Do people too often think that we would be good at...?

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Gammeldans
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23 Jan 2023, 6:08 am

I have been told that many people with ASD have the engineer's mind (whatever that refers to).
I have also beeen told that not many of us have the artistic mind (whatever that refers to).

Are people telling my information that is wrong?
Or could this be true?

I myself do not really have an engineer's mind.
I like artistic stuff like drama, dancing and storytelling. I'm taking singing lessons and my teacher says that he likes how I try to sing with a dramatic voice.

Do people too often think that we would be good at things that require an engineer's mind?
I have heard from people that I would be good at computer programming. It turned it wasn't a thing for me.

Do people confused what we people have with the engineer's mind?



autisticelders
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23 Jan 2023, 6:13 am

people do "assume" things about not just autism but many other things as well. Lots of stereotyping, classifying, labeling goes on in the world. I am old and have learned over that time not to pay attention to it. Most of us(humans) don't fit the labels other people try to give us over almost anything. would have loved to have singing lessons when I was young, you are lucky to be able to do that! :)


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Joe90
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23 Jan 2023, 6:22 am

I don't have an engineer's mind at all. I work as a cleaner at a bus garage so lots of engineers there, they are all 100% NT, and when they're talking about the work it's like they're talking a different language.
I don't even know how to use our washing-machine, I keep forgetting how to use it. :lol:

I've always been creative and imaginative. I like drawing, I can play the piano, and I write stories. I have a very creative mind.

I struggle to do puzzles or put a piece of furniture together or fix something that is broken or use math.
Math has always been my biggest struggle. Numbers just don't like me, they dance around the page and laugh at me. :lol: I always find myself backing away from math.

At least I'm good at spelling though.


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Gammeldans
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23 Jan 2023, 6:38 am

Joe90 wrote:
I don't have an engineer's mind at all. I work as a cleaner at a bus garage so lots of engineers there, they are all 100% NT, and when they're talking about the work it's like they're talking a different language.

I've always been creative and imaginative. I like drawing, I can play the piano, and I write stories. I have a very creative mind.

I struggle to do puzzles or put a piece of furniture together or fix something that is broken or use math.
Math has always been my biggest struggle. Numbers just don't like me, they dance around the page and laugh at me. :lol: I always find myself backing away from math.

At least I'm good at spelling though.

I guess the stereotypes are about male aspies.

The big issue for me is that people say that I think in systems and therefore have an engineer's mind.
I doubt that the boss at the local grocery store have engineer's mind just because he can see the store as a system.

I think drama, grocery stores and computer programming all need people who can think about systems. It is just that being good at thinking about systems is not the same as having an engineer's mind.

Do people confuse our ability to think about systems with the engineer's mind?

I guess people don't think artistic people think about systems and don't really care much about analysis; they just do their thing.
Sure, many people who like drama don't care about analysing much but they are probably more likely to be NTs.
Many NTs find thinking about systems too hard, I guess.



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26 Jan 2023, 11:38 pm

A lot of us are technically-minded, but not all. And just because a thing is technical doesn't mean that a technically-minded person will necessarily be very good at it. I'm quite good at some technical things but probably poor at others, and beyond a certain point most technical subjects get too advanced, complicated and demanding for me.

I've also got something of a love-hate relationship with technical subjects. Even if I'm good at them and thoroughly enjoy them, I often start to feel I'm losing touch with part of my humanity. I'd hate to be forced to do nothing but technical things all the time. When I pursue music my brain tends to push me into the technical side of it and I don't like that. A newspaper reporter who I'd been to school with found out that I was recording my own music, and I was really disappointed when he put the story in the local paper because it was all about how clever I was to make my own multi-track recording machines and play lots of instruments all by myself, and there was nothing about the artistic aspect of the music I was writing and creating. He didn't even ask to hear the music. I wouldn't have minded so much but he was very into the artistic content of music himself, and would rave about this or that rock band's work. I don't like being typecast like that, I don't like being thought of as nothing but a technician with no emotions or artistic talent.

In a way I envy people who aren't skilled at technical things, because they're more able to stay with the more emotional, social, and artistic side of life, as they don't have much else in them. But technical skills are very useful for solving practical problems, and it must be hard for people with no such skills when life presents them with such problems and they don't know what to do, and in my experience life is full of problems that need a good grounding in reasoned, critical thinking to solve. Still, I suppose if their people skills are good then they can get somebody else to do it for them.



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26 Jan 2023, 11:51 pm

I am a scientist, but I also love art. I made webcomics for about 8 years (from my senior year of high school till my first year of grad school). I still love scientific illustration to this day.



IsabellaLinton
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27 Jan 2023, 12:08 am

I'm strong in mathematics but also right-brained, so maybe that explains my ADHD. :jester:

All the men in my family tree have been engineers in the past few generations, either with credentials or just very skilled with mechanics, construction, electrical work, physics, etc. They were also autistic, or they seemed to fit the criteria. I inherited that type of thinking and was very successful in maths from a young age, especially number patterns, arithmetic, algebra, and trigonometry. In Uni I excelled in formal Logic and Deductive Reasoning (Philosophy). I have synaesthesia so most of this learning was done in a right-brained way. I see numbers (and letters - algebra), in specific colours. This allowed me to personify numbers and remember formulae the way an artist would mix colours. It was astonishing to me that other people didn't think that way.

I'm artistic because my mind isn't linear despite being good at maths. I can't picture anything visually (forget what that's called), but I'm able to think creatively in spatial mind maps where every thought has a colour. I have advanced degrees in Humanities and Visual Arts. I'm inspired by music, literature, poetry, philosophy, art history and live theatre. I studied ballet, tap dance, acting, painting, sketching, and sculpture. I'm a published writer and poet. Come to think of it my dad's family were all artists too despite their background in engineering.

I think it makes sense that we have a stereotype of being engineers because most of us are quite matter-of-fact and logical in the way we process information, even if we aren't good at traditional maths and science. I also think it makes sense that we're sometimes considered artists, because we're so lost in our heads most of the time. I feel like I have a different operating system than neurotypicals who don't process everything by synaesthesia or a complicated sensory system. I feel and experience everything from an environment at once, including emotions and nuance. That's how art is made.

I think it's safe to say many autistic people have both types of talent.



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27 Jan 2023, 12:37 pm

I believe in the connectivity theory of autism - that our brains are overly connected in some areas while lacking in others. This can cause many difficulties due to the flexibility needed to survive in life, but also can lead to great potential if the connections are in useful places (which can be many areas in life, not just engineering). Autism is more common in families with engineers because it is a field where every single detail is required to be precise, rewarding neurological narrow-mindedness. But it is a disorder at the end of the day, causing more suffering than upsides.



Silence23
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27 Jan 2023, 1:37 pm

I wouldn't exclude many autists of having a creative mind (one which they maybe haven't discovered yet). Music has some kind of mathematical structure, e.g. in the composition, in the harmonic frequencies, etc. That can be interesting to some autists.

Painting and drawing can also be interesting, e.g. when mimicking beautiful shapes nature creates, which are made of sine waves, linear functions, exponential functions, fractals, etc.

Programming can also be quite creative.



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27 Jan 2023, 3:03 pm

^
Yes I think the relationship between artistic-emotional thinking and scientific-critical thinking is quite interesting.

There was a time when I was almost 100% nerd, and then I discovered emotion and saw how valuable it could be to me. It's strangely like the reverse of the story of the human race - originally they were strong on emotional but weak on logic, and their renaissance was science. OTOH I must have started out as a completely emotional being when I was very young. I'm sure I wasn't born a nerd.

And as you suggest, the two modes aren't entirely separate. Art can't be done without some skill in technique, and science can't be done without creativity.



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29 Jan 2023, 12:38 pm

Every time I see the word engineer I think of the ones that drive the choo-choo trains. I'm not even sure what the other kind of engineer actually is or does. I guess I'm too old.

Of course the stereotypes are always about male aspies and everyone thinks they're supposed to be like Rain Man and can do things like take a radio apart and then put it back together perfectly when they were six years old but not be able to feel empathy or emotions. They never think we can be artists or musicians or actors or anything that requires creativity or a more "right-brained" kind of mind. They don't even think we can be adult and female. It'll never change.



Gammeldans
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30 Jan 2023, 4:08 am

PenPen wrote:
I believe in the connectivity theory of autism - that our brains are overly connected in some areas while lacking in others. This can cause many difficulties due to the flexibility needed to survive in life, but also can lead to great potential if the connections are in useful places (which can be many areas in life, not just engineering). Autism is more common in families with engineers because it is a field where every single detail is required to be precise, rewarding neurological narrow-mindedness. But it is a disorder at the end of the day, causing more suffering than upsides.

You wrote: "...because it is a field where every single detail is required to be precise".

My question is: wouldn't that also be true for singing as well?

I think the whole talk about ASD and the engineer's mindset is so much more than just the detail-focusing. A lot of other fields than engineering and computer programming require detail-focusing. It must be something else that people are talking about.

I guess people think that, although skills like singing can be very detailed-focus and intellectual it is also very physical (people with ASD might struggle with motor skills).
Engineering and computer programming isn't that much about motor skills, I guess.
Also, many people do not teach singing as something that is build up by a system.
Often it is more about just doing it, I think.
That would actually be bad teaching.
We need to see singing as build up by a system, ie different skills working together in a big system. Then singing can be very theoretical or intellectual if we analyze the music or motor skills involved.
Baking is also about the system and the details but we seldom hear about the "autistic baker".
Why? Probably because like singing it is something physical.

All this talk about ASD and the engineer's mindset seems to indicate that people think ASD makes people bad at doing physical stuff, like we are only thinkers. Thinkers are also not the practical people needed in certain fields.
I tried working in a grocery store and wasn't that good at it. I wanted to be the thinker/analyser but they never really allowed me to.

What do you think?

lostonearth35 wrote:
They never think we can be artists or musicians or actors or anything that requires creativity or a more "right-brained" kind of mind. They don't even think we can be adult and female. It'll never change.

I have heard "aspies" saying that we should find acting diffiult s we struggle with social situations and prosody or body language.
But acting is not about social situations. It is way different.
Again we are talking about something physical. We can learn to become better at using prosody and body language.

I have heard that aspies would love classical piano. I don't. Just reading music in a score and then playing it isn't fun or easy. I want to understand the music. I wanna be the thinker.
Perhaps they mean that piano require lots of focus. I only have that if I am allowed to be the analyser or thinker.



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30 Jan 2023, 4:49 pm

Gammeldans wrote:
You wrote: "...because it is a field where every single detail is required to be precise".
My question is: wouldn't that also be true for singing as well?

I'd say singing isn't quite so precise. There's quite a degree of freedom with pitching and timing, and human voices aren't as accurate as many mechanical musical instruments. There's usually a degree of tolerance in engineering, but the limits are defined and documented, whereas singers rarely try to measure their pitching and timing against established tolerances, though now we've got computers there are things like Rock Band that will do that - not that the score on Rock Band is fully diagnostic of your musical skill, except perhaps for drumming, and even then it's not really the same.

Oddly enough, when I first started trying to sing I got much too hung up about pitch accuracy to the detriment of overall subjective vocal "quality." And I still have trouble playing guitars with light-gauge strings and hate the massive learning curve of string instruments without frets, though they give the best results because the player is more free to bend the notes in subjective ways. Good music very often needs a certain amount of "dirt" in it, a thing my Aspie brain has always balked at, though I'm well aware of its importance. There's nothing so boring as a "perfect" performance. OTOH classical music is more nerdy and finicky, and traditionally the classical buffs looked upon pop music as an unprofessional cowboy kind of thing. But most people prefer pop music, probably because classical is too fussy and formal to appeal that much to most people.



Gammeldans
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31 Jan 2023, 11:48 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
Gammeldans wrote:
You wrote: "...because it is a field where every single detail is required to be precise".
My question is: wouldn't that also be true for singing as well?

I'd say singing isn't quite so precise. There's quite a degree of freedom with pitching and timing, and human voices aren't as accurate as many mechanical musical instruments. There's usually a degree of tolerance in engineering, but the limits are defined and documented, whereas singers rarely try to measure their pitching and timing against established tolerances, though now we've got computers there are things like Rock Band that will do that - not that the score on Rock Band is fully diagnostic of your musical skill, except perhaps for drumming, and even then it's not really the same.

Oddly enough, when I first started trying to sing I got much too hung up about pitch accuracy to the detriment of overall subjective vocal "quality." And I still have trouble playing guitars with light-gauge strings and hate the massive learning curve of string instruments without frets, though they give the best results because the player is more free to bend the notes in subjective ways. Good music very often needs a certain amount of "dirt" in it, a thing my Aspie brain has always balked at, though I'm well aware of its importance. There's nothing so boring as a "perfect" performance. OTOH classical music is more nerdy and finicky, and traditionally the classical buffs looked upon pop music as an unprofessional cowboy kind of thing. But most people prefer pop music, probably because classical is too fussy and formal to appeal that much to most people.

Classical singing techniques are pretty precise.
I use classical technique (without the vibrato) and singing the correct pitch is extremely important.

I don't sing with s rock voice which might be a bit different.
I am very precise about diction and pitch.
I also play dance music and timing is very important.



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31 Jan 2023, 7:37 pm

Everyone thinks I'm smart because I'm in WAVE (A gifted and talented program), but I'm bad at math, bad at deadlines, and it takes time to decipher paragraphs even though my strength is language arts. I skim the paragraph and end up not understanding what it's saying and have to reread it.
People think I know Spanish fluently which is just racist, when in reality I don't have the patience to learn another language when I haven't even mastered the first one!
And though I'm not sure what I am, I just feel like people are constantly either over or underestimate me because of the way I act.


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BreathlessJade
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23 Mar 2023, 11:55 pm

i find that, often times, people try to live their dreams through someone else. as for as asd, my folks lack insight and refuse to acknowledge me being on the spectrum, but they see fit to claim i should be making a ton of money playing piano (i'm a songwriter). people like to "move the goalposts" meaning they like to treat you like you're not really succeeding because it's not what they want. people really make me sick.