unverifiable claim to having been diagnosed with Asperger’s
I, Lucas Sloan, do solemnly swear that Alicorn is not neurotypical, and very probably has Asperger’s. I further attest that the information this comment is based on is the result of having physically interacted with her.
Are you also solemnly swearing to ignorance of Alicorn’s long-time inarticulable ease with which she makes long-term friendships, a strong non-Asperger’s indicator?
Except that she’d done it naturally all her life without any rigorous systematization—which is why she finds her methods so inarticulable (“why not just meet girls/friends on the internet?”). Someone who’s systematized it has gone through all the steps (the “nuts and bolts”) explicitly and has no trouble telling others how to do it—yet Alicorn has spectacularly, laughably failed at that.
(Good for her if she can make friends—but she can’t seem to pass that skill on.)
So the evidence suggests that this friendship ability did not originate from Asperger’s-type systematization, rendering it unable to substantiate claims of Aspberger’s.
Yes, to criticize the advice’s actual vacuousness.
[Alicorn:] Cultivate social spontaneity. This one is hard to define, so I’ll give an example. I was waiting for a bus and a woman I’d never met before in an awesome homemade knitted cloak tottering along on crutches said she loved my jacket.
[Crono:] WARNING. If you’re male and you attempt to talk to a woman on public transportation, you may very well end up making her extremely uncomfortable. This xkcd comic triggered a major backlash.
[me:]The way you avoid negative outcomes or ill will in such situations is to only approach people who will appreciate being approached by you.
And how do you determine that? Um, implementation issue. Yeah.
The advice requires you to know things that, as an AS type, you wouldn’t know to begin with. Her advice is just another form of “do what the other person believes is okay for you to do, and do it right and stuff”—this shows serious lack of systematization.
And what kind of advice is it anyway, to say, “Um, okay, first assume the other person has started the conversation...”
I’ve read everything that Alicorn wrote in that thread four times now, and don’t see anywhere where she said to assume that the other person has started the conversation. She didn’t give explicit advice on how to start a conversation, but note that the original comment is marked “some tidbits”, not “everything you need to know about having a conversation”.
She does give a useful, if rough, heuristic for determining when one shouldn’t try to start a conversation with a stranger:
If you do not have practice using social spontaneity to good effect it is ideal to try it in situations where the other party may both physically and socially escape, just as a general rule.
Further, auties can learn heuristics that mitigate some of our social skills deficits, and Alicorn’s advice is generally within the realm of such heuristics; she doesn’t suggest reading the other person’s body language, for example, but gives advice that is likely to work without the knowledge that body language gives. Also, as a strong extrovert, Alicorn is more likely than most auties to have developed those heuristics to the point where they can be built on to create more advanced heuristics that go well beyond what is stereotypically expected of an autie.
I’ve read everything that Alicorn wrote in that thread four times now, and don’t see anywhere where she said to assume that the other person has started the conversation.
What about the thing I just quoted:
[Alicorn:] Cultivate social spontaneity. This one is hard to define, so I’ll give an example. I was waiting for a bus and a woman I’d never met before in an awesome homemade knitted cloak tottering along on crutches said she loved my jacket.
Next:
She does give a useful, if rough, heuristic for determining when one shouldn’t try to start a conversation with a stranger:
If you do not have practice using social spontaneity to good effect it is ideal to try it in situations where the other party may both physically and socially escape, just as a general rule.
Except that’s not useful, because socially-adept people violate that in spades.
As I discussed here, I don’t think being autistic and being extroverted are mutually exclusive, although they may co-occur in many individuals. Alicorn was actually one of the people I had in mind as someone whom I’ve met who has AS and is also extroverted.
Yes, I’m quite aware of that. And be that as it may, the experience of an extroverted autistic is going to be significantly different from that of a normal autistic, questioning the usefulness of the former’s insight into the latter.
I agree with you on this point. To the extent that Alicorn has presented her socialization/luminosity advice as being applicable to all people (or all autistic people), she has certainly overstated her case. Indeed, I would guess the reason her comment about meeting people on the Internet was downvoted was that it appeared to promise universally applicable advice, and as HughRistik ably pointed out, it did not fulfill that promise.
But my guess, based on Alicorn’s posts, would be that at this point, even Alicorn would agree that her advice may not work for all people. She backed off somewhat on the universal applicability of her Internet-socializing advice in response to HughRistik’s comment (“It is possible I was overgeneralizing”). And I think her more recent posts have mostly recognized that her advice may not be helpful to all people. For example, in the introduction to the luminosity sequence, she wrote:
I’m optimistic that at least some of [these techniques] will be useful to at least some people. However, I may be a walking, talking “results not typical”. My prior attempts at improving luminosity in others consist of me asking individually-designed questions in real time, and that’s gone fairly well; it remains to be seen if I can distill the basic idea into a format that’s generally accessible.
Yes, she backed down in response to my comment, which I noticed and greatly appreciated. But she never made any personal admission of fault or retraction to Silas, so I understand why he held a grudge. After all, she did tell him:
If they [women Silas knows] have not invited you to any social functions where you could meet any of their friends, I doubt they like you very much. If you’d like to add a less polite data point, I’d neither date you nor introduce you to my single friends based on what little I know of you.
At this point in the conversation, I really don’t see what Silas had done to deserve such as assessment, other than proclaim frustration at his dating situation, and point out that her advice wasn’t helpful to him.
If Alicorn had given Silas some kind of personal apology or retraction, admitting that it was premature to try to give him advice without understanding his situation, and imputing negative characteristics to him because of his difficulty accepting that advice, then perhaps the whole communication breakdown might not have happened.
While Silas has handled the interpersonal aspects of their interaction badly, so has Alicorn. I understand why he was frustrated, and felt motivated to point out seeming contradictions between the way she treated him and his arguments, and some of the other posting she did on LessWrong (I also noticed a contradiction between her excellent post on problems vs tasks, and her “let them eat cake” style dating advice to Silas). Along the way, Silas dug himself into a deeper and deeper hole with sarcasm and abrasiveness (despite the urging of me and many others to cool down) and convinced Alicorn and a bunch of other people that he is a jerk, even though he also seems to have made good faith efforts to have discussions with Alicorn on other subjects.
As a result, judgments of Silas by Alicorn or others based on his recent behavior risk falling prey to the fundamental attribution error that Alicorn correctly warns against in the original post. He does have (in my mind) a valid, unresolved beef with a certain lack of charity and hasty negative conclusions that Alicorn displayed to his arguments and character in the past. I strongly, strongly disagree with how he has been expressing it, but he does have a valid beef that people need to realize before piling on him (it’s a testament to the failure of his communication skills that he has slowly managed to alienate a large segment of the community even when he started out being in the right.)
Indeed with this single post you are a much better advocate for Silas than he has been with his many posts. I had not previously seen that post from Alicorn, and I suspect I am not the only one. I agree that Silas, while he has made some good points here and there, has mostly just dug himself a deeper and deeper hole. Whereas Alicorn’s radio silence, particularly in comparison with the frequency of Silas’s posting, has been the wiser move, whether or not it was calculated to be so.
Except that’s not useful, because socially-adept people violate that in spades.
Yes, they can afford to violate it because they can pick up on the relevant subtle cues. Any attempt at systematization in this sort is going to require having a more restrained set of options than that used by socially-adept people. That’s because the rules for how humans interact are really complicated. So even if you did have a decent descriptor for how they all worked, keeping track of all those rules would be really difficult.
Yes, they can afford to violate it because they can pick up on the relevant subtle cues. Any attempt at systematization in this sort is going to require having a more restrained set of options than that used by socially-adept people.
And adhering to this rule will so constrain you and mark you as unusual, that it’s no different from just doing aspie SOP (what you’d do anyway).
If I could afford to only talk to people in these circumstances, I wouldn’t be asking for social advice.
And adhering to this rule will so constrain you and mark you as unusual, that it’s no different from just doing aspie SOP (what you’d do anyway).
It’s different in that it’s a kind of unusual behavior that helps one learn skills that can then be used to make one appear less abnormal.
Isomorphically, someone who was just learning to drive would not immediately try to drive on a busy highway; they would start by practicing in an empty parking lot, even though that’s not a normal venue for driving. Once they were confident in their ability to get the results that they wanted from their car, then they’d try driving on roads.
I concur with Lady Airedale, but from what I understand Alicorn is mostly extroverted in one-on-one settings and less so in large groups. I’m not sure how common this is for extroverts generally.
So then she is like most autistics, but still hasn’t actually systematized the problem in a way that she can articulate the solution to other real autistics.
I’m planning an article/series on how to explain, and I can definitely see more and more people every day who need it.
I, Lucas Sloan, do solemnly swear that Alicorn is not neurotypical, and very probably has Asperger’s. I further attest that the information this comment is based on is the result of having physically interacted with her.
Are you also solemnly swearing to ignorance of Alicorn’s long-time inarticulable ease with which she makes long-term friendships, a strong non-Asperger’s indicator?
I did not know of her ability to purposefully create friendships in any way.
Systematizing something which most people do naturally (ie making friends with people) is an indicator of Aspergers.
Except that she’d done it naturally all her life without any rigorous systematization—which is why she finds her methods so inarticulable (“why not just meet girls/friends on the internet?”). Someone who’s systematized it has gone through all the steps (the “nuts and bolts”) explicitly and has no trouble telling others how to do it—yet Alicorn has spectacularly, laughably failed at that.
(Good for her if she can make friends—but she can’t seem to pass that skill on.)
So the evidence suggests that this friendship ability did not originate from Asperger’s-type systematization, rendering it unable to substantiate claims of Aspberger’s.
:\
I know you saw this, you replied to one of the replies to it.
Yes, to criticize the advice’s actual vacuousness.
The advice requires you to know things that, as an AS type, you wouldn’t know to begin with. Her advice is just another form of “do what the other person believes is okay for you to do, and do it right and stuff”—this shows serious lack of systematization.
And what kind of advice is it anyway, to say, “Um, okay, first assume the other person has started the conversation...”
I’ve read everything that Alicorn wrote in that thread four times now, and don’t see anywhere where she said to assume that the other person has started the conversation. She didn’t give explicit advice on how to start a conversation, but note that the original comment is marked “some tidbits”, not “everything you need to know about having a conversation”.
She does give a useful, if rough, heuristic for determining when one shouldn’t try to start a conversation with a stranger:
Further, auties can learn heuristics that mitigate some of our social skills deficits, and Alicorn’s advice is generally within the realm of such heuristics; she doesn’t suggest reading the other person’s body language, for example, but gives advice that is likely to work without the knowledge that body language gives. Also, as a strong extrovert, Alicorn is more likely than most auties to have developed those heuristics to the point where they can be built on to create more advanced heuristics that go well beyond what is stereotypically expected of an autie.
What about the thing I just quoted:
Next:
Except that’s not useful, because socially-adept people violate that in spades.
Wait, I thought she was autistic?
As I discussed here, I don’t think being autistic and being extroverted are mutually exclusive, although they may co-occur in many individuals. Alicorn was actually one of the people I had in mind as someone whom I’ve met who has AS and is also extroverted.
Yes, I’m quite aware of that. And be that as it may, the experience of an extroverted autistic is going to be significantly different from that of a normal autistic, questioning the usefulness of the former’s insight into the latter.
I agree with you on this point. To the extent that Alicorn has presented her socialization/luminosity advice as being applicable to all people (or all autistic people), she has certainly overstated her case. Indeed, I would guess the reason her comment about meeting people on the Internet was downvoted was that it appeared to promise universally applicable advice, and as HughRistik ably pointed out, it did not fulfill that promise.
But my guess, based on Alicorn’s posts, would be that at this point, even Alicorn would agree that her advice may not work for all people. She backed off somewhat on the universal applicability of her Internet-socializing advice in response to HughRistik’s comment (“It is possible I was overgeneralizing”). And I think her more recent posts have mostly recognized that her advice may not be helpful to all people. For example, in the introduction to the luminosity sequence, she wrote:
Yes, she backed down in response to my comment, which I noticed and greatly appreciated. But she never made any personal admission of fault or retraction to Silas, so I understand why he held a grudge. After all, she did tell him:
At this point in the conversation, I really don’t see what Silas had done to deserve such as assessment, other than proclaim frustration at his dating situation, and point out that her advice wasn’t helpful to him.
If Alicorn had given Silas some kind of personal apology or retraction, admitting that it was premature to try to give him advice without understanding his situation, and imputing negative characteristics to him because of his difficulty accepting that advice, then perhaps the whole communication breakdown might not have happened.
While Silas has handled the interpersonal aspects of their interaction badly, so has Alicorn. I understand why he was frustrated, and felt motivated to point out seeming contradictions between the way she treated him and his arguments, and some of the other posting she did on LessWrong (I also noticed a contradiction between her excellent post on problems vs tasks, and her “let them eat cake” style dating advice to Silas). Along the way, Silas dug himself into a deeper and deeper hole with sarcasm and abrasiveness (despite the urging of me and many others to cool down) and convinced Alicorn and a bunch of other people that he is a jerk, even though he also seems to have made good faith efforts to have discussions with Alicorn on other subjects.
As a result, judgments of Silas by Alicorn or others based on his recent behavior risk falling prey to the fundamental attribution error that Alicorn correctly warns against in the original post. He does have (in my mind) a valid, unresolved beef with a certain lack of charity and hasty negative conclusions that Alicorn displayed to his arguments and character in the past. I strongly, strongly disagree with how he has been expressing it, but he does have a valid beef that people need to realize before piling on him (it’s a testament to the failure of his communication skills that he has slowly managed to alienate a large segment of the community even when he started out being in the right.)
Indeed with this single post you are a much better advocate for Silas than he has been with his many posts. I had not previously seen that post from Alicorn, and I suspect I am not the only one. I agree that Silas, while he has made some good points here and there, has mostly just dug himself a deeper and deeper hole. Whereas Alicorn’s radio silence, particularly in comparison with the frequency of Silas’s posting, has been the wiser move, whether or not it was calculated to be so.
Yes, they can afford to violate it because they can pick up on the relevant subtle cues. Any attempt at systematization in this sort is going to require having a more restrained set of options than that used by socially-adept people. That’s because the rules for how humans interact are really complicated. So even if you did have a decent descriptor for how they all worked, keeping track of all those rules would be really difficult.
And adhering to this rule will so constrain you and mark you as unusual, that it’s no different from just doing aspie SOP (what you’d do anyway).
If I could afford to only talk to people in these circumstances, I wouldn’t be asking for social advice.
It’s different in that it’s a kind of unusual behavior that helps one learn skills that can then be used to make one appear less abnormal.
Isomorphically, someone who was just learning to drive would not immediately try to drive on a busy highway; they would start by practicing in an empty parking lot, even though that’s not a normal venue for driving. Once they were confident in their ability to get the results that they wanted from their car, then they’d try driving on roads.
I concur with Lady Airedale, but from what I understand Alicorn is mostly extroverted in one-on-one settings and less so in large groups. I’m not sure how common this is for extroverts generally.
So then she is like most autistics, but still hasn’t actually systematized the problem in a way that she can articulate the solution to other real autistics.
I’m planning an article/series on how to explain, and I can definitely see more and more people every day who need it.
Downvote explanation requested.
Sorry, first hand knowledge wins.