So you want them to prepend every paragraph with "I know I'm wrong sometimes"? What does that achieve? The article is nice, concise, and gets the point across beautifully. Everybody's wrong sometimes, but some people are genuinely very rarely wrong in their area of expertise, and I'm willing to believe this guy is one of them. I'm glad he doesn't give in to the petty workplace politics, and I wish more people would.
The frustrating part was that this was framed as "any time I'm wrong, it's simply a miscommunication." The author barely acknowledges that they can be wrong in the first paragraph, and it's phrased in a way that makes it seem like a legal disclaimer. It's not phrased in a way that implies the author ever believes that they're wrong. Because of this, the entire article is colored by the attitude that any time an autistic person is wrong, it's miscommunication.
I don't need it repeated over and over. That's overkill, not concise, and adds nothing of value to the conversation. Based on the comments I've seen in this thread, it seems clear that this point never made it across, or barely made it across.
This is unfortunate because the actual content of the piece is great. It highlights the ways that people with autism and people without autism can miscommunicate.
If anything, the reactions to this article highlight how embarrassingly bad the average person is at interpreting communicating that is written in an (arguably) slightly unusual way. I feel bad for the author for having to withstand this barrage of hopelessly nitpicky readers. I dearly hope this doesn't discourage them, because it definitely would discourage me.
Or maybe the specific scenario presented in the article triggers some sort of a "it's not me, it's them autists!" reflex in people who visualized themselves on the other side of these interactions; I honestly don't know any more. I'm not (diagnosed to be) autistic, but fucking hell, I'm having a ridiculously hard time empathizing with these reactions, so maybe I should get that checked out...
You are telling me I shouldn't miscommunicate in an article where I try to explain what it feels like when you have a disability that leads people to think you miscommunicate. I understand that I probably should have somehow expanded on the "I am wrong daily" part, but to me, I wrote a clear sentence: "I am wrong daily, it's absolutely no big deal, in fact, I enjoy it and seek it out."
This is the problem I am trying to highlight. I think I state something as clearly as I can, then people think I am lying, or wrong, or deceiving, or arrogant, or not clear enough, or overexplaining, or not explaining enough, and frame the rest of the article in that light. If i say "I am not trying to be arrogant", people will take that as even more evidence, so I don't even try. This is literally what I try to explain in this article.
So many people in this comment section apparently being blessed with the infinite power of nuance, mind theory, social grace, empathy and linguistic intuition could maybe try to be charitable in light of this.
Thanks for reading. That is a very good point I have taken away from publishing this. I stated in the first sentence that I have no problem being wrong, in fact, I want to be wrong because it means I can do an even better job and learn new stuff.
If anything, the ratio of “you can’t acknowledge you’re wrong” to “oh i’m wrong” situations is about 1:1000. In future articles, I will spread and repeat things out a bit more, instead of editing an article like I would a strategy document.
I've never been diagnosed with autism, but I'm certain I'm on the spectrum.
I hate repeating myself. But I had to learn to write in such a way to do so because if I don't I end up with 4 sentences when a person further off the spectrum will write an entire page on the subject... or maybe that's my subjective opinion.
You can make all the personal inferences you want but I don't agree; I repeat myself because if I don't I received lower grades and downvotes.
I didn't ask for any of that. I'm explaining why the article came off badly to me. I'm assuming that was not the author's intention. I provided this feedback in my comment so that they may reflect on why this is so.
There's nothing else in my comment. You are reading too much into my comment.
