate people though. I lack the spontaneity and acting ability. In order to manipulate people you need to be able to entertain them and lavish them with attention. I'm just too clumsy at conversation to do this. It's almost like I'm processing things too quickly and then getting lost in my own thoughts that fill the space. I find that my mind is always racing way ahead or I'm thinking off in tangents, then I have to stop and recalibrate before I can even respond. This makes for all kinds of awkward silences and lost opportunities to say what I really wanted to say. I always turn out being the passive one with the other person controlling the conversation.

If I could manipulate anyone it would have to be in a more cold and calculating way.

I'm pretty depressive most of the time. That might be part of my problem. It's hard for me to be socially warm. I reserve hugs for family.


I agree. The world is never black-and-white. Sometimes you have to do things for yourself and push the boundaries. Even rather innocent lying can be dangerous though if it erodes trust. The justification that what someone doesn't know can't hurt them doesn't always sit well with me.

That's psychopath style. It works but it's crude and takes a lot of energy, you don't want to drop the facade. BPD style might be more accessible for us, it's more like counterpunching, you just read people and give them what they want - or better yet what they need. They come back for more because nobody else understands them. I've always been good at realtime riding of psychic pressure waves, conversationally, probably because I assume that people should be grateful to talk to me. It takes me completely out of my head, I can do witty banter without thinking about it. I really believe we can all do this when distracted from ourselves.

Read the cup question posted by fraac. Both were unintentional in my opinion. I don't really understand how he intentionally paid an extra dollar more on the second question considering that was the new pricing with no room to bargain as if there were another choice.
hmmm...I think I could see why someone would think of it an intentional. (edited to add)

This is the same person in both hypothetical situations though and he really likes the biggest size regardless of what it is. That is why I find questions like this confusing. The second paragraph, if it had more stakes involved rather than a new set pricing of an additional price such as "It is an additional dollar for 30 minutes and then it goes back to it's original price" then I would have concluded intentional.

My idea, which fits the other thought experiments they posed (can link if you're interested), was that if your values are challenged then you project yourself into the situation and say it was intentional. So it would be intentional if he had to pay $50 or if he had to fight someone to win the drink - if those were things you cared about. That led me to think that NT 'Theory of Mind' is just a particular value system, one that applies in all situations involving people, so they project themselves into the scenario and discern intentionality. (The free cup is still incidental so not intentional to anyone.) It looks a lot like the pre-conscious group identity stuff I go on about, that autistics can access with oxytocin. When you see 'theory of mind' as a chemically induced optical illusion it's notable that a lot of the mysteries cancel each other out.

Your analysis makes sense.

"both my intent and the research itself were badly misinterpreted"--of course.

You simply can't be taken seriously.

I more or less agree with what marshall wrote.

Simplified, over the years my understanding went from "my environment is inhabited by loud, unpredictable things I ignore when I feel like it" to "they're humans like me" and eventually arrived at "they're people whose opinions and emotions usually follow very predictable patterns that - ironically - most of them don't even seem to be aware of".

Verdandi has a lot of useful and legitimate information to contribute, and members do take her quite seriously. on the other hand, someone who seems to have a strange tendency to seek out her posts to nip at her heels and target her on a personal level (as opposed to intellectually addressing her points) is taken a lot less seriously.