1y ago

[Helpful Resource] A Field Guide to Earthlings: An Autistic/Asperger View of Neurotypical Behavior

pdfcoffee.com Ian Ford - A Field Guide to Earthlings, An autistic-Asperger view of neurotypical behavior - PDFCOFFEE.COM

A Field Guide to Earthlings: An autistic/Asperger view of neurotypical behavior Covers nuances of friendship, dating, sm...

A free ebook written for autistic people that describes the neurtotypical world. It can be funny and quite insightful!

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I learned all my social norms by reading philosophy books, and totally fucking myself over because normal people don't want to have lengthy talks about that stuff.
It's seriously a wonder why my parents never got me tested.
- My (autistic) wife studied philosophy to better understand humans (she didn’t get tested either until I got tested a year ago, we‘re both 30+ now)

I love this book! Not only was it useful at understanding how neurotypicals think and behave because it's written by an autistic person, but it also helped me understand myself better by comparison.
Here are some quotes I highlighted:
The social reality pattern is the extension of this theory of social construction into the realm of truth and reality. In its strongest form, the person cannot differentiate between consensus opinion and reality, and he apparently has few independent thoughts derived from his own experience, and instead assumes that the only thing that is true is what is communicated. For NTs with a strong social reality pattern, the truth is not the conclusion drawn from evidence. It is socially constructed. Everything can be socially constructed, even if it is apparently natural.
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In other words, things are what they appear. The NT mind is often not good at distinguishing appearances from the facts that underlie those appearances. To appear to do good is doing good. To claim that one is supportive is the same as being supportive.
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In autism circles, the term “weak central coherence” refers to the opposite of certainty about the big picture, or the theory that autistic people have trouble seeing the big picture. A more positive view of weak central coherence is the accurate reporting of how well a subject is understood in its entirety.
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New information and beliefs can be learned by NTs socially - that is, by hearing someone else say it, or reading it, as opposed to perceiving or experiencing it. The source of new information and beliefs often comes from an authority, whether it is the dominant cultural authority or some counter-cultural authority. For example, it could come from a parent, scientists, the mayor, a popular singer, or anyone that has a following. The authority status of the sender affects whether the receiver will accept or reject the new information. People with a strong social learning pattern can have difficulty having an independent thought or coming to a conclusion through logic.
- That is how I think lol. Can't count the number of times I have said something like "... is only a thing because someone a long time ago decided it is a thing and can easily no longer exist if we decided so". Most people completely miss the point when I say that. I think those ideas also apply to the lgbtq+ quite well because being gay wasn't weird entail someone decided it is weird.
  
  Right‽ I love that someone pointed it out to get a better awareness of ourselves and potential differences from others.
- As someone who's neurotypical, that mode of thinking is just as foreign and annoying to me
  
  Which mode? The social reality pattern?
- In autism circles, the term “weak central coherence” refers to the opposite of certainty about the big picture, or the theory that autistic people have trouble seeing the big picture. A more positive view of weak central coherence is the accurate reporting of how well a subject is understood in its entirety.
  Is this why people insist on asking questions I can't possibly know the answer to (for eg, about future events or causes behind psychological states), and then get mad when I tell them I don't know?
  
  I have no idea if that's what's happening in your case, but I have noticed that allistics tend to behave like they know something when I think they don't. I think it's a matter of how we define knowing something. For me, knowing something means that I am fairly certain that I understand the details, connections, and am confident in how I obtained the knowledge. For allistics, it's more about sharing that they have heard about it and that people agree with them. Additionally, while autistics may feel comfortable openly sharing that they don't know something, allistics see this as a sort of weakness or embarrassment. Since knowing could mean your guess, your friends may be asking you for your opinion, not your certain knowledge, so they could feel that you are withholding it. Additionally, since knowledge is socially constructed for allistics, you not engaging in the topic prevents them from creating knowledge, you're deciding to not engage in their concern, and they feel disregarded and vulnerable not having "knowledge" on whatever they're concerned about, whether validly rooted in objective reality or socially constructed.
  Disclaimer: These are generalities and every person, allistic or not, has their individual idiosyncrasies.

Not to be confused with Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (but which covers similar themes)

Is the link broken? I'm getting 404s
- Works for me! Could it be a network setting or your location??
  
  Well now looking at it from my desktop it's no longer a 404. It's an SSL certificate first and a broken XML right after. Whatever that book is, the tech gods don't want me to view it.

There was a youtube series a decade ago by "Zogg from Betelgeuse". At the time I thought it was a brutally logical and often humourous breakdown of humanity and how strange human behaviour is. It was written from the lens of educating aliens in advance of an invasion. There weren't many ideas that weren't already just how I understood things. I suspect there might be some similarities with this book.

17 comments