Comment by furyofantares | Hacker News Reader

Comment by furyofantares | Hacker News Reader

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I have a number of thoughts on this.

> If autism is the impaired ability to ascribe mental states

First, autism is not the impaired ability to ascribe mental states. Earlier in your post you more accurately described that as a symptom.

There are attempted theories that get more to what autism "is", that it's a heavier weight on bottom-up processing, processing distinct details more and holistic things less. Another (congruent) idea is related to a "narrow tunnel of attention" and to using more of the brain to attend to a more narrow set of stimuli and thoughts. (You can look up monotropism for more info on this idea.)

Secondly, in my experience and others I've read - autistic individuals seem to often do much better at understanding each other. I mean this in two ways: autists are often better at understanding other autists than they are at understanding neurotypicals, but also in many cases autists may be better at understanding other autists than neurotypicals are at understanding autists.

With this framing you could just as well say neurotypicals lack a theory of mind. Largely we don't do that because there are more neurotypicals than autists.

Of course that's not the full reason and it's not fully symmetrical. If there were a 50/50 split in the population then I think autism would be less of a disability for folks in terms of this theory of mind stuff, but it would still be a significant disability for anyone who struggles with all the other consequences of autism.

But it is still relevant that this "theory of mind" stuff may be a misleading way to talk about it; by default I would expect everyone to have an easier time with a theory of minds like their own. And thinking about it this way also helps inform neurotypicals with autistic loved ones that if they expect their loved one to work hard to understand them, they could do the same.

"Secondly, in my experience and others I've read - autistic individuals seem to often do much better at understanding each other. I mean this in two ways: autists are often better at understanding other autists than they are at understanding neurotypicals, but also in many cases autists may be better at understanding other autists than neurotypicals are at understanding autists."

This is an interesting point.

"With this framing you could just as well say neurotypicals lack a theory of mind. Largely we don't do that because there are more neurotypicals than autists."

I think the really interesting result would result from testing this.

i.e. because of prior knowledge, neurotypicals model the default person as neurotypical.

However, knowing whether the second party is neurotypical or autistic, can a neurotypical person model their second party's mental states better than an autist, or worse?

> However, knowing whether the second party is neurotypical or autistic, can a neurotypical person model their second party's mental states better than an autist, or worse?

Even this is still limited by the neurotypical person's prior experience with autistic people and recognizing them as such.

All of this really reduces down to "it's hard to understand people whose brains work different from yours or from others' that you have significant experience with."

I also found that post very interesting. I would also make a point (vapid as it may be) that autism is a spectrum. Many people over the years have called me autistic, and I for sure have a few too many autistic family members for it to be a fluke. Somehow though, in person I have a solid skill at teaching people technical information at a level they can understand it, I am quick to identify what types of analogies they will understand and my technical knowledge is generally broad enough to relate it. If you saw me at work you would probably consider me -a hard worker -a dirtbag -adept -foolish, whatever it is, but likely not autistic; if you got to know me, you would probably be suspicious. 2 sibblings are in a similar category but more advanced autism, 1 undiagnosed, they are perfectly capable of reasoning about their own/others cognition.

It makes me suspicious though, if I was more defensive then I wouldnt go around saying I might be mildly autistic. If that other me were surveyed, would I unwittingly bias the results?

> Somehow though, in person I have a solid skill at teaching people technical information at a level they can understand it, I am quick to identify what types of analogies they will understand

That's interesting. There's something odd about me but I don't know what, I'm not like other people and they tend to consider me a bit weird (usually in a nice way). In turn, I often can't understand them. That said, what I just quoted above of yours pretty much describes me. I'm extremely good at putting myself in another person's boots for teaching technical subjects, and indeed I'm not too shabby at the social side of things - I'm often surprised at people's faux pas. And yet, people's behaviour regularly baffles me too. It's like I'm picking up a lot of some things but perhaps too little of another.

I did an online test for autism, expected to come out below average but much to my surprise came out above.

> you would probably consider me -a hard worker -a dirtbag -adept -foolish

Looks a bit like you're passing CLI arguments :-)

> I would also make a point (vapid as it may be) that autism is a spectrum

I don't think that's a vapid point at all. It is however a widely misunderstood statement. Autism being a spectrum does not mean "you can have it a little, or a lot, or in-between". It means you can have any one of the symptoms a little or a lot or in between, individually.

Among other things this means being good socially does not trivially preclude autism.

>in many cases autists may be better at understanding other autists than neurotypicals are at understanding autists. With this framing you could just as well say neurotypicals lack a theory of mind

Excellent comment, which has me rethinking autism. It's a topic I've thought quite a bit about, since by all measures I am the polar opposite of autistic, I'm extremely abstract to the total neglect of detail, and yet I've always gravitated to friends high in autistic traits. Maybe they have or see something I lack.

The DSM-V defines autism by the disability it causes. The diagnostic criteria list are all things neurotypicals can do but autists struggle at. So I always saw it framed as a disability.

But could an equally compelling list of diagnostic criteria be written, which is all things autists can do but neurotypicals struggle at? Could neurotypical be framed as a disability?

The DSM-V is about clinical diagnoses. Mental disorders are understood as something everyone experiences to varying degrees. You're considered to have something clinically when it impairs your daily life, something psychiatrists have defined as being 3 σ away from the average number of symptoms someone would report.

In this example struggling with things like math wouldn't qualify as a disability unless it impaired you in a statistically significant way

At a high enough level; science, math, software; anything that requires super human focus basically.

Speaking for myself, I had to learn everything about human behavior from the ground up, which paradoxically makes me very good at reading and dealing with other humans IRL since it's all conscious for me.

But, it's super important to remember that it's a spectrum, some people are seemingly seriously disabled by it.

This is just nonsense. Depending on the severity, autism makes a person completely dependent on other normal people (neurotypical is just a pc term) to simply survive. There's no degree of "normalcy" that, the more "severe" it gets, the more dependent on others you become.

That is true, I was ignoring the severely autistic. It becomes crippling at a certain point, but on the other hand, there are billionaire CEOs on the autism spectrum, who probably got there because they are different.

> But could an equally compelling list of diagnostic criteria be written, which is all things autists can do but neurotypicals struggle at? Could neurotypical be framed as a disability?

Something like this? https://lemonandlively.com/allism/

From my perspective, the surprising thing about people not on the autistic spectrum is how often they lie, how often they stab each other in the back for quite trivial reasons, and how obsessed they are with evaluating and maintaining everyone's position in the pecking order -- they are barely able to think about anything else, at least half of their brains are always evaluating this.

And the famous "theory of mind" in most cases is merely the ability to understand someone who is almost the same. I mean, of course if someone thinks exactly the same way I do, it will be very easy for me to predict what they think. But find someone different (doesn't need to be autistic; any kind of difference will work) and suddenly most people's ability to read their mind is gone.

> Could neurotypical be framed as a disability?

No. What is it with so many autists trying to turn things around and act as though they are better in some way and NTs are the 'problem'. It's bizarre and seems like some sort of denial.

I'm still not convinced were not arguing semantics. Okay, agreed, an impaired theory of mind is a symptom of autism. But to me this is like saying the sky is blue, and then someone saying "no its actually scattering blue".

The fundamental mechanisms that make an autistic brain different than the statistical average brain are not yet fully understood, I know. But this study we are talking about is not about the fundamental mechanisms.

I just got out of a relationship with a French woman because of our differences in cultural norms, she also had an accent and we used idioms and expressions that neither of us were super keen on. We both lacked a robust theory of mind of each other. I had an impaired ability to ascribe mental states to her. And I find it very unlikely that I will ever become fluent in French. I currently and probably always will lack that capacity.

I also have an impaired ability to ascribe mental states to Donald Trump, and my cat. But most people would consider me allistic. Because I have mental processes that allow me to ascribe the mental states of other statistically normal people. Within the context of statistically average people, of my own culture, I have a robust-enough theory of mind. ToM is not binary, but a degree, and context dependent.

"Mental conditions" are classified mostly because they are disadvantageous or uncomfortable to some group of people. They can only be classified in relation to normal social behavior at some degree of deviation. Shouldn't it be implied that allistic people also have an impaired theory of mind of autistic people.

Taking Wikipedia's definition of ToM, it specifically mentions "capacity". So when you mention that autism may be a "narrow tunnel of attention", this feels very consistent with the definition of ToM. If my attention is extremely narrow, then I will have an impaired ability to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them.

Condensing GPs wall of text, I think the overall point is that Aspies are bad at ascribing motivation and mental states to neurotypicals, but much better than neurotypicals at ascribing them to other Aspies.

It's more a case of speaking different "emotional languages" than a strict deficit.

> So when you mention that autism may be a "narrow tunnel of attention", this feels very consistent with the definition of ToM. If my attention is extremely narrow, then I will have an impaired ability to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them.

Indeed that may be a cause of impaired theory of mind in many autistic individuals. It would depend on what the narrow tunnel of attention is focused on. A narrow (and deep - I failed to say that earlier) tunnel of attention focused on another mind, say an autistic psychotherapist, or better an autistic psychotherapist focused on autism, may have a greatly heightened theory of mind.

Perhaps tangential, but consider Temple Grandin's exemplary work designing animal handling facilities that work much better largely due to treating the animals better - often with changes or accommodations to things that nobody realized caused the animals stress and anxiety, often by putting herself in their place.

> With this framing you could just as well say neurotypicals lack a theory of mind. Largely we don't do that because there are more neurotypicals than autists.

It's because NTs are the default, and Autism is seen as a (sometimes) harmful deviation that is still being investigated.

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