Are you an orangutan or a chimpanzee? Common misunderstandings talking about doomsday fears with people who are autistic - or very socially aware - and how this diversity enriches society
Probably more than a quarter of our members of the Facebook group Doomsday Debunked are autistic spectrum. Some members are autistic to the point that it impacts on language abilities (the most autistic people in society often can’t speak but members of our group of course have to be able to communicate via text to take part).
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Orangutans and chimpanzees. Our civilization benefits greatly from this diversity.
Orangutan: Luke autistic people caught up with the task and not even much interested in David Attenborough.
Chimpanzee: Like non-autistic people with a strong focus on interactions with others around them.
There likely is a reason why evolution has given some humans autistic and others non autistic traits - both are beneficial to hunter gatherers.
Kids are born autistic or born not autistic.
Other members are not autistic at all, but rather, are very empathic (extremely attentive to the feelings of others), and are easily overwhelmed by their own emotions and other people’s emotions. They may have vivid imaginations and are scared by images and nightmares.
Some are both. So when I talk here about autistic and empathic - the very empathic people are sometimes also autistic.
I also talk about social awareness - that’s often challenged for autistic people.
Autistic people are also often empathic and sometimes very empathic - it is a misconception the idea that they are not. So, in what follows when I talk about more autistic members, I do not mean they lack empathy.
However, autistic people are often less able to process and recognize the feelings of others in social settings.
Sometimes autistic people find it hard to recognize their own emotions too.
The more empathic members are the other way around. They recognize emotions easily. However they can over recognize, sometimes they interpolate and see feelings that aren’t actually there. When that happens they can take a lot of convincing, being so confident in their own ability to recognize feelings.
Some autistic people also may pick up some feelings from others very easily, and be over receptive to them, over recognize, especially simple raw emotions like anger, or happiness. It’s mainly the more complex social settings and their associated social emotions they sometimes can’t read well.
They still read emotions but don’t necessarily see the same ones that others would see in that setting.
Some autistic people find it hard to recognize even the simplest emotions such as anger, sadness, happiness etc in themselves and in others and as children take a long time to learn to do this.
Some of our members I think are both, autistic and also with a heightened empathy, easily overwhelmed by their own emotions, but also easily overwhelmed by other people’s emotions. All this is harder for them to work with because of their autism.
Many members also are OCD, especially about whatever scares them, can’t let go of it, it fills their mind for weeks on end and they obsess about it.
Many also have magical thinking, a kind of illogical feeling things are connected although you know intellectually they are not. This is often associated with OCD, but we all have it to some extent. For magical thinking, see my article here:
One thing may happen if you get panicked about some of these scenarios, is that you find yourself thinking in a clearly illogical way, that somehow your thinking could cause this scenario, or things you do that are not at all connected. E.g. you may be afraid that if you leave your house, where you feel safe, that something utterly catastrophic will happen, not just to you but the whole world. Or that thinking about something that scares you will make it happen. It is silly and you know it is, but it may be compelling and convincing all the same.
Many seem to be all of these, autistic, OCD (often with magical thinking), and with heightened empathy to other people’s emotions. So we get various combinations of any or all of:
autistic
heightened awareness of others emotions
imaginative
OCD
magical thinking
Another high vulnerability group is those who are
bipolar - and when in the manic or the depressive phase they can be at special risk of vulnerability to doomsday fears.
This is all anecdotal and some may be none of those. Not a study. But from our experiences in the group, these seem to be the people most vulnerable to doomsday fears. People who most want to help with debunking are also often like this too, especially if they have been scared in the past, and they are often the best debunkers.
This post focuses on confusions when autistic, and very socially aware people interact and also about talking about their fears to people who are especially imaginative and empathic - since it’s one of the top reasons for communication glitches in the group.
In the title, orangutan refers to autistic people since as we’ll see orangutans have autistic traits and in humans this is a trait shared with solitary hunters in hunter / gatherer tribes - while Chimpanzee refers to neurotypical people since Chimpanzees are very socially aware
A child is born autistic
I’ve copied this to my substack in response to a very mistaken executive order by the White House under Trump to help boost awareness of autism as not a disease and more than a disorder - something of great benefit to society.
Will do a separate blog post about the Executive Order soon.
The challenge is to help integrate autistic and ultra-socially aware people into society so that we all benefit from this diversity that is built into our civilization through evolution.
There has to be a reason why such a high percentage of humans are born autistic. Those genes wouldn’t persist if they weren’t evolutionarily beneficial.
there are 200 - 1,000 genes linked to autism
kids are already autistic when born
Rarely autism is caused by the environment in the womb
if the mother gets rubella during pregnancy
or if the mother is receiving valporic acid (a treatment for some conditions such as epilepsy or bipolar disorder)
“Autism is a constellation,” says Daniel H. Geschwind, MD, PhD, who won a National Academy of Medicine prize for investigating autism’s genetic underpinnings.
…
However, an estimated 200 - 1,000 genes impact autism susceptibility. In comparison, autism cases linked to environmental exposures during early fetal development, such as prenatal exposure to valporic acid, are relatively rare.
…
“We’ve successfully identified genetic causes of autism,” says Dr. Geschwind. “We're now ready and moving into a new phase where we're using the genetic information to develop therapeutics, and that's very exciting.
No surprise we get many communications glitches in the group
These people have very different ways of communicating and of understanding things.
To add to that, many members have English as a second language or are using Google translate to speak and listen which adds to the problems.
Then to make it even worse, our members are often panicking and our group is a place to help them in the middle of a panic attack.
So, when someone posts to the group, at that very moment their heart may be racing, they may be vomiting with fear, breathing rapidly, and they are often not thinking clearly.
Debunkers may panic as well. They are not scared by the story, but they are concerned about the person who has just posted and who is panicking. The situation seems urgent, to find a way to help this person, and they don’t know what to do. Though they are not scared of the thing they want to debunk, they panic because they don’t know the best way to respond.
With this background, it’s no surprise that we get communication glitches in the group nearly every day, sometimes serious ones.
If you get a communication glitch - not to worry - it is normal here!
If this happens to you, first don’t worry about it. It is normal in our group. All of us have done this many times. I have lost count of the number of times I have accidentally scared someone when trying to help them. Several times a week, and sometimes several times a day, I say something that leads to a panicked reply from the person I’m trying to help.
If your comment triggers a panic, again, don’t worry!
Remember that these are often people who are already panicking many times a day. For the most easily panicked, if something you say triggers a momentarily panic, bear in mind that it may be one of half a dozen they have already had so far that day. It’s not a reason to give up, but to try to find a better way to say whatever you were trying to say, or to move on.
I wrote this to help members understand each others’ way of communication.
Focus here on autism and heightened social awareness / empathy
In this post I am going to talk particularly about autism and about its flip side, a heightened social awareness (not sure it’s got a name). I am going to talk mostly about the two ends of the spectrum, the most autistic people and the most socially aware. There is a wide range in between and no two people are the same. It’s just by way of some examples to give an idea of the issues.
FIrst take a deep breath, or several
First, if you are panicking, take a few deep breaths. If in a panic attack then breathe slowly for 10 or 20 minutes or sometimes more until the panic goes away. You can’t think so clearly if you are panicking.
For some reason, when you breathe slowly, your mind calms down. It is an automatic response of the body and brain.
Breathe in and out slowly and deeply and other ways to calm a panic attack
Doomsday debunked is a sympathetic group - and you are protected
This is especially important for our more autistic members who are often not able to pick up on the signs that the person they are talking to is being sympathetic.
This is a sympathetic group.
We have strong rules to help you
Comments on your posts are usually from people trying to help you.
If you think someone is trying to scare you or laugh at you, report it to the moderators. We will protect you.
Often they are not trying to scare you at all and it is just a communication glitch.
If someone really is trying to scare you or mock you, then we will stop them. Mute them if necessary, talk to them, explain how the group works etc.
If they are not aligned with our aims to sympathize and help scared people, they often leave the group voluntarily, or they are banned.
Talking to very empathic people
This includes autistic empathic people
Empathic people are focused all the time on tiny nuances of words and expression.
They can be very scared or not scared at all, depending on which analogies you use.
You need to think carefully about any images, and analogies.
They tend to generalize from a single instance (e.g. share a photo of a single polar bear starving and they feel that all polar bears are in trouble). You need to be careful about the examples you use.
You can trigger a panic attack easily just by using a metaphor they find scary.
Taking to very autistic people - not a single spectrum
Any autistic person in the group has to be high functioning autistic, enough to be able to speak, communicate reasonably well and use the internet. Our autistic members span a wide spectrum too.
I should say that I know that the idea of a “spectrum” is a simplification. Every autistic person is unique. For instance, some of the autistic people in the group are very good at social interaction, at least in that online situation, and quick at picking up subtle social cues for instance. Others are not able to pick up on those cues at all, so it’s not really a single thing, it’s a catch all term for many different personalities and ways of seeing the world.
It’s not really one spectrum but many independent spectra that any of us may be on a continuum for.
This is not real data but to show the concept:
Autism, evolution, and the inadequacy of ‘spectrum’
They show three spectra there but in practice there may be many of them.
So, what I say here doesn’t apply to all autistic people. It is rather just talking from my own experience of the types of misunderstanding we often get in the group.
Far end of the autism spectrum (or spectra)
The biggest glitches happen with those who are at the far end of the autistic spectrum so I’ll focus on those. You can be a high functioning autistic person and not run into any of these communication glitches, or only a few of them.
Very autistic people, even when they have a high functioning use of language, often are strong on vocabulary but weak on sentence structure. They focus more on individual words and less on the overall global sense of a sentence.
They may use short sentences with a simple format. They may use the present tense to talk about everything, past, present and future (some autistic people find tenses confusing).
If very autistic, they are easily confused by paragraphs with chains of more than a few ideas joined together. The most autistic members tend to use short or repetitive sentences.
When you talk to very autistic members you need to make it clear where you are headed at the start of a paragraph.
So for instance, it is a good idea to start your paragraph with the thing they most need to hear, stated as simply as possible. This also helps for people who are in a panic attack, whether they are autistic or not.
Also often when we talk, we build up sentences one on top of the other like a house of cards. Autistic people do this too, but the most autistic people tend to have fewer cards in the house they build up in their sentences.
If you build up lots of sentences into a structure, then for a very autistic person it all falls down as a house of cards. Or a bit like Jenga.
The most autistic members may only able to build a couple of sentences on top of each other in their paragraphs.
They also need to need connections between sentences and paragraphs made more explicitly.
For example if you are talking about Jane or John in one paragraph, and then in a new paragraph talk say “he” or “she”, a very autistic person is less likely to pick up on this as being the same person, Jane or John. It is like they get a reset at the start of the paragraph. They may be puzzled or make connections that you don’t expect.
Comparison with app interfaces
One good way to understand the differences is by comparing it with apps. Wikipedia describes it like this:
One of the best parallels is to think of the two types as two different types of computers. One computer-type has a wonderfully intuitive user-interface, but comparatively lousy data-handling power. The other type has vast data-storage and data-processing powers, but a really lousy (comparatively speaking) user interface
Wikipedia:High-functioning autism and Asperger's editors - Wikipedia
However it’s a spectrum, amongst those with the wonderfully intuitive user interface, then the most empathic end of the spectrum have a user interface that is quite baffling not just to the most autistic members but also to people in the middle of the spectrum too.
App interface at heightened social awareness end of the spectrum
Those with heightened social awareness may interact with the world using an interface something like this:
This is a rather wonderful but sometimes frustrating Windows 10 app for painting called “Fresh Paint”. It’s got lots of nice features. But it is all “intuitive user interface”.
There is no text there, lots of icons, it doesn’t even have a help page - the ? icon takes you to a useless online page with lots of questions and no answers. If you hover the mouse over those icons, some have short tips that tell you very little. Others don’t even have that.
Our members at the most empathic end of the spectrum have a UI (User Interface) like that.
They may not even look at the data, and if the data contradicts their intuition, they don’t notice. All they see is the overall picture.
They may be focused on emotions to the extent that they may see lots of nuances and complexities in emotions but are little aware of much else, which for them recedes into unimportant.
As an artist they might be like Kandinsky, doing paintings like this, they live in a world full of colourful emotive blobs, which drives everything they do and how they feel.
Detail from: Wassily Kandinsky - Improvisation with Horses (sketch for improvisation No. 20), 1911
If you panic then your world can become like this too. You no longer see the details, just everything blurs into emotional blobs.
The downside is that you miss details of fact that contradict your emotional reaction or reading. You get a first impression of someone or a situation, and then continue to hold to it, even when lots of data comes up that contradicts it.
Then one image, maybe of a starving child, can completely flip your view on things. Then another image can flip it back again or in another direction.
For some of our most socially aware and empathic members, their user interface is so intuitive they hardly see the data at all. Even if the data contradicts what the user interface says, they only see the interface and ignore the data or don’t even see it.
They think they are great at reading other people’s emotions and often they are, but if they get it wrong they get it really badly wrong. And what’s more if they get it wrong then it can take a lot to flip this.
That’s because it’s hard for them to believe that their wonderful intuitive UI could be misleading them. It is so easy to use and so convincing to them, that they can’t see the underlying data that contradicts it, or if they do, they discount it.
App interface of a very autistic person
Very autistic people see the world more like this:
(Example of using “Inspect element” in Firefox)
Lots of text and data, focusing right in on a single element in a web page, and then looking at all its properties in detail.
This is just as baffling to the more empathic members. They are looking for the tone, some clue as to how you are feeling, how you are thinking. They have nothing to get a handle on if you present them with what you see as a very autistic person.
It is great for fact checking, if you know how to do it properly. But it can easily turn into an obsession to find out everything about something, when you don’t need to.
The downside is that you miss nuances of situation and tone. Autistic people often are unable to tell if someone is being sympathetic with them, or attacking them, and just have to guess.
Common confusions when autistic people and empathic people interact in our group
Here again empathic can include autistic empathic people.
If you are severely autistic:
If someone in the group tries to help you many times, and then seem to suddenly attack you - it is likely a communications glitch.
Report it to the mods, and we will look into it. Most likely they are not attacking you, because this is a very sympathetic group and real attacks are rare. We will do what we can to help resolve the communications glitch and to try to reduce the chance of it happening in the future.
If they really are attacking you we will make sure they stop.
If you are very empathic
If someone in the group says something that seems rude, abrupt, or hurtful, bear in mind it may just be a glitch.
They may not be trying to hurt anyone.
They may be doing this because they are autistic.
For an example, our most autistic members sometimes do laughter Ha ha reactions on posts, and you have no idea why they did it. They are not poking fun at you or laughing at you.
Maybe there was something about it that was funny to them, and they not trying to do something, they are just adding their instant reaction to the post.
The main thing that confuses the socially empathic people is that there is no social purpose here. Just naively and factually giving their reaction.
[We solved this in the group by adding a new rule not to do laugh reactions on posts unless they are intended as humour. Autistic people often like rules and it helps them feel safe, when they know what the rules are]
They might also say something that doesn’t fit the context of the social situation. Be angry with someone who is sympathizing with them. Talk about some pet idea of theirs in a situation where it is just not relevant to the conversation.
It’s really hard for our more empathic and socially aware members not to read intent and feelings into these communication glitches.
Autistic people often also lack of a theory of mind, not being able to model the minds of other people in their imagination, not being able to figure out the consequences of what they say to someone with a different mind from them.
Theory of mind | Spectrum | Autism Research News
Some people on the autistic spectrum tend to randomly attack other people in their real life [often because of triggers such as a loud noise or someone singing] - it is not something they can control in the same way as most or us. Interesting page here describing it as "intense energy"
Aggressive Behaviors or Intense Energy?
They may avoid socializing because they know that if they do then they might attack someone - verbally or physically - and that it won't be understood unless the other person is familiar with autism.
Our more empathic members use a lot of sympathy language, but without much actual facts in it, and that can be confusing to the autistic people.
Some common characteristics of the most autistic people and the most empathic people in the group
The most autistic people tend to
Focus on the facts
Tend to believe that others are truthful. They find it hard to accept that false prophets lie, for instance, or that journalists make things up. They are easily taken in by fake news.
They can’t read tone. They often have no way to pick up from their words whether someone is being sympathetic or attacking them, and have to guess. Sometimes they guess wrong.
Are not good at picking up on the social context.
Need to be told if something is sarcastic or ironical.
Need to be told if a question is rhetorical. They tend to just answer them as questions (perhaps a bit puzzled that you asked)
Get confused by metaphors and take them literally.
Tend not to carry the subject of a sentence over to the next sentence or paragraph. If a sentence is about Jack, say, it might seem natural to start a new paragraph saying “He” when an autistic person might need you to say “Jack” again, otherwise they are not sure who you are talking about.
If very severely autistic, then the past and future may be hard to grasp. If someone asks you “is 2000 a long time ago” they are probably autistic. They are not making fun of you. They just want to know.
Give short answers just sticking to the facts, and tend not to elaborate. Tend not to recognize the need to tell you details that they already know themselves.
If you ask several questions one after another in the same PM or comment in a discussion, they may just answer “Yes” without giving any verbal clues about which of your questions they are answering, it’s a similar thing, they know which one they are answering and are often not very aware of the need to tell you which one it is.
If you say something that helped them, they often do not respond to tell you that it helped. They know it helped, and they are grateful, but they do not make the extra jump to realize they need to tell you all this.
If they go silent it’s usually a good sign, you answered their question and helped them and they have no more questions. They know that you helped them, and don’t recognize the social need to communicate that knowledge to you. If you ask them to tell others they have been helped, or thank them if they help them, they may do that a few times but soon forget.
Empathic people tend to
Get overwhelmed by emotions. Generalize from a single event or photo. If they see one photograph of a starving polar bear it feels to them as if all polar bears are starving and the species must be about to go extinct.
Read emotions into situations that aren’t there. They may think someone is trolling, or angry, or confused. They may think they know how someone is feeling, because their user interface presents this to them so clearly, they find it very hard to believe that this could be mistaken.
Also, read things that aren’t there into non communication and communication glitches.
Need a lot of feedback from the other person, about their emotional state, such as whether what they said helped them.
See also
If I understand it right, both have pluses and minuses and if most of society was autistic it would be configured in a way that the non autistic people would find hard to navigate. There must be some reason for this also.
If autistic people didn’t contribute some value to our society and survival, natural selection would have lead to people not having children with these traits and the genes for autism would have been bred out of society, at least to the extent where they became very rare. Couldn’t have as much as a few percent of the population autistic if it didn’t have a significant evolutionary advantage.
Autism genes and solitary hunter gatherers
I found an interesting paper suggesting that the autism genes may have been selected for as they favour solitary hunter gatherers, much like some solitary species of animals. The non autistic genes make it easier to work together in large social groups, but have disadvantages for solitary hunter gatherers. It’s an interesting hypothesis.
The traits that make it so easy for autistic people to focus and savant like abilities some develop could be very beneficial for a solitary hunter gatherer. They wold help with things like tracking, knowledge of flora and fauna, memorizing habits of their prey, edible and inedible species, intricate details of how to make shelters and tools.
Many anthropologists studying hunter-gatherer groups exclaim that the foragers that they are observing have cultivated amazing naturalistic abilities and are able to sense and perceive things to which they themselves are virtually blind (Kaplan, Hill, Lancaster, and Hurtado, 2000). These abilities, like tracking, ranging, stalking, food processing, mapping of terrain, and knowledge of flora and fauna may be areas through which the potential for autistic or savant-like abilities were channeled in the ancestral past. The same could be said for the deep stores of specialized or technical knowledge exhibited by people on the autism spectrum. This penchant for knowledge about pet interests could have been dedicated to memorizing edible and inedible species, analyzing the habits of prey items, understanding self-protection, maximization of food-collection efficiency, tool fashioning, and shelter procurement.
Also the way autistic people like obsessive repetitive activities, and an obsessive desire for sameness in their routines, is well adapted to the lifestyle of a lone forager.
A lone forager would be forced to engage in lonely, repetitive, and stereotypic activities, such as scanning repeatedly for threats and items to scavenge, picking and processing fruit, searching for and extracting vegetables, and locating and capturing prey items. An obsessive desire for sameness, repetition, and ritual makes little sense in the context of a social setting but seems applicable in a lone setting. In fact, it might be bad to expect variability and to thrive off unpredictability in a solitary scenario because of the monotony of living alone.
Orangutans and chimpanzees
Autistic people are more like orangutans in their behaviour.
Notice how the orangutan there is caught up in its task, not even paying any attention to David Attenborough. If it was a chimpanzee it would be trying to interact with him.
They do not form large social communities, and they eat, sleep, hunt and forage on their own. They spend at least 95% of their time on their own, have limited social aptitude and prefer solitude.
An analysis of the behavior of orangutans in the wild offers valuable insight into the ecology of a solitary ape. Most animals, many mammals, and several species of primates seek out food on their own. It is clear that such a solitary foraging strategy can even be effective for apes. In fact, orangutans, the species that is genetically third closest to humans as revealed by molecular studies, live solitarily in the wild. Orangutans eat, sleep, hunt, and forage on their own (Delgado and Van Schaik, 2000). They are often described as cautious and introverted, and it has been estimated that Bornean orangutans spend at least 95% of their time alone (Van Schaik, 1999). Orangutans have low interaction and association rates, and only infrequently meet up with conspecifics, often only to mate (Van Schaik and Van Hoof, 1996). They have been reported to congregate in small groups temporarily, but only to eat from a particularly fruit-laden tree. Several specialists emphasize that orangutans have limited social aptitude and tend to prefer solitude (Van Schaik, 1999). Van Schaik (1999) has concluded that, unlike all other species of apes, well-defined communities do not appear to exist in any orangutan population studied so far.
Fun fact: orang" means person" and utan is derived from "hutan" for forest. So orangutan means “person of the forest”.
https://www.theorangutanproject.org.uk/about-orangutans/orangutan-facts/
Non autistic people are more like chimpanzees that live very socially. You wouldn’t see orangutans behaving like this:
The very skills that help people who are very social like Chimpanzees to function well in social groups can cause problems if they have to spend a lot of time on their own.
It can lead to them treating inanimate objects as if they had intention, like people, which can lead to displaced and confused behaviour:
A mind that is highly geared toward using social cognition and forming emotional relationships would have been disadvantageous in an individual who was forced by circumstance to live in a solitary scenario.
This may help explain why many individuals with autism have an undue preference for their own company, pay attention to the nonsocial aspects of people, and treat others as if they were inanimate objects. Concentrating on empathy or theory of mind would probably have been impractical and counterproductive. Brune and Brune-Cohrs (2006) have speculated that theory of mind and social cognition are probably vulnerable to dysfunction.
He pointed out that most people at one time or another have strong desires to ascribe intentions to non-animals. A solitary forager without autism may be likely to attribute agency or ascribe intentions to inanimate objects, amounting to displaced and confused behavior.
They can also get miserable and create imaginary friends in their solitude. The very gregariousness that works so well in a large society can be maladaptive if they have to be solitary for much of their life.
Like other animals that are not obligately social, many individuals with autism avoid close bodily contact and fail to establish emotional relationships. It seems that these tendencies might have facilitated solitary life, whereas the inclinations to seek out physical contact and emotional relationships could have made solitary life miserable or unbearable. Classic works of fiction portraying humans abandoned or marooned from others emphasize the human need for companionship. The protagonists in such works frequently have unremitting obsessions with imaginary friends, behavior that would be extraneous and probably maladaptive for a solitary human. People on the autism spectrum would be less likely to yearn for companionship and more likely to focus on survival. Solitary species have very limited abilities for social cognition. This is probably because gregarious predispositions, companionable inclinations, and social instincts in general are maladaptive in a solitary context.
In the past humans hunter gatherers would sometimes form larger groups, like the chimpanzees, and sometimes smaller groups or be solitary like the orangutans.
So we have ended up with a mix of both kinds of traits. Though most closely related to chimpanzees, as hunter gatherers, our behaviour is at times more like that of orangutans. Chimpanzees do not do much solitary hunter gathering, but tend to do everything in a group in the wild.
Value of autistic genes in our society
The autistic genes are still valuable today in our society. They help with tasks that involve observing and making inferences about physical systems, but are of almost no use in trying to understand and predict the behaviour of other human minds. For that you need empathizing and forming accurate theories about the other person’s mind.
Systemizing is the ability to observe a physical system and make inferences or conclusions about how it works and what causes it to work the way it does. [It] works well for phenomena that are lawful and deterministic but that systemizing is of almost no use when it comes to predicting moment-by-moment changes in a person's behavior. Empathizing and forming theories about the other person's mind is required for the latter task.
For instance some (not all) autistic people are especially good at things like map reading, mental rotation, physics, maths, engineering, computer programming.
They don’t mention it there but some also are especially good at visual work.
Autistic people are not all the same, it doesn’t mean every autistic person is good at maths, or drawing or map reading. It’s a wide range of things here, and some autistic people will be good at some and others at others.
While in areas such as social work, nursing, and psychology, then the more empathizing genes are most useful.
Again this doesn’t mean that all the empathizing people will be good at social work or enjoy it or even want to do it. Again it’s a wide range of things here that some of the empathizing people will use their empathizing in some ways and others in other ways and will have a wide range of abilities depending on the person.
I recommend you have a read of the article here to find out more:
From another article autistic people are also often good at visual thinking. They don’t mention that much in the previous article, but you can see how that would be useful for a solitary hunter, and it is also very useful today, for instance, for those involved in designing things:
“Anecdotal accounts of experiences of people with autism, such as the eloquent descriptions provided by Dr Temple Grandin in her autobiography Thinking in Pictures (1995), support the centrality of visual thinking. The opening words of this book are as follows:
“I think in pictures. Words are like a second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head. When somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures. Language-based thinkers often find this phenomenon difficult to understand, but in my job as an equipment designer for the livestock industry, visual thinking is a tremendous advantage.”
In contrast to the relative integrity of the visual–spatial system, the language-processing system in autism exhibits obvious impairment. For example, people with high-functioning autism have more difficulty in following complex instructions or comprehending idioms, metaphors and connected discourse. According to Tager-Flusberg (1996), when language is acquired in autism, verbal communication continues to be primarily limited to the expression of instrumental functions, or simple labelling.
Sentence comprehension in autism: thinking in pictures with decreased functional connectivity
Temple Grandin talks about how she thinks visually and how that works in detail here:
Like orangutans navigating a civilization built by chimpanzees
You can imagine an orangutan, if somehow they were to think of themselves as being a chimpanzee, maybe brought up to a chimpanzee foster mother in a chimpanzee group - however hard they tried it would be very very hard for them to fit into a chimpanzee troop.
It is a bit like that for autistic people in our society. Our modern world has developed to be easiest to navigate for the majority of those with chimpanzee like tendencies.
If we were more like orangutan’s the way our civilization was configured would be very different, and it might then be those with chimpanzee like traits that would find it hard to fit in and know how to navigate the hard to fathom structures of our society.
That would be like a chimpanzee brought up by an orangutan foster mother. It would be constantly trying to interact socially with all the orangutans it met and would be constantly rebuffed and it would not be able to do the solitary foraging of a normal orangutan in orangutan “culture”.
Communicating with autistic people if you are not autistic yourself
Here are some tips on communicating with autistic people from the National Autistic Society, I’ve just taken the ones that are relevant to online communication:
Communication tips
This quick guide may help you to communicate more effectively with an autistic person, whether it’s your child, pupil, colleague or friend.
They find it hard to process what I say
An autistic person can find it difficult to filter out the less important information. If there is too much information, it can lead to ‘overload’, where no further information can be processed.
[This is a film the Autistic society did about information overload]
Say less and say it slowly.
Use specific key words, repeating and stressing them.
Pause between words and phrases to give the person time to process what you’ve said, and to give them chance to think of a response.
Don’t use too many questions.
Use less non-verbal communication (eg eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, body language) when a person is showing signs of anxiety.
[online then you can use emoticons]Use visual supports (eg symbols, timetables, Social Stories™).
They struggle with open ended questions
Keep questions short.
Ask only the most necessary questions.
Structure your questions, eg you could offer options or choices.
Be specific. For example, ask “Did you enjoy your lunch?” and “Did you enjoy maths?” rather than “How was your day?”.
They takes things literally
Avoid using irony, sarcasm, figurative language, rhetorical questions, idioms or exaggeration. If you do use these, explain what you have said and be clear about what you really mean to say.
They react badly when I say no
Try using a different word or symbol. .
If you are saying 'no' because they are behaving inappropriately, you may want to change your reaction to their behaviour. Try not to shout or give too much attention, a calm reaction may help to decrease this behaviour in time.
Set clear boundaries and explain why and where it is acceptable and not acceptable to behave in certain ways.
Find out more about behaviour.
Understanding an autistic person’s communication
Communication happens when one person sends a message to another person. This can be verbally or non-verbally. Interaction happens when two people respond to one another - two-way communication.
Most people on the autism spectrum have difficulty interacting with others. They may have difficulty with initiating interactions, responding to others, or using interaction to show people things or to be sociable. Understanding and relating to other people, and taking part in everyday family, school, work and social life, can be harder.
Other people appear to know, intuitively, how to communicate and interact with each other, yet can also struggle to build rapport with autistic people. A 2016 study found that neurotypical people often quickly develop a negative bias towards autistic people in face to face social situations. However, these biases were not present when the conversation took place without audio-visual cues.
To find out more explore the Autistic Society website
Digital NHS gives these as some of the key points (again only including the ones most relevant to online communication)
Autism can be easier to spot in men than in women. This is probably because women are working harder to try to conform to society's expectations. Consequently fewer women are diagnosed and often later in life.
Autistic people don't necessarily lack empathy. They're actually experiencing an overload of input from the world around them. This can lead to sensory overloads, or melt downs, so they need to take regular breaks alone in a quiet place.
Autistic people can be sociable. But they are often very direct, see things in 'black and white' and don't understand the need for small talk. This can mean they're experienced as rude. Autistic people find it hard to interpret non-verbal signals, pick up on moods or take turns to speak. They find hints and sarcasm unnecessary and confusing.
You can help an autistic person at work by being very clear about what you want, giving clear deadlines and measures of success. Allow them to avoid big meetings, work independently in a quiet area and to take regular sensory breaks. Don't judge them if they don't take part in watercooler conversations and nights out or if they say something that seems odd or insensitive.
You can get the best out of an autistic person at work by giving them intellectually challenging projects to complete and deliver. Value and encourage their unique 'out of the box' thinking. Support them to speak and contribute in group situations. Encourage them in team working and adapting to change. Above all promote an atmosphere of neurodiversity and acceptance.
Ten things you probably didn't know about autism - NHS Digital
I’ve got this from
but edited them to be a bit shorter, it’s a paraphrase:
They rarely lie. Most people tell frequent little white lies, and hide important truths from their peers. Autistic people tell the truth, whther it’s positive or negative. If they complement you then you know they really mean it.
Autistic people are directly aware of their experience and sensations
Autistic people rarely judge others, and see through superficial appearances to the real person, and are more accepting of differences (e.g. a classmate with Downs syndrome or disabilities)
Autistic people are often honestly not interested in social expectations, and do things because they like to do them.
Many autistic people have surprisingly good, or almost perfect memories.
Autistic people tend to be less interested in prestige and status, and expensive but unimportant externals (brand names, high-end restaurants etc)
Autistic people tell the truth directly and lack subterfuge. Mainly because they find such things baffling.
Autistic people rarely have hidden agendas sand don’t hide their true intentions - again they find this baffling
For more details: Top 10 Traits to Appreciate in People With Autism
Truth and lies
Autistic people tend to be very direct. While the more socially aware are far more likely to tell white lies.
For instance the more socially aware may tell white lies when complementing someone on their appearance, or their abilities while an autistic person might just say what they think. The upside of this is that if an autistic person complements you, you know they are being genuine.
The more socially aware often use hyperbole and slogans. They can also sometime find it hard to say something they know the other person needs to know, because they are afraid of hurting their feelings.
They can get involved in great tangles of thought sometimes, not sure what to say or do because they think about the complex social effects of it and expanding webs of social repercussions of their actions.
They may conceal something from you that would lead you to make a different decision, something that is important for you to know, but they think you will make the wrong decision or be hurt if you know it. Or they may conceal something that they think would lead you to act against their own interests or those of someone they are for.
Meanwhile autistic people tend to tell the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” most of the time. Not always - autistic people can tell lies too.
This can be refreshingly honest, but it can also include telling you things you don’t need to know, because they find it interesting themselves. You need to tell them that you aren’t interested, not just give subtle hints but say it plainly and clearly.
Even if asked not to talk about something, and told it will harm their case if they say it, they are still likely to keep saying it if they think it is important.
The more socially aware sometimes get involved in immense tangles of thought. The stereotype is that it’s women that are like this more than men, but men do the same, just aren’t expected to say things like this. It’s much more to do with character than with whether you are a man or a woman. J.K. Rowling has a fun scene where Hermione talks about this:
“Don't you understand how Cho's feeling at the moment?" [Hermione] asked
"No," said Ron and Harry together.
Hermione sighed and laid down her quill.
"Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so badly."
A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode."
"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione nastily, picking up her her quill again.”
The more socially aware tend to get caught up in tangles like that more.
Many celebrities are autistic
Some celebrities talking about their autism
Chris Pakham, naturalist and one of the main presenters of BBC’s Spring Watch and Autumn Watch talking about his autism.
x`Greta Thunburg, the climate activist, talking about her Aspergers and how it helps her.
Why are there many autistic and A-spectrum people associated with Silicon valley?
Julia Malkin, autistic driving instructor
More about learning to drive as an autistic person:
Emotional intelligence and autism
Some people think we should add other abilities such as
This is an area where some autistic people are challenged. Not all of them, but about 50% of autistic people are not easily aware of either their own emotions or those of others. They also often don’t see the emotional subtext of situations.
Imagine, for example, not being able to understand why the death of a beloved pet is still a sensitive issue for your friend even several years after the pet has passed away. Imagine saying something such as, “But that cat has been dead for two years!” And then imagine the reaction of your friend, who in that moment is feeling sad about the loss, feeling it as strongly as if he or she had lost the pet yesterday. Your friend is not likely to react well. Your words might sound intentionally cold, uncaring, and thoughtless. But when your friend does not respond favorably, you are confused. What do you do now? You made a simple statement of fact, and now your friend is upset with you.
This is the experience of challenged emotional intelligence. This is commonly the experience of a person with Asperger’s. Anxiety soars as the person wonders what he or she did wrong, what he or she failed to understand, or what was missed.
This is something people with aspergers / autism may need to learn to discern and decode intellectually when it doesn’t come naturally emotionally.
For example, to use the above scenario as a basis of conversation in a therapy session might help a person with Asperger’s see that there are different ways of responding to the death of a pet, and that the person’s own, seemingly logical way may not be the way others respond to something as essentially emotional as the loss of a pet.
Learning that there is such variability helps a person with Asperger’s navigate the complex emotional undertones of daily life. It also helps relieve the free-floating anxiety that can accompany conversations and events, both familiar and unfamiliar, because it broadens the range of expectations and softens the likelihood of inadvertent blunders.
Emotional intelligence is a challenge for individuals with Asperger’s, but it is also a fruitful topic for exploration in therapy because it is so central to most interactions with others, both in social and in intimate contexts.
See
Learning to identify emotions
Autistic people often are not able to pick up on their own emotional responses and though they suspect they are experiencing an emotion, may not be sure what the emotion is. This is known as alexithymia
Here I’m using People with autism can read emotions and feel empathy
People with high levels of alexithymia (which we assess with questionnaires) might suspect they are experiencing an emotion, but are unsure which emotion it is. They could be sad, angry, anxious or maybe just overheated.
However only half of those with autism are like this. The other half are able to identify their own emotions and those of others in the same way as anyone else.
Some autistic people report experiencing an excessive amount of empathic emotion, to the extent that they find it hard to handle.
Also there are high rates of alexithymia in various other populations, e.g. etaing disorders, depression, substance abuse can all lead to this condition.
Meanwhile about one in ten of the population as a whole have alexithymia.
Autistic people who don’t have alexithymia have the same level of empathy with the pain of others as anyone else. But the ones with it, both autistic and non autistic do not show this typical empathy response.
However those with alexithymia may still care about others’ feeling. It’s just that they are often not able to identify how they are feeling. They may show more distress in witnessing others’ pain than those without the condition.
It is the same with recognizing the emotions of others. It’s the alexithymia that causes it not the autism as such. Those with autism and without alexithymia havee normal responses, except that they tend to look at faces less often than the non autistic people, and so may not pick up on things just because they are not looking.
When looking at faces then autistic people pay as much attention to the eyes and mouth as anyone else if they don’t have alexithymia, but both autistic and non autistic people don’t pay much attention to that area of the face if they have alexithymia, just look at the face in a general way.
Autistic people generally do not find it acceptable to say hurtful things to others even if they have alexithymia, and use other information, such as social rules to decide if what they are about to say will be hurtful.
See
More about challenges of emotion detection - alexithymia
People with autism don't lack emotions but often have difficulty identifying them
There are a number of factors that might contribute to high levels of anxiety in those with ASD. One of these factors seems to be the difficulty that many individuals with ASD experience in identifying and describing their own emotions – a phenomenon known as alexithymia.
For instance, suppose you encounter a spider and are asked if you are scared. Typically what you say will match your body’s responses. If your eyes are dilated with fear, your Adrenalin levels high, you’ll say you are intensely scared. But many autistic people do not respond like that.
In individuals who report difficulties identifying their own emotions, this association between subjective and objective measures of emotional responses is reduced or absent. In other words they sometimes report feeling strongly about something when their bodies are in a state of relative calm and at other times they may report feeling calm when, in fact, their body is in a state of high alert.
People with autism don't lack emotions but often have difficulty identifying them
It’s not that they are unaware of these bodily sensations, it’s just that they don’t naturally give a lot of importance to them in reporting whether they are scared or not.
They can learn to recognize their body’s responses, and work out if they are scared or calm from the way their body feels, but it doesn’t come as naturally to those who are very autistic as it does to those who are very empathic / socially aware.
Also calming your mind and mindfulness helps wth finding the space to recognize and handle the emotions of yourself and others
When learning to recognize your own emotions and those of others, the Atlas of emotions may be useful, creating a map of emotions, but also responses to them:(
At a more basic level then autistic children may struggle to identify simple emotions. The idea of using faces on tracked vehicles is one way to help them, because they move in predictable ways unlike planes or cars, this makes it an environment that autistic children will be more comfortable in, making it easier for them to learn the emotions presented on the toys’ faces. This is for young children aged 4–7.
Here are a couple of examples
This menu shows the kind of questions that autistic children would be asked after watching the episodes.
From their abstract:
QUOTE STARTS
“The Transporters, an animated series designed to enhance emotion comprehension in children with ASC. Children with ASC (4–7 years old) watched The Transporters every day for four weeks. Participants were tested before and after intervention on emotional vocabulary and emotion recognition at three levels of generalization. The intervention group improved significantly more than a clinical control group on all task levels, performing comparably to typical controls at time 2. The discussion centres on how vehicles as mechanical systems may be one key reason why The Transporters caused the improved understanding and recognition of emotions in children with ASC.”
..
“According to the hyper-systemizing theory (Baron-Cohen 2006), vehicles whose motion is determined only by physical rules (such as vehicles that can only go back and forth along linear tracks) would be much preferred by children with autism over vehicles like planes or cars whose motion could be highly variable, moving at the whim of the human driver “
…
“We therefore created a children's animation series, The Transporters (www.thetransporters.com), based around eight characters who are all vehicles that move according to rule-based motion. Onto these vehicles we grafted real-life faces of actors showing emotions. We tested whether creating an autism-friendly context of predictable mechanical motion could render facial expressions of emotion more learnable and increase the motivation to learn them. The different toy vehicles (two trams, two cable cars, a chain ferry, a coach, a funicular railway and a tractor) had motion that was constrained in a linear manner (all the vehicles moved on tracks or cables).
The Transporters is a high-quality three-dimensional children's animation series and consists of 15 five-minute episodes, each of which focuses on a key emotion or mental state. This is relevant to this special issue's focus on ‘affective computing’ in exploiting a cutting-edge graphic animation technique called ‘live action’. This allowed real human faces to be superimposed on animated vehicles. Using real faces was a design feature again chosen to maximize generalization to the real social world. The 15 key emotions depicted on the vehicles are happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted, surprised, excited, tired, unfriendly, kind, sorry, proud, jealous, joking and ashamed. The emotions selected include the six ‘basic’ emotions (Ekman 1999), emotions that are more ‘complex’ but still developmentally appropriate (e.g. jealous, proud, ashamed) and emotions and mental states that are important for everyday social functioning (e.g. kind, unfriendly, tired, joking). These emotions were chosen because typically developing children recognize and understand these between 2 and 7 years of age
Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions?
Contents
No surprise we get many communications glitches in the group
Doomsday debunked is a sympathetic group - and you are protectedalking to very empathic people
Common confusions when autistic people and empathic people interact in our group
Autism genes and solitary hunter gatherers
Orangutans and chimpanzees
Communicating with autistic people if you are not autistic yourself
CONTACT ME VIA PM OR ON FACEBOOK OR EMAIL
If you need to talk to me about something it is often far better to do so via private / direct messaging because Quora often fails to notify me of comment replies.
You can Direct Message my profile (then More >> messages). Or better, email me at support@robertinventor.com
Or best of all Direct Message me on Facebook if you are okay joining Facebook. My Facebook profile is here:. Robert Walker I usually get Facebook messages much faster than on the other platforms as I spend most of my day there.
FOR MORE HELP
To find a debunk see: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date See also my Short debunks
Scared and want a story debunked? Post to our Facebook group. Please look over the group rules before posting or commenting as they help the group to run smoothly
Facebook group Doomsday Debunked
Also do join our facebook group if you can help with fact checking or to help scared people who are panicking.
SEARCH LIST OF DEBUNKS
You can search by title and there’s also an option to search the content of the blog using a google search.
CLICK HERE TO SEARCH: List of articles in my Debunking Doomsday blog to date
NEW SHORT DEBUNKS
I do many more fact checks and debunks on our facebook group than I could ever write up as blog posts. They are shorter and less polished but there is a good chance you may find a short debunk for some recent concern.
See Latest short debunks for new short debunks
I also do tweets about them. I also tweet the debunks and short debunks to my Blue Sky page here:
Then on the Doomsday Debunked wiki, see my Short Debunks page which is a single page of all the earlier short debunks in one page.
I do the short debunks more often but they are less polished - they are copies of my longer replies to scared people in the Facebook group.rough Ukraine and will do so no matter what its allies do to support Ukraine.
TIPS FOR DEALING WITH DOOMSDAY FEARS
If suicidal or helping someone suicidal see my:
BLOG: Supporting someone who is suicidal
If you have got scared by any of this, health professionals can help. Many of those affected do get help and find it makes a big difference.
They can’t do fact checking, don’t expect that of them. But they can do a huge amount to help with the panic, anxiety, maladaptive responses to fear and so on.
Also do remember that therapy is not like physical medicine. The only way a therapist can diagnose or indeed treat you is by talking to you and listening to you. If this dialogue isn’t working for whatever reason do remember you can always ask to change to another therapist and it doesn’t reflect badly on your current therapist to do this.
Also check out my Seven tips for dealing with doomsday fears based on things that help those scared, including a section about ways that health professionals can help you.
I know that sadly many of the people we help can’t access therapy for one reason or another - usually long waiting lists or the costs.
There is much you can do to help yourself. As well as those seven tips, see my:
BLOG: Breathe in and out slowly and deeply and other ways to calm a panic attack
BLOG: Tips from CBT
— might help some of you to deal with doomsday anxieties
If you have potentially scary questions about any other topic please post here: https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/post-to-comment-on-with-off-topic-29a Post to comment on, with off topic potentially scary comments - or send me a private message - or use our group on Facebook
The reason is I often aren't able to respond to comments for some time and the unanswered comment can scare people who come to this post for help on something else
Also even when answered the comment may scare them because they see it first.
It works much better to put comments on other topics on a special post for them.
It is absolutely fine to digress and go off topic in conversations here - this is specifically about things you want help with that might scare people.
Thanks!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/02/14/faculty-vote-no-confidence-in-commonwealth-university-of-pa-president/?
https://www.postandcourier.com/education-lab/disability-access-challenged-sc-section-504/article_3ccd46e0-e95d-11ef-8a9c-4bf53910a6cf.html
Can you report on this?