Re: Meta, and all the things!

On 16/05/12 18:07, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
> On 5/16/12 5:22 AM, Bernard Peek wrote:

>> I'm definitely Aspie or similar. Typical geek, although there's no way
>> for an adult to be diagnosed as autistic around here. I manage software
>> developers and try to hire Aspies if I can.
>
> Thank God another mature one! I am diagnosed (at age 63, about five
> years ago, and the way that I _was_ diagnosed was highly unusual
> circumstances, including a PhD who wanted to gather data for a paper
> on adult Aspies. I was delighted about it, because it explained so
> many oddities about the previous 63 years (had only even _heard_ of it
> shortly before that).
>
> It has its' unexpected downsides, though. When you tell people about
> it, they think you're trying to "make excuses" for bad behavior (I
> wonder what excuse Mal uses?), so it becomes a moral thing somehow
> (which I always kind of suspected, with the typical Aspie mistakes I
> made in trying to fit in with people, that there was something that I
> couldn't smell that was a "stink" around me, aka "immoral"). Another
> downside in trying to fit in with the people on the Aspie/Autie boards
> is that they seem to be about 95% teenagers and twenty-somethings,
> with the typical hormonal irrationality and blinders of that age
> group. That happens, of course, because most of those of us who are
> older _aren't_ diagnosed, and just muddled through, while those who
> know that they are are picked up in early grade school, if not
> younger. The next few years should be very interesting, what with
> these kids growing up knowing instead of trying their best to fit in
> and getting heavy psychological complexes from not quite being able to.
>
> But somewhere in those 100 messages you'll run across the area where I
> was told to stuff it about that, as I have been on other Lists with
> different focuses.

Yeah. Discussions about religion (or politics) can get pretty heated
pretty fast. It's a minefield for most people. Double danger because
it's by email where the usual visual clues don't exist. Double again for
an Aspie who can't see other clues. I avoid debating religion where I
can. I've had some pleasant debates with doorstep evangelists of various
flavours. I do mention early in the discussion that I was taught by
Jesuits. I haven't yet met a doorstep evangelist who recognised the
significance of that.

Elsewhere I'm mediating between someone who I suspect is an Aspie (and
an economist, not a good combination) and the rest of the group.
Watching him leap from one bear-trap to the next has a horrible sort of
fascination. It's not going to end well.



--
Bernard Peek
bap@shrdlu.com