Are NTs illogical? Or do they use different logic to us?

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JimJohn
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30 Dec 2022, 11:51 am

Elgee wrote:

Autistic people can be illogical or "irrational," too, simply because, like NTs, they are human. However, I'd like to believe that a much higher PERCENTAGE of irrational thinking occurs in NTs than in Autistics.

I know a man with a clinical ASD diagnosis who is very illogical in that he's gone wokers.

He gets offended if one's ideology doesn't match HIS overly woke agenda.

He got offended when I innocently commented, "Rory is a boy's name." My intent was to follow that up with saying that my grand-niece's name is Rory, and I was then going to tell the story of how I asked my nephew why he and his wife didn't use an alternate spelling to indicate it's a girl such as Rorie or Rorri. Very innocent expression of my special interest (name spellings).

But right after I said, "Rory is a boy's name," this man jumped in and angrily declared, "We do NOT talk about anything gender exclusive here!"

This was a social meeting for autistic adults, and he was the head organizer with the ability to delete me from the group! Nevertheless, I took my chance and fired back, "This isn't about gender! It's a fact. Just like Joseph is a boy's name. William is a boy's name." I said a few more things.

Later in an email he told me he almost removed me as an assistant organizer (and he eventually did anyways!).

When I said, "Rory is a boy's name," I meant that the vast majority of people with this name are male. This is fact, not opinion.

What I think the man thought I meant was that I didn't approve of Rory as a girl's name (which is not true at all). Thus, he lacked logic and reacted emotionally.

However, he was also offended when I said "Joseph is a boy's name." Again, this is fact. Find one single WOMAN named Joseph.

Now, if I had said, "Jordan is a boy's name," this would not be factual, because it seems that it's split 50/50 among males and females. Same with "Taylor."

He totally missed my point. I'll bet he'd get offended if he overhead a woman telling a friend, "I'm pregnant; it's a girl; I want to give her a traditionally feminine name like Rose, but my husband wants to give her a masculine name like Hunter."

Autistics can be very set in their way of thinking, and hence, not be open-minded to hearing differing views. There was another autistic man who literally asked me for advice about his living situation (he was 28 and still living with his parents). I gave him the solicited advice. He got mad and accused me of wanting to antagonize him. I pointed out, "You ASKED for my advice and I GAVE it, and now you're accusing me of antagonizing you!" This didn't sink in and he continued his accusation.

It boils down to being HUMAN. Though we are the smartest animal on earth, we are also the most illogical and dumbest. We're smarter than rats and butterflies, but I can't think of a single stupid, illogical thing that rats and butterflies do.

How about moths? I liked your post and read all of it. I also gave some thought to stupid things rats and butterflies do. Some of it I realized could be based on perspective.

I know insects can get tricked by instincts. Some people even argue that people don’t make conscious decisions.

I don’t think there is much getting past the perspective argument.

But ….it is hard to argue that bugs bumping into a light at night or moths flying into a flame does not appear stupid to a human.

naturalplastic
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30 Dec 2022, 12:02 pm

Moths navigate at night by star light.

So they arent really being 'irrational' if they mistake a manmade light (flame or electric) for a star, and fly in circles around it.

Or...maybe you could say it IS 'irrational' in the same way that human instincts can 'misfire' and cause us to do dumb things.

techstepgenr8tion
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30 Dec 2022, 12:13 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

Or...maybe you could say it IS 'irrational' in the same way that human instincts can 'misfire' and cause us to do dumb things.

What I find so interesting - a big part of how people were previously diagnosed with Asperger's (while it existed) was not having accurate 'theory of mind' developed.

I don't know what else to call assumed ability for laypeople (outside an industry) to know customer from vendor working at customer's store other than failed theory of mind. The only dichotomy I can think of it is that it might be a failure in the reductionist direction if someone is on the spectrum and a failure in the schizotypal direction if they're NT? Otherwise I don't see a big difference.

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30 Dec 2022, 12:29 pm

Horses return to a burning barn. Some dogs mourn their owners until they die, as do some humans. Sage grouse completely ignore predators during the mating dance. Beaver looking for a new pond are oblivious to everything else, more or less in a state of shock when not near water. However, they can maintain a straight course, something almost impossible for people without a guiding feature in sight.
Some swallows built a nest on a vehicle, and watched it get moved with their nestlings. They then spent several hours flying the old route home before learning the new one. When a tree was being removed, it was done by taking off the smaller branches first. The crew took a break, and watched a squirrel make a dash for the tree. It raced up the trunk and straight off the end of a cut branch.
I have a chunk of wood about 4" or 10 cm in diameter and twice as long that was cut at both ends by a Beaver, for no practical end, although it may have been practice, like the little dams the kits make.

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30 Dec 2022, 12:35 pm

Perception can also be tricky - we see what we expect to see more than we look afresh. However, there is also a problem with just what we are willing to see. I think that for a frightening number of people, the highest truth is not the one that can be proven in a lab, but the story that brings the most happiness to their social circle. One incident that really brought that home to me was a woman on the Maury Povich show insisting that her brown babies had come from a white couple, despite her husband's willingness to accept them, right up to the DNA test results. She seemed to have an instinct giving her the authority to designate a father.

JimJohn
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30 Dec 2022, 12:49 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

Some people could argue that it happens no other way. Supposedly, humans only backward rationalize that they make conscious decisions. I am sure you have heard of the experiments where they compare reaction times to brain waves, etc….

I never quite understood how moths are navigating by star light or moonlight. They aren’t flying straight up into the stratosphere. I can see some other possibilities. This will show my ignorance but their following something like a lunar calendar makes better sense to me but I doubt that as well. They are equally unfathomable to me.

Supposedly birds are using light invisible to humans for navigation.

What turtles are purported to do is quite unfathomable. They say turtles learn migration patterns in their small part of a forest and not to move them or they will lost. How far can they see? Surely, their perspective is tree trunks, blades of grass and pebbles. In this example I am thinking of box turtles.

My confusion with that is the fact that the forest changes. Every 20 years humans cut the forest down for lumber and nature does similar things to it.

Water turtles do similar things moving from mud hole to mud hole, stream to river, etc…. I think it is easy to give a half baked explanation of what they are doing but personally I don’t understand it fully and I am not sure if other people do either. Obviously, the majority don’t.

naturalplastic
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30 Dec 2022, 12:58 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

Or...maybe you could say it IS 'irrational' in the same way that human instincts can 'misfire' and cause us to do dumb things.

In other words you're saying that we on the autism spectrum are supposed to 'lack empathy/theory of mind'. And yet in my anectdote - I am the one showing 'empathy' and TOM. And my NT supervisor, and her cadre of loyalists are demonstrating a shocking absence of TOM. They cant get into the 'heads' of customers and realize that the customer is just like they themslves were prior to when they themselves got hired by the company. Yet I do just that. Yeah. Tell me about it. Have thought about that very irony many times! Lol!

And in reply to your above reply. Her minions are being less rational than you suggest. Fearing her as a 'meal ticket' would be ...kinda rational- if she were a high level salaried manager. But she is not a high enough level supervisor to inspire that kind of fear. Its more that she manipulates them to share her hatred of customers, and they all buy into this group accepted reality -that to me makes no sense.

In fact one young lady responded to her statement about wanting to sass customers by saying "they can see that we are all talking about inventory".

This second lady (a)assumes that we are always in earshot of customers, and (b) she expects customers to stand there evesdropping on us for minutes on end to ascertain what we are talking about, before they talk to us and (c) has the delusional belief that store associates never talk about inventory (some stores still do their own inventory, and the rest need to prep for outsiders to do it). So she managed to cram three forms of abject stupidity into one single beath of air! Amazing achievement! :lol:

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30 Dec 2022, 1:01 pm

okay thats twice in three weeks my post has disappeared.. so much for trying to make helpful contributions .?????.

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naturalplastic
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30 Dec 2022, 1:03 pm

@Jim John

If you're a moth - you keep the star on (say) your left side - in order to fly in a straight line (east to west or whatever).

A star is almost infinite lightyears away so its angle to you wont change if you fly in a straight line. So if it stays at the same angle to your eye you will go straight.

But if the 'star' is really a man made streetlamp only feet away then - if you keep it in your left field of view - you will end up going in circles around it. Thats what happens.

JimJohn
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30 Dec 2022, 1:08 pm

Dear_one wrote:

I think you may be able to chalk a dog mourning their owners until they die up to some other things like habit and inability to adjust or being faithful and attached to only one human.

Supposedly, some of dog’s inabilities include comparisons such as today is worse than yesterday. Personally, I don’t think they worry about death. I don’t doubt that I could be wrong. I do however observe that everyone that has ever owned a dog and their brother has expert opinions on dogs.

I liked all of your examples.

techstepgenr8tion
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30 Dec 2022, 1:12 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

And in reply to your above reply. Her minions are being less rational than you suggest. Fearing her as a 'meal ticket' would be ...kinda rational- if she were a high level salaried manager. But she is not a high enough level supervisor to inspire that kind of fear. Its more that she manipulates them to share her hatred of customers, and they all buy into this group accepted reality -that to me makes no sense.

In fact one young lady responded to her statement about wanting to sass customers by saying "they can see that we are all talking about inventory".

The darkest sense I've had of NT culture, and I normally don't say it this way because I get hammered for both being 'negative' and connecting too many dots without warrant, is that they almost seem to see thinking from first principles or thinking clearly or rationally as a sign that you had the 'bully' beaten out of you, which means it's a sign of high status to be crazy and inflicting crazy on the world (because you're bending reality and people to your will through power) while at the same time anyone whose rational for its own sake shows signs of being an exile, a loser, someone who was either unpopular in high school or had something bad happen to them somewhere along the way, but that rationality effectively subs in for lesser, weaker, inferior genes, etc..

I actually can't help but think of that as well when I'm dealing with these customers who are in their 60's, their ability to understand the logic of their own business is early grade school to where you sound crazy if you're trying to sort things out that make no sense, or worse - you're seen as your 'bosses son' in a way to where children shouldn't be correcting adults (and yet - not correcting it is to ask me to program mutually exclusive things). I don't know how these people stay in business if they're this crazy and at the same time I don't know how basic reasoning breaks down in meetings where we're supposed to be building them a system to automate what they're doing, that circle doesn't square no matter what excuses I'm hearing about them operating subconsciously or whatever else and I've even subtly tested certain 'I don't understand any of that' moves they make in emails and it seems like there's still a fair amount of what I thought - they're older and they're paying, I'm younger and I'm the hiree, therefor my understanding things that they don't is a threat to their ability to twist my bosses arm for free stuff (and on that same logic - I think customers often do come in belligerent / incoherent to get you to make mistakes so they can keep you on your back heels).

That's where I think aspies / auties get struck down the hardest - ie. they bring a philosophy book, a synthesizer, a basketball, whatever they're passionate about, to a gun fight and get red-misted.

This also makes me rethink some of the criticisms I've had of postmodernist critique of logic where 'everything is about power'. For a lot of people, particularly for a lot of less bright NT's, that might very well be their core driver and my offense at that idea - like in many other places I have to watch out for - is because the message is really talking past me to someone who it accurately matches.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 30 Dec 2022, 1:24 pm, edited 4 times in total.

JimJohn
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30 Dec 2022, 1:15 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

Thanks, I imagine they want to go straight for the purpose of dispersal of the species. I imagine the “why” helps understanding the “how” as well as the physics. Thanks again.

JimJohn
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30 Dec 2022, 1:26 pm

Dear_one wrote:

On horses returning to a burning barn, that is probably habit. Supposedly, some domesticated animals have genes that give them OCD.

Domesticated animals can also be without some instincts.

I imagine domesticated animals that can be trained are more prone to habits than their wild counteroarts or domesticated animals that are not selectively bred to be easily trained.

Last edited by JimJohn on 30 Dec 2022, 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dear_one
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30 Dec 2022, 1:26 pm

Jakki wrote:

okay thats twice in three weeks my post has disappeared.. so much for trying to make helpful contributions .?????.

When that starts happening to me, I compose the messages elsewhere so I'll have a copy, and just paste it in.

techstepgenr8tion
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30 Dec 2022, 1:27 pm

I edited the heck out of that last post because I wanted to get that middle paragraph right.

I've seen these covert power games all over the place, they seem to be mostly about the 'haves', especially those without particularly strong qualification, playing sharp elbows and raining glass on anyone whose trying to sort things out and actually 'do their job' the way it's supposed to be done.

Programming at least forces the ambiguity out and I have an excuse to fall back on - that the system literally won't work unless it's built on coherent business logic and instructions. They really don't like that but they understand that compliance really isn't a choice unless they want to wait forever for their software, or just cut their losses if the process is too embarrassing for them.

techstepgenr8tion
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30 Dec 2022, 1:35 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

A channel some of you might enjoy for the workplace...erm... stuff (sadly it's almost too close to the truth to be funny).

I try to think of what I would to - today, with my current knowledge - if I was the guy in this video.

If I had any organizational autonomy, at all, I would say something like the following:

'I'm sorry but.... I don't understand any of this and I don't think I want my name associated with this project.'

or worse...

'I apologize, I see what kind of expertise you need but... I'm not a psychiatrist.'

If I really wanted to be mean I might recommend someone who I think would be incompetent enough to belong in that seat and let them bark at the moon together, although I really would not be inclined to do that unless that seat was really calling their name.

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