Real empathy or hypocrisy?

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- Because their way of thinking is different to ours, we can have trouble working out how their minds work. This is known as lack of empathy.

- Because our way of thinking is different to theirs, they can have trouble working out how our minds work. This is also lack of empathy.

The above mirror-image is well known as the "double empathy problem".
The following pair, however, seem rather less symmetrical; some might even say hypocritical...

- When we behave in ways which they don't understand, they should be tolerant because our way of thinking is "different".

- When they behave in ways which we don't understand, we should always assume that they are up to something.

Some people are malicious, I have no doubt about that; but assuming so by default is merely prejudice, whoever is doing it. And it's not generally a good move if you want to convince them to treat us better. Rather ironically, not being able to see this could itself be described as a lack of empathy.

It doesn't matter who the them and us are - the argument is still the same.

The main reason that there seems to be such an imbalance is simply because autistic people have more contact with non-autistic people than the other way around; by a huge margin. If 95% of people are non-autistic, then it stands to reason that 95% of the nasty people you know will also be non-autistic, all other things being equal. We don't get any choice than to be immersed in a mostly non-autistic world, but our world is a complete mystery to most people. Maybe the diagnostic manuals for autism should include; "difficult for non-autistic people to empathise with."

That's what I meant by hyperfocus. In my case it weren't methodology, order and procedure, it were patterns - mental patterns that help me understand the situation and make the best decisions. That's my mind, I'm an abstract pattern thinker.
But generally yes, an Aspie can be so focused on mechanical / procedural aspects of the situation that the emotional load is hardly noticeable to them.


Definitely yes!