Subject: Autistic ‘black and white’ thinking.
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I've also wondered about Greta Thunberg saying that.
I think what she maybe means is that there's clarity on things, for her. Which would make what she's saying pretty similar to what's laid out here. She's probably been accused many times of being "black and white" because of it.
@KatyElphinstone @jessica I tend to think I get black and white around principles, specifically, where allistics are happy to compromise / turn a blind eye.
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@KatyElphinstone @autistics Between "theory of mind deficits", "restricted interests", and now "rigid thinking", it's starting to look as though neurotypicals commenting on autistics is a case of "Every accusation is a confession".
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I've also wondered about Greta Thunberg saying that.
I think what she maybe means is that there's clarity on things, for her. Which would make what she's saying pretty similar to what's laid out here. She's probably been accused many times of being "black and white" because of it.
@KatyElphinstone @jessica I think the distinction there is that it wasn't grey. It was "no, it's black and white, in a specific arrangement. If you look at it properly they're clearly separated."
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@KatyElphinstone Being unambiguous is not “black and white” nor is it limiting. One can have a huge rainbow of clearly defined colours. Blue is not red, yellow is not green. But there are limitless colours. I suspect sometimes people mistake a strong desire for clarity to be a refusal to accept complexity. Sometimes it’s just a stubborn effort to understand or organise the complexity.
I love the phrase “pattern-seeking missile.”
@paco @KatyElphinstone
It’s amazing to me how satisfied some NTs are with poor communication (ambiguity) when they could choose to express their ideas completely and effectively without a lot more effort.How much chaos and wasted effort could be avoided by using a dozen more well-considered words?
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2: Probability thinking and autism.
There’s growing discussion in cognitive science that many autistic people:
- Prefer system-level pattern detection
- Track contingencies more explicitly
- Think in conditional structures (“if X, then Y”)
- Notice statistical irregularitiesThat isn’t black-and-white thinking.
That’s model-based reasoning.If anything, it can tolerate uncertainty better, because uncertainty is explicitly modeled rather than socially smoothed over.
️@KatyElphinstone I wonder if that's what allows my brain to model the flow of code! I've been coding in a very limited programming language that doesn't support exceptions being caught after the fact really, so I have to preemptively know all the potential failure modes and either design such that they don't occur or else slip in explicit guards for them. I'm literally mapping the flow of execution through conditional statements and the parameters that I have either in my head or in the code itself and try to think about places it could go wrong. Often I'll be thinking of these things before I've ever written a line of it.
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@KatyElphinstone dunno if you know that proverb, someone once told me: "In the end, everything's alright. If it isn't alright yet, it isn't the end yet."
My reaction was "In the end, we're all dead."
Which is true, but a little demotivating to a lot of people. Just as plenty people seem to feel horrified when I explain the myth of Sisyphos and the philosophy of Absurdism to them, which feels very comforting to me. You just roll the stone up the hill every day while maintaining a smile and some day you don't.
Probably should mention that I was never diagnosed with autism, but a lot of these points seem quite fitting.
@leonavis @KatyElphinstone "In the long run we are all dead" - John Maynard Keynes
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3: Conceptual vs social uncertainty.
Many autistic people seem to tolerate:
- Conceptual ambiguity
- Abstract uncertainty
- Complex models
- Open-ended questionsBut we do struggle with:
- Unstated social rules
- Hidden expectations
- Implicit hierarchy shifts
- Unpredictable human behaviorSo the discomfort isn’t with uncertainty per se. It’s with unmodeled variables.
Which ties in with discomfort with social reassurance, e.g. with trusting “everything will be fine.”
️@KatyElphinstone My brain absolutely wants to quantify all the things - I can be debilitatingly clarity-seeking, but if that clarity is "these are the known possibilities and how likely they each are," that tends to work too, in a way social reassurance extremely doesn't.
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I think our bones are right.
In fact, I think embracing a reasoning style based on data, patterns, and probability could be a huge bonus for everyone.
As – objectively speaking – it could pave the road for authenticity, equity, and justice to replace former murkiness, power plays, and empty promises.
End of 🧵
References below
@KatyElphinstone
You hear that guys? We got good bones! -
@KatyElphinstone That may be why traditional advertisement doesn't work on us - we simply don't trust it.
Speaking for myself, no matter how promising an advertisement looks, I'll ignore it simply because it's advertisement. It's not a trustworthy source of information. Broken promises is all I'll ever expect from advertisement.
(That framing would also indicate what type of advertisement does work: anything from a trustworthy source, for example product information or recommendations contained in articles or blog posts from authors we consider reliable.)
@everythingalsocan @KatyElphinstone I know every one of my phone or laptop acquisition decisions for many years has been the product of an awful lot of research dives, typically starting only a few months after getting the last one
(It would be the same for cars if I was a driver. I'm not a driver, for both SPD and ethical reasons.)
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2: Probability thinking and autism.
There’s growing discussion in cognitive science that many autistic people:
- Prefer system-level pattern detection
- Track contingencies more explicitly
- Think in conditional structures (“if X, then Y”)
- Notice statistical irregularitiesThat isn’t black-and-white thinking.
That’s model-based reasoning.If anything, it can tolerate uncertainty better, because uncertainty is explicitly modeled rather than socially smoothed over.
️@KatyElphinstone *Quantified* uncertainty is certainly easier to handle!
I'm a vocal composer, and as a white cis man (at least to a first approximation) I have all sorts of anxiety about being perceived to be making unfair demands on singers who aren't.
But what counts as this anyway? It's very contextual!
So my writing is overwhelmingly for specific individual singers, who can meet my clarity-seeking demands by explaining what their voices can and can't do, and where there is uncertainty - e.g. in how long one can sing between breaths, which is quite contextually variable - can make *that* clear.
And while classical singers tend to get prescriptive "fach" vocal labels - and are most of the singers who can meet my certainty-seeking demands probably for precisely that reason of having a career-defining label based on these specifics - I don't think about which of these labels fit, at least not on the level of "this is a lyric mezzo I will write a lyric mezzo piece." (One of my muses *did* end up shifting fach soon after I wrote for her - and my pattern detection made me half-anticipate it! - but I wrote for the specific parameters I was given, including stretching her in a specific direction she figured she'd need for her soon-to-be-former fach...)
So I can reliably write things that people I write for will happily sing and sing well. The *social perception* aspect is far more difficult for me to handle, because I can't quantify "how likely is it that people think I'm a cis man sexualising female-coded voices because I'm drawn to warm low notes and floaty ethereal high ones?" (Which I am... For the same sensory reasons I'm sex-averse...)
If the uncertainty is explicit to a working model (in this case, of What Voice X Can Do), I can account for it. If it's rooted in the unpredictability of NT thoughts, not so much...
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Subject: Autistic ‘black and white’ thinking.
It's framed as a deficit often seen in autism, but... is it that simple?
Autistic people are traditionally criticized for our inflexibility, or cognitive rigidity.
But I think this isn’t the whole picture.
To start with what we know, here are ten things we autistic people generally have in common (refs at the end of the thread):
️ #Autism #Neurodivergent #ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #Neurodiversity
@KatyElphinstone I spent a while reading the comments here, and the irony of a big group of autistic folks arguing about the nuances of black and white thinking made me laugh. Clearly we aren't all that rigid. It only seems that way because when we do see the logical answer to something we won't accept illogical conclusions.
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@KatyElphinstone @autistics Between "theory of mind deficits", "restricted interests", and now "rigid thinking", it's starting to look as though neurotypicals commenting on autistics is a case of "Every accusation is a confession".
@dedicto @KatyElphinstone @autistics
Projection. Yes, I've suspected this for a while, right down to the origin of the word "autistic" being "a person's retreat from reality into their own subjective world". -
@KatyElphinstone @autistics Between "theory of mind deficits", "restricted interests", and now "rigid thinking", it's starting to look as though neurotypicals commenting on autistics is a case of "Every accusation is a confession".
Well yes!!
This is a series of threads I'm doing on "is it really a deficit?"
So.... There will be more to come
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@KatyElphinstone @jessica I think the distinction there is that it wasn't grey. It was "no, it's black and white, in a specific arrangement. If you look at it properly they're clearly separated."
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@KatyElphinstone I wonder if that's what allows my brain to model the flow of code! I've been coding in a very limited programming language that doesn't support exceptions being caught after the fact really, so I have to preemptively know all the potential failure modes and either design such that they don't occur or else slip in explicit guards for them. I'm literally mapping the flow of execution through conditional statements and the parameters that I have either in my head or in the code itself and try to think about places it could go wrong. Often I'll be thinking of these things before I've ever written a line of it.
It sounds like a great skill.
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@KatyElphinstone *Quantified* uncertainty is certainly easier to handle!
I'm a vocal composer, and as a white cis man (at least to a first approximation) I have all sorts of anxiety about being perceived to be making unfair demands on singers who aren't.
But what counts as this anyway? It's very contextual!
So my writing is overwhelmingly for specific individual singers, who can meet my clarity-seeking demands by explaining what their voices can and can't do, and where there is uncertainty - e.g. in how long one can sing between breaths, which is quite contextually variable - can make *that* clear.
And while classical singers tend to get prescriptive "fach" vocal labels - and are most of the singers who can meet my certainty-seeking demands probably for precisely that reason of having a career-defining label based on these specifics - I don't think about which of these labels fit, at least not on the level of "this is a lyric mezzo I will write a lyric mezzo piece." (One of my muses *did* end up shifting fach soon after I wrote for her - and my pattern detection made me half-anticipate it! - but I wrote for the specific parameters I was given, including stretching her in a specific direction she figured she'd need for her soon-to-be-former fach...)
So I can reliably write things that people I write for will happily sing and sing well. The *social perception* aspect is far more difficult for me to handle, because I can't quantify "how likely is it that people think I'm a cis man sexualising female-coded voices because I'm drawn to warm low notes and floaty ethereal high ones?" (Which I am... For the same sensory reasons I'm sex-averse...)
If the uncertainty is explicit to a working model (in this case, of What Voice X Can Do), I can account for it. If it's rooted in the unpredictability of NT thoughts, not so much...
I've really enjoyed this - thank you! I feel like I've learned a lot.
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@KatyElphinstone I wonder if that's what allows my brain to model the flow of code! I've been coding in a very limited programming language that doesn't support exceptions being caught after the fact really, so I have to preemptively know all the potential failure modes and either design such that they don't occur or else slip in explicit guards for them. I'm literally mapping the flow of execution through conditional statements and the parameters that I have either in my head or in the code itself and try to think about places it could go wrong. Often I'll be thinking of these things before I've ever written a line of it.
@x0 @KatyElphinstone
I was in grade 5 when I first learned programming. Our teacher taught us his own class outside of school hours which was at about a grade 10 level. Most of the students struggled with it, but it just came naturally to me. He'd tell us our assignment and it was like a flowchart generated itself in my head. Even then I'd say that I thought "algorithmically". I think that it's a tragedy that my subsequent schooling never built upon that. -
Orwell, G. (1946) “Politics and the English Language”
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/
- Shows how vague language protects cruelty & frames clarity as resistance to manipulation.Pellicano, E. & Burr, D. (2012) Bayesian explanation of autistic perception (UCL record)
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1476122/
- A Bayesian framing of autistic perception showing how priors and uncertainty differ in shaping experience.End of refs.
@KatyElphinstone Thank you so much for this thread!
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@KatyElphinstone Thank you so much for this thread!
Glad it struck home
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Karvelis, P. et al. (2018) Bayesian visual integration and autistic traits (open access, PMC)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5966274/
- Tests autistic traits in Bayesian integration and links traits to stronger perception via more precise sensory information.Li, J. et al. (2014) moral judgement and cooperation in autism (open access, PMC)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3945921/
- Relates moral judgements in autism to cooperation behaviour in a game context.more below
@KatyElphinstone Karvelis et al is excellent, the first time I've ever seen research backing this specific trait, thank you!
