I avoid sooo many topics out of fear that people will not only misunderstand me, but then make permanent judgements of my character and even punish me. Like, I'm not allowed to say that sometimes my dog drives me so insane that I wish I never got her in the moment because that would make me a terrible dog owner and a horrible person. Yeah right! All I'm saying is that I have thought that at times. I haven't beaten or neglected her. I'm not planning on dropping her off at the dog pound. I'm just being honest with a thought I had. A lot of people have even thought that about their own human kids.
When it comes to cis-women, I hold back a lot because they often think I'm trying to hit on them. Apparently, sharing an interest or wanting to hear them talk about their interest is considered flirting to NTs. Meanwhile, I'm just treating them the same way I would like to be treated. It would make my day if someone, regardless of gender, wanted to hear me talk about the Golden Age of Piracy. I would not think they're trying to get in my pants because that's not a romantic or sexy topic, just like hearing about your unhealthy eating habits isn't romantic or sexy, Karen! And asking if you're okay when you're clearly distraught doesn't mean I want to sleep with you either. I'm only trying to be nice.
They do release formic acid which smells rank. But I've only ever smelled it from a large pile of dead ants. Not a few walking around outside or in a house.
Yeah... I can barely smell at all. Even normally strong smells like that of the urine of an unfixed male cat aren't particularly impactful to me. I wouldn't have even considered the potentiality that ants have a distinctive smell in spite of being aware that they use pheromone trails for navigation.
I'm constantly astounded that people on the spectrum assume that they're absolutely, 100% right, and that the problem is always everyone else. If I'm saying something, and no one around me is understanding what I'm saying, then the problem is clearly not everyone else. The very clear, and obvious problem is that I'm not communicating clearly -or- effectively.
More often than not, I find that I've omitted something that seems blindingly, patently obvious to me, but no one else was aware of because I entirely failed to communicate it.
This is a hallmark of being on the spectrum; people think that because they see things one way, everyone else must be able to see the same thing.
That one 'blindingly obvious' thing is key often for me too. Sometimes it's not only not obvious to other people but it's entirely wrong too.
Ironically, it's often the same thing the other way round: the neurotypical leaves off or implies some context that seems obvious to them and the people they normally communicate with.
The other main thing, from neurodivergent to neurotypical, is (not) implying emotional meaning. (And vice versa, not picking up on it.) You say something and mean it logically, but hidden in your words is emotional meaning - sometimes it's real but you wouldn't even know it yourself; sometimes it's not real just you said things in a way that someone else would if they meant that extra emotion. Communication is about emotion as much as facts, and the listener rightly tries to pick up on emotions, but misunderstands.
As I said in another comment, one of the defining characteristics of the autism spectrum is a blunted sense of empathy. As you say, that blunted empathy can mean that the autistic person doesn't hear the emotional content, reacts to it inappropriately, or is not able to effectively communicate emotional content themselves.
Come to think of it, if people on the spectrum aren't communicating emotional content, or are doing it very poorly, that might explain part of why some autistic people think they're communicating precisely with carefully chosen words, but their intent and meaning is still being misunderstood.
I think probably all people dismiss what is obvious to them as not needing to be said, and for good reason: why overburden a conversation with obvious truths. Though given that we're all just apes with a superiority complex, we're probably entirely wrong about what's obvious or true 🙈
Reminds me of that xkcd comic with two experts talking about how people not in their field would only know what they consider basic but people usually don't know that either
It's a little more complicated with autism though, because one of the hallmarks of autism is blunted empathy (and no, I'm not saying that we're all sociopaths-lite).
An example I heard from a psychologist--and I'm going to try not to butcher this--is that if you show an autistic child a cookie tin and ask them what they think is in the tin, they'll say cookies. Then you show them what's in the tin, and it's actually toy cars. But if, after showing them toy cars in a cookie tin, you ask them what another person is going to think is in the cookie tin, the autistic child is likely to say "toy cars".
Obvs. most people on the spectrum get better about this as they get older and learn from experience, but I strongly suspect that this sort of thing is what's going on when autistic people 'explain' things. My guess is that this difficulty with affective and cognitive empathy is also what leads to people on the spectrum over-explaining things; since they're not able to make an accurate guess about what other people know or can infer, they give too much information about a thing.
My SO frequently includes me in conversations that they've already started in their head, and I have to remind them that I have zero context for what they just said.
I've found that LLMs spit things out that read like bad high school essays. I'm not sure they're succeeding at sounding allistic at all. Just weirdly repetative in the way a structured high school essay is.
I sometimes use AI as a proofreader. Asking if the text is well structured and how I can improve it. I prefer to rework it by myself, but it’s nice to be able to get a feedback on a report you are writing before sending it.
But my main use is to ask « common sense » things or fill my lack of basic knowledge. For example, I was struggling for buying some honey at a store because they were 3 kinds of honey and I had no way to know which one to buy (it was a bigger a store than the one I usually go to). I had a short conversation with an AI to determine which one was the best for me. It calmed me down and helped me to make the right choice (this is the kind of situation that makes me very anxious).
It’s also very good to learn or understand foreign language expressions. English is not my native language, so it’s nice to be able to ask an AI about a joke characters are telling in a RPG when the game has not been translated.
I think the next step for me will be to give an AI the ebook I am reading, and ask it questions about things I forgot or did not understand correctly while reading it (I don’t want a summary of the whole book because I don’t want to be spoiled).
I think it’s a very useful tool, and I believe it could make a big difference for autistic people as well in some cases.
I've spent 2 months transcribing an entire poorly written text book into a Google doc. I'm now taking that transcription and having chat gpt rewrite it all for readability. All so I can maybe pass certification exam.
The problem is less with us and more with academia having developed an highly oppressive way of writing things. But from my perspective it's just sloppy unreadable garbage.
AI has been great I can just give It the promt "make this concise and readable using only common language" and it will take entire chapters down to simple point form lists for me.
I haven't had a reason to use it properly yet, just testing, but it looks great. It's not perfect though. I asked it for a way to check what programs I have installed on Windows because I want to switch to Linux, and its answer was that I should make a list of the installed programs >.<
This is literally how I’m getting my directors to stop pestering me about how complex my shit is. Dumbing it down and translating my messages for them. Works wonders.
As someone who doesn't have adhd/autism, I see this as one of those legitimate uses of AI. Because lots of people struggle to make mails/texts to be readable.
Other is summaries the context of large texts/data sheets.
Claude has the ability to accept uploads of PDFs and then answer questions about them. I just recently uploaded a PDF of a complex state tax law that had deleted portions and addendums and all kinds of stuff over 36 pages of legalese, and after a few test questions to see if Claude was able to do what I wanted, I started asking questions and getting answers (with references) for important things I needed to know about what my rights were, and what I could and couldn't do.
I never could have figured that out just reading through those pages.
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