This is a community for people with Autism to be themselves. All neurotypes are welcome.
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This is not a valid excuse to go into asshole territory. Occasionally, you might not be in a position to understand why things are done a certain way - mostly because of inexperience, or your higher-ups might not have the time to explain the rules to you. Some examples might include regulations or standards.
It's alright to be humble and recognize that you may not understand some things sometimes. That's actually how you learn, and avoid pissing off your colleagues.
I follow the rules unless they don't make sense to me, I must be autistic and neurodivergent omg so quirky.
People, we can just remark on things, we don't need a unique identifier for every observable opinion in the world. I know its part of finding belonging and community, but you aren't neurodivergent for questioning the way the world works, you're critical of your surroundings and that's a good thing
"My superpower is I don't listen" is a thing I see repeated way too often on social media.
I agree with others in this thread, this has more to do with ethics and critical thinking than with nuerodivigence. And that nuerodivergence seems to be getting conflated here with autism, specifically.
It's a sign of intelligence to question the status quo.
And if being intelligent is neurodivergent because the rest of the populace is stupid asf, so be it
Yoo..so that means im neurodivergent?? Cause I do this ya'll
This has little to do with autism and more with being smart. No, seriously.
From the English Wikipedia, stages of moral development:
1 and 2 are "Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)" (according to the same article, children and animals have this), 3 and 4 are "Level 2 (Conventional)", 5 and 6 are "Level 3 (Post-Conventional)".
The last one is basically thinking around "what if everyone did that?". Unfortunately, lots of people are at either stage 2 or 4. Sometimes downgrading from 4 to 2 once they become the authority.
It's very curious to claim neurodivergent people refused to participate in the slave trade, the Holocaust, or white nationalist lynch mobs.
I haven't seen any evidence to this effect. Certainly, I've seen a fair share of evidence against it.
This has little to do with autism and more with being smart.
Intelligent people engage in immoral activities frequently. They get sucked into cults of personality and religious extremism frequently. They are conned frequently.
Intelligence isn't infalliblity.
Exactly this. Why is everything nowadays neurodivergent...
So the neurodivergent folk converge on it? This rule of thumb makes no sense to me.
Are you questioning the rule?
Yes, maybe I just didn't understand it.
another one that would indicate im apparently not neurodivergent because I have a hard time not following rules regardless. Like to my detriment. Unless i find them like morally wrong.
Not playing a tabletop game with you.
Fuck yeah I cheat at Candyland, motherfucker. Watch out!
fair but I do understand the concept of house rules. rules just have to be agreed on before the game starts.
So neuro divergent are just autistic?
Yah not loving how nd just becomes whichever one you're thinking of, or just some vague difference. It's like the "Asian" of cognitive differences.
Like ocd and bpd exist, for examples.
I mean I do it sometimes too, but it does exclude
Conversely, if someone is honest and says, "this is just how I like it I'm not really sure why" I'll at least respect it because they were honest, and a silly (little) rule that exists because of some cope or something is something I can relate to.
I'll just do what causes least harm / most positive things. If following some obscure rule doesnt require worthwhile effort from me then might as well, in case something goes wrong. If there isnt any logical reason to suspect ignoring the rule would cause harm then I'll just put it lower on the priority about how things are done.
Until i actually know better, i dont want to assume anything poorly explained is irrelevant.
As it should be
Well yeah, there are only two kinds of rules:
If you can't at least give a basic reasoning for the rule, it's #2
Coming right for me
There's some people who aren't neurodivergent and do the same. Some people just don't want to follow rules they don't understand, which can be pretty annoying
If you can't explain your rule so it makes sense, your rule is shit and you expecting others to follow it are the actual annoying person.
Very often the reasoning is "convention". Is that good enough?
I've heard plenty of unreasonable people say this about completely reasonable rules. Hell, I've heard someone say this about seatbelts, "it doesn't make sense how it isn't my own decision" lol
Sometimes people just don't get something. Doesn't mean the rule is bad if you don't get it lol
A seatbelt you can't adjust the height would actually strangle me in a crash. Not that i don't put it on, but there might be reasons in some cases.
The only argument you need is, can you catch 200 lbs going 45 mph? 25 mph? 1 mph? If the answer is bro, I can't catch 200 lbs, wear your fucking seat belt.
To me not having middle ground means just not enough description of the scenarios and how the rule applies. If I see a list of several caveats and inapplicable situations, I'm very likely gonna develop some sort of statistical reason the rule applies differently sometimes.
This isn't a neurodivergent thing. It's an intelligent / ethical person thing.
Yeah I agree.
I'm autistic, have a sense of justice being the result of reasonable clear fair and as objective as possible rules being consistently followed...
... but you don't need to be autistic to adhere to that. You can be ethical, moral, hold yourself to a standard, determine the reasonability of said standard, without being autistic.
Also... neurodivergence is more broad than just autism.
ADHD is a form of neurodivergence. On its own, I don't see that as being inherently relevant to rule comprehension, consideration or adherence, beyond maybe more complex rules or contingent rulesets taking more effort/exposure/practice to understand, consider or adhere to.
Schizophrenics are neurodivergent. Their ruleset often frequently changes considerably, due to reasons they often cannot explain coherently, and/or the rules they'll tell you they follow can be incoherent/contradictory.
DID is a form of neurodivergence. Each different identity often has its own significantly distinct ruleset / approach to rules.
Being bipolar is arguably a form of neurodivergence. Such people essentially have two rulesets that they alternate between.
Yeah, I've noticed a real problem on here with that. Claiming neurodivergency for something that some people do and some people don't.
This is a trait that some people have. Some people do it more and some do it less. If it's combined with many other symptoms and it makes it difficult for someone to function in society then it might be grounds for a diagnosis.
I think things like this are also just representative of a general shift in society. There's a lot more education online and elsewhere about the power dynamics in society that might have been ignored or not understood in the past. So this behavior is more prevalent which coincides with an increase in neurodivergency even though those two things aren't actually correlated.
I don't think it's necessarily "a problem on here", I think this type of assertion is just part of exploring neurodivergency.
Does something really need to make it difficult for someone to function in society in order to be part of a diagnosis? That seems unlikely.
I disagree that this is an "intelligent / ethical person thing", although I don't really believe that intelligence and ethics is really measurable in that way.
Yes. It does need to make it difficult to function. That's one of the core criteria for most diagnoses in the DSM. "Neurodivergency" as a meme and - I guess you can call it a subculture? - on the internet is wholly misunderstood.
It's really hard to categorize neurodivergency. Particularly in contrast to being "neurotypical". There isn't an "average human" that they compare people to on a chart and say "yep, you're not up to this standard" gavel bang "autism".
I mean, just think about it. If more than 50% of people exhibited this trait in one way or another, this behavior suddenly becomes neurotypical, since the "typical" person possesses this trait.
But the problem with this, just like your problem with intelligence and ethics is that it's all impossible to measure. Behaviors like this exist on a spectrum. This is part of my problem with this aspect of the subculture and posts like this. This behavior happens in "neurotypicals" as well. Autism isn't a switch flipped in your brain that suddenly gives you special traits that neurotypical people don't have. Autism is a diagnosis that happens when a person has a defined constellation of traits that are generally correlated and one or more of which are making it difficult to function.
I saw another post recently that went something like "neurotypicals don't understand having to take a day off after social events" and "neurotypicals don't rehearse social interactions in their head". Which is simply untrue. Many many people take a rest day after a social event or think about how to handle a social interaction, the only difference that the behavior isn't so severe that they are functionally impaired by it.
Couldn't agree more. I do not follow arbitrary rules unless compelled to, as long as it doesn't harm anyone or anything. If you want me to do something, there needs to be a logical reason for me to do it
I generally follow the rules unless I have a reason not to. The rationale is that just because I don't see the reason for the rule doesn't mean there isn't one. If everyone ignored every rule they didn't understand the need for the world would be even more of a shit show.
So I stop at the stop sign when no one is around. I know I would only do it when it was safe, but so does everyone who got hit by a car running a stop sign at a blind corner in the middle of the night.
I'm definitely asking about it if it's the least bit inconvenient though.
sort of tangential, but this discussion reminds me of a recent conversation. we had a plumbing leak recently so we had to have these water damage mitigation guys come out and check all the floors and drywall and figure out what needs to get replaced, yada yada. and they've all got these things they call "moisture meters" which are little black plastic boxes with a digital display on the front, and you hold it against a surface and it shows a number that somehow indicates how much water is absorbed into the material. so I asked one of these guys "hey, how does that work? like what's it actually measuring?" and he gave a response that sounded in tone like a technical explanation, but the actual information essentially boiled down to "it tells you how much water is in there, and if it's above 20 it's bad." and I'm thinking like, yeah, I got that, I figured that out from hearing you call it a "moisture meter" and watching you use it for ten seconds. is that what you thought I was confused about? obviously I mean like, what quantity does the number represent; what are the units; what physical thing is being measured to generate that number; is it based on a physical property, a thermal property, chemical, electrical; you're using it the same on wood, drywall, carpet, insulation, how does it apparently treat all materials the same when they have different physical properties and absorb, hold, and release water in different ways? it just baffled me that I could have all these questions less than a minute after seeing one for the first time, but this guy who uses one professionally every day only needs to know water>20=bad
I once was doing some it support trainee work on some education facility. Their old it manager retired while i was there and whole it support thing was outsourced to some external company. They probably knew their shit well enough but still i had to explain some things about office 365 to them (i hadnt even used 365 properly before that ) and i felt that i knew some things better than them. Yet they were the ones getting paid.
They were probably better qualified to do the job in general, but still in my opinion some random trainee shouldnt know more about anything than PAID professional who is supposed to take care of everything. Though I also head from them that they are quite well worked and have to work on MANY sites and basically are not allowed to make mistakes, so maybe there was that too. Seemed really stressful to work for that company.
The problem is that all the rules contradict each other in one way or another. If you know the reason for the rule, then you know which ones take precedence in each situation. Otherwise, you're just making arbitrary choices on which ones to follow and which to break, and if you can just arbitrarily break a rule with no obvious consequences, then why bother ever following it?