Great article. Interestingly, I'd suggest the introductory material has a subtle empathy gap that can be summarised with the "Regardless of how careful we are to frame what we say, there is a strong chance that it will be misinterpreted" comment.
That applies to everyone. It is a rare and skillfull person who can get a new point into a conversation. Spend any time at all watching how political debates evolve and it is quite clear that pushing a conversation from equilibrium to equilibrium is remarkably challenging to do and often comes under heavy social attack. There are also hints coming out of the world of the therapists where there are a stunning number of people who don't know how to express their thoughts to save themselves.
At a personal level the standard neurotypical strategy is not to say anything new, or anything that hasn't been pre-vetted by something else with higher status. So the problem autistic people tend to run into is that they aren't repeating what someone influential said in a similar context and that is an inherently high-risk strategy. Careful framing can't possibly lead to a safety. Autistic people may act in socially inappropriate ways, but the mistake is to assume other people are good communicators. They aren't, they are subtly limited by fairly strict guiderails and can't express/process a lot of concepts independently from the herd.
The real skill is storytelling. Or, frame setting if you want. It absolutely can lead to safety and empowerment, but it’s an incredibly difficult set of skills for most people to learn. Essentially, instead of expressing content into a conversation, you express context. Instead of “stop spending so much of our money”, you say “You know, I keep thinking about what it’ll be like for us together when we retire. I have this nightmare where we’re poor…”. Or, someone says “You’re just not listening!” And you respond with “Oh, if youre not feeling listened to, let me try to express back to you what I’m hearing you say. And after you feel heard, then I’ll respond.”
Frame setting is a tool of power. It’s probably the single greatest tool that exists for manipulating people. (Well, aside from offering people giant sums of money). It’s the tool of good therapists and psychopaths the world over. And I think the only way to build resilience against it is to learn the skill yourself.
(It also comes with a paired skill - which is to become consciously aware of the frame someone is speaking from, and being able to name and debate the frame itself.)
Robert Kegan has a developmental model that bunches people into one of 5 progressive stages of cognitive development. The 5th stage is (very loosely) characterised by this sort of thinking. They did a broad assessment of the population and found only about 5% of people assessed are in this stage.
The sad truth is that most people spend their whole lives subject to the frames that other people set for them. Speech from outside the frames you know is usually incomprehensible.
Although I don't really feel comfortable just agreeing with someone on HN, so I'll also just poke https://josephg.com/blog/why-i-am-no-longer-a-libertarian/ while I'm on the way through to stay in practice. The complaint against libertarianism could be made against any system. Note that through history the developed world generally just leaves poor nations to starve and fumble for example (well, that is a bit generous - we raided and pillaged them). On the spectrum of pure authoritarianism to pure libertarianism, the system that has the best chance of finding a reason for the wealthy to help the poor turned out to be liberty. And within libertarianism there is a lot of room to negotiate over how mineral rights and economic rent are handled.
> also hints coming out of the world of the therapists where there are a stunning number of people who don't know how to express their thoughts to save themselves.
Q. How many psychotherapists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.
That applies to everyone. It is a rare and skillfull person who can get a new point into a conversation. Spend any time at all watching how political debates evolve and it is quite clear that pushing a conversation from equilibrium to equilibrium is remarkably challenging to do and often comes under heavy social attack. There are also hints coming out of the world of the therapists where there are a stunning number of people who don't know how to express their thoughts to save themselves.
At a personal level the standard neurotypical strategy is not to say anything new, or anything that hasn't been pre-vetted by something else with higher status. So the problem autistic people tend to run into is that they aren't repeating what someone influential said in a similar context and that is an inherently high-risk strategy. Careful framing can't possibly lead to a safety. Autistic people may act in socially inappropriate ways, but the mistake is to assume other people are good communicators. They aren't, they are subtly limited by fairly strict guiderails and can't express/process a lot of concepts independently from the herd.