Questions related to the Double Empathy Problem

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23 Jul 2024, 8:48 pm

Suppose that in your society the vast majority of professional spaces related to education, training, politics and human resources are occupied by autistic people, and that from their roles they, consciously or unconsciously, share and transmit their way of seeing, feeling, interacting with and understanding the world (e.g., according to some literature, with emphasis on, but not limited to, literalism, respect, adherence to rules, fact-based thinking, greater order and personal organization, among other common or more frequent traits.).

Would this change behavioral, cultural, or social patterns for both neurotypical individuals and autistic individuals?
And would it reverse the assertion from the Double Empathy Problem, as articulated by Milton?
(‘One could say that many autistic people have indeed gained a greater level of insight into NT [non-autistic] society and mores than vice versa, perhaps due to the need to survive and potentially thrive in a NT culture. Conversely, the NT person has no pertinent personal requirement to understand the mind of the “autistic person” unless closely related socially in some way,’ Milton explains.)


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IsabellaLinton
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23 Jul 2024, 8:57 pm

How would ADHD factor in?
I don't have any personal organization.
I'm a trainwreck but highly ND/ASD too.


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23 Jul 2024, 9:13 pm

Debatable premises in the post, yes, but they could be taken for granted ("according to some literature") for the sake of the opportunity to analyze the questions.


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IsabellaLinton
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23 Jul 2024, 9:16 pm

I don't know.
I don't think anyone will ever understand everyone else because we're all different.
Empathy isn't always the problem.
We all have different personalities, strengths / weaknesses, and proclivities.


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techstepgenr8tion
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23 Jul 2024, 9:52 pm

Yeah, demography is a really big deal. If we have an emotionally mature culture it doesn't always matter much but when we don't (and add lots of economic stress to that) it tends to fragment across predictable lines and whoever has the upper hand gets a fair amount colder to whoever doesn't.


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28 Jul 2024, 6:37 am

I don't worry about empathy me

It's just something that happens but to be perfectly honest I don't really understand the question


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28 Jul 2024, 7:15 am

The distance from Boston to New York is exactly the same as the distance from New York to Boston. For me that is the double empathy problem. As an autistic I have a hard time understanding an NT, also an NT will have a hard time understanding me. Empathy involves perspective taking. It is reasonable to assume that perspective taking is easier with someone who is more similar to one’s self. However: not everyone on Wrongplanet is similar to myself. I may have to use the same “perspective taking with someone different than myself” skills here on WP as I would elsewhere. I really have. That is my lived experience. Sometimes I find a person on WP who is more similar to myself in one particular aspect but not another. I might relate to Isabella in her work struggles or her hyperfocus, but not in other aspects like her political views or sexual politics. I might relate to Fnord in his special interest in electronics but not his inflexibility with regard to atheism.
I might relate to AuntBlabby’s empathy for the homeless but not have had his trouble holding down a job, or have had his experience in the military or as a veteran.

So the problem with the double empathy problem is that while all Autistics are different from NTs we aren’t necessarily all similar to one another. We may be high functioning or low functioning. May have co-occurring conditions.
We may simply be different people. We may be PhDs or have never gotten any degree. We may have different hypersensitivities or hypo-sensitivities. An activist will try to overlook these differences and focus on a message, the reality is more complex.


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Last edited by Fenn on 28 Jul 2024, 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

babybird
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28 Jul 2024, 7:28 am

Yeah I get that


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naturalplastic
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28 Jul 2024, 8:27 am

So...if some dictator ...maybe a cross between Sheldon Leonard and Joseph Stalin, took over a major nation, and then forced every people-oriented profession in that nation to hire and be staffed by ONLY autistic people ...and that forced the NT majority of the population to go through these autistic functionaries to get...hired, help from social workers, etc...would that force NTs to adopt a more autistic way of thinking? Or at least develop more empathy for autistic way of thinking?

Maybe.

And if pigs had wings maybe they could fly.



Edna3362
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28 Jul 2024, 5:33 pm

On one level, yes.
A shift of priorities here and there perhaps.

Paradigms of certain facts can be different, redefined or altered...
Statistical changes related to demographics of human may shift a little to the respective sides...



On another level, no.
Because the human ego mind still exists in everyone and not everyone is born a saint or all are striving to be one.

Because there are still human fundamentals patterns that most humans are subject under whether individually or collectively.



Realistically, it's as possible as a single person shifting the current human paradigm globally; which might be once in hundreds of years.

And that's me having a generous guess. :lol:


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Fenn
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30 Jul 2024, 1:07 pm

Fenn wrote:
The distance from Boston to New York is exactly the same as the distance from New York to Boston. For me that is the double empathy problem. As an autistic I have a hard time understanding an NT, also an NT will have a hard time understanding me. Empathy involves perspective taking. It is reasonable to assume that perspective taking is easier with someone who is more similar to one’s self.


Another analogy:

Able and Baker are both not neurotypical, similar to how New York City and San Francisco are both far from Chicago.

Just as being "not neurotypical" does not imply that Able and Baker are similar to each other, being "distant from Chicago" does not imply that New York City and San Francisco are close to each other.

In both cases:

Able and Baker might share a characteristic (neurodiversity) but are not necessarily similar.

New York City and San Francisco are both far from Chicago, but they are also far from each other, showing that distance from a common point does not dictate their proximity to each other.


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