TotallynotJessica
196Ah pathological demand avoidance. It's not my inability to cope with ambiguity that's the problem, it's everyone else's inability to meet my arbitrary standards.
This meme screams of someone like my 16 year old son with Asperger's so I'll answer it with the same response I would give him.
Because there are things called social norms and whether you like or agree with them or not they exist and if you don't learn to adopt them you will isolate yourself.
The attitude as represented in the meme is destructive when you understand that humans are social creatures and people are not going to want to hang around an insufferable asshole for long periods of time. As such, you need to learn to mask, adapt, or whatever you can do because if you want to succeed let alone survive in life the attitude needs to change or it needs to hide.
Now for all the people who don't like this let me ask you this question. Would you rather someone who loves you and cares for you to tell you this harsh reality and help you work through it to be the best you or would you rather learn when the world shuts you out and you end up exceedingly unloved and alone?
And before someone says "what if I want that?/I want that/I would love that/don't threaten me with a good time". Everyone requires some level of human interaction. You need to understand that even those who are your blood will start ghosting you if you are nothing but an insufferable asshole who is miserable to be around.
Questioning social norms doesn't necessarily makes you an asshole, it depends on how it is approached.
By not defying them we will remain stagnant, imagine the downhill slope we would end up on if no one ever questioned why a man shouldn't love another man or a woman shouldn't love another woman.
People shut you down because many are intolerant to change and have their values under scrutiny is seen as hostile, but that doesn't imply compliance is productive. Of course, you don't want to this all the time, but teaching your kid to repress their displease of social norms doesn't sound good either.
"you are insufferable for asking why"
"you need to mask, to adapt"
😬
you are never unloved
You are always loved by God
any love of man is incomparable to the love of God
Which one? I'm vetting them to see who has the better dental plan. There's just so many to choose from, it's tough to decide.
whatever you do don't fucking deal with the fae, they'll get you to sell your own teeth for a pittence
There are a lot of gods, so which one? Also, i never saw a god showing love to me, did i got left behind? Damn it
The one triune God
and you being born, being alive, having food, having a machine to comment this are all examples of hs Love for you
and he expressed the ultimate love to us on the Cross
i'm not sure why "social cues" and "authority" would have much to do with each other, it's not like anarchists are socially inept, in fact being socially adept is kinda a core part of functional anarchy.
I dislike arbitrary things as well, but thanks to the magic of understanding how to be social i can just talk to people about it and explain why i think arbitraryness sucks ass, and they then treat me nicely and feel bad about my struggles since i'm so easy to deal with.
And it's not like i'm some 10 charisma bard, simply being chill and not actively unpleasant gets you 80% of the way. Even if you never make eye contact you'll still be seen as pretty normal if you speak normally and follow basic conversational etiquette.
A common issue autistic people have is with "implied authority", which has the same main issue as social cues. Doing things because "that's how its always been". A manager who has a job due to nepotism and a common courtesy that is just a white lie are going to cause the same kind of rage in an autist. If it can't be explained in a way that is logical and fair, they will not have any patience for it.
This meme is not about anarchists.
I feel like you're talking about a completely different thing, though. You can be no-nonsense but still nice to interact with, it's something i've gotten hugely better at in just the past like 7 years.
Like in the example of someone who got their job due to nepotism i'd just bring that up to people i trust and report it to wherever such things are reported, your union representative if nothing else. I wouldn't say "you're a nepo hire and i don't like that" to their face because that would be terrifying to deal with, but i wouldn't be silent about it either.
If your response would instead be to rage about it to their face, then; like others have said, i think that goes beyond just autism and into oppositional disorder or whatever.
Have you ever been checked for Oppositional Defiance Disorder? Because as someone who has it, you just described it to a T.
Why is psychology this way?
the coolest thing ever is
The BAD EVIL Disorder
in psychology language
everything has to be a "disorder"
Anything that is not a cis white guy who wants to march waving a big national flag is a disorder.
They name the conditions by how they affect normal people, not how the conditions affect us.
Admittedly, I literally told off a priest and a cop at completely different times in the same day, when I was 5.....
Sometimes the real reason is uncomfortable and they don't want to say it out loud. Like, "the CEO is an idiot, and wants it this way for stupid reasons"
Though maybe "the CEO doesn't understand how Google calendar works, so he thinks putting our time off in a shared spreadsheet is easier" would satisfy?
At my job a lot of stupid things come out of "someone high ranking doesn't understand computers" or "they don't benefit from fixing this, so it's easier for them to leave it stupid"
In my experience the reason is often "because fuvk [relevant slur]"
What I learned to do is mentally answer my own question with
"Because at the end of the month we will get a 4 number number added to the bank account, which we need for wifey to get dino nuggies"
some of these mysterious rules are peer pressure from dead people; fuck that. some of these are safety rules meant for conditions that no longer exist
And I'd like to know the latter even if they're no longer appropriate.
What is an example of a safety rule who's conditions no longer exist which would not have the conditions almost immediately return if the rule was removed?
Like every example I can think of is a regulation to stop companies from hurting people which they would simply resume doing given the choice, thus making us still need the rule?
"Safety Law" that is still on the books, but not enforced.
Kentucky has a law that states that all women drivers must be preceded by a flagger on foot, to warn oncoming pedestrians and other traffic. The true irony of this law is that it was passed before Kentucky had paved a single road, and the cars of the time still used wagon style wheels. This meant that those cars were practically "on rails" as they were driving in the ruts that other wagon and car wheels had created in the roads.
tons of things relating to food, like here in sweden you can honestly straight up just eat raw chicken and you'll probably be fine, in germany raw ground pork is a fairly normal dish, but in other parts of the world and in the past this would have fucking horrified people.
I don't want to "probably" be fine. I don't want to roll a D20 when I eat chicken and I get salmonella if I roll a 1. And why is your chicken so clean anyway that you can get to "probably"? Because of a ton of laws and regulations mandating cleanliness in the processing plants.
Conservatives are measurably dying at slightly higher rates because they have stupid beliefs and believe lies about things like drinking raw milk.
What is an example of a safety rule who’s conditions no longer exist which would not have the conditions almost immediately return if the rule was removed?
My job is populated by dinosaurs that only recently adopted git for version control. They had some rules and procedures that made a kind of sense when deployment meant "I'll scp the files to the prod server", but don't add value anymore.
Some people had a rule where after "deploy" they would SSH into prod and check the md5 hash of the files and compare them to their local copy. You don't have to do that.
They also wanted to only allow one person to work on a file at the same time because "you can overwrite their changes". Git handles that fine (unless you really fuck up the merge conflict, admittedly)
i mean more like rules as adaptation to dangerous condition that no longer exists instead of rules that prevent the dangerous condition from occuring. like, i have a habit of boiling all drinking water even after moving to a place that doesn't require it
Poliovirus agrees and would love fewer vaccinations against it
If not for the CIA making a deal with Plague we'd be done with polio by now.
/c/autism is leaking.
This is me to my core. (I mean, just check the username.) The easiest way to lose my trust is to say the reason is "because I said so." Okay, but why do you say so? Is there a real reason, or are you being a buzz-kill? Because plenty of people have arbitrary reasons for things and sometimes that's what it comes down to.
I can recall specific instances where I was given a reason and it made all the difference. Like a lot of little kids, I used to scream when having fun. Just saying, "Don't do that" didn't make an impact. But when my mom explained that when she hears me scream, she thinks I'm in trouble, and if I scream for no reason it'd make it harder for her to respond if I were actually in trouble, that's the day I stopped.
A little bit of explanation can go a long way. Sometimes people treat kids like they can't understand deeper reasoning, but that's not true for everyone.
I pay it forward now. A kid I worked with preferred to point at things using his middle finger instead of his pointer finger, even when the thing he was pointing at was on the ceiling. When I told him to use his pointer instead and he asked why, I told him, "Some people think that means something very mean. I don't want people to think you're trying to be mean." That's all it took for him to start using his index finger instead.
Point is, when people explain why something is done a certain way, they can be far more likely to respect their rule. I get that there are times when quick obedience is required, like when there's imminent danger. However, explaining more trivial situations builds the trust necessary to navigate those moments better. If someone's always pushing for authority over arbitrary things, they shouldn't be surprised when people (especially kids) don't listen to them when the matter is serious. Which is why I take the time to explain things with the kids I work with - sometimes we really do need to move quickly, particularly when another kid is acting out aggressively and we need to leave the room. They know I'll give reasons when there is time, so when I tell them to do something with urgency, they know things are getting real and it's time to move.
My parents did this as well, and I have massive respect for them because of it. Similarly, the only time my dad would yell at me was when something was urgent and dangerous and he needed me to do the thing right then and there's no time to explain. I knew I could always ask for an explanation after the fact.
I think one of the reasons some of the little kids in my life like me is I try to give them honest explanations. They don't always fully understand, but I think they appreciate getting answers. And probably appreciate the occasional "I don't know, actually. Let's look it up"
"because that's just how things are done"
Then things are done in a stupid way for stupid reasons that nobody likes and we shouldn't do it then.
And also "this is how we've always done it" - cool, you've always done it wrong.
I literally did that when I started my current gig, because they were doing so many things manually that were trivially automated and didn't require a three page checklist and multiple hours of time. Within 3 months I took a 4-5hr/instance task into a 30 minute one that also gives you 80% of the shit you need to check off on the QA sheet.
“because that’s just how things are done”
Yeah, that's the essence of conservatism.
My family members always get up in arms when I tell them I changed the family recipe for one dish or another. "You can't change perfection!" Then they try it and ask for the recipe. I hate reverence for the mystical ancestors; they can be - and often are - wrong.
as if our ancestors didn't change recipes themselves, yes i'm sure ol' great-great-great-great-gramma Beatrice used tomatoes
A little girl sees her mum cooking sausages and asks "mum, why do you cut the ends off of the sausages before you fry them?" Her mum replies "well, that's how I learned it from my mother."
So the girl calls her grandma and asks "grandma, why do you and mum always cut the ends off of sausages before you fry them?" The grandma replies "well, that's how I learned it from my mother."
So the girl calls her great grandmother and asks "great grandma, why do you, mum and grandma always cut the ends off of sausages before you fry them?" The great grandma replies "have they not bought a bigger pan yet?"
I've always heard and told it as "baking bread in an oven that got bigger over the years" but it's my favorite go-to for appeal to tradition.
The version I heard was with a roast and involved cutting the ends off. Funny how many version there are.
Mom, please get off the internet. It's not good for you.
For clarification, Just joking. That sentence was one of the most repeated anwsers to everything when i dared to ask how something works from my mother.
I mean, often what people mean is "I don't have the time and/or energy right now to explain it to you".
"So you see, the carrier of charge is the electron, and when they are non uniformly distributed in a conductor, it produces the electromotive force..."
4 years later
"And that's how Gay Sonic memes are stored on the Internet."
I'm willing to postpone explanations if they insist, but I still eventually want an answer
Which is fine. Although as an adult it's also fair to expect that you research it yourself.
Is it, really? Am I expected to research became someone else wants to change my behavior and don't have the time to share the research they supposedly have done? We believe in a lot of things based on trust in the system. When you challenge someone's position, you should at the same time challenge yours.
well, depending on what we are talking about, your understanding may not be required for you to perform your task. Maybe your instructor also doesn't know. but somewhere down the line someone implemented it for a good reason thats not immediately obvious or easy to explain.
We cannot expect everyone to know everything about what they do. it would be better but isnt feasible.
i dont need to know how to build a car to drive it. would it help? yes. is my mental capacity limited? very!
I don't need to know how a car works to know the consequences of not using it correctly. I don't need to understand how a respiratory virus replicates and harms my body to know that I should wear a mask around others when sick. It usually comes down to more universal concepts like danger, efficiency, or efficacy. What makes a reason good is often simpler than the involved mechanics
And yet we have tons of people unwilling to believe that the response to a respiratortly virus is to wear masks. It was well explained why, they just didn't want to do it because it was seen as too much of an inconvenience.
Same thing happens with driving vehicles.
Sometimes the answer doesn't matter if people want to be obstinate, and saying that they won't do it if not properly explained is an easy out for them.
Yes, and there are also time-sensitive cases like emergency services, medical procedures, and working in high-risk environments, where you don't have time to stop and explain everything. Ideally there'd be some kind of debrief tho.
indeed, i mean exactly those cases
You've clearly lived a life of privilege in a society that never stops sucking your dick. That's rare. Some of us need to grow the fuck up at some point. For us, knowing things is helpful.
okay, so you know everything about anything in minute detail? then tell me this:
when does the dick sucking begin?? i was told there would be dick sucking!
I mean I usually do have a problem with authority, mostly because they can't adequately explain why.
And because they hurt people. And will not apologise or even acknowledge it and prevent it from happening again. See different religions, police forces, politicians, CEOs, ... fuck authorities, if they don't have a proper process to deal with their own errors.
My biggest motivation to work is pure spite. Especially as an engineer. If I'm told my idea for something is shit without sufficient explanation - I'll be secretly working on that to either discover myself why it's shit or come back at ya with "SEE?!".
this is basically how the scentific process was invented.
"your shit sucks"
"yeah? prove it, fuckface"
"WELL HAHA HERE'S A FUCKING EXPERIMENT THAT PROVES IT, SUCK IT WHOPAOW"
I do that a lot
The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.
– David Graeber
Need to know is a thing. If you don't need to know in order to do your job, then you don't need to be told the how or why. Your job is to do what you've been told.
If you can't handle that, then fucking quit. Or consult a web search, I guess. Why waste time and effort explaining if it's not necessary or important? Sometimes it really is just as simple as "some moron says to."
Yeah, then "some moron" can do it himself.
The secret ingredient is violence. Often legal state-mandated violence, otherwise just plain abuse and violence that's willingly ignored by the authorities.
"Do it or the state will hurt you" is a valid reason that I will understand. I will still sneakily do the thing instead if I think it's worth the risk, but I do consider the reason.
YES !!
I read this as "I don't understand why so I don't care"
Works sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't.
It's more that I want to know why I do the things I do. I crave understanding rather than simple orders
If you can't explain it, then it's probably not important anyway
This can be a slippery slope, though. My mom fell into conspiracy theories, and a big part of that was thinking along the lines of "if you can't explain how vaccines can't cause autism, then I'm going to keep believing they do." Silly me with my genetic counseling background made a small, simple slideshow about how the immune system and vaccines work, and of course she still said "you didn't explain it well enough, so I still believe they cause autism."
Essentially the strategy of "if you can't explain why, it's not worth doing" only works if the person asking truly wants to understand, and withholds forming an opinion until they have all the information they can gather, instead of just looking for an excuse to not do something. Like most things in life, it can be abused by bad actors.
Of course, this was in the context of OP's meme rejecting the rules of society / work / ... without proper explanation.
One should keep Chesterton's Fence in mind.
Idiots like Musk will see a system they don't understand and tear it down, and then people die.
Absolutely, but then the fence should have a clear marking, otherwise it's a booby trap and the idiot that placed it without documentation is just as much at fault as the idiot that removed it without proper analysis.
I'm reminded of that meme of the cartoon girl going "this sign won't stop me because I can't read"
I've had coworkers that changed some code, then just deleted the tests that started failing. Then they get annoyed their PR is blocked by more attentive coworkers.
Never change anything because society is too difficult to actually understand was the essence of his argument lol. He was a reactionary christain opposed to social change and it's a bad argument.
You should be able to change things without assuming that everything which seems silly has some unknown and important purpose. You should manage change by assessing risks and hazards which are known and planning appropriately.
It's not a bad argument to try to understand an existing system before changing it.
I've seen a lot of "why is this like this? I'm changing it" blow up in software. The clearest memory was not realizing that user names could be null, even though that looked impossible by tracing the registration route. Turns out there was another, stupider, way of registering.
It's especially a good argument when the person evaluating the system has no domain knowledge or expertise.
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
Is where it comes from, in a book describing why he's a Catholic.
But the reality of the world, especially social institutions is not like this. There is a cunning sleight of hand here, a fence only gets built because someone has a reason to build a fence. Many things in life are not built: they arise spontaneously or emerge from chaos through more complex forms of interaction.
If we switch the argument to being about diverting a watercourse, or regrading land, it suddenly falls apart because it becomes clear that these things do not exist for intelligent reasons.
I don't think it's a bad idea to try and understand the world or to mitigate risks when making changes. I think chesterton's fence is a shite argument because it implies that everything which exists has a planned purpose and favours the status quo which may be intolerable.
If we switch the argument to being about diverting a watercourse, or regrading land, it suddenly falls apart because it becomes clear that these things do not exist for intelligent reasons.
This is not a compelling analogy. Many things in nature may not exist for an intelligent reason, but their presence matters in ways that may not be obvious. Diverting a waterway may cause tremendous damage to the ecosystem and other downstream (pun intended) things. That is an excellent example of why you should understand the current system before attempting to change it.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to try and understand the world or to mitigate risks when making changes. I think chesterton’s fence is a shite argument because it implies that everything which exists has a planned purpose and favours the status quo which may be intoler
I don't think the implied plan purpose is necessary for the argument to make sense. The point of the story is it's not always clear what things are load bearing, nor what loads they bear.
If the chesteron origin is distracting to you, let's discard it. I think we agree that changing a complex system without attempting to understand it first is foolish.
