An Aspie's Perspective

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Remember the story about the truck that tried to drive through the tunnel on a building site and got wedged. I mean it was completely and totally stuck. No-one, including the construction crew or police could work out how to get it out. Just then, a little Aspie boy riding past on his bike looked at the problem and said "Why don't you just let the tyres down?"

Okay, so I used a bit of poetic licence there, but you get the idea. As Aspies, our brains are wired a little bit differently to NTs and as a result, many of us can see solutions to problems neurotypicals just don't see. Has anyone got any examples of where you've been able to use your Aspie perspective to find solutions to problems neurotypicals just haven't been able to see? I'd like to hear your stories.

Don't know if I count since I'm not officially on the spectrum.

My parents had put a set of carriers on the roof of the car. A few days later they'd gotten concerned about an odd sound they'd been noticing, a vibration of sorts, every time they drove. My father even took the car out on the road a few times trying to figure out what it was.

He came home after one such drive and said "I still can't figure it out".

"It's the carry racks," I said. (Have no idea how old I was. Still fairly young, tho'.) "They're hollow and are catching air and channeling it. They're making the noise and sending it thru the entire car which is amplifying it."

My father stared at me, and went down and took the racks off the car, then went out for a drive.

He came home smiling. The noise was gone.

Yes, I was credited with the save. Don't recall any ice cream, tho'.

When I read this, I remember a story my mum read out loud when I was little. It is about a boy who went out with an umbrella when it was really windy. So he flies away, higher and higher and was gone.
My answer as an about four years old child: "Why didn´t he just let the umbrella go at the begining when he wasn´t so high?" I always found that the boy was really stupid and didn´t like the story.

I had this temp job once, where I was mailing medical chart notes to referring physicians. The protocol was to print out the note, look up the referring and their address from the patient's electronic chart, and handwrite the address on the envelope. As you might imagine, it was time consuming. So I came up with this solution where we would electronically draw the address from the patient's chart and print it on the note itself so that when the paper was folded and put into a window envelope, the address would show.

I do these complex problem solving techniques all the time and I am very good at it. The problem is. I can't do it all the time and there are somethings I simply can't do. One of the down sides of being able to effortlessly solve complex problems is that it artificially raises the standard of exceptions for you to unrealistic highs and everybody out then expect you to preform at these unrealistic levels all the time. Sadly though, I run into a lot of situations where I know the answer and I don't say anything because I will be ridiculed for it or face a potential liability.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the topic at hand, but this is my Aspie perspective:

I do as I do, because I am as I am. To change me would be a rejection to me.

similar thing happened to me, not sure if its me thinking differently or others just not thinking but I was with some other people who were trying to put a buggy they had just bought into a car boot they were trying for like 10 minutes I just came and said why don't you take it out of the box, as soon as they did that it was obviously able to fit into the car.

Yes but it does not go down very well. For example, when it comes to depression groups I notice that many of them seem to spend a lot of time beating themselves up. They seem to believe that it is 'bad' or 'weak' or 'wrong' to not be good at something (for example) or that they are worthless if they don't have x, y or z.

I say this is poppycock that they have been fed by society. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not being good at something or not having x, y and z.

They appear to have fragile egos. I pointed this out as I thought it might help them if they could make their egos less fragile by dropping the belief system above and adopting a less judgmental/ego centered more equality based way of thinking.

This apparently upsets everyone. I was trying to be helpful but it appears they would rather hate themselves than accept themselves and the fact that there is nothing wrong with being an individual.

What they want is hugs, and consolation.

I thought it might make more sense to change the belief system that has lead to such beliefs existing in the first place, then the consolation will not be required because no one will believe they are worthless and they will be accepting of what they call 'imperfections' and what i personally call 'differences'.

I am different not defective and I hate belief systems that insist otherwise. Depression groups are full of these horrible assumptions that a human life can be worthless and its awful to see. I won't go to them anymore, their way of thinking is very mean and not at all enlightened or accepting. I can find such ways of looking at life emotionally traumatising and upsetting.

I also find them HIGHLY offensive in their assumptions in regards to me. I am not worthless or deserving of poor treatment by society just because I am not a social butterfly.

Horrible places depression groups and for that reason I will not go to them, even if my therapist tries to refer me.

Full of mean ways of looking at people. How awful believing that any living creature is worthless or not deserving of life, be they human or otherwise.

Also, in one group, they told me to kill myself. I think these people are a bit more mentally disturbed than just feeling a bit sad about things. They scare me.

I have these kinds of insights all the time. For the most part I can recognize what's wrong with something immediately. Usually I just keep my mouth shut. It's incredibly frustrating to be around people who take a half an hour to understand something I figured out in 30 seconds, and I find it hard to point out the obvious without making them feel stupid for not seeing it. Plus I've found that when you are always the person who immediately has an answer to every problem, people start to either not believe you (even though you're right) or dislike you because they think you're showing off.

I tend to solve puzzles and problems differently to how they were designed to be solved. For example, I took an aptitude test which included mathematical aptitude and scored brilliantly, even though I know I'm not great at maths. I "logicised" my way through a lot of them. The one I remember was a question where I had to figure out the angle in a triangle, and there was reference to sin cos and tan I think. I don't remember any of that stuff from high school. Anyway, I looked at the diagram of the triangle and guessed which was the correct answer out of four multiple choices because of what it visually looked like.

I get these flashes of (what would you call them?) enhanced perception or insight from time to time. Often when they're applicable to a personal situation, and therefore not observable to anyone else.

I can think of a handful of times in my life when I have been able to solve someone else's problem this way.

I would say that this quality isn't a generally-held perception of autists because it is so rare that an autist's personal interest in a subject or situation coincides with a popularly-perceived need for a solution.

(In the 'stuck truck' example given, for example, the autistic kid might just as easily have been pedalling along nearby to collect the licence plate number of the truck, and had no interest at all in resolving the problem)

It's rare, after all, for an autist's perceptions of need or desirability of an outcome to match the popular opinion on the subject (unless it's of immediate and urgent relevance, such as calling the emergency services, and perhaps not even then.

I would say that it is when an autistic person is directly-involved in some field of research or endeavour that this quality of deep and instantaneous insight into a situation or problem is most often manifested.

This has nothing to do with stereotypes of autism-related genius, and everything to do with an autistic person's innate tendency to examine matters without prejudice or preconceptions, and to take every given 'puzzle' as unique and potentially solveable by application of strictly logical or procedural methods.

(N.b., There seems to be a distinct lack of formal scientific research into this characteristic of problem solving by autistics, so the above is just my unsupported opinion.)