Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
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@KatyElphinstone from my point of view, you're 100% correct in your take. They leave out a lot of information because they want to isolate the issue, but they forget that they need to do so in a way that doesn't make the test overly vague. It would have been simply resolved by defining 'blame' or by explicitly stating that punishment is part of assigning blame here.
Our culture generally tends to conflate punishment, deterrence, & retribution, with all sorts of nasty results. I think Katy's analysis above neatly unpacks that.
ETA: Oh, I forgot a fourth one: restraint. It does makes a certain amount of sense to keep some offenders off the street. But if that's your primary method of managing offenses...you've got the wrong end of the stick.
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@KatyElphinstone your analysis of the situation is spot on I think. I really vibe with the blame vs responsibility distinction. Sally is inherently responsible having decided to make her opinion known which influenced her friend’s action. The friend is also responsible for her own actions. It wouldn’t even occur to me to look for blame in a situation like this unless I was forced to.
Before I read the thread, with only the information in the first two posts, my impression of this test was that it trivializes a fairly complex moral conundrum.
I feel this is the case for a lot of assessment type studies that have hypothetical scenarios and questionnaires like this. The questions always leave enormous elephants in the room, begging the reply “it depends”.
Thanks for this. My way of answering a lot of conundrums is "that depends"
Or even... "That depends on how we define [...]"
So much that my kids would often answer for me lol
Also I wanted to say sorry for changing the name from Sally to Janet. I realised there were a bunch of jellyfish studies, and in the one with the swimming the name given is Janet. Making it look like you're responding randomly with a different name. My sincere apologies for that!
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Our culture generally tends to conflate punishment, deterrence, & retribution, with all sorts of nasty results. I think Katy's analysis above neatly unpacks that.
ETA: Oh, I forgot a fourth one: restraint. It does makes a certain amount of sense to keep some offenders off the street. But if that's your primary method of managing offenses...you've got the wrong end of the stick.
Exactly
this.And while the deterrence makes sense and is useful, the other things don't and aren't.
Ah... except perhaps for the purpose of maintaining power structures and the status quo
️(I'm laughing as I write this, and thinking, "ah, no wonder people don't like us" - especially privileged ones who like their position)
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I so agree about knowing the edge of your knowledge. At least a little humility...
@KatyElphinstone @gwenthefops @sinvega And that's something I feel immediately distances me from normies: most people like a confident idiot. They feel safe. Meanwhile, such behaviour makes all my alarm bells ring.
Sometimes I wonder if it helps or makes it worse, that I work in a field where knowing what you don't know is perhaps the most important skill. I've used to run job interviews explicitly rigged so that the applicant can't know the answers to some questions. If you bullshit, you're out. I can't trust you.
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Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
The “jellyfish” study (2011) was influential in this, as it concluded that autistic people lacked Theory of Mind & capacity for moral reasoning.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-autistic-mind.html
In the fictional scenario given to participants, Sally tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.
️ #Autism #Empathy #Neurodiversity #Psychology #TheoryofMind #ActuallyAutistic
@KatyElphinstone hello. I have question. Is it possible for autistic person to have a lot of empathy but hard time expressing it?
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@KatyElphinstone "those with a milder form of autism such as Asperger's syndrome, often develop compensatory mechanisms to deal with their difficulties in understanding other people's thoughts. The details of these mechanisms are unknown"
The mechanisms are "unknown"? They're observation and deduction, forced on by having to figure out your illogical shit with no help from you and no manual.
What a twerp. They're supposed to be a scientist, and have this shit down.
Cthulhu weeps, that's bad.
Sadly, in medicine, "science" often boils down to "the consensus between three neurotypical men".
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@KatyElphinstone she logically is responsible for her friends death because jellyfish are deadly and this is well known
@burnoutqueen @KatyElphinstone I thought only *some* species are dangerous?
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Autistic people, after all, are known for preferring logic (I certainly do).
And we’re also known for thinking outside the box – meaning that if we’re forced to make false decisions based on faulty assumptions, then we are quite likely to make the ‘wrong’ choice.
Interested to hear others’ thoughts on this! And I’ll be looking for another influential study to look closely at.
I really enjoy analyzing things!
End of thread. 🧵
@KatyElphinstone
I read the article before reading your posts and I 100% agree.
The paper seemed so simplicistic to me.I don't understand how could anyone trying to deduct mental functioning based on that.
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Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?
The “jellyfish” study (2011) was influential in this, as it concluded that autistic people lacked Theory of Mind & capacity for moral reasoning.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-autistic-mind.html
In the fictional scenario given to participants, Sally tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.
️ #Autism #Empathy #Neurodiversity #Psychology #TheoryofMind #ActuallyAutistic
"Sure, you just have to inject the disinfectant directly into your bloodstream against Corona, that's what I read on the internet… What? Why is it suddenly my fault that he died?"
Go my little kid, swim with the stingrays they are so cute.....
Im just stupid so im not to blame sounds not really logical.
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@KatyElphinstone
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Thing is, when I as an Autistic blame someone or something, I’m just identifying the causal chain of events - there’s nothing “moral,” about it.
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It’s a “moral,” matter when you’re planning to punish who or whatever caused the problem. As a lifelong God’s fool sort of Autistic, that isn’t automatic, in fact I try to never punish anyone for anything.
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So “blame,” is a word that means different things to different neurotypes, making these tests faulty from the start. We’re suppose to lack empathy because for them, blaming Sally means hurting Sally, which it doesn’t for me.
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Worse, their version includes punishment, and they think that’s Human Nature and true for everyone so they don’t even try to compensate for that confound.
🤨
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#ND #ActuallyAutistic #Autism @autistics@punishmenthurts @KatyElphinstone @autistics
I never had a diagnosis, but I can relate so much on this.
I always have to remind me that people doesn't like a rational analysis of what's happening if they are involved, and that it makes me come out as judgmental even if I have zero intentions of that.
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@punishmenthurts @KatyElphinstone @autistics
I never had a diagnosis, but I can relate so much on this.
I always have to remind me that people doesn't like a rational analysis of what's happening if they are involved, and that it makes me come out as judgmental even if I have zero intentions of that.
Exactly this, yes. I'm always a bit astonished at what I've perceived to be the arrogance of people who are very sure about their own intentions.... Especially when they keep repeating the same actions over and over, and then act surprised about there being a similar outcome every time
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@KatyElphinstone your analysis of the situation is spot on I think. I really vibe with the blame vs responsibility distinction. Sally is inherently responsible having decided to make her opinion known which influenced her friend’s action. The friend is also responsible for her own actions. It wouldn’t even occur to me to look for blame in a situation like this unless I was forced to.
Before I read the thread, with only the information in the first two posts, my impression of this test was that it trivializes a fairly complex moral conundrum.
I feel this is the case for a lot of assessment type studies that have hypothetical scenarios and questionnaires like this. The questions always leave enormous elephants in the room, begging the reply “it depends”.
@CynAq @KatyElphinstone 'It depends' is the answer to a *lot* of questions.
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Autistic people, after all, are known for preferring logic (I certainly do).
And we’re also known for thinking outside the box – meaning that if we’re forced to make false decisions based on faulty assumptions, then we are quite likely to make the ‘wrong’ choice.
Interested to hear others’ thoughts on this! And I’ll be looking for another influential study to look closely at.
I really enjoy analyzing things!
End of thread. 🧵
@KatyElphinstone After reading the first two posts, I thought: Of course Janet is to blame! And realised only when reading further that blame is not only meant in a causal sense. I never meant moral blame or punishment. Then I thought about how frustrating it feels to me when people say „X is a true fact“ but I find out later that they didn’t have all the information and simply wanted to appear confident.
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@KatyElphinstone your analysis of the situation is spot on I think. I really vibe with the blame vs responsibility distinction. Sally is inherently responsible having decided to make her opinion known which influenced her friend’s action. The friend is also responsible for her own actions. It wouldn’t even occur to me to look for blame in a situation like this unless I was forced to.
Before I read the thread, with only the information in the first two posts, my impression of this test was that it trivializes a fairly complex moral conundrum.
I feel this is the case for a lot of assessment type studies that have hypothetical scenarios and questionnaires like this. The questions always leave enormous elephants in the room, begging the reply “it depends”.
Sally Janet
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Error 1) Presupposition / Loaded framing. The task assumes that when harm occurs, someone usually gets blamed. That assumption isn't tested & is built into the question.
Error 2) False dichotomy. Moral evaluation is reduced to blame vs no blame, leaving no room for partial, shared, or non-punitive responsibility.
Error 3) Category error. Conflation of blame and responsibility. Responsibility for outcomes is treated as identical to moral condemnation, collapsing two very different concepts.
️@KatyElphinstone some good stuff here which is worth keeping in mind more generally when looking at root causes and choice of language
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@KatyElphinstone some good stuff here which is worth keeping in mind more generally when looking at root causes and choice of language
Yes - I've been fascinated by logic recently. I feel it can be usefully used in a lot of contexts that involve dismantling power structures.
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Autistic people, after all, are known for preferring logic (I certainly do).
And we’re also known for thinking outside the box – meaning that if we’re forced to make false decisions based on faulty assumptions, then we are quite likely to make the ‘wrong’ choice.
Interested to hear others’ thoughts on this! And I’ll be looking for another influential study to look closely at.
I really enjoy analyzing things!
End of thread. 🧵
@KatyElphinstone really interesting.
My thoughts; the theory of mind impairment interpretation requires the assumption that the only morally relevant feature was Janet's belief state, when in fact participants may have been rating her process of belief formation as a separate moral dimension.
The study did not control for the source of the belief. If Janet made her recommendation to swim based on personal experience instead of relying on a book, I bet the study would have different findings.
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Yes - I've been fascinated by logic recently. I feel it can be usefully used in a lot of contexts that involve dismantling power structures.
@KatyElphinstone systematic logical thinking with some careful use of language and definitions can be very useful for uncovering things. Making things about a moral judgement, quite possibly unintentionally, too early in the process means you may not find your way to the true root cause.
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I'm the same.
This thread is actually a byproduct out of an article I'm writing on autistic empathy. I'm nearly done but these are the kinds of things that will go into it.
(And when finished I'll be asking for people's thoughts / feedback!)
@KatyElphinstone I've got to say... it's not a fun time to be empathetic.
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@KatyElphinstone I've got to say... it's not a fun time to be empathetic.
True
