<story><title>Autism and responding to authority (2019)</title><url>https://neuroclastic.com/autism-and-responding-to-authority/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>digging</author><text>I suspect the author meant something more like, &amp;quot;neurotypical people live contented lives holding the belief that arbitrary authority actually exists.&amp;quot; But I can&amp;#x27;t truly speak for them.&lt;p&gt;Even before I fully reasoned it out, growing up I always knew that arbitrary authority doesn&amp;#x27;t exist for me. Sure a SME should be given more weight discussing their subject, and a parent understands dangers of the world that their young child literally can&amp;#x27;t comprehend. But many of us experienced &amp;quot;listen to me because I said so&amp;quot; as children, and continue to experience that in school and into adulthood in the workplace. It&amp;#x27;s meaningless, but many neurotypical people neither notice that it&amp;#x27;s wrong or understand why it&amp;#x27;s wrong, perhaps because their brains aren&amp;#x27;t wired a way to unconsciously detect those red flags.</text></item><item><author>JohnBooty</author><text>This article is a bit maddening. I find the beginning encouraging....&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    I’ve written before about how autistic people often 
    struggle to know how to act around authority figures. 
    Actually, that’s not true– we don’t seem to *care* how 
    we act around authority.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I like the distinction between unknowing and uncaring. I like the level of personal responsibility that this suggests and I wish the rest of the article continued in this vein.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    It makes us *really weird* to neurotypical people, 
    who seem to accept authority happily.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This is not correct at all in my experience. I don&amp;#x27;t think anybody loves submitting to authority just for the fun of it.&lt;p&gt;Certainly there is a lot of personal calculus that goes into whether or not we accept a given authority. Cost vs. benefit. Whether we see a reason to respect the authority. Whether we see value in it. Social pressure. Of course this calculus will be different from person to person and from situation to situation, and of course neurotypicals and folks on the spectrum will tend to have a different view.&lt;p&gt;But, &amp;quot;seem to accept authority happily?&amp;quot; Yeesh. It seems to imply an absence of thought rather than different criteria weights.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dEnigma</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t like this trend of using the label &amp;quot;neurotypical&amp;quot; to describe one&amp;#x27;s idea of the most boring, unimaginative person one can think of, and then applying it to pretty much everyone that isn&amp;#x27;t on the spectrum. &amp;quot;Neurotypical&amp;quot; people range from  absolute rebels who reject any kind of authority to people happily working for and supporting a fascist regime, and then everything in-between. There is no less of a variety of opinion and thought in them than in &amp;quot;neurodivergent&amp;quot; people.</text></comment>
<story><title>Autism and responding to authority (2019)</title><url>https://neuroclastic.com/autism-and-responding-to-authority/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>digging</author><text>I suspect the author meant something more like, &amp;quot;neurotypical people live contented lives holding the belief that arbitrary authority actually exists.&amp;quot; But I can&amp;#x27;t truly speak for them.&lt;p&gt;Even before I fully reasoned it out, growing up I always knew that arbitrary authority doesn&amp;#x27;t exist for me. Sure a SME should be given more weight discussing their subject, and a parent understands dangers of the world that their young child literally can&amp;#x27;t comprehend. But many of us experienced &amp;quot;listen to me because I said so&amp;quot; as children, and continue to experience that in school and into adulthood in the workplace. It&amp;#x27;s meaningless, but many neurotypical people neither notice that it&amp;#x27;s wrong or understand why it&amp;#x27;s wrong, perhaps because their brains aren&amp;#x27;t wired a way to unconsciously detect those red flags.</text></item><item><author>JohnBooty</author><text>This article is a bit maddening. I find the beginning encouraging....&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    I’ve written before about how autistic people often 
    struggle to know how to act around authority figures. 
    Actually, that’s not true– we don’t seem to *care* how 
    we act around authority.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I like the distinction between unknowing and uncaring. I like the level of personal responsibility that this suggests and I wish the rest of the article continued in this vein.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    It makes us *really weird* to neurotypical people, 
    who seem to accept authority happily.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This is not correct at all in my experience. I don&amp;#x27;t think anybody loves submitting to authority just for the fun of it.&lt;p&gt;Certainly there is a lot of personal calculus that goes into whether or not we accept a given authority. Cost vs. benefit. Whether we see a reason to respect the authority. Whether we see value in it. Social pressure. Of course this calculus will be different from person to person and from situation to situation, and of course neurotypicals and folks on the spectrum will tend to have a different view.&lt;p&gt;But, &amp;quot;seem to accept authority happily?&amp;quot; Yeesh. It seems to imply an absence of thought rather than different criteria weights.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hotnfresh</author><text>&amp;gt; But many of us experienced &amp;quot;listen to me because I said so&amp;quot; as children, and continue to experience that in school and into adulthood in the workplace. It&amp;#x27;s meaningless, but many neurotypical people neither notice that it&amp;#x27;s wrong or understand why it&amp;#x27;s wrong&lt;p&gt;This would not be perhaps &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; most-universal example of arbitrary authority, played with in countless pieces of mainstream media, if neurotypicals were as you suppose they are.&lt;p&gt;I think you need to go back to the drawing board on this one.</text></comment>