How big is your filter bubble? What’s in it? What’s outside it? Okay, next question: how can you tell?
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Culture, in the part of the world in which I’ve been, and, for all I know, in other parts as well to which I cannot speak, has two rough parts: the Mainland and the Isles.
The Mainland is what calls itself the “mainstream” or “normal” culture.
You know… Mundania.
The Isles are everything else. Everything that’s not “mainstream” is an island.
Nobody knows how many Isles there are. They are wholly and utterly unmapped. Each one is its own subculture.
Some Isles are closer to the Mainland, and some further.
Some Isles are closer to others. Some are big. Some are small.
We — meaning I and a very large percentage of my readership — live in a collection of close Isles which form up an Archipelago. The SCA. Fandom. NERO. Etc.
This is the Archipelago of Weird.
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I find it useful to apply Miller’s law:
In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to find out what it could be true of.
allistic person, let’s talk about this one place you feel locked out of and how we can make it even better for the majority, who already run so many other industries to the exclusion of people like me, first. Let’s make sure the already-privileged majority is comfortable in all places, at all times, before appreciating small pockets of minority safety and accommodation, and asking what they used to do right before they, too, were colonized by the tyranny of the narrowly-defined “default” human being in need of additional comfort while I try to survive. THAT FEELS FUCKING INCLUSIVE TO ME, HELL YEAH.
(...) Expecting autistic people to get better at small talk in order to make allistics feel more welcome is like expecting people in wheelchairs to get better at walking in order to make physically abled people feel more welcome.
(...) Mainstream feminism has some serious catching-up to do when it comes to learning about the lives of people who aren’t nice normal middle- to upper-class ladies, not to mention a lot of earned distrust. When you tell people that a skill to which they are inherently maladapted is a new requirement for participating in some culture, you are telling those people that they are no longer welcome in that culture. Bluntly, that is not your decision to make, and people are right not to trust the motivations of anyone who behaves as if they think it is. Too many of us have been burned too many times by people who told us “we want to make this a great place for everyone!”, only to find out that in practice, “everyone” actually means “all the allistics.”
One important feature of safe spaces is that they can’t always be safe for two groups at the same time. Jews are a discriminated-against minority who need a safe space. Muslims are a discriminated-against minority who need a safe space. But the safe space for Jews should be very far way from the safe space for Muslims, or else neither space is safe for anybody.
The rationalist community is a safe space for people who obsessively focus on reason and argument even when it is socially unacceptable to do so.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say that these people need a safe space. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been called “a nerd” or “a dork” or “autistic” for saying something rational is too high to count. Just recently commenters on Marginal Revolution – not exactly known for being a haunt for intellect-hating jocks – found an old post of mine and called me among many other things “aspie”, “a pansy”, “retarded”, and an “omega” (a PUA term for a man who’s so socially inept he will never date anyone).
I also enjoy this ending (EDIT: of the article linked by Lumifer, not the SSC one):
Nor is it lost on me that I am sitting here patiently spergsplaining theory of mind to people who supposedly have it when I supposedly don’t. Allistics can get away with developing a theory of one mind — their own — because they can expect most of the people they interact with to have knowledge, perspectives, and a sensorium not all that different from theirs. Autists don’t get that option. Reaching adulthood, for us, means first learning how to function through a distorted sensorium, then learning to develop a theory of minds, plural, starting with ones different from our own.
It reminds me of my pet theory on some similarities between high-IQ people and autists; specifically, having to develop a “theory of mind unlike my own” during childhood. (But the two of us probably had a long disagreement about this in the past, if I remember correctly, so I don’t want to repeat it here.)
Just to forestall confusion, that ending is not the ending of the SSC post, but the (near-)ending of the post Lumifer linked to. (In particular, Scott is not calling himself autistic.)
A good post in a generally good blog. Samples:
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reminds me of a SSC post on safe spaces:
I also enjoy this ending (EDIT: of the article linked by Lumifer, not the SSC one):
It reminds me of my pet theory on some similarities between high-IQ people and autists; specifically, having to develop a “theory of mind unlike my own” during childhood. (But the two of us probably had a long disagreement about this in the past, if I remember correctly, so I don’t want to repeat it here.)
Just to forestall confusion, that ending is not the ending of the SSC post, but the (near-)ending of the post Lumifer linked to. (In particular, Scott is not calling himself autistic.)
Thanks; edited the comment to make it clear.