One that comes to mind for me: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is not always true. Maybe even only half the time! Are there any phrases you tend to hear and shake your head at?

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
    0·
    4 months ago

    Autistic people do have significantly reduced cognitive empathy. That’s literally part of being on the spectrum. Some will have better cognitive empathy than others. If a person is not capable of reading the emotion that an NT is projecting, then their reactions are going to appear to lack affective empathy as well.

    • derek@infosec.pub
      1·
      3 days ago

      Your closing sentence hints at the root of the misunderstanding here. It also fails to strengthen your initial claim at all. This study’s Lay summary sets it out perfectly.

      Many autistic individuals report feelings of excessive empathy, yet their experience is not reflected by most of the current literature, typically suggesting that autism is characterized by intact emotional and reduced cognitive empathy. To fill this gap, we looked at both ends of the imbalance between these components, termed empathic disequilibrium. We show that, like empathy, empathic disequilibrium is related to autism diagnosis and traits, and thus may provide a more nuanced understanding of empathy and its link with autism.

      Autistic folks don’t always exhibit the socially defined traits of autism. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, right? So while your [claim] [double-down] [pre-emptive concession] [claim] ends with a claim that’s reasonable it is also fundamentally disconnected from the initial claim (which is, at best, half-true). Social and non-social traits are additional dimensions on a complex spectrum. Defining autism only by its more visible / stigmatized traits perpetuates the false equivocations of abnormal with disordered and disordered with diseased.

      Sent with love ❤️