And I know of some taking ADHD meds for their co-morbid ADHD (autists have a higher probability for ADHD).

From the complaints I've heard from friends, those sound like pretty typical side effects for SSRIs. (Bupropion OTOH is both a stimulant and an antidepressant, and may be more effective for people with comorbidity ADHD and depression; the POV character should talk to their psychiatrist)

Having had other close experiences for the med balancing for someone with bpd and a complex host of other disorders - most of the times neurological med families are just trialed until one sticks and the specific efficacy and side effects of each can vary wildly from person to person. Brains are really complex and we don't really have an understanding of the method of action (specifically - why the med works - what it is changing in brain chemistry and why that has the impact we observe) of most neurological meds.

We even still struggle to comprehend specific biological markers linked to certain disorders - probably in part due to the fact that we're categorizing those disorders by wide swathes of symptoms.

There is no normal experience, only the kinds of experiences that people have. Some people have buckets of experience that are worse or more challenging than others, everyone has shared experiences that cross-sect.

These labels are useful insofar as grouping experiences together that tend to co-occur makes it easy to talk about certain categories of aggregate experiences or strategies for navigating life, but I think too many people relegate too much importance to these arbitrary labels, like "autism", derive too much of their identity from them, and too often use them as excuses to not deal with life's challenges and complexities head on.

    Every waking moment on the spectrum 

    thinking it isn't real isn't entirely helpful 

It's because there a handful of associated symptoms for autism and different people have a different mixture of them. You don't need an equally large amount of all symptoms in order to be autistic.

Think of it more like a light spectrum where there are different mixtures of hues for the symptoms, but autism still implies some amount of significant overall intensity. In short, it's a spectrum, not a continuum.

If you experience some or all of the symptoms associated with autism but at a level that doesn't significantly impair your overall functioning, then that's not a diagnosis of autism. Just like everyone who gets sad isn't depressed and everyone who worries doesn't have generalized anxiety. That's just normal human variability and life challenges.

But... I mean, if you asked 100 people what they think a spectrum means in this context, how many of them would think it meant "vector" rather than "real number"? I would guess fewer than 10. I consider myself a fairly well-informed nerd, but I think I had encountered many usages of "spectrum" describing a single trait for many years, and I think this is the second time I've ever encountered someone using the "vector" definition (the first one was also using it to describe autism). Has this linguistic battle already been lost? Does it improve clarity to call it a "spectrum" and insist on using the "vector" definition?

(I've personally been using the phrase "collection of imperfectly correlated traits")

But what people consistently misunderstand is that there is a fundamental dichotomy at the diagnostic level. Speaking from the perspective of the DSM, which I prefer because it's at least concrete and has medical relevance in North America, you meet the criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder ("on the spectrum") or you do not ("not on the spectrum").

In other words, the diagnostic criteria themselves do not constitute a spectrum, especially not a linear one. Maybe people are confusing this with the DSM's three levels of support needs.

1. Different autistic people may vary in which symptoms are most severe while all still being autistic.

2. Different autistic people may vary in the overall severity of all symptoms and how much it impacts their quality of life. (At the same time, there is still a distinct cut off where you are not considered to have autism if it doesn't manifest significantly in your life.)

The latter point is why "Asperger's" is now simply lumped in with ASD. But that tends to obscure the former point which is also important.

Perhaps "cluster" would have been better, but here we are.

No, because the endpoints of the spectrum are not defined as 0% autistic and 100% autistic.

The spectrum definitionally only includes people diagnosed with autism.

Your approach is like saying "there is a 'how bad is the cancer' spectrum" where 0 is "no cancer" as opposed to something like "cancer but easily curable." No reasonable definition of "cancer suffering spectrum" would include "doesn't even have cancer."

saying "that's insulting" doesn't impact his assertion. you have to meet their logic where it is to disagree. lucky this case was so easy.

I'm arguing that directly and asserting that web sites like the one posted are exactly the kind of things that make it easy for people to do that because they are relatable to basically everybody.

This is faulty logic. Just because it's a spectrum doesn't mean every single human is on the spectrum.

Yeah you might experience symptom X but for me symptom X is literally crippling. You can take your minimization of the autistic experience and go jump off a cliff with it.

It is exactly this kind of generalization that I'm referring to in my comment - "I think autism has become a tag for the shared experiences of things"

If anything, we are both equally frustrated by the fact that everyone who has experiences they consider "autistic" will happily jump on the bandwagon, despite the fact that it is a relatively small percentage of the population who has experiences that are sufficiently severe or unusual to warrant any kind of label at all.

Nobody likes high pitched noises, everyone is distracted and disorganized, everyone has trouble concentrating or feels overwhelmed when lots of things happen at once, taking lots of medication is hard on the body for everyone, socializing in unfamiliar settings or for long periods feels uncomfortable, interacting with coworkers is weird, many people get lost in the details of things, many people like to spend long periods focused on their interests, some people have really good memories for certain things, etc, etc, etc.

That doesn't make labeling yourself as autistic useful unless your experiences are preventing you from living the life you want to live, and even then, its only useful as a tool to find strategies of getting through that life, the label has no value in-itself.

Yes. And, as you have eloquently said in your other comments in this thread, the label CAN (not DOES but CAN) readily become value-NEGATIVE, if it becomes in itself an object of fixation that draws time and emotional energy away from the basic, brass-tacks work of living life as best as one can, whatever that has to look like for each individual.

It is an obvious error to pretend that this does not or cannot happen—an error no more and no less obvious than to pretend that it must or always happens.

Do you think Autistics are a small group so you're finding a way to argue that?

Why do you care if a person you think has minor struggles labels themselves autistic?

It's definitely the case that some people have a much larger magnitude of experience or persistence of experience. And for some, it's at levels that do make functioning in society quite difficult or impossible.

And yet, I think the point you are quite rightly making is that many people who are decidedly low on the spectrum are now adopting the identity of autism as a way to explain why life is hard.

I don't know why people feel inclined to adopt the label. I don't care that they do, they can call themselves whatever they want. But I do wonder if there are more productive ways of perceiving yourself, if you are indeed very much capable of functioning in society.

If your response to the game is to argue about the usefulness/value of the autism label, and to insinuate that it normalizes some kind of “bandwagon” effect, rather than feeling empathy that a colleague sitting next to you might be in mortal fear of what happens if their “energy bar” dips beyond their control - then perhaps we need more of this type of experience and conversation, rather than less.

But, everyone gets short of breath some times. Everyone wakes up with the feeling of a congested chest occasionally. Everybody is limited in the exercises they can do by their lung capacity and exercise tolerance.

But because after working very diligently, by your logic, I don't have asthma. Because I can run, and rock climb, and do all the life stuff that I wanna do.

Except that logic is fucking stupid! Because when I got covid a few years back, I was using my rescue inhaler constantly because I could feel my lungs starting to close up, felt just like the asthma attacks I would get when I was younger. But because I learned to use the techniques and habits I built up when growing up, and I made sure it never progressed far enough towards an attack that needed medical intervention. I don't have asthma, right? I should have thrown away my inhaler years ago because I was never using it?

The culture of treating mental health by different rules, from outwardly physical health, is fucking stupid, and I can't wait for that meme to die!

And it's especially egregious when people use that meme to then weaponize it to exclude people from the groups with shared experiences, weaknesses, skills, and needs.

If you really feel the need to be exclusive, and tell other people that their experience is invalid, and demand that they preform their rock bottom for you, before you'll believe them. Might I suggest instead of telling other people that the way they describe their life is wrong, instead try adding the prefix subclinical. As in my asthma (through work and effort), is subclinical.

E.g. instead of being an asshole who says "that doesn't count as austism" you can say "most people who claim to be autistic are lucky subclinical". Then you still get to invalidate the experiences of others, But you do so in a way that's slightly less hostile and gaslighting.

(*): Does the time I was sick count as an attack? Had I ignored those symptoms, would it have gotten worse, would I have needed to visit the hospital? Would you still try to tell me that this is different because I was also sick, so everything else doesn't matter?

>I should have thrown away my inhaler years ago because I was never using it?

Inhalers expire after a year, so yes, you should have, and you should have gotten a new one. I only learned this after getting a fresh one at the start of COVID because I hadn't had one in several years. Pretty sure growing up I had the same inhaler for like 8 years, so obviously it still works OK after a year, just relaying what my doctor told me 5 years ago.

Thankfully the expiration on mine was still good when I needed it. I try to keep mine refreshed every few years or so. It kinda feels bad throwing a barely used one away, but I never regret that when I actually pull it out to use it

> If you really feel the need to be exclusive, and tell other people that their experience is invalid, and demand that they preform their rock bottom for you, before you'll believe them. Might I suggest instead of telling other people that the way they describe their life is wrong, instead try adding the prefix subclinical. As in my asthma (through work and effort), is subclinical.

The fact that people have started applying social-justice-y terminology ("gatekeeping," "weaponize," "shared experiences," etc) to medical diagnosis is a clear sign we've gone too far. "You can't question my diagnosis because it's part of my identity! Stop gatekeeping me!"

Please. "Austism" is not a settled category and it's okay to argue about boundaries. The irony here is that autistic as an adjective means "unfeeling" e.g. "He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings". When sorting out the definition of autism (and similar conditions), we should be a little more autistic.

Yes, if you have something to add - something more substantive than just a snotty dismissal of the autistic experience rooted in the superficial observation that everyone occasionally experiences the "same" things.

> The irony here is that autistic as an adjective means "unfeeling"

The real irony here is your insistence that you have something to add to this discussion while leading with a decades-old myth that people with autism don't feel emotions.

But at least you've found a way you can feel superior to both groups right?

It's not social justice, it's just basic fairness. I've never been called weak or out of shape when I couldn't keep up with my friends when running. People are happy to adjust their expectations when I share that I have asthma, so it's harder than it might look. But I have been called lazy because I was unable to start on a task because I didn't have enough dopamine. Tell someone you have ADHD and many will suggest just making a list, or ask, "have you tried eating gluten free?" Before going on to explain they think in's over diagnosed. Please, tell me my asthma is over diagnosed, or my conversation and treatment plan with wy physician is inappropriate?

It's stupid that we blame people for admitting that things are harder than they expect. And telling someone they "don't seem autistic" or "don't look like you have asthma" are equally fucked up, but as a perfect case example, this thread. So many people are gladly willing to minimize and discount someone's description about mental health, but not lung health.

That is all I'm objecting to.

> Please. "Austism" is not a settled category and it's okay to argue about boundaries. The irony here is that autistic as an adjective means "unfeeling" e.g. "He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings". When sorting out the definition of autism (and similar conditions), we should be a little more autistic.

There's a bit of room between what I'm suggesting, and what you're replying to. I'm actually thinking we should be a little bit less autistic, because clinging too tightly to the literal written definition of individual words, limits the flexibility required for reasonable communication.

What I said was; it's inappropriate for anyone to tell somebody else that the way that they describe their experience is wrong.

but what I believe you're objecting to is; anybody can be autistic if they want to.

Which is not what I said.

the two phrases "I have very mild case of autism" and " I identify with a lot of the symptomology of autism and find that it's community and its skills and techniques to be very effective and beneficial in my life" should be treated as equivalent phrases. if you tell somebody that they're wrong to say either you are the asshole. You are rejecting their description of their life. You may disagree if they qualify for a medical diagnosis of autism. But unless someone claims that, your just arguing against a straw man that you created. (rhetorical you)

Standing up for people that you see being mistreated, insulted, or disrespected isn't "social-justice-y" it's basic human dignity and compassion.

The way you choose to disagree shows how much respect you have for other people. I don't agree with you is very different from, you're wrong to think that or say that. Every single person should object when they see someone punching down.

I think yeah the language has gotten very ambiguous and the "spectrum" is so wide and ill-defined that we need more and better words, but, I do also feel like it isn't just everyone's shared experience. I do feel like there are a lot of people who don't really experience these things, that aren't stuck in a constant self-conscious hyper-analysis and reflection loop, and are able to just kind of go with the flow a bit more (which is not to say that they don't have troubles or anxieties).

Edit: I will also note that I did have a similar reaction to you to this game. I didn't even go past the intro because I felt like I knew what it was. I would call this something like autism-lite, and it probably is pretty widespread, particularly in HN-like circles. It does feel a little bit confusing and even offensive to compare it to "capital A autism," an actual disability, but that's where our lexicon is right now.

We used to have other words. Asperger's used to be a separate condition but was merged into one diagnosis. I wonder if there was a reason the experts who study this decided to go with fewer words?

Have you tried adding additional adjectives? That's usually what I do when the word I want is too general, and isn't as specific as I want to be.

I sometimes jokingly refer to "my spectrum," but I think that word is not great either because it implies a linear gradation, when I think it's a higher dimensional space like a personality star chart.

That doesn't really help with the social side of describing it though.

So many people insist that it doesn't count unless you're completely or meaningfully incapacitated. But that's stupid place to put the bar.

For more mild and gray-area cases, it's really more akin to personality and it should be about understanding the particular combination of traits or symptoms of an individual. I wouldn't be officially diagnosed with OCD, or depression, or BPD, or maybe even ADD, but I can relate to all of those on some level and I feel like learning about them helps me understand myself better (with a grain of salt just like any health thing). It doesn't make me go around telling people I'm disabled and how they need to accommodate or support me, that's just narcissism.

If you mean "Autism", that might be true. But I don't think "Asperger's" meant that. So we might have taken a step backwards there.

There are many conditions that a key point of diagnosis is impact to your life, and that's a conversation to have with the practitioner doing the diagnosis. It's a starting point not a bar, unfortunately nuance gets lost a lot once it's talked about in the social sphere/used as common parlance.

However, I strongly disagree that the only use of the label is for developing personal coping skills. I shared your mindset for most of my life, having seen the negative effects of basing one's identity around it, but in the past couple years I've come to see the utility of the autism label and accept it for myself.

Its function (in the modern sense) is to be a tag for shared experiences, that's not a side effect. A sizeable portion of the population shares a similar grouping of frustrations with -- and difficulties functioning in -- society at large. It would be great if direct communication, respect for sensory processing issues, acceptance of stimming and other unusual behaviors, etc. etc. were widespread without the need for a special label, but society at large is slow to change; if the label is the catalyst needed for us to be more accepting of those different than us, so be it.

The typical reaction from a non-ND person to seeing [non-disruptive] autistic behaviors is one of fear or light disgust; however, give that same person a box to put those behaviors in and they understand how to look past them, and see you as a human. That's my experience, anyway. The loudest champions of autism often have a different perspective, one more based around identity; I see issues with that for the same reasons you describe, but nonetheless the label as a whole still carries utility on a societal level too.

Psychiatry is in its infancy. To see autism as an "excuse not to deal with life" is just plain bigotry.

Unfortunately, these psychiatry terms have spilled over into social media without the same warnings. This leads to extreme over-diagnosis by people who learn basic symptoms and start spotting them in everyone.

> I estimate that at least 1/8 of all people I have ever met are on the autism spectrum.

Unless you are only meeting people in an environment that is extraordinarily biased toward Autism Spectrum Disorder and you’re avoiding mingling with the general population, this simply isn’t possible.

> Around 1/4 to 1/2 of all people I have ever met have some form of executive function disorder.

You are grossly over-diagnosing.

When you see a characteristic in half of all people it’s no longer in the realm of something considered a disorder. You are literally just describing the median point in human behaviors.

Autistic individuals have systemic changes in their mind and body which let them see life from a different perspective.

People with executive function disorder have issues with rapid thinking, focusing, and other things that can work in their favor often enough to be passed on.

Speaking in cryptic aphorisms doesn't help anything.

Psychiatry isn't a field where everyone has a single perspective. There is a lot of debate within psychiatry and much research exploring different perspectives.

However, I don't think it's appropriate for a non-psychiatrist to start diagnosing half of the population with a disorder or 1 in 8 people they meet with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

An untrained perspective is not on the same level as the professionals and researchers.

Repeating “psychiatry is in its infancy” over and over again does not elevate your opinion to the same level of trained professionals and academic research.

Autism compounds this greatly because of the double empathy problem, so one should expect an autistic person to have mostly autistic friends and to be in environments where the rate of autism is far higher

I'm not assuming anything. I literally explained that the only way it's possible is for someone to avoid the general population and only socialize in environments with extreme bias.

The more important point is that diagnosing autism is not something you can do by simply meeting people in social situations. It's something that takes training and experience by professionals, not an untrained person who sizes people up as they meet them in a social capacity.

Almost all of my social circle is somewhere on the spectrum, and quite a few are diagnosed.

So I can say with some authority that there are absolutely some people who use it as an excuse, which is made even more apparent than the people that aren't using it as one. TikTok and other high-information-low-veracity social media is only making this trend worse. It's not bigotry to acknowledge that.

(Most of said individuals ended up getting cut out of said social circle, after the people actually making an effort got tired of them constantly using their disability as an excuse not to even try to modify bad behavior)

That said, I'm not against diagnosis, or even self-diagnosis. Improved diagnosis is a good thing! But mostly because it makes it easier to understand how you can structure things to adapt to it. Or to quote a coworker's email signature:

> “Undiagnosed neurodivergence is like being handed a video game that has been set to hard mode, but having people tell you over and over "it's on easy, why do you keep dying? " Diagnosis is learning the game is on hard mode. It doesn't make it easier, but you can strategize.”

It would be nice if there were objective tests that said exactly where someone is, but those are both impossible and would be subverted even if they were possible.

Parents are doing the best they can, but in the end they're still making decisions for other human beings who are not them, and those human beings are going through a time of life that is undeniably hard and requires growing to be able to do all kinds of things they couldn't formerly do. How can the kids know what is reasonable difficulty and what is excessive due to their neural makeup?

It's a tricky and nuanced situation, and so I really do see people falling into the opposing extreme camps. I agree that humans will take advantage of any system. That doesn't really have any bearing on how things are going, and whether people are seeing the nuance clearly or not. My personal experience is witnessing kids who are taking advantage of accommodations and failing to grow as a result, and how the system cannot distinguish which of those accommodations are appropriate and which aren't. It's also witnessing kids who need accommodation but won't ask for it, because they or their parents believe that muscling through is necessary, or that their problems aren't real. How are those not examples of extreme positions?

My point is that in order to get better at this, we need to be doing the hard work of figuring out what's real and what's not, or even how real it is, and what interventions do and don't work. Surely it's not controversial to say that giving a procrastinator twice as much time to finish their tests is not always the right thing? It can hurt as easily as it can help. And yet, it is the right thing for some people, for some situations. If it takes me 10 minutes to solve a quadratic that takes you 5, getting a failing grade is not going to help me learn, nor does it mean I'm incompetent at mathematics.

If you don't think people are saying "just suck it up", you're not looking very hard. Same if you don't think people are saying that we should offer any and all accommodations to anyone who requests.

Believing that "too many" autistic people are using it as an excuse - an entire category of people - is bigotry.

I did say that it is common for people to see themselves in the descriptions of many psychiatric disorders, because many of the symptoms are experiences that most people can relate to, in some form or another, and then use that as a vehicle to avoid enduring some of life's necessary suffering.

> There is no normal experience, only the kinds of experiences that people have. Some people have buckets of experience that are worse or more challenging than others, everyone has shared experiences that cross-sect.

A lot of people are in the short head of the distributions when it comes to nearly all of these markers. Some people are in the long tails for a large number of them. Those are the ones we label. Being in the short head doesn't mean one is never awkward or never late or annoyed by certain noises, it means that they're so at a frequency that's common.

Recall that psychology has had a gigantic replication crisis, and that the founders of the field like Freud and Jung were charlatans, and that there is no agreed-upon mechanistic explanation for autism, and that a primary diagnostic tool is a literal questionnaire, and that psychology and psychiatry have been abused for political reasons by every totalitarian government of the 20th century.

Given all this, we should have some humility about this topic. Maybe let's not leap to medicalizing large swathes of the human condition and just accept eccentrics as part of life.

And maybe we can normalize the idea that employees have special emotional needs that can be accounted for on an individual basis without medical permission slips or any need for wielding constructed identities.

Recently a friend explained to me that Freud really wasn’t a scientist, but he was so influential in getting western cultures to think about the mind in new ways that we still learn about him. Like nobody cared about psychology until he get famous

Would we say that Copernicus was a charlatan or not a scientist because the heliocentric model turned out to be wrong? As you acknowledge, Freud pushed the collective understanding further.

It's definitely a lot more murky and there are massive gaps in our understanding between biology and neuroscience and psychology, and fundamental differences and limits on methodology that we may never surpass, but his work still has its place on the timeline of progress does it not?

What about something like phrenology? It's easy to laugh at it now and consider its proponents charlatans or lunatics but at a time it was considered a worthy avenue of exploration, that turned out to be a dead end, but that's part of science.

It wasn't until the mid-20th century when people started to get more serious about defining science. Philosophers started critiquing it in the early 20th century like the Vienna Circle and Popper, and eventually the definition of what constitutes science was narrowed down to one that was defined as a particular sort of empiricism.

That, too, has its own problems.

[1] anecdote: at the end of explaining the fMRI procedure to the participant children and their parents, I'd ask if the child had any questions. Neurotypical children would usually ask about any reward $ for completing the task. AS kids would usually ask something poignant about the experiment.

And since every phenotype exists along a normal distribution, there will always be resemblances and fuzziness, and no clear lines demarcating order from disorder.

But it is also obvious that nonverbal people who are stimming most of the day and can barely tie their own shoelaces exist, and these people need to be cared for and studied by responsible professionals in mature and private settings with their loved ones.

I agree that a healthy dose of skepticism and acknowledgement of our rudimentary understanding is warranted, but it does start to sound a little anti-science. I don't think there's anything wrong with continuing to explore and attempting to explain or put words to these things even though they are near the highest level of complexity in nature and the hardest to empirically evaluate.

Are NSAIDs considered to be medicalizing large swathes of the human condition (or caffeine, or alcohol for that matter)? Where is the line between a universally accepted and ubiquitous pharmaceutical and an overmedicalized one? I think we should be moving more towards the question of "do you feel like this medication benefits you or would benefit you?" than "do you check these boxes in the DSM and officially receive this diagnosis".

Subjectively... I see people around me casually doing things that I simply cannot do. I'm 41 years old, and not once do I recall performing any action without actively forcing myself to do it. That includes things as small and trivial as getting up from my desk to use the restroom.

I can't relate at all to the concept of a "habit". Combing my hair requires an explicit decision to do so. I usually have to find my brush, since there's no consistent place I put it. When I'm done, I'll forget that I wanted to put it back where it belongs while actively being frustrated with myself for not doing so the previous day.

It's glaringly obvious to me that other people don't struggle with the things I struggle with; at the very least, they don't struggle to the same degree. It's exhausting.

Oh, and I've never even been diagnosed with autism. I have ADHD. What I described above is classic "executive dysfunction".

It’s a problem when our definition of “normal” is the blended combination of every more outgoing and more successful person we see combined into one composite super-person.

Most people don’t do anything like a party committee. Most people don’t go to networking events and of those who do, many don’t network or socialize much. Most parents don’t call three times per day.

Yet it’s easy to see (or imagine) all of these behaviors and mentally blend them up into a composite idea of what “normal” means in a way that is far from average.

I see this a lot in students self-diagnosing with ADHD right now: Their mental model of “normal” is actually more like a 99th percentile studying and self-discipline machine, not a typical student. The way they describe “normal” or neurotypical people is more like superheroes with super abilities who have infinite motivation to study for 8 hours per day after cleaning their house to spotless precision and never touching their phone for a break. They have mentally erased the average person from their minds and replaced it with a hypothetical super person who doesn’t exist.

While going through the simulator, I was shocked with the response to some choices and situations. I was not aware that these things were so disruptive to some people.

Well, I guess the simulator did a good job spreading awareness that it is like that for some?

I have ADHD and while I'm medicated I cannot fathom some of the struggles or decisions that unmedicated me makes... like I struggle to have empathy for unmedicated me.

I imagine without such deep personal experience it would be much harder or impossible to understand or empathize.

Something I’ve thought might be a helpful AI app, for a product like smart glasses or earbuds with integrated cameras, if it were possible, is a live nonverbal communication translator, to help with the cognitive load of ASD people, as cognitive empathy is often a performance issue socially.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism that using AI as a cognitive crutch is unhealthy, but the same argument could be made about mechanical advantages, beasts of burden, or machines, reducing humanity’s physical fitness. AI’s potential to be a cognitive force multiplier is its killer app.

Or that's how I imagine it at least

I don't have Autism, and none of those things apply to me.

- One scenario had a team unboxing an espresso machine and making too much noice by using it, clinking cups and laughing. The options were to put on noise canceling headphones, find a different desk away from the noise, or just endure it. Personally I'd take a break and go join them, and I don't even like coffee.

- The scenario where the user is in a room with a PM and a couple other people debating the tone of copy on a website, and the conversation is meandering without clear turns (iirc): there were only options to essentially hurry the conversation along or not participate at all, but IRL I'd join in with the other three debating the tone and just generally be bullshitting/sidetracking/meandering the conversation because I like to talk to people.

- The scenario where somebody comes up and asks for a new feature without clear acceptance criteria: the options were to turn to the computer and type out acceptance criteria in front of the person (which feels passive aggressive to me); tell them you'll do it; or ask them to schedule time with you to hammer out the criteria. I would've just chatted with them right there about the feature they wanted, let them know that XYZ is what I think the acceptance criteria is at the end of the conversation, and if that's wrong they'd correct me.

THE WORST! Why can't we just work?! Do stuff, make money, get the f- out.

It's a job, not a religion.

It’s my personal escapism from the everydayness of existence.

For others it's a calling.

Nothing wrong with either - I just think it's worth being aware that people have different motivations.

He was an irritating person even without his camera. I hate having my picture taken, and I don't consent to having my face posted on social media. Later, when the company realised that setting money on fire isn't a solid business strategy, he was thankfully fired.

E.g. communication tends to work best if you have A: trust and B: a mental model for the other person. A is a buffer against friction. B is essentially API documentation about this specific person

The social bits are how most people build A and B

There's no polite way to tell such individuals to f- off, of course, and it's often expected.

Humans are social creatures. We can't live in a vacuum nor on our own without support from other humans (i.e., food production).

Now, if other people do need corporate staged social games in order to build that up for themselves, then that’s ok for them, but why is that considered the norm? Why are they required? Why is it up to the neurodivergent person to exhaust themselves for them? Why is it considered normal for someone in a “People team” to ignore the needs of some of the people? I don’t see why other people’s needs are inherently more important than mine.

I don't know it has to be that way at all. There's probably lots of room for compromise. The "people team" would need to both know about the need and care enough to try to take it into account

I think that's the most I can deal with today ;)

The bad part is: when HR forces you to take some time off because you're sick, you can't regenerate, really. And if you're sick you don't have the mental capacity left to dampen the noises.

I always explain the perception of life to others as it being like living and working next to a construction site. All the time, including when you try to sleep. The world is full of too many noises, and social interactions are noises, too.

I also would love to see NICU being in there, too. Maybe with appointments the next day putting you in waiting mode so you can't sleep and rest in the game?

There's no specific autism medication that I'm aware of, but psychiatric diseases often have plenty of comorbidity. There's some ADHD popup in the game that distracts you with Wikipedia, there's misophonia, it sounds like the character has a whole mix of different things.

Some questionable doctor prescribed me something like that a couple months ago as a precursor to dealing with ADHD. He said it would take a few weeks to build up in my system with once daily pills. I took a single pill and didn’t sleep for 3 days, and felt “off” for a good week or three. Never again.

I really don’t want to do a sleep study, as it sounds like nightmare fuel, so I got an Apple Watch which is supposed to be able to signal if there is a possible issue over the course of a month. I’ve had a couple days in normal range, but most days show elevated breathing interruptions. If it signals me after the end of the 30 days, I guess I’ll feel forced to get a sleep study. While I hate the idea of needing a cpap, being tired all the time isn’t fun either.

Taking Ubiqunol now, red light therapy for mitochondrial health - there's a bunch of other related supplements. Started exercising. Energy is better now.

It’s a condition that exists on a spectrum, as does its treatments or coping mechanisms. That said, I’m the “take my assigned medication” type, so I always took the full dose in the game.

Damn, it's way past the time for me to take my SSRIs, because I forgot to take Adderall earlier in the day and zoned out on HN instead when I should've been finishing that API.

Narrator: the actual task didn't call for an API redesign, but if we're doing things, we're doing them The Right Way™ or we don't do them at all, right?

No alcohol.

Also look at your environment and its stressors. Moving out was one of the best things I did for my mental health.

My food can touch without me melting down, so I'd consider it a win. This is not medical advice.

Edit: Just asked her and the final cocktail they have settled on is aripriprazole (Abilify, an atypical antipsychotic) and hydroxyzine (first-generation antihistamine with anxiolytic and sedative properties).

I sent her the game and she said it was hard haha. I asked if that was what autism feels like and she said this-

“Not for me but I have ASD. For my son, it would be similar but different since he can't tell me what is going on in his head. I can only guess with him, poor lamb.”

IE, medication can be hit-or-miss. Did I (as the person in the game) go to a pill pusher and thus the medication causes more problems then it helps? Or, is the medication something where the benefits outweigh the consequences?

As many other people in this thread point out, there is no "medication for autism," so I assumed that it was a case of poorly prescribed medication from a pill pusher and didn't take it the first time I played.

There are point diffs on your stats each turn. The positive diffs are always the same for the same choices regardless of day.

The negative choices have an additional 25% added to them each day, so -10 the first day for a choice would be -12 (floor) the second day, -15 the third day, etc.

There's also an overlap in traits.

I'm AuDHD (autism + ADHD). You can read about my ADHD side if the experience (with memes!) here:

https://romankogan.net/adhd

Don't ask me what's normal about normal subgroups¹, for example (or what's weird about other ones, especially given that it's the normal ones that are special in some way, and the "abnormal" ones didn't even get a name).

Or why mathematicians came up with other, alternatively stupid ways to refer to them, when saying kernel subgroups (or simply kernels) would communicate the idea exactly (normal subgroups are simply kernels of morphisms, i.e. the subgroups that could be sent to identity by a map that preserves group relations).

Better yet, call them divisor subgroups (or just divisors), because the reason we care about them is that we can use them to divide a group into equally-sized pieces which also form a group.

Which we naturally call the quotient group.

So, to be clear:

* You have M=12 apples. You put them on the table in rows of N=3 apples, and get exactly 4 full rows of 3 apples each, which line up with each other:

    •••
    •••
    •••
    •••

* You have a group G of remainders mod 12 . You pick three of them, H = {0, 4, 8}, and write them down in a row.

If you add 1 to each number in H, you get another, new, row of 3 remainders: 1, 5, 9. You write that down; same thing works for 2 and 3.

With modular arithnetic, adding 4 or 8 just shuffles numbers in any row that you wrote down. So adding 5 is the same as adding 1; you get only 4 rows that don't overlap.

Math speak: H is a subgroup, and H acts on each row by a shuffle. The rows correspond to remainders modulo 4.

    0  4  8  =  H + 0 (= H + 4 = H + 8)
    1  5  9  =  H + 1 (= H + 5 = H + 9)
    2  6 10  =  H + 2 (= H + 6 = H + 10)
    3  7 11  =  H + 3 (= H + 7 = H + 11)

For example, if you pick any number from row 1 and add any number from row 2, you always get a number from row 3.

Adding two numbers from row 3 yields a number from row 2. We can write this like this:

    [1] + [2] = [3]
    [3] + [3] = [2]
    [3] + [2] = [1]
    ...

You can see how the rows not only correspond to remainders mod 4 (as a set), they are related in the same way (add like numbers mod 4):

        (H + a) + (H + b) = H + (a +b)
      = H + ((a + b) % 4)     (since H + 4 = H).

Math speak: by analogy with the division of numbers, we say that we get a quotient group G/H=Z_4 with elements [0], [1], [2], [3].

We could use the same naming logic to say that to get the quotient group G/H, we divide G by its divisor group H....

...hahaha, who am kidding, that makes too much sense. If you saw the word divisor, you'd think of getting a quotient right away. Come on. Can't have that.

To get the quotient group G/H, you quotient G by its normal subgroup H.

Yes, mathematicians straight up verbed the word quotient, and called the operand H something that is in absolutely no way connected to it.

To recap,

Numbers: divide a number M by its divisor N do get the quotient M/N.

Groups: quotient a group G by its normal subgroup H to get a quotient group G/H.

... I'm not going to complain about "comorbidity".

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_subgroup

The lack of executive function is overlapping, but this particular post might be more of an ADHD simulator.

The very first "Follow the morning routine" or not is where this veers off my experience of the spectrum.

"Changing plans because of situations internal or external" is hard.

The option should've been "Spend 20 minutes making eggs again, because the yolks weren't the right kind of runny", miss the train, take a cab to work, but tell the driver that you've now got a system for eggs which you didn't have today (yeah, fun fact, the recipe was off because they don't refrigerate them over in France).

It is not "pop-psych", it is reality.

These are just labels we apply to buckets of symptoms. The underlying problems and biological differences that can cause these buckets of symptoms probably will be found, and then we can re-categorize things quite a bit. My bet is we do this within the next couple decades.

What causes difficulty is that actual symptoms of one of these buckets can cause behaviors and coping strategies that look like other ones.

Another issue is that these symptoms are not specific. What one neurodivergent person means by "I have sensory issues" is vastly different from another neurodivergent person, and your psych health provider will dig into those specifics and try and tease out which label fits the best, or whether it's even an example of that symptom. How those symptoms affect you is the entire point.

>I'm still hesitant that "autism" these days may describe either someone who's completely nonverbal and living in assisted living, or someone who's a successful academic/engineer/entrepreneur.

And you have that same feeling towards "blind" or "deaf" right? Since a lot of blind people struggle to lead "normal" lives but there are accomplished blind software devs right here on HN

Consider how many people live life with some sort of mild delusion and yet are perfectly functional 99% of the time. The brain is complicated and cannot ever be reduced to single dimensions like that, and it is weirdly good at still functioning when part of it is broken in some way, like with Broca's area or Phineas Gage.

Yes, "syndrome" and "disorder" are vague labels that don't have hard cutoffs or any test you can objectively run. That's the point of those words. When you have a hard test you can run, it becomes a "disease".

With Autism, as noted elsewhere in this thread, a general social understanding of it is required to help normalize environments that don't exclude autistic people. Having specific labels could, on the one hand, help bring focus towards the specific needs of those people. On the other hand, it's harder to convince people of a 100 different neurodiverse profiles than one...

EDIT: I misread your comment earlier, ignore the above paragraph. I definitely get how exhausting it might be to list off everything. I suppose I feel the Autism label is too big at the moment to communicate effectively though. See the following, I think it still applies.

It also helps people on the other end. If someone says they have "Misophonia, Aural sensitivity, and Rejection Sensitivity" I would understand a lot more about their situation than if they simply said they're mildly Autistic.

It's called comorbidities. It's very common in mental health conditions.

I know it feels nice to be able to craft a simple narrative, but this narrative feels more harmful and misconstrued than useful.

It could be that autism really is, exactly as we describe it and conceive of it, in some meaningful way defined by actual reality, a thing.

It could be that it's ten different things that aren't actually connected at all, but happen to look kinda similar. Some of which either are a variant of ADHD (or vice-versa, doesn't much matter) or just happen to include similar symptoms and behaviors that respond well to the same drugs and therapies we use to tread ADHD.

(now, to some degree we do have real tests we can do to pick up e.g. genetic markers of certain disorders, but these largely remain just another clue, not exactly solid proof, with some exceptions)

To illustrate: imagine we couldn't ever see the inside of a human body and just had to guess at what was going on when something went wrong. We'd probably have something we just called "bad kidney" that was actually several different problems, and we'd just throw drugs and other therapies at it until (often, but not always) some set of those relieved the symptoms. Meanwhile, sometimes it's a kidney stone, sometimes it's cancer, et c. And maybe we even have a whole step that's trying to figure out if it's "bad kidney" or "bad bladder" and sometimes we'd get that right, but sometimes wrong, but also some of the same medicines work for either (depending on the actual cause) so we might incorrectly diagnose "bad kidney" then accidentally correctly treat "bad bladder", and think we were right all along.

Happened to my grandfather even though he was probably the best damned cab driver in all of Michigan.

Did he fall asleep at the wheel, while driving? I can see that being a fireable offense.

>> Someone posts an old joke on Hacker News

>> You interpret it literally.

> see old joke

> attempt to make ND meta joke

> see allistics not get it

> Stop shaking the god damn ladder you little shit!

Not screaming in terror, like the passengers in his car.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250927031224.h...

Consider how many people cannot even know what ycombinator is.

Harsh as this sounds, this is the truth.

don't forget the vaccines and tylenol, RFK Jr

autism predates the widespread use of plastic by generations

The Nazis had already holocausted autistic people.

What helps:

- Challenging the idea that you need to mask to be successful. If masking is a recipe for burnout, then it actually seems like it's a strategy that will lower your chance for success. How much of the need here is self-imposed?

- Owning your calendar and timing for meetings to better suit your energy.

- Regular therapy and reflection, honestly.

- Regular exercise, doesn't matter who you are or what form, this is essential.

I can respect that this "simulation" fosters empathy, but worry that it also awfulizes/catastrophizes solvable problems. Figuring out functional routines and managing burnout is just as big a part of the job as writing code. It's very much a personal responsibility, maybe not in the job description, maybe harder for some than others, but it is our responsibility.

You might as well be telling a wheelchair-bound person that it's their responsibility to find a way up a flight of stairs or maneuver a cramped bathroom stall.

Most people have 2 legs and 2 arms. Some people don't (birth defects, injuries, accidents, disease, etc). There is a spectrum of missing appendages, but to say everyone is missing at least part of an appendage is not correct.

This is currently how autism is viewed.

Essentially, there's a collection of behaviors you need to exhibit to be considered autistic. Then, the "spectrum" part is the severity of those behaviors.

With the DSM-5 and it's removal of Asperger's as a separate diagnosis the diagnosis criteria has been made stricter. People that would have formerly been diagnosed as Asperger could theoretically not be anymore under ASD.

The percentage of people with autism in a population is very stable and we know there is a huge genetic component to it.

People are getting diagnosed more but the amount of people with autism has likely stayed stable.

Which is really, really good thing. A diagnosis is live changing. The earlier you get diagnosed and the more supportive your network is, the better the outcome.

This is the "there is only so much covid because we testing so much" discussion all over again.

Masking is not always conscious, in fact it's largely unconscious. So many autistic people will go through their day around neurotypical people and feel burnt out by lunch and have no idea why. They don't necessarily realize they're burning tons of mental effort just talking to people or dealing with stimuli.

Autistic people learn to mask just to get by day to day. It's not like they got issued a "How to be Autistic: Masking for Success" guide book when they were born.

I still think it's important to (1) notice what's causing the problem, bring it into consciousness (2) understand the behavior (in this case: masking) and reckon with it if if's causing a bad outcome (burnout.)

Easier said than done. For me, therapy has been life-changing for helping me notice and understand unintentional behaviors.

Autistic people don't come into the world as fully formed adults with irrational ideas about the need to mask. They start off as children and attempt to socialize with other children. The autistic child in a neurotypical world just "being themselves" finds themselves repeatedly kicked out of friend groups and rejected by everyone sometimes including by their parents. This is deeply traumatic to a young child's psyche. Unloved and rejected, a solution appears! I'll just pretend to be like the other kids, even though they're stupid and wrong. They may actually objectively be stupid, but apparently they don't like being told that to their face. Pile on another decade or two of this, and hey, this child, now older and wiser, has autistic masking tendencies that cause them to burn out. Blame the now-adult person with autism all you want to absolve yourself of a need to concern yourself with other people's problems, but that's not actually helpful for those people suffering from autistic burnout.

I mask as a coping mechanism for ADHD and Social Anxiety. This masking causes me harm. I learned it in the way you describe.

The most helpful learning I've gotten through years of therapy has been to: (1) recognize what I'm doing (2) not beat myself up about it (3) try small steps to change my behavior so that I can feel good about it.

I'm the only person who can unlearn this for myself. I don't blame anyone who masks, and have nothing but empathy for the experience, but I'm proposing they can find a different way.

Therapy absolutely helps. Unlearning maladaptive behaviors rooted in childhood trauma is part of being a well-adjusted adult.

It takes energy to not do every impulsive thing that comes to mind. Fine, don't call it masking to not give into them. Whatever you want to call it though, it's exhausting.

What's the different way?

I’m lucky enough to be on the lower/moderate side of things, but man all of this stuff hit home in its own way. Annoying noises (for me it’s the whine of cheap electronics or the chaotic bass of some music genres/upstairs neighbors), the forceful imposition of others in my space (“cameras on!”, scented cleaners, voluntold activities), and the daily task micromanagement to get by (do I call a friend/family member since they’ve texted me three times today about a trivial matter, or do I watch comfort shows and work on a personal project?).

This shit is hard, and adding in the requirement to engage in political maneuvering to succeed and thrive makes it exponentially worse.

I just want to do a good job and go home to live the best life I can. I suspect most autists are the same.

It very likely is!

Autism is an extremely diverse and complex phenomenon. No two autistic people experience the world in the same way. This simulation is based on the experiences of a single autistic individual and is not representative of all autistic people, although, I suspect many autistic people will recognize some aspects of their own experience in this simulation.

Play this game, do your morning routine like an adult, skip the pills, and it’s game over already. Wow!

Eg.: party near my desk (near my office, even in my office) I will personally cancel their "party", or message each of their bosses etc.

I think, the best thing you can do is to don't care about anybody, "I'm (we're) here to work, if you're not here to work then GTFO".

"Let's have camera's on"...ehm no thanks ;-) etc.

I'm still polite though, I would say highly polite, but if anyone behaves like an idiot, then they will have a problem with me.

Is really being autistic, meaning you take shit from other people all the time? I'm not sure.

But once you are older and able to sieze your own power and set your own boundaries? The healthiest high functioning autist I know share this "don't give a fuck " attitude.

Very sad for the hell lower functioning ones must live in... Almost like the horror stories of locked in comas.

Man of Steel - The World's Too Big, Mom

https://youtu.be/VcdFURryKjA

Zack Snyder described perfectly the ADHD/ Autistic experience growing up in one single scene. Intentionally or not. This movie made me feel less alone in this world. Superman helped me realize that wasn't a freak. I just perceived the world differently. Thank you Zack. I will forever be grateful for Man of Steel for many years to come

Compounding this issue is the fact that people often refuse to accept that a mental thing is actually a physiological thing, albeit harder to fix because it’s currently poorly understood. People’s mental models of brain-related conditions often create a separation of the person from their physical self, either due to some subconscious or conscious belief in a metaphysical representation of the condition.

It seems like one of those games that I'm going to recall in various situations in the future.

The ADHD modal is hilarious.

The snap back to "now it's time to give your morning standup update" hit hard btw :)

Though it took me a second because the page was St Anthony IIRC. I'm Eastern Orthodox so for a second I was like "how did my ADHD-self open this here, wtf?!". Then I laughed once I got it.

I'm not at all familiar with Autism, and I have no idea what "Masking" means at all, but every option I choose seems to lower that stat, to the point where I never make it to day 2. Is there a cheat sheet that lists the "correct" selections at each step?

Thank you. Neovim has radicalized my design sensibilities and I really miss the internet I used in the 90s as a kid.

> I'm not at all familiar with Autism, and I have no idea what "Masking" means at all, but every option I choose seems to lower that stat, to the point where I never make it to day 2. Is there a cheat sheet that lists the "correct" selections at each step?

I got a chuckle out of this because it's how I felt IRL for a long time. Especially "every option I choose seems to lower that stat" This is a good rundown https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behavio...

No cheatsheet but I'll opensource the code in a few days when i clean it up a bit

I approached the game as a non-neurodivergent person making whatever the natural decision I personally would have made in each situation, and ended up dying to the "masking" every time! It kind of gives me an appreciation that what comes naturally to me, at no cost, imposes a tremendous cost to others. I suppose that might have been the whole point of the site. Well done.

Well, masking is done by everybody, not just autists, but in this game it's used to refer to that specifically. Arguably autists have to do it more, or feel the exhaustion from it more strongly.

I was passed over without disclosure. When I did disclose, they tried to fire me. It would be great if they add a feature where you're told for a decade by peers, leads, and managers that you're at the next level, but never actually get there. Then they try firing you while the internal interviews give feedback about how you're likely overqualified for roles at your level. How's your mental health doing after that? The game should add a part about wanting to get hit by a bus during your commute so you cana avoid the torture.

Pitting teammates against each other like that? It's a guaranteed way to kill off mentoring, knowledge sharing, and any real sense of collaboration.

Not just tech, but business in general.

I wish I could have added this story knot. I'll open source it soon and you'll see how crufty dealing with inkle is https://www.inklestudios.com/ in JS. Credit to the folks working on inkle but something like this is pushing the tech beyond what it says on the tin.

I don't doubt at all that a lot of software developers have had the experience you describe, but when you describe it as intrinsic to the economics of commercial software development, I think you're bound to end up in some weird places.

best lesson for me was an HR manager explaining it to me, after finally after 3 years i asked pretty please to give a lil raise, i was still trainee after all that time.

he smiled and said he thought id never ask. made me senior on the department matching my input. and told me this exact fact. He said, why should i give you a raise if you seem happy where ur at? never complain, never ask, never get.

its harsh but its good to understand certain hashness. Then you can work around it, step over that bridge, and be more active in tracking your input, their expectations, and showing them the mismatch deservant of a raise or promotion.

its often peoples shyness or false expectations that get them in such a situation where they feel very under valued. they are because they under value themselves or dont know how to translate/express their value to another persons perspective. another harsh truth. Especially if you are neurodivergent, the way you see things and another is further apart, so your words need to do more to reconcile that difference to generate mutual understanding.

in an ideal world this would not happen or be needed, ofcourse. but we dont live in an ideal world, and there is no switch to flip to make it an ideal world.

But I've repeatedly told over the years by clever libertarian software engineers that I don't need a union because it's better to just go to the boss with your concerns, instead of making things so adversarial.

But it's common and extremely frustrating for anyone neurodivergent to be told "but everyone feels that way" whenever they discuss any of their issues.

Feels like my life is worthless and if complain to anybody they will just throw me in jail or the hospital again. Like I'm trapped in hell and unable to ever be normal.

All I pray for everyday is to find a partner who lets me have some sense of justice against the ones who caused this.

I feel like Apple is to blame and if I'm being honest until they comply with my every wish I'm never going to not be able to not be a homicide victim.

Seriously. Skip coffee.

If the author feels overwhelmed, I'd say coffee should be tried first. It's not easy (caffeine addiction is real, especially for the spectrum), but it gets easier and easier with time.

Most I was able to do is day 2. Probably realistic.

Something like the following: - a game or puzzle which requires working memory, like matching pairs or some puzzles that need a lot of working memory and/or flipping between screens - this gets interrupted by fullscreen interruptions of someone's face, and text asking questions, or announcing something, and you have to pick an answer or a reaction (multiple choice) - it could start with questions like 'hi, are you busy?' or 'can I ask you a question?' - answers which tries to end the conversation quickly could lead to even more demanding reactions or questions - interruptions stating there is an emergency can lead to a lot of questions and answers which then leads you to discover than it is in fact not an emergency - once one of these engagements finish you can return to the game and try to complete it - you'll get multiple interruptions like this - other interruptions can also flash up, like a notification that a meeting is due in x minutes - it could then have a short simulated meeting, perhaps just a line by line scroll of dialogue between others, where you need to say nothing - however, at some point someone will ask you directly about one of the items discussed, and you will be given a set of fairly ambiguous multiple choice answers which you will have to try out until you get to the 'correct' one - at the end of the meeting you return to the working memory task/game - this gets interrupted by someone then asking you about the action points in the meeting - return to the game - get notifications about the end of your work day coming up - more interruptions, etc.

Have two people sit next to each other, each with a blank piece of paper and a pen.

Have them both simultaneously write down the numbers from 1 to 1: one time in decimal, one time in roman numbers and one time as letters of the alphabet (a=1, b=2...)

One person goes about it system by system (first decimal, then Roman... ). The other goes about it number by number (1,I,A,2,II,B...)

Time them both and compare their times.

this is a fun idea and I like it. You're experience wont be the same as my.

https://psyche.co/videos/enter-the-sensory-world-of-an-overs...

Misophonia for me does not give me any choice. Either the noise stops or I am leaving. If necessary I will explain later. If the noise stops I am possibly leaving anyway in case it starts again. Fortunately in my case the trigger is pretty obscure, like nails on a chalkboard type of rarity -- people don't actually do that so often.

The explanations I thought were dramatized. One of the challenges I think people with autism have is trying to explain their reactions and coming up with things that neurotypical people cannot relate to. It is more like reflexes. I'd be slack-jawed if my co-worker asked me to explain why my leg moved when the doctor hits my knee, "it just does that when you hit it that way", "probably something to do with ligaments, or tendons? IDK". Could you make an "undiagnosed" mode where your scores just go up and down?

And the options -- when the people team came through at $bigcorp and announced tiny hotdesking, I filed all the necessary paperwork, gave constructive feedback, worked with my manager etc, but started looking for new work immediately and noped out at the first opportunity. The people team was happy to close the file which was growing fat with demerits like not hanging my coat the right way, but my peers and reports were upset. well done people team! This was at a company that professed to be supportive of neurodivergence.

It's easy to mouth slogans, and modern companies employ teams of specialists in that department. You can't trust their words, which should be assumed to be lies, only their actions (especially their actions when they're under some pressure).

Here's an absurdly clear example: I recently listened to these podcasts about Saudi Arabia's Neom project. It is hyper-dysfunctional and was run by a guy who literally bragged about treating his subordinates as slaves trying to work them to death. But all the responses from the project are pitch-perfect corporate "we value our employees," "we follow best practices," etc.

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/neom-pt-1-skiing-in...

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/neom-pt-2-the-emper...

I would guess there's far more of (2) going around than (1).

This is an overly polarized view -- what does "supportive" even mean? What forms are actually deemed permissible? -- but it's probably more right than wrong.

It's like the schools with posters everywhere declaring "Zero tolerance for bullying" or "Bully free zone". Except that there is no (1) at those places. Those signs mean they have a problem with bullying and haven't come up with any solutions.

> This was at a company that professed to be supportive of neurodivergence.

No company is supportive of neurodivergence, if it actually causes a difference. They are supportive if your issue is you need to wear noise cancelling headphones, and they can put your photo on the careers page about how they support neurodivergence.

I get that there is back biting and intensive score-keeping, resentment etc, but the act of putting everything on a synchronized linear scale (with sub linear progression) seems cruel. Some people like tchotchkies, some people don't like those esoteric office snacks, some people like mouthwash and shoe polish and fancy towels in the restroom. Why gatekeep it all and shove the same exact bundle of goods down everyone's throats?

If they were really minimaxing your next unit of work, this is not an optimal strategy. It's just lazy, a children's tale of how an office might be.

Of course... That's the quiet part. The out loud part is just dismissing everything you say and passing you over for promotion.

The objections you have raised, the things you have said. I really understand what you mean. There's evidence all around that the aspects of our experience isn't alien at all. Why can't others see that? At this point I think that not seeing it is necessary mental infrastructure for some people. It's a bridge over an abyss that for us broke.

I think the solace I get is that this line of work tends to funnel people of our disposition into it. So we find ourselves less alone than we normally would.

I’ve realised in recent years that I’m quite far on the spectrum. Very obvious when I was young but am exceptionally good at masking now so most people don’t realise.

Nowadays I experience misophonia in “attacks” that just come on. Recently I was on public transport and the noise was suddenly so unbearable that I had to get the hell out of there, hadn’t really felt like that since I was a kid. Fight or flight feeling. When I was a kid I had a lot of hearing tests as a result, ASD was not on anyone’s radar.

Didn’t realise this had a name.

They are very squishy and I can place then in my ear and depending on how thick I make them, they have varying levels of blocking out sound. Super useful if I want extra blocking or just a little light blocking so I can still hear things around me, but dampened.

They have been a life changer for me. The best kind I've found are Mack's. Maybe they would help you too.

I do not see any examples of a "naturally occurring" sound there. Is the sound supposed to be human generated in some way? That would feel a bit incongruent with my understanding of it as a pure stimulus response situation.

When people are the cause it becomes more challenging. People feel attacked when you tell them they are chewing loudly, or they think you are weird when you complain about the sound of the specific pen they are using makes when they are writing on the paper bothers you. Couple misophonia reactions with ADHD justice sensitivity and the emotional reaction can overload my rational comprehension that it is quite normal to make, tolerate, and ignore those sounds to make the stupid fucking meat between my ears feel like I am being targeted by whoever is making the noise. 95% of time I can manage it, but when it gets overwhelming my reactions can be suboptimal (like, wildly inappropriate when I was a kid, but as an adult pulling an Irish goodbye and just leaving, which can be a career limiting move when you are in the workplace).

anyone who experiences willing to shed light? id guess if the sufferer expects we all dislike certain sounds, causing them intentionally is especially hateful?

>id guess if the sufferer expects we all dislike certain sounds, causing them intentionally is especially hateful?

I think it's pointless to attempt to look at it rationally, given the reactions I've heard seem entirely irrational and disproportionate.

I remember one time I was at work and a coworker on the opposite end of the room was using what I thought was the exact same model of mechanical keyboard I was using, with blue switches. I had never realized just how loud those things were until then. I kept glancing at him and could feel myself getting unreasonably annoyed, but I really had no grounds to say anything under any circumstance, given I had been using those very same switches in that same office very recently. What really struck me was how the same noise would sound pleasing when I made it and annoying when someone else made it, and I wondered if I had bothered someone with my typing, or if it was just me. I don't know if I'll use my own keyboard with clicky switches if I share an office with someone again.

When you are typing, the clicking is concordant with your finer movements and the text you are writing. When someone else is typing, it's not.

Not sure if it's the same for everyone, but for me it's caused by an over-focus on the sound. Once I've noticed it, it's like the sound gets louder and louder...

[edit] I'm fairly sure my Dad was on the spectrum, and the sounds young kids make would make him very distressed, shouting or banging etc. so I don't think it's synthetic vs natural sounds.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/misophonia-beyond-sensory-s...

She works in a kindergarten, and so I asked how she tolerates all those kids making noises while eating and such, given how adverse she is towards the sounds I make.

She said it didn't bother her the slightest as she knew the kids couldn't help it, and the reason my smacking annoyed her for example was because she knew it could be avoided if I just were more careful.

Does everyone have this to some extent? Or is it really only a thing neurospicy folks experience? I have to run away from my wife when she's chewing loudly sometimes, the rage is real.

I've just realised that my hatred of foly in films is another symptom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(sound_design)) - can't watch films where this is overdone.

As others mentioned, noise cancelling headphones bring me so much peace.

It almost never happens anymore, thankfully. Once every other month or so.

(Note that I am not autistic, or at least undiagnosed and my guess is that I wouldn't be. I just have some fairly mild autistic tendencies. I have a toe on the spectrum, or something. Those tendencies have a pretty dramatic impact on my life, but I think in a mostly neurotypical way -- we boring people can have similar problems too!)

Autistic people can get sick of other autistic people's shit. Pathological demand avoidance can just make it near impossible to work with them in a normal context and on and on it goes.

Draw straws and one person dials in from their desk or a phone closet. Take advantage of multiple locations, which are frequently if not always part of the landscape. I had a similar experience, there was a lady on the same floor who was sensitive to light, versus I had a plant that was dying, so I bought a timer and a desk lamp and set it directly under the lamp to run after hours, and we kept the lights dim during the day.

At some point the rigidity is just another type of enshittification, there to subtract. Ingrained in their culture and part of their prerogative. Denying them the privilege is an insult that earns greater retribution. Pour encourager les autres.

It would literally cost them nothing to be flexible. Solzhenitsyn level material.

Suggests a new unit of measure, the Solz, which characterizes how occult and byzantine the rules are and how vindictive and arbitrary the application. Bonus points for tail-eating and Lysenkoist aspects. Stalin era normalized to 1.

I had "exceeds" ratings the whole time at this job, btw. I am told my contributions live on 10 years later, I can't say that about most of my work experience.

No one wants to hear it but there is a vast difference between those on the spectrum and those not. I am in tech and i have never met anyone autistic. This is because the sad reality is that autism makes it that hard to hold down a job even if high functioning.

It is grossly over exaggerated by many and used as an excuse. This is not saying anyone here does that but in media it is extremely common. This only makes it harder for those who do suffer from it. The majority of autism stereotypes are almost all on the high functioning side. Closer to the low functioning side, it is very sad.

But the only vocabulary they have to express all this is therapy speak and mental health. So everyone has ADHD, autism, PTSD, anxiety, depression, bipolar and more. When it's often actually a lack of purpose, a lack of enduring value, being a standardized cog in a machine, ripped of context and roots, atomized, etc. But this is not valid vocabulary, we are modern people, we have chemical imbalances and not nonsense medieval concepts. Medical labels still have power even in a lifeless bureaucratic corporate HR hellscape. Medical diagnoses and credible claims of unsafe work environments. Anything else, they sleep. These two and they listen.

That is not how the brain works. The whole chemical imbalances thing is a gross over-simplification. Honestly how it is used in pop science is often very analogues to the medieval theory of Humorism.

> When it's often actually a lack of purpose, a lack of enduring value, being a standardized cog in a machine

If you are subjected to an toxic environment it is a very healthy and good reaction to be unhappy about this.

Yes, psychologist mostly focus on the individual. That is their job. They can't fix unemployment, alienation of labor and so on. Those are societal issues that need political solutions.

However, this does not mean ADHD, autism, PTSD and so on are not real issues.

If I lived in a perfect utopia, I would still have ADHD. If ADHD were made up, why do my genetic children also have a 40% chance of having ADHD? Why would that not be true if I adopted someone?

These are real and disabling things that need specific treatment.

For the common person, psychology and therapy are a new skin on spiritual guidance, shamanism, or rituals like Catholic confession.

> That is not how the brain works. The whole chemical imbalances thing is a gross over-simplification

I know and I was implying disagreement by the placement of that sentence in the context. I was trying to present what the common notion is. If it's a chemical imbalance, it can't be your fault. We trust science, we are physicalists. It has to be imagined as some miswiring or chemical problem for it to be respectable and taken seriously.

> If I lived in a perfect utopia, I would still have ADHD. If ADHD were made up, why do my genetic children also have a 40% chance of having ADHD? Why would that not be true if I adopted someone?

Personality and temperament differences exist yes. What we decide to label as a disease diagnosis is an entirely orthogonal question. ADHD is often diagnosed in rigid school environments that look nothing like homo sapiens' evolved natural habitat. It's not necessarily a disease not to flourish there. Yes I understand that given the environment, it makes sense to try to help as best as we can, and we can't single-handedly change society with a magic wand. Of course.

Yes, you are not wrong but as a ADHD person it comes off as super invalidating.

It is kind of like discussions where gender radical people tell to trans people that gender is just a social construct. Like it is but that doesn't exactly help trans people.

I mean I am sure you recognize this as you wrote.

> Yes I understand that given the environment, it makes sense to try to help as best as we can, and we can't single-handedly change society with a magic wand. Of course.

Still, I do believe that you massively overstate socially constructed aspect of having ADHD and underestimate the physical reality of it.

Yes, my environment makes a huge huge difference. But, as someone who was diagnosed very late in life, it was always with me. Even when I was alone. Even when I thrived. It is a fundamental part of who I am.

Not having a diagnosis earlier set up for constant spirals of failure, for internalized self hate. It did not allow me to find strategies to cope effectively.

I couldn't find or build the environment I needed because I didn't know my needs. This is why the diagnosis must come first.

ADHD is a disability and it is a real as being deaf or not being able to walk.

Once this is on the table, it's hard answer in a way that doesn't come across as being the asshole. But that's kind of my point. People tie identities and emotions to labels. It reframes how people react. Since it's real, you're given support. If it were fake, you'd get scolded. The shift in view that I got from Scott Alexander is that the arrow points the other way around. Since we see people who can benefit from some support, and we generally don't want to be assholes and want the support to be paid by insurance etc, we have to declare the thing as a Disease(TM). But this categorization is in good part necessary due to the bureaucratic system we live in. There are many ways that societies have conceptualized such things. All the way to demon possession. In comparison blindness is much easier to understand mechanistically.

What? I deal with all of that and more at work, and I just roll my eyes (to myself) and think "it's a paycheck."

If you're lucky you might find a sense of purpose and value at work but it's not really normal from what I've experienced. Even if you like the people you work with, the job itself is probably mostly bullshit. The only jobs I've had that weren't were the jobs that had very standardized tasks: making burgers, framing walls, painting, cutting grass. There's not much bullshit in those jobs because it's very clear what you are there to do. And you can turn around at the end of the day and look at the wall you built. That doesn't mean you might not feel like a cog in a machine.

IMO most people should find purpose and value outside of work. Work is just how you pay for those things.

It faced some controversy in its day. Do you think now is a better time for games like this?

the first 2 years i had a sense that i needed to read between the lines in many conversations and asking for clarity on topics of budget, clients, and contracts was not done. to be clear: asking for details on requirements is completely normal and encouraged

ive become competent at compartmentalizing after 5 years. ive offered unsolicited advice to my less socially aware coworkers which only lead to more confusion as they had not noticed things said "between the lines" and have almost no interest in clients

i cant imagine having to mask through day-to-day life and a job which demands masking by people without disability. no wonder i didnt make it to dinner in the sim

Why do both eating a proper breakfast and skipping breakfast affect your masking negatively? No one is around, what difference does it make?

Some of the messaging too is just... off-putting/patronizing. "Brave the grocery store"? I know social situations can be tough on people but it's not you're being asked to kill the chicken and process it or grow the veggies. Is resiliency so low that it's a battle to go pick up necessities?

Maybe I was blessed to grow up in a poor, not exactly stable household at least for a while.

- Go into a bright, commercial space

- All the packets are "shouting" at you with colorful labels

- There is noise of shoppers, a PA system, canned music and/or advertising

- Navigate lots of social interactions with other shoppers around navigating asiles, manouvering carts, who picks what

- Manage a shopping list and find a variety of goods

- Go to the check-out asile. Hopefully you can avoid interacting with a human

- Manage packing bags and paying

- Hopefully noone talks to you as you leave

"Why should x situation be like y difficulty? I don't understand."

"No, you _don't_ understand, because you're not autistic. Which isn't really an insult but it is the case. So why you gotta brush off our struggles like you do get it."

Being autistic is exhausting on a _whole different level_. It is NOT comparable to neurotypicals' experiences except superficially.

Shouldn't a list be a positive here?

What's bad about "packing bags and paying", with "paying" being separate from human interaction? I'm genuinely curious.

Not in socially acceptable ways - people look at you strangely when you have sunglasses on indoors, and when I'm wearing headphones people usually gesture for me to take them off when they want to talk. It's even worse to have the loud noise suddenly crashing in while I have to talk to the cashier - better to have gotten used to it before.

> Shouldn't a list be a positive here?

In some ways yes, but it also brings new problems. What if a specific product isn't in stock? It's also pressure to really get everything - I sometimes can't get everything on my list because it stresses me out enough that I'd rather order some stuff.

> What's bad about "packing bags and paying", with "paying" being separate from human interaction?

Packing bags isn't an issue for me, but paying takes enough concentration that I often stumble over my words, e.g. by combining two colloquial responses. It's always embarrassing and makes the next times I go shopping even more stressful.

Stumbling over your words? Oh well. Who cares. It's a cashier. I did this all summer in a foreign country. Toddler talked my way through it and honestly with everyone. It's not exactly the same, but the pressure is. It's incorrect speech with a person you'll never see again or who won't remember you. Who cares?

Like this all feels like anxiety and lack of problem solving. And I'm not sure I even forgive it because my kid has autism and anxiety and she has solutions for these problems. She's not perfect, but she seems to be carrying on better than what you're portraying here. I also know several autistic people where what you're talking about is just not a thing. I get if you know an autistic person yoy know that autistic person, but they are coming up with solutions that allow them to be without a higher level of stress than anyone else.

When things are hard and you anticipate that you're going to struggle, it's perfectly natural that you're going to develop an anxiety response to those things. It's possible that you will describe the experience through the lens of anxiety even if there is more going on than merely anxiety.

> I'm not ASD just sound and light sensitive do to physical damage. Not a single person has bothered me about this even during conversation.

I'm glad that you have found a means to manage your difficulties and it does not cause you social issues. Bear in mind that someone who is very ASD is "manually" managing social situations which come automatically to "the rest of us." The same social disapproval you casually dismiss is likely a cause of anxiety for them.

> my kid has autism and anxiety and she has solutions for these problems.

I'm glad that she appears to be high functioning. Even those who are might want to avoid the shop because it's just a challenge they would rather avoid today. But for others I can imagine it being all too much.

It's a feeling in the body, a sense of alarm. That sinking pit of adrenaline.

I don't think I have autism but I do get ptsd type stuff occasionally.

I think lots of people on the spectrum would gladly grow vegetables or kill chickens over having to go to the grocery store. Tolerance levels on activities placing you in highly social situations with overwhelming stimuli can be significantly lower for people on the spectrum.

> hyper focus on a very complex cognitive task or dedicate hours of "boring" repetitive practice in a physical activity

That's awesome, take that win for sure that it's easier for them to do that and if one would rather go farm than take place in society then I think that's a fantastic goal to work toward.

It’s sort of built into the definition of a disorder that otherwise normal stressors or negative pressures have an outsized and excessive impact on the person with the disorder relative to what it would be if they didn’t have the disorder.

Think of it like this, if I punch you as hard as I can in your leg, that might hurt quite a bit and make you favor your leg for a few hours. But if you have a broken leg and I do the same thing it’s going to be much worse for you and you won’t recover nearly is quickly. The input hasn’t changed, only the underlying condition that amplifies the results of that input.

And if you had a broken leg and I did punch you as hard as I could, no one would really be “worried for your ability to live” if you complained that my doing that ruined your ability to function today and tomorrow. Because of course it did, you have a broken leg.

Same idea here. Autism makes the inputs excessively intense. The only difference is se expect your broken leg to eventually heal, and we generally don’t go around punching people in their legs. But autism doesn’t heal and we do live in a word of intense advertising and flash in an attempt to grab your attention.

"Why do people need the wheelchair ramp? Is resiliency so low nowa days? Are people lazy?" Lol

It gets worse. I haven't left my apartment in a few weeks. The last time I went out into the world is because I had to appear in court for jury duty. (Yes, it sucked. No, I didn't want to ask for a hardship.)

People experience things in a wide variety of ways. Things that most people believe are trivial can be an anxiety trigger for others.

And for what it's worth, I am not put off or patronized by "Brave the grocery store." That's an accurate description of what I feel every time I have to go to the pharmacy.

A lot of people in the advocacy space use it to mean basic things like being well behaved or being nice to people. Everybody has to be well-behaved at work. Everybody has to consider the feelings of others etc.

The idea of "wearing a mask" in the sense of being polite is older than the notion of masking in autism. For example, P. G. Wodehouse used it a few times in the 1920s to refer to the social expectations made on aristocratic families. E.g. from 1922:

> I didn’t like the chap, but we Woosters can wear the mask. I beamed a bit.

In this sense everyone masks. In fact they mask almost all the time from the time they get up until maybe the time they go to bad. Masking in autism originally referred to something different that was specific to autism.

The way it's used now it essentially just means "it's harder for me to fit in." Which is true but doesn't tell you anything about autism from a psychological point of view beyond the obvious fact that it's harder for us to fit in.

I figured that was just being an introvert.

Thank you for this comment. As a family member of a young AuDHD person I am continually battered by a combination of their behavior (which directly and un-ignorably degrades the experience of everyone around) and by various 'advocacy' ideas that use phrasing like that to not-so-subtly imply that it's actually our bad for daring to expect to "not be hit," or to not be forced to constantly base our whole lives on one person's preferences, etc.

It's tough sometimes to figure out what's real, what's a fair expectation, what's something that can be learned/unlearned, and what's just inevitable.

Focus in the effect if the person's action on you, and set hard boundaries for yourself.

Note that boundaries are in this specific form:

"If you do X in Y situation, I will do Z"

The consequence to the instigating person (the Z part) is important. The person you described likely has a deficit in empathy, so feedback on actions has to happen to modify behavior.

Note that I'm not saying to hit back. Consequences are generally best when withdrawing something of value than adding something of negative value.

For example: "If we're watching a movie and you are physically rowdy, you will have to leave the living room and entertain yourself in your room".

Focua on how things affect you, and what actions you can take in response to boundary breaking behavior. Then be ruthlessly firm and consistent about it.

Sorry, but I have to correct this because it's a common misunderstanding. It's actually a name collision.

People on the autism spectrum struggle with theory of mind, which is also called "cognitive empathy." We can have difficulty understanding the mental states and emotions of others.

On they other hand, we're often higher than average on what's called "emotional empathy" or "affective empathy." Many autistic people get very distressed when others are unhappy or are suffering. For example, autistic folks are over-represented in the animal rights movements and other movements to reduce suffering.

Somebody who lacks empathy in the everyday use of the word is someone who does not care if others are suffering. That is not a symptom of autism, and never has been going back to the start of research on the topic.

HOWEVER - the person I was replying to was mentioning them being hurt by the behaviors, and that signals a lack of empathy from the individual doing thise actions.

Even apart from behavioral disorders, there's comorbidities -- autism is comorbid with ADHD and ADHD is highly comorbid with a lot of conduct disorders and personality disorders.

So it could be any of that. But my basic point is that for the person I'm replying to all of this complexity simplifies if you instead focus on the effect of the other person's behaviors on you. That's what you have control over.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem

Short of breaking their spirit there's not much the parents can do to make them less wild. Parents have to try to find a way to let the kid be wild and feel good about being a temperamentally wild kid while also recognizing that there are limits and boundaries. A similar experience is perhaps owning a dog that needs to run around outside every day.

But nothing in the autism or ADHD diagnoses says you can't learn social skills or that they shouldn't. Nor does it require anyone to endure abuse or physical attacks.

Assuming you're not the parent (since you say the more generic "family member"), probably the best thing you can do is try to befriend this kid and learn a bit about what's like to be them. And try to find traits in yourself that help you see why they act one way or another.

Another thing to keep in mind is that things you take for granted may be very distressing to this person. They may be able to hear noises or smell smells or taste flavors that you can't. The parents have a tough job because nobody wants their kid's preferences to dictate everything, but nobody wants to knowingly make their kid distressed when they can help it. That becomes a tough tradeoff when you have someone who is easily distressed by a world that isn't really designed with their brains in mind. This is where things like earplugs and sunglasses can help. It's a bit like being hungover all the time. If you reduce the sensory input everyone becomes less irritable and more even keel.

Or you might not want to say hello or goodbye in the normal situations they are used. Or small talk. These are all things many neurotypical enjoy.

So it's kind of like going through social interactions with an itch that you're constantly aware of but can't scratch. Or perhaps for a neurotypical person, imagine that you're instead not allowed to make any facial expressions or change in your tone of voice and you have to constantly monitor yourself to make sure you're not doing what is, to you, a normal and unconscious reaction. Of course everyone has to modulate their tone of voice and expression to some degree, but with autistics the gap between how they'd behave 'naturally' and 'what is considered socially acceptable' can be a much bigger one to bridge.

Masking for neuro typical people is very easy, even if emotionally draining. My wife is the perfect example - her personality is to be nice to everyone and to connect with people. A lot of times this leads to prolonged conversations with people, which then she complains about, but its basically like saying you are tired after going on a long bike ride - there is some enjoyment in the activity.

Whereas for neuro-spicy people, masking is the equivalent of spilling seeds on the floor and having to pick up each one with tweezers to put them back. Its both exhausting and not enjoyable.

If you recharge at night, that's a lot of socializing.

I'll believe that...

> very good battery

...but that I very much doubt. I've never had an iPhone with what I'd call good battery life. Acceptable was the maximum.

And not from a lack of trying, and definitely not because you don’t care?

Because to me, that’s what masking means: constantly checking yourself because you do care, and you do like people, and the last thing you ever want to do is hurt or upset someone, and yet sometimes you do, and that sucks, and you learn from it, file it away in your mind for next time, and wake up the next day with the same happy-go-lucky optimism you do every day until the world beats it out of you.

Skipping breakfast reduces the caloric energy you have. Eating a full breakfast is basically going against your instinct. Optimal thing for autistic people would be a energy bar that is both healthy, has good texture, and makes you feel full.

It's designed to make you lose in a couple of days, which would imply you're not a highly functional autist, and hence I wonder how the heck did you get a job without others noticing your autism?

For example, self care with video games would be different. I think the author was just trying to demonstrate that self care in the normal sense isn't the same to spectrum folks

(of course the other issue there is that I prefer having fixed times in the day to eat)

The idea behind the game is to illustrate that adhering to norms is energy draining, while also letting yourself be yourself results in negative outcomes.

I still don't understand why having breakfast or changing the radio station decreases your masking, though.

That makes it harder to mask, because the decisions I would make with low energy and crankiness are not the same ones I would make if I had eaten. It impacts my ability to converse with others in an effective way.

It also impacts my work output and mood..

All this is often referred to under the notion of "internalised ableism".

That's called enculturation.

I find a lot very confusing about the idea of masking. Everyone masks, even people who are more neurotypical than autists. Getting along with social life means not showing every emotion, it means being uncomfortable, doing things that you personally dislike or find uncomfortable, feigning more comfort in social situations than you actually feel, regulating your behavior to fit in, etc. And then going home to detox and restore your energy with private time.

I'm not saying that masking is autism is not a thing. But most of what I hear described is just ... normal life for most people ... except perhaps to the degree it is felt or needed.

Well, yes, precisely. Almost everyone can relate to experiencing mild or moderate back pain for a couple of days when they sleep in a weird position, but some people have chronic back pain that makes life unbearable without prescription pain killers.

While talking to people about my ADHD in real life I noticed that many of them speak like they understand ADHD. Even when I try to explain in more detail they come really close to "getting it" by superficially relating to some of the ADHD symptoms, but unfortunately almost all of them end up taking the logical leap to say that "everyone deals with this" and start recommending "solutions".

Most people will never understand ADHD just like I don't truly understand what life is like for people with chronic pain, and that's fine.

People seem to at least conceptually understand that chronic pain = pain like they know it + much worse + never-ending, which they recognize as being awful. The thing that bothers me is that when it comes to ADHD (and autism) the calculation suddenly becomes ADHD = concentration problems they experienced + exaggeration + lack of discipline.

ADHD is relentless, it follows you everywhere, you can take many months off from work for stress relief and it will still be there (I tried). You can make sure to sleep well, eat well, exercise, avoid all stressors, focus on hobbies that make you happy and it'll still be there.

People juggle sleep deprivation, stressful job and/or kids, socializing, chores, appointments on a daily basis and say that concentration problems are normal, and yes, of course they are if you're overloading yourself like that. But many people with ADHD experience those (and much more) at our baseline and if I tried to achieve half of what other people achieve on a daily basis, I would burn myself out in under a month.

Some people might read this and think that this I'm an outlier but I think I'm pretty average as far as ADHD severity goes, I managed to finish university before struggling to keep up outside of highly structured environments, and ultimately getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.

For example at home I usually knew which chores needed to be done, and I desperately wanted to do them but I could never get started because I didn't have enough willpower. I would procrastinate for weeks or even months while constantly beating myself up over it.

I still don't enjoy chores, nobody does, but with medication I have noticeably more willpower to get started on things that need to be done. The thought of folding laundry, a task which I always knew would take me no longer than 5 minutes, no longer overwhelms me with dread and I end up doing it in a "reasonable" amount of time (reasonable for me, plenty of people would find it unreasonable if we lived together).

For instance, like many people on the spectrum, I feel discomfort making any form of direct eye contact. When I don't have a lot of mental energy, this discomfort can become quite intense, to the point that maintaining normal eye contact takes up so much mental effort that I can't listen to what someone is saying anymore.

I don't exactly have the "normal" experience to compare with, but I don't believe most people experience that. I've learned the hard way that people don't really appreciate it when you stare at the floor during the entire conversation, so forcing myself to make eye contact has become more automatic over the years, but it adds just a little bit of extra effort on top of what everyone else is feeling.

Sometimes, it's also other tiny issues. Deviations from how things "should be" can trigger an irrational feeling of upsetting. As a kid I remember crying about a door being painted, or the class using a different set of stairs to the normal route because deep down it felt extremely wrong. Even in my teens, having fries on a Tuesday was something I sometimes needed to recover from. I've learned to dismiss/ignore/crop up those irrational feelings, but sometimes they can sneak up on you and become quite taxing. The worst part, in my opinion, is how the mental impact remains despite knowing how absolutely bonkers those feelings are.

I believe I'm not affected as strongly by my autism as some other unfortunate souls are, because people seem somewhat surprised when they learn about stuff like that. I can only imagine how stressful their daily lives must be.

Think about how you might react if you were talking with someone about what they had for breakfast today and they answered “a bag of cotton candy and a beer”. That’s really weird right? Like you might be concerned about them for making that choice right? And what if on other days you notice that they’re a bit grumpier or more tired and they admit to not eating breakfast on those days. Now imagine over a few months you come to realize that your co-worker is either always skipping breakfast despite how it affects them, or they’re eating a bag of cotton candy and a beer. You’d probably be really concerned for them. You might even in an attempt to be helpful and supportive try and help them have better breakfasts, maybe even bring in some bagels (even though they always decline). This is an extreme example of course but for some autistic people, they will go through phases were if they eat they can only eat very specific things and those things aren’t going to be “normal”. During that time, the decision to eat or not to eat and the decision for what to eat are extremely fraught things because very well meaning and well intentioned people find the decisions being made odd and feel like they need to “help”. But if you don’t want the help (or worse if you know you should be doing something different but your mind will make you physically ill if you do) all that “help” is really just another stressor on top of everything else.

is this even autism specific?? ha

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth" - Oscar Wilde

It's like being an actor, except the whole world is your stage, and you have to be conscious of your character, lines, and motivation, the entire time you're awake.

It is not about "hot desk" but just not being able to see that some time you will need to reorganize how you sit. And not everyone will get the perfect spot.

Is it really a thing for some people that you need to sit on the same place always? I was never sure how much it offended some people or if they were just being comfortable.

Yes, yes it is.

I was hoping for more information than that answer because i have heard that type of answer before.

From my personal experience most can be flexible, they may have a preference (stronger than "normal" people) to xyz spot, but will sit elsewhere if it's already taken.

I had no idea about masking, even though I’ve been doing it for as long as I remember being alive. Aaaah, it’s so draining. When I was younger (in my 20s) I used to think there’d come a time when I’d finally come out of my shell. I’m pushing 40 now, but the shell is only thicker, the cave deeper, the walls taller. Instead of dreaming that one day I’ll be “like everyone else”, I’m contemplating the day I’ll cease to exist. Funny.

It’s easy to remove the locus of control by saying “this environment wasn’t built for me” but do appreciate how much it actually /is/ created for you.

That, on its own, would make it clear the environment wasn't built for me.

The fact that the environment was very obviously built for management—for information to flow up so that decisions can flow down—but also that nobody is willing to acknowledge that? That just makes it even clearer.

I've worked in an environment that did feel like it was built for me, and it was pretty much the opposite of scrum/agile/etc. I had real trust with a clearly defined area of ownership. I was responsible for managing the interfaces and interaction points around my area and, occasionally, for real deadlines (with real context!), not a slog of fake short-term deadlines that exist just to create pressure. I didn't have to break down or justify my work in terms of bite-sized tasks that could roll up into somebody's spreadsheet.

And the best part? We got more done, faster, than conventionally managed teams.

If the culture hadn't been totally ruined by a reorg, I'd still be there. I'm still sad I haven't been able to find anything similar since. But, having experience that, I am only more confident that scrum et al are absolutely not built for me.

I didn’t say that anyone liked the process, but I assure you that the average autistic engineer would actually do worse in a more feeeform environment. They would like it more though.

Of course, if you actually enumerate the "how" and not just the "what" in your ticketing system, you can get a much more realistic view. "Add foobar RPC server", "Hook auth into the foobar RPC server", "Add foobar subcommand to CLI", ...

I think everyone does better with a clear set of expectations, autism or not. That's why we do design docs, design reviews, and try to put a realistic set of work into the ticket tracker. I would say personally, though, 99% of the time I don't really need to do that to get a good result out of myself. I can just say "by next Tuesday I will have this subsystem done". Typically this is done with heroics rather than good planning (Monday becomes a longer-than-average workday), so I try to avoid it, but I definitely understand why people want a more freeform environment.

And some management type will say when you're halfway through 'add' that they'll cut 'delete', but it's impossible to automate anything without a delete option, so you implement it anyway during your testing and then they get mad.

Scrum can protect you some really nasty stuff.

A sufficiently strong team can make even a bad process work out okay, but that just means they're strong enough to compensate for the process, not that the process had any latent merit.

Kanban gives more flexibility. Scrum seems to fall apart like that eventually leaving a power vacuum for tasks out bound of scrum. Active products have constant support questions.

Then you have SAFE, which is even worse. Waterfall but then even worse. Coordination seems to be very complex, the diagram is close to unreadable. Looks like a badly designed production street for its purpose.

That is a problem. For who is it created exactly?

The story points people won the battle against time units, claiming that "complexity" can be measured and quantified better than "hours" could, but in every place I've worked, people just treat them as though they're actually some unit of time. Product managers and my bosses always believe you can do arithmetic with that (multiply engineers assigned to project by 2 to cut time in half right? Sum up 25 points and be confident 5 engineers can complete them all in a week right?)

Then we occasionally have to pretend to really care why our "velocity" isn't arbitrarily higher or why it's less than it once was, when all of the tasks have estimates from 1-5 with at least a 1-point margin of error. There's so much noise that no amount of smoothing yields useful data that you can use to achieve "certainty" -- such as that X project will be done in Y number of sprints, which is what senior management craves most, but can never safely be promised unless you have a death wish.

Basically I'm convinced at minimum like half of teams that "do agile" or "do scrum" are just cargo-culting and derive no particular benefit from it. I don't think I'd even do estimation of any kind if I ran a software team as I saw fit.

Then you have modified fibonacci, which make me puke. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20. I get special headaches because of names like this.

However you can find this page if you adding them up by as strings, it isn't connected, but attack on titan was a good anime: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/123581320

Weird coincidence. I need to sleep, spend a lot today in my headspace.

It is just engine design really;) How bad can that be?

We don't even get real time, just pretend time. But I have to say, I admire this idea. All the time wasting around it, retro's with stupid humiliations. They run on naming and shaming. Sticks and carrots.

Works well :D Until people stop participating in the retro's. There is nothing to say, nobody says anything. They start atomizing the tasks infinitely or always inflate the estimate by 2. The standup nobody speaks, but they work like silent ghosts.

Scary sight huh? Happy Helloween vibes inglorious bastards.

There are too many unknowns to deal with to actually make use of it, and managing the unknowns is a whole other aspect of management outside scrum. This is why most scrums essentially devolve into ad hoc work per sprint with very loose planning.

Make it work -> Make it right -> Make it fast

is arguably the best way to go about things, then structure your work around that.

Ive done this with greenfield projects when I used to work for Amazon (while still ironically operating under scrum), and was able to get SD2-SD3 promo within 2 years (entering an an SD2).

In terms of planning work, you basically allocate people as necessary. The first part deals with a lot of unknowns, so estimation is pointless - basically everyone is on board in terms of getting software up and running and talking to other software.

Once you have that, making it right is a lot easier to estimate because you can do a lot more fine grained planning (like for example, a certain team member that worked on a feature can add all the correctness and unit testing way faster than someone who has not)

Then making it fast is basically just optimizations, which can be done by a subset of team members while the rest work on adding features (and adding features needs to be done in the same way - make the feature just work, make it correct for all use cases, and then make it optimal)

No, it’s the opposite. Daily performance check-ins are exhausting and humiliating. The cops show up at your house every day with guns drawn.

A trap autistic people fall into is believing things will get better if a metric is imposed. “Oh, now I just have to beat the metric, not worry about being well-liked.” No, now you have to do both. New written rulers don’t make the shitty unwritten ones go away. It just became monotonically easier to get fired and monotonically harder to get promoted.

When management imposes a metric or quota, it’s time to get a union. Unfortunately, this is not something we have the skills to do alone, but it is a way to fight back against those who hate us.

It's like a factory but the people are the machines.

Probably many of the people who hate writing code for a PM at work, love working on their own open source project.

And the difference is freedom.

I think higher management likes to believe that those things (sprints, scrum, Jira and standups) provide a safety net against lazy employees not working hard enough, so they cling to them. Of course, they actually do little and are pretty easy to game. Their failure to magically make all software work predictable and deterministic and all developer time fungible actually means that you still need a manager involved and close to the work to identify people who BS their way through everything and take way longer than they should.

I'd rather be in an environment where you are given access to simple tools like kanban to prioritize and track work, and for people who don't deliver, the manager just fires them (maybe with one warning).

The cost of control and the costly overhead has everything to do with atomizing the work load. Just like in a distributed system. The synchronization mechanisms get more complicate.

The more layers, the less trustable the organization, since every manager under their manger, is a potentially corruptable.

This makes the communication lines unclear and makes people over promise. Also distributing the workload has diminishing returns.

I am not a fan of scrum or other systems.

I don't have a PM.

If you have a manger, that decides this, or the PO decides this, IMO that’s a key problem of your scrum implementation.

My first encounter with Scrum (or whatever it was) was good. It felt good to work in cycles and reprioritize twice a month.

Since then I have seen various versions of working systems and various versions of broken systems.

The two last projects have been extremely agile, the current project has exactly 5 mandatory meetings in an average week:

- 3 x stand ups that typically take <10 minutes and never more than 15.

- 1 stand up plus planning (scheduled 1 hour, typically takes 20 minutes)

- 1 stand up plus voluntary demo + retro (scheduled 1 hour, typically takes 30 minutes)

The previous project had a lot more structure but also worked well.

Common themes:

- Communication is 2 way

- Both teams are friendly and competent

- Customer care about results and leave programming to us

- Clear communication about what they hope, but without stress. Especially the first project were the stakes were serious: if we manage to hit the deadline we knew we would save the organization millions, but if not, nobody was in trouble. It was an actual challenge, not a scary thing.

Have I seen dysfunctional Scrum and Agile as well? Yes!

Some examples:

- endless estimation meetings which not only eats programmer hours but also mean that everyone feel they have to match the estimates

- one way communication (in a loop from customer - ux - programmer - tester - customer). Doesn't help if there are 14 days sprints when every sprint is a mini waterfall

- taking time of the project to do agile workshop after agile workshop while continuing to be absolutely rigid

- "release" after "release" but no actual customer

- "finish one thing" taken to mean that styling has to be perfect even on placeholder pages

It’s not built for the product team (devs, designers, QA).

In some cases, coincidentally, it might be good for some neurodivergent folks, I guess…

…as long as they don’t mind the constant bugging for updates, interruptions, and constant pressure… I’m sure it’s an environment where people with ADHD etc shine.

As someone with ADHD, I am orders of magnitude more productive when I do freelancing than in an SCRUM based corporate environment and much happier. And I mean orders of magnitude, I am not being dramatic. (Though that only works if I work on something I am interested in otherwise my lows are even lower.)

Task switching is a typical issue for both ADHD as autism people and SCRUM has so much. Just the damn dailies are complete murder for my mental health and productivity.

The problem with SCRUM is that it focuses on everyone being a cog in the machine. Everyone replaceable. At best it allows teams to self-organize (in theory, seldom in practice) but does not acknowledge individual needs of team members.

In my opinion the entire structure of scrum and sprints is structured to help people with autism and adhd.

Unfortunately the principles are rarely adhered to.

It's there to help management control the 'au-dhd' crowd with a manufactured focus that rarely aligns with what they could naturally focus on.

Right off the bat, I don't do "self-care" in the morning and I don't eat breakfast, so I can't get past #1

You'll annoy the hell out of some people, and thats fine. They can find other people to spend time with.

You can probably find a good community where you are, and if not just move to SF which is something like the autism homeland. Being autistic there is valorized and even imitated in sort of amusing ways.

Masking is a kind of hell, living someone else's life. Unmasking and living as yourself feels scary at first but the people who will love you that way can only find you if you live that way.

"Just be yourself" is a good message in a movie, but everyone has to play a role to some extent to get where they want to be.

No thank you. I very much prefer to remain employed.

I get enough accommodations as it is; society is built on give-and-take and I’ve found a stable medium. My masking is part of that compromise. Without it I would just be entitled.

If you imagine neurotypical and autistic as two "languages", then masking is when an autistic person is going to the effort to speak the neurotypical language, so as to remove the burden from neurotypical people of having to parse the autistic language. Most of the time, unless the interaction is very short and one-shot, the autistic person will still come off as speaking the neurotypical language "as a second language" rather than speaking it "fluently"; but it is the lived experience of many autistic people that this is still less disruptive in mixed company than just letting go and going full native autistic and expecting neurotypical people to be the ones to adapt. (Even in SF, a randomly-selected group of people often contains a few people visiting from elsewhere, who have never interacted with [non-masking] autistic people before, and so have never learned to "speak" autistic.)

Which is not to say that it isn't nice to find other autistic people to hang out with, where you can just let your hair down and "speak your native language" together! But it's not like this is something people avoid doing, if they get the chance. It's just that in most places in the world, you're rather unlikely to stumble into groups consisting solely of autistic people. (Except maybe in engineering-led tech companies!)

This analogy is very analogous. Damian Milton introduced it to academia as the "double empathy problem", and there are a trickle of studies confirming the obvious corollaries of the analogy (e.g. doi:10.1177/1362361320919286 "Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective") which are considered surprising by academia because autism (like most psychological conditions) is defined badly:

> Autism is defined clinically by deficits in social communication. It may therefore be expected that autistic people find it difficult to share information with other people.

Imagine visiting a new planet where every household has it's OWN unique language, most of them at least somewhat different from all the others, but they can mostly all speak passable english - is it easier for you to learn each of their languages, or for them to "mask" and speak to you in english?

I am not saying this to claim that those with autism should mask, but I think the advice in this comment could be misinterpreted. While we should all be able to live as authentic selves, the reality is that this comes with trade-offs. We should evaluate those trade-offs independently and determine which of our personality traits are worth masking and which are not.

To be direct: this is a recipe for failure in a neurotypical world.

I agree with you with regard to the resulting personal relationship quality. However, there is a *massive* practical/economic cost.

I worked in Tech for 30 years. Burned out hard. Then I got my autism diagnosis.

I lived sincerely. I was punished for it.

I then tried to conform—masking before I quite knew what it was. I just knew that it required enormous effort to remain "composed".

Nope, still punished. The mask wasn't good enough.

Not only that, I began to loathe who I was becoming because of the mask. And I saw the added cost of how it was wrecking my marriage.

I'm now into year 3 (2.33) into unemployment with no idea what's next. I just know that it can't involve any masking whatsoever.

And that, in of itself, means I will be far "less successful" in this neurotypical world.

In the context of this game world, that circumstance manifests as the player getting fired from their job. Perhaps a person would like to keep their job and so does things they otherwise wouldn't like to do.

I strongly agree. Masking is a maladaptive strategy and it's described that way in the literature.

But you do have to figure out who you are and what matters to you. A lot of autistic people spend much of their youth trying to be other people and only really figuring out what they like when they're in their 30s, 40s, or older.

This is just the human experience.

I thought when my Masking score went down, it meant I was showing my true colors too much and exposing myself as autistic (to the detriment of my career). Took me a minute to realize it was the opposite.

Later I learned it's called masking and a lot of people like yourself think of it as bad.

But it made my life immeasurably better.

I hated how I acted and how people reacted to me when I was young.

I wouldn't even know how to turn off the "masking behavior" now and I never would have become who I am without it.

Maybe it's because I was young and didn't know any other people like me but I don't think labelling this survival technique as hell is right for everybody.

What does “masking” mean to you? Because when I search for autistic masking I get a really wide range of behaviors from suppressing physical rocking to attempting to learn social skills.

Some masking might be counterproductive or even harmful. Some of the stuff I’m finding listed as masking is just basic being an adult stuff, though. If “don’t mask” means “don’t try to improve yourself” then it’s terrible advice.

Some of those people sign my paycheck though.

I do agree that “masking is bad” is sometimes taken too far. It doesn’t justify being harmful to other people. But the chronic toxic positivity that workplaces demand, because people want to delude themselves into believing it isn’t corrosive to sell one’s time and dignity for survival, is exhausting and unsustainable for autistic people.

It's possible to survive without doing that - start your own business.

It's just tremendously more work to come up with a good and working business plan, and to find a funding source to help actualize that plan, when you're too good to "sell your time and dignity" to at least get seed money.

I don't get this mindset that the whole idea of working for someone else is degrading. Working for someone else is outsourcing a very tough part of business -- the strategy and funding -- to someone else. In exchange for this turnkey arrangement, you receive far less money than would a sole proprietor who managed to hatch the idea and deliver the same value on their own, successfully, but you also make far more money than the (zero or negative $) you would in the 90% likely scenario where your business fails.

Nobody is being forced to work for others -- but to get money you do have to provide value worth paying for to someone. Extreme self-sufficiency, owing nothing to anyone, is also an option -- you can get a loan and buy a few acres of farmland for less than a car and do your own thing there.

I like the point you are making about being able to structure your own workplace and engage with the world on your own terms however.

As for the game itself, it seems a bit punishing / too pessimistic? I don't want to be insensitive but I don't think my choices would lead my character, who was maintaining a full time job for this long, to collapse at their desk midday and be fired.

Honestly I think everyone feels like this to some degree and most people are hiding their contempt for the structures at work.

This is a grind for pretty much everyone. To give you the other side, to someone extroverted and socially attuned, the fake nonsense is more grating and insulting than it is to you, I'd guess. Life is hard and everyone has his cross to bear.

It has lost meaning for me as a normie. It’s the same thing with the word “depressed” .

When I was in school in the ‘90s hardly anyone identified as such. These days, when I talk to my kid, and she tells me that so many people claim to be on the spectrum even though they seem ordinary.

It’s hard to know what it means since it’s so broad.

You experience autistic traits, but not intensely enough to be a disorder? Congratulations, you can leave the word "disorder" out when you describe yourself.

Everyone masks, but some people mask so often and so intensely that it's like performing a second life; all while hoping your audience doesn't notice. Also, it physically hurts to do, because the interactions you are performing overstimulate your brain.

---

I'm assuming you are an adult. Would you like to make social room for someone to be themselves around you instead of perform the role of "functional adult"? If you don't want to make that accommodation, is it something that you are willing to do anyway?

It all depends on how large the accommodation is. What if they say my talking overstimulates them and I must write everything down. Also the stress from masking is too much so we can only work together 30 minutes a day. In that case no, I would need to work with someone else. Not because I dislike them, but because we are not getting a project done that way.

The goal is to resolve the problem, not to bow to every person's whim. How many accommodations are they making for you that you are unaware of?

You can't be responsible to manage a person's disorder. You can, however, actively try to help. The most important distinction here is how you frame your participation.

One of the best ways to help is to explicitly say that you want to help and compromise, but have clear boundaries you are unwilling to cross. The default assumption, that you are unwilling to help simply because you find it inconvenient to do so, is usually accurate. It takes effort to disprove that assumption, but that proof can relieve a lot of stress.

What you have done in the comment I responded to, has had quite the opposite effect. I understand it wasn't likely your intention, but your communication implied that you are generally unwilling to make an accommodation until you personally believe it is necessary. That implication is an insurmountable boundary that every ADHD/ASD person is intimately familiar with. You are the only one in a position to move that boundary.

Autism is even better because you can diagnose it in anyone and the treatment can show whatever results you want. It's a spectrum you see.

I think elder care or in home care in NYC is a similar operation.

The sheer weight of human productivity is unbelievable. You have some two hundred to two fifty million Americans producing things through labour. They're all taxed and it goes into one or two places. Tap that keg and you get unbelievable wealth.

My misophonia comes from food noises. Music doesn’t bother me, but eating sounds make me sick and angry. It’s some kind of anti-ASMR. Oddly, my cats’ eating sounds aren’t an issue because they’re animals and they’re “supposed to be gross.”

Not saying mean things unprovoked and doing one’s share of the chores is being an adult. Having to put on an emotional show so the high-status, low-competence people in charge feel secure in their high status is… exhausting, pointless, and unsustainable.

Similarly, I don't understand the decisions related to the driving environment: it appears to be a personal vehicle, surely you, as the owner, can make the interior environment something that's as close to personally comfortable as possible? Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions.

Related, what is or isn't masking seems very confused. To begin with, it's not just code for "hiding or not hiding behaviors that appear socially irregular." But it's also not the case that deciding whether to participate in a non-working-hours event is or isn't masking in of itself.

Presenting behavior in a socialized way when necessary is a skill that's harder (as I understand it) for those on the autism spectrum, but I don't think that makes every application equivalent to masking.

I lost interest after the breakfast question. For someone who’s physically fit (which this person likely is) skipping breakfast shouldn’t cause a noticeable drop in energy. If it does, then there may be more going on than just autism.

it's not a reality simulator, incredibly few video games are.

the whole thing seems like a conflicted struggle between "I want to make a game" and "I need to get my points across", often to the detriment of the game-part.

It's an interesting concept though.

Why? It's a multiple choice game with different outcomes. Hardly groundbreaking.

Execution matters regardless, but not all innovations are in mechanics of gameplay.

As far as energy levels go, if you are already tired, you may lack energy to cope with stressful situations, which leads you to procrastinate or even sleep too just not face it. From personal experience, low (just below the lower limit, so nothing seemingly dramatic) vitamin D levels may affect one's energy levels negatively (always tired, brain fog, everything feels hard...), and having appropriate vitamin D levels may already provide one with a clear mind and remove the hardship of dealing with most of what others consider as seemingly simple situations.

You might be depressed because of low energy levels, instead of the other way around.

So, make sure your energy levels are appropriate and that your mitochondria work fine. (Any LLM will provide you with detailed info about energy levels and mitochondria).

Of course, that's only based on personal experience, and I'm a software engineer, not a Doctor.

Have a nice day.

Other high stress situations involving actually solving something motivates me though.

What are the other types of experience one might have?

I do as a default because it is, that's why the sentence is tautological - which was my point. There's also a difference between expressing an opinion and being "worked up".

Unfortunately I haven’t even been able to make it through one phd presentation of my friends.

This seems to be a common issue with mediocre video game writers and designers, especially those politically motivated. If you can't trust your audience to make up their own mind about the subject matter then maybe the interactive medium isn't the right one for you.

I don't even have an autism diagnosis. It never occurred to me that something might be "going on". Breakfast imparts energy. To me, that has been a given.

So humans doing both have genes for both, but maybe some humans have more of some of those.

When this changes in numbers, size or kind I do not feel any difference in energy.

When I bike to work I am particularly not hungry until 11:45.

Interestingly my appetite sometimes skyrockets after certain activities like bouldering or weight lifting, so the diminished hunger response must be a bit more complex of a phenomenon.

What is "normal food"? Fruit seems like it would be more universally normal than pretty much anything else.

What I meant by that is that this is a full starter for the day, not a "late French breakfast"

It's (a) them being collectively combined and (b) the severity that creates the issue, but it's very hard for autistic people to explain and justify what's happening to them when everybody feels like they already experience these things and manage to just "deal" with it.

If 50% of the world is just fine without eating breakfast, that still means 4 Bn people are not.

Posting personal anecdotes as if that proves feeling low on energy without breakfast means something is wrong is a degree of irrationality I can’t believe is showing up on HN.

It’s fine to share personal anecdotes and experiences but so many here are sharing them as if it disproves all other things experiences and responses.

Then there's the energy thing. I guess if I'm in ketosis it's fine, but after not eating for a whole day it's hard to sustain the next day, but eating isn't alway worth it.

The saddest part is that junk foot and Tesco meal deal is so is somehow easier to digest. So I often eat that.

I'm trying Kefir (even though I'm lactose intolerant, but I take lactase with it) for the 10 time probably. My GP recommended it. Alas, maybe it helps.

Soooo, tldr eating yes, I love it, but it can have consequences that completely tank my productivity. And each time I have to ponder this it feels like I've done a chore but without the reward feeling of completing a chore, even though I just say there in silence for 5-15 minutes

Idk if other people are in a similar boat

I lose energy if I do have breakfast. Which results in lack of focus. Therefore I often postpone my breakfast as long as I possibly can, otherwise, with a large probability, my work day is ruined before it even starts.

I think this has a lot to do with the 9–5 and my natural sleep cycle being delayed compared to that.

Also of note given the OP’s subject, several studies show that people with significantly impactful Autism spectrum disorders have higher brain glucose consumption than the baseline.

In regards to autism: 10.1001/archpsyc.1985.01790280026003

It definitely does.

I have to eat breakfast in the morning in order to feel energetic during the day. But specifically, I need a high-protein, high-fiber breakfast. Anything else makes me feel lethargic and tired.

Hard to describe, but there is a tendency to self-sabotage (for lack of a better term) that you have to take into account. Sure, it may be my car, and I may have control of the radio, but I don't always act upon the need to adjust my environment.

This is correlated with the amount of energy and attention you have to give to processing your environment, much like the health bars in the game UI.

That implies active work to mask that is almost certainly measured in hours per day, across nearly every domain of communication and human interaction.

How many hours a day does the average employee spend talking to coworkers about their sexual preference?

Edit:

1: An urge probably backed up by a good faith, well-reasoned, ethical understanding of the literal words that the manager spoke to them!

But in the context of the beginning of a game, people without autism are probably confused. Why isn't the car's environment already tuned to the character's exact specifications?

I get some of the potential reasons why after playing the game for a bit. But I still would have liked to see a callback to this. E.g., if I drive to lunch with coworkers I could choose to mask by letting the passenger tune the radio. Then the next morning I get a painful sound when I turn on the car. Ah, I get it now! That seems like more satisfying gameplay-- maybe the game already does it and I died too early to see!

You don't get to choose every option every day. Some days you're on, and you make (almost) all of the right choices for your wellbeing. But not every day is like that.

Try tuning your entire environment and then maintaining it all the time. Best I can do is get it into a failure mode that isn't a disaster.

Mapping anything into a perfect system fails. So I'm surrounded by half working shit that works well enough that the energy from the shittyness that it sucks from me is made up by the fact that it's good enough to not crash out over. But I will still stress. Because I do want to fix the Bluetooth but I also have 8000 other things at home to perfectly tune as well.

My shoes are a year and a half old. A little stained, a little green from mowing the lawn. I sure as fuck don't want to go to a shoe store and tell the poor young worker there that I don't need their help. I'm not buying shoes without trying them on, so internet is out. When the soles fall off and the social impact is great enough, I'll replace them.

I haven't cut my hair in a year and a half because the hair dresser lady that I went to for 15 years moved away. Staring into a mirror while someone talks to me and cuts my hair is a fucking nightmare. I know this makes me look unconventional, but worth it for now. I have to carefully wash, condition, dry, and brush my hair. It's more work. But it's optimized.

    I'm not buying shoes without trying them on, so internet is out.

I can relate to this in that I barely have any energy in the mornings to do anything no matter how early I set my alarm, then end up skipping everything except the bare minimum to function, or maybe less depending on if I happen to have more energy that day.

The "simulator" paradigm pretends to promote empathy but it actually does the opposite.

You did give examples, but only for ways it perhaps fails in promoting empathy for groups with similar problems.

Right now, Autism and/or ADHD are the two that are most prevalent on social media. Many people, especially younger people who spend a lot of time on Reddit, TikTok, or other sites, see these diagnoses trend with vague descriptions about what they entail. When they encounter struggles, they recall those vague descriptions, make a connection, and assume their life problems are due to the diagnosis.

It's not uncommon to read accounts of people who describe their symptoms as textbook social anxiety or depression who will nevertheless insist they have "AuDHD" as self-diagnosed via their social media consumption.

It can actually be hard to break them out of one preferred diagnosis and get them going down the right path to address the problem.

An example: Someone develops an eating disorder, but they read on Reddit that forgetting to eat and having low energy for schoolwork can be a symptoms of ADHD. They self-diagnose as ADHD and avoid addressing their very obvious eating disorder problem. They might even get insulted when someone suggests they have an eating disorder, insisting that the other person must not understand ADHD.

This pattern isn't unique to autism or ADHD. It's common to all trending internet diagnoses. You will find communities where everyone convinces themselves they have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Doctors who treat those two conditions are currently rejecting referrals at a high rate due to extreme self-diagnosis via TikTok. The people self-diagnosing with those conditions usually do have something wrong, but they've latched on to one explanation that doesn't fit and they won't let go because they think it explains everything about them.

Being "culturally dominant" is not a good thing for autistic people: it's not autistic voices that dominate, but mostly eugenics groups, with the occasional well-meaning (but usually uninformed) activist group trying to oppose the narrative. If you're familiar with the kind of "anti-racist" corporate training that's mostly just white guilt with a few racial stereotypes thrown in, then you know how far "well-meaning" can take you.

While we can draw many analogies to autistic masking, autistic masking is qualitatively different to the examples you've listed. We have other words for the other things (e.g. "talking white" is a special-case of "situational code-switching", and "staying closeted" is a special-case of something that I don't know a name for). You're skirting (and, I think, crossing) the line between analogy and appropriation in your first paragraph. (See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45440873, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45441925)

I'm not really sure what you mean by your "actually does the opposite" remark in the second paragraph, unless you're automatically treating this interactive description of autism made with care, by someone with personal experience of being autistic, as the kind of rubbish that's made by "well-meaning" ignorants for low-quality corporate training.

People with other flavours of neurodivergence have produced similar "simulators" (a kind of RPG, really). You might be familiar with Spoon Theory, originally devised to describe the psychological burden of living with lupus? That simulator is a TTRPG. I suspect that this simulator was made by someone who'd be classified as neurodivergent in respects not classified as autism.

If you're trying to imply some accusation, please be explicit about it. No vague deniable hinting.

In the case of "cultural and ethnically homogeneous society", there are two ways to get there: Either slowly melting pot over hundreds of years minimum, or drastic bad actions that destroy people's lives and strip culture instead of sharing it.

And since anyone alive today will be long dead by the time the first one possibly happens, it looks like a claim that they would be in favor of the second one.

So yeah, that would cause strong disagreement. It's a revolting thing to be associated with.

But it's not because the literal thing you said is wrong. The literal thing you said is correct. It is easier to not have to worry about those differences.

And there's no contradiction in any of that. What specific opinions are you calling contradictory?

Why do you feel this way? Do you not think having to do those things is tiring and exhausting for the affected people? Do you think the simulator’s author would disagree? If someone wrote a simulator for trying to code switch as a Black person or an Asian person and didn’t include all the ways that autistic people have to mask, would you feel they were also not promoting empathy?

Everyone seems to self-diagnose as slightly autistic these days. “I’ve noticed that I have personal quirks. Must be autism. Couldn’t be that everyone has their own personal stuff to deal with.”

I think this is maybe related to imposter syndrome. “There are people who can easily do this thing that I struggle with. Maybe I’m not qualified./Maybe I’m autistic.”. This thought process assumes others aren’t struggling and also tends to look to those who excel rather than the average so it’s biased anyway.

I would love to live in a society in which everyone is allowed to have personal quirks and their own personal stuff to deal with without being judged for it and without needing a label like “autism” to excuse it.

On the one hand, of course we extend extra grace and accommodations to a person with a given disability because we expect people without the disability to behave differently. On the other hand, they didn’t just magically get the disability when they got diagnosed. They’ve had it their entire life, and needed that grace and accommodation their entire life. But only it’s only now, half way through their life with their shiny new diagnosis that people give them that grace and accommodation. Is it then any wonder that people who haven’t been able to get that official diagnosis are still trying to at least get people to accept an unofficial diagnosis? If we were better at not needing the labels in order to accommodate, maybe we wouldn’t also have so many “self diagnosed” people. Or ironically maybe we’d have more officially diagnosed people because we wouldn’t be having a moral panic over fakes.

If you're talking about what happens after the first day, I think it's not due to any of the "stats" but rather because your first day is long and so you're running late on the second day, and for whatever reason you have nothing ready-to-eat at home. (Might be related to that option to go to the grocery store that you probably didn't take.)

In other words, it's seemingly a narrative-driven obstacle.

> it appears to be a personal vehicle, surely you, as the owner, can make the interior environment something that's as close to personally comfortable as possible? Maybe I'm missing the takeaway from the driving decisions.

Could be a rental car. Though my guess here is that the author actually comes from a place where the combination of culture and socioeconomics means they commute via public transit; and so they're actually trying to translate their experiences of the social impingement of public transit into analogous experiences when driving.

(Personally, I think a better translation would be being stuck in gridlock, or getting on a highway via an onramp where you keep getting cut off, etc, where there's an autistic itch there to get the other human drivers to realize that, when driving, they should "realize they're all cogs in a global optimization problem and so drive as predictably as possible, in order to decrease burstiness and so increase throughput, even at the expense of their individual perceived end-to-end latency.")

> Related, what is or isn't masking seems very confused. To begin with, it's not just code for "hiding or not hiding behaviors that appear socially irregular." But it's also not the case that deciding whether to participate in a non-working-hours event is or isn't masking in of itself.

AFAICT the "masking" gauge seems to be some rolled-up combination of 1. an odd domain-specific form willpower ("spoons" but you can only spend them on masking-related tasks, and when depleted you can't mask even if you still have motivation to do other things), with 2. a measure how close others are to deducing from your behavior that you are in fact on the autistic spectrum. (As if that's something you could ever expect to keep your coworkers and boss from realizing about you over years of continuous interaction.)

I say this because of the interaction I encountered about coming to a charity event, where literally being explicit about how you have a problem dealing with that kind of social situation... decreases the "masking" gauge. If it was purely #1, I'd expect the gauge to go up. It's only under interpretation #2 where it would go down.

(Or maybe you could describe the "masking" gauge in classical D&D terms as a WIS stat where masking attempts are Will-based saving throws?)

Honestly, I'd like to just see the source code for this. I'm surprised it's not linked; I feel like reading the source (hopefully with a lot of code comments about why the given heuristics were chosen) is the obvious "next step" to the game communicating what it wants to communicate.

There's what's that quote about good art disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed.

Eating is very stressful for many autistic people because of trauma and lack of (non-enmeshing) support in childhood. They don't learn how to make a comfortable environment for themselves or that it is even possible. Every meal becomes stressful. Force feeding or depending completely on others.

Masking goes so deep, it's just not possible to easily convey with words, because after a lifetime of masking you don't even notice all the things that you do that count.

"Presenting behavior in a socialized way when necessary" has a hidden part. Presenting what behavior? To whom? Presenting autism-coded behavior around autistic people is stress-free.

Like others said, skipping breakfast should not be that big of a deal for a reasonably healthy adult, we didn't evolve having 3 meals a day. Intermittent fasting is a thing too.

'Masking' parameter misses the point in my opinion. Picking what I would personally realistically do (having adapted over the years) causes it to drop to 0 over a few days. Picking what i think author wants me to pick, same result. Yet somehow I managed not to get fired in 3 days irl.

I get it, it's an illustration of 'autism is hard' for 'normies'. But it was painfully close to being realistic/enjoyable too.

Not to say it's not useful, ADHD popups were 10/10, general vibe was spot on, will probably forward it to a few friends; it's just not nuanced enough to not annoy me personally.

One of rare times where I can be blunt honest and hopefully not come across arrogant.

I haven’t played the simulator but I wonder if it’s also trying to account for more than just the physiological effects. A friend of mine has autism, and we were getting together one day. On the way over I suggested getting some food since it was close to dinner time. They agreed, gave me some items and I bought us some food. When I arrived they were amped up and excited to show me something. I set the food down, and I ate while they were showing me this thing that had them all excited. They ate some of the food too, but were clearly distracted and not all that hungry. No big deal. But a few hours later I noticed they’d gone real quiet and seemed down or anxious about something. Turned out they had been worrying for the last hour that they had offended me because they didn’t eat all the food and they knew they weren’t going to eat all the food because they were going through a phase where eating in general was just a difficult thing to want to do and so were eating just the minimums they needed to not have other problems.

The entire later half of their evening and their excitement over their new thing had been badly deflated all because of a decision / need to not eat all the food on offer. Never mind that this was nothing new for them. Never mind that I could easily see myself skipping food just for the excitement they were experiencing before factoring in any sensory phases. Never mind that it would be a truly shit thing for me to be offended because they only ate some of the greasy fast food I picked up for us. No this simple and normal act caused them an hour of stress and anxiety over worrying if they’d crossed some social line for doing something I didn’t even notice until they said something.

But it doesn’t matter whether I noticed. Their brain latched onto the “you did something abnormal, people might have noticed, now you need to analyze everything that’s happened to figure out what you next move should be” train of thought and it would not let go. So at least from what I’ve seen, choosing to eat or not can have impacts beyond just “hungry”

Am I missing where the person you are replying to identified as non-autistic?

What's different is that for neurotypical people they don't seem to be aware of it and it comes naturally, but for ND it's learned behaviour that costs energy and conscious effort to do. And they feel like they have to do it because society is used to people effortlessly doing it all the time, so if you don't you're considered off, or simply don't get to participate in society because you're weird/boring/scary. The latter is the worst, you're just yourself but people get uncomfortable around you. They won't tell you why nor just accept you (which is understandable, biological defense mechanisms etc), but you do become an outcast. Unless you play the social games.

> Presenting autism-coded behavior around autistic people is stress-free.

Anecdotal, but... not necessarily, any one person's behaviours can affect someone else negatively.

For neurotypicals, masking is to exhibit behaviors that you subconciously know how to do because they are part of your natural range of behaviors. When a neurotypical is masking being friendly and happy in a social occasion (when they actually don't feel like it), they draw on their previous experience of having been friendly and happy in another social occasion. They know what it feels like, they know how to behave instinctively whey they really are happy and friendly, and faking it is only the effort of drawing from prior experience. For actors, this is called "the Method".

For autists, masking is emulating behaviors they wouldn't normally exhibit on any such occasion. They don't know how to do it, not subconciously, not instinctively. So they explicitly have to observe others, emulate their behavior on that occasion. That leads to two kinds of problems: First, they need to have observed this behavior, learned and practiced it, and need to know how to reproduce it correctly. Second, they need to recognize the occasion correctly, and not misinterpret their surroundings, the feelings and moods of others. And since autists also do have problems even interpreting their own emotional state (they do have emotions, but no intuitive way to know what they are at the moment) and even more the emotional state of others, the effort is far higher. Imagine an actor who is asked to play a totally alien role without any frame of reference and without prior experience, no do-overs and all the other people around him are also directors and constantly judging his performance and measuring it against their effortless instinct what it should look like.

And of course, every now and then you fail to do it right and people think you were acting really weird but won't explain why.

Saying "I'm tired I'll go work more silently" is just reasonably workplace behavior. Telling your coworker "can we sit down and talk about this somewhere more quiet" is just reasonable thing to say to improve productivity. Saying "This meeting is a bit unstructured and i feel if would be more productive to write out an agenda" is not breaking a mask or being an ass, it's focusing on getting shit done for everyone. Sending an email about concerns about unclear and un-mensurable performance in a post-meeting summary is productive and useful for the team (and less socially draining than doing it during the meeting).

All humans mask. Autistic people are simply more prone to "over-mask" or mask things others don't. But a-lot of masking behaviors are mal-adaoptions from childhood. A distraction-less focused and structured work environment helps everyone, so be the ass and enforce it. And particularly engineering fields have a higher tendency to attract (certain) autistic traits, which just further makes speaking out even more valuable for everyone involved.

Simply put; The game makes being "breaking the mask" a negative thing, and a failure case for the game. But all options that break the mask seem to improve energy and social connection. (which goes entirely against the supposed benefit or purpose of masking)

But in many cases, it will absolutely be interpreted as being an ass, and autistic people are less adept at spotting those contexts and communicating in ways which don't look like they're being an ass (also, autistic people are probably more likely to be irritated by the agenda of the rest of the meeting or next meeting being to discuss agendas...)

I agree with your wider point that everyone masks to some degree, but its obviously less consequential to non-junior neurotypical people in familiar environments who can reasonably accurately predict how everyone will react to them choosing to take the mask off and hint what they really think about the meeting. Sure, a lot of other stuff like requesting to talk in a quieter environment is usually something straightforward any reasonable person will accommodate, but it's not surprising people concerned that making too many requests perceived as "weird" might harm their career and not really sure what's "weird" or not default to just trying to avoid them.

Beyond simply masking autistic traits, some people mask to the point of changing personalities or interests. Masking to be more "normal" than any "normal" person.

Knowing when and when not to raise or point out issues or concerns can be quite complex.

So in practice, its quite difficult to find the balance. But take issue with the "inevitability" present in a lot the explanations of autistic masking.

Googling "making workplace autism friendly" gives ... detailed descriptions of very nice workplaces. Particularly the examples in this game are things every workplace would benefit from adjusting even for "neuortypical" workers. (And if not pointed out, it will just continue to drain energy the future)

I think the point is that for autistic people, a lot of things in their day-to-day life that randomly happen and can't be controlled for, can be the equivalent of just, random people walking by and punching you in the arm all day.

Each individual punch might not hurt, and describing the incident to a neurotypical person is probably met with "Eh, that doesn't sound that bad". An entire day's worth leaves you with a pretty sore arm though.

Similarly for the masking meter, I don’t know what it feels like exactly to have mask. However isn’t it hard, in varying degrees, to constantly determine and go through with the right forward-looking choice in real life? My guess is what’s a challenge for some is also a heavy toll on others.

Habits help with much of the daily decisions, but are of course their own challenge to implement and maintain.

The whole masking thing isn't about skill. (Like in the intro, the guy is in fact even outgoing at times...) It's rather that you need to run behavior with software instead of hardware acceleration. Possible but it sucks.

That being said, the whole thing with falling asleep at the desk is a tough manifestation. For me it's less drastic but gets me into problems in the long run.

Yeah in my 20s, and early 30s, I could eat breakfast while logging onto the computer and starting to work.

But now in my 40s I take some time for self-care, not sure if it counts, but it's difficult to answer a question like that with either or.

Decades on the computer has forced me to do Yoga every morning too. So it's not like I want to do it, I just realized that I have to.

I lost when I went to a work outing instead of staying home, but I had RSVP'd to the outing. This is what the game doesn't cover, I never RSVP unless I can keep my word. Never commit!

In my mind these decisions were literally the opposite - I was being honest about what the character wanted and was making space for myself.

Is masking about faking interactions with other people? But nearly everything that I get dinged for about masking doesn't even involve others. Is it about hiding symptoms from others? Or from hiding things you don't like from yourself?

You could replace it with an HP bar or Foobar bar and it’d have just as much meaning. I grew up taking care of my autistic sister and have a couple diagnoses of my own, I found it almost offensive that this claims to be representative of autism because of how generic and distanced it is (ex. “Masking” is collapsed down to being the same as “spoon” discourse with depression)

Plenty of autistic people experience actual disability. And masking isn't just "what everyone does at work". Masking is a trauma response. Autistic people in genral have been abused for their 'abnormal' behavior to the point of being so traumatized that masking is not even a choice. They must hide for fear of further abuse and harassment.

Abuse such as "everyone's a little autistic" and "that's not a disability" or "you just want attention"

Making passing judgements on someone's disability that you clearly don't understand makes you a bigoted asshole. Stop it.

You shouldn't shit on anyone, but you do raise a good point: how do you know who the actually disabled people are?

If some people who claim autism offer as evidence experiences that almost all neurotypical folks can relate to, people are going to be skeptical. You can call them bigoted assholes, but you're unlikely to shame anyone into suspending their skepticism.

1. Things that I brush off or bounce back from have a cumulative effect that leaves some autistic people 'in the red'. It affects them and sticks with them more than it does to me.

2. Options that are not at all realistic or sensible to me like 'not taking meds' - i would never consider skipping a prescription. several cases offered responding with formal processes and complaints that are wildly inappropriate for the offense. Are you showing that to an autistic person these terrible choices somehow seem to be viable?

3. This sample environment is over-the-top with caricatures of the worst sort of job activities populated by judgemental and sneering villains. Are you trying to show that to an autistic person they only see a day full of the very worst things - that they fixate on these problems and don't put them in context with the rest of the experience?

An uncharitable person could take away that autistic people are fragile, make poor choices, and only see the worst in the people around them.

Maybe this was more meant as a comic rant that autistic people could enjoy as a parody of their shared experiences? I'm not actually sure this is accomplishing what you want.

Being able to hear songs in your head sounds great until you have the same one on repeat for days.

This morning it's "the things we do for love". Not sure where that one came from.

Also high pitched sounds (seagull deterers) or electricity buzzing. I learnt at a physics class at high school that I could hear higher pitches than other kids as well, although now that I'm older I've probably lost some of that.

Thank you for making this, I think you just saved me from flushing two years of personal progress down the toilet in the name of... What? Fucking business logic? I'll pass on that, I think, and keep improving my life on my own terms.

And maybe address the question why, again and again, I keep finding ways to convince myself that this is what I want my life to be. No matter how many times it leads me to crash and burn and have to spend years picking up the pieces.

Seriously, thank you. If I ever meet you, I will buy you a beverage to your liking, to go, so you can go home and enjoy it in peace.

/g

Really appreciate the effort you put into this and being vulnerable sharing your own personal experience so openly with us

Thank you

Welcome thoughts on what has worked and what has not worked.

Even when clicking responses that seem like they should make relationship go down and energy up, like giving a minimal response, instead it makes energy go down a lot and relationships go up.

While the topic is eating, I hate lunch around noon on a workday because it disables my higher brain functions for a couple of hours. It is almost mandatory however because what else am I supposed to use that mandatory break for? Just vegging out? That's pointless. I'm not working construction, I don't need to rest my body, I'm doing screen work. What I need is them not riding my back about how I'm not always laser focused on the BS they have us do. My brain decides when I need to put work aside and think about things that aren't such tedium.

Isn't that just part of everyday life as a grown-up?

"Energy" in this case as a stand-in for willpower, for emotional regulation, for actual physical energy.

Yes it is.

The question isn't if you mask, it's what you are masking and to what extent.

There is a big difference between having sense enough not to wear your favorite gimp suit to work and not knowing how to make small talk and have to do it as performance everyday when you are at work.

"Story mode" thinkers should be considered atypical, detached from reality, IMO. Coworkers convinced the political prison of job culture is just and honorific, for example.

The noise was distracting to me so to complained, after a long while they eventually got someone in... but they just put in a really noisy fan in the office close'ish to our desk. They didn't fix it the extra fan did nothing, it couldn't pull more air then it was given.. obv.. so then I had even more noise and the A/C system still didn't work.

I gave up trying to get it improved, and worked with headphones most of the time. No one else finds it an issue.

At the end of the day when staying late and the A/C systems turns off, I can feel a huge load lifted of my shoulders, and I can think much clearer.

Also the lights are horrible, if I'm working alone in the weekend I'll leave them off, it's so much nicer, less harsh. But again I seem the only one who noticed and is affected by it.

I eventually got so burnt out, crashed and quit... have been unemployed for... many many years now. Hard to say why I couldn't another job. I think maybe PTSD of my (first) and last experience, along with intense anxiety to just start. (interviewing is a painful experience, not only do I have to answer and ask questions, but need to fake eye contact, make small talk etc, all to get a job I'll probably have to bail out of.

I've tried to do some self-employed stuff, but nothing has given much income. (living with parents, I feel terrible about it, but no idea how to escape my living hell)