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Ganondox
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11 Jul 2013, 10:36 pm

Okay, I was looking up "prevalence of belief in afterlife" on a work computer and this popped up?

http://www.bu.edu/autism/files/2010/03/ ... g-BBS1.pdf

Excuse me? My belief in afterlife came from my own accord. I do not need you to tell me what I can or cannot do, or what I can or cannot feel. Hmph, maybe mindblindness is not making up BS about other people. I find this type of thing more offensive than anything else. Does anyone else feel the same way?


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Rascal77s
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12 Jul 2013, 12:23 am

Hey man, I was having a nice pleasant evening. Why did you have to piss me off?



Callista
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12 Jul 2013, 12:36 am

We don't engage in existential thought? Uh-huh. Tell that to the average Aspie, to whom existential crises are commonplace.

If anything, we engage in more existential thought than most people. Did the author of this article even bother to talk to any autistic people about their beliefs? Even for those autistics who don't believe in an afterlife, it isn't because that's the idea they default to because they can't conceive of the idea of existence. It's because they have actually thought about it and drawn logical conclusions. And those of us who believe in an afterlife--similarly. We thought about it and decided one way or the other. We don't pick up culture nearly as well or automatically as the NTs around us do; if we believe in something, it's our own belief, something we think about and either accept or reject, even though the idea may have been something we first heard from someone else.

Oh, and by the way: Yes, we do grieve our loved ones. Just because some of us don't wail about it in as showy a fashion as a dramatic NT does, doesn't mean we aren't sitting there thinking to ourselves, "But what am I going to do without them?" and trying to adjust to a life that doesn't have that person in it. People with autism often grieve more quietly. For me, grief is the problem of learning how to re-arrange the pieces of the puzzle of life to form a new picture, now that a piece is missing.

What does the author of that article think we are--some kind of robots? It might be hard for us to juggle thinking about multiple viewpoints all at once, and it might take us more careful thought to understand who we are and what our place in the world is, but if they had actually talked to any autistic people they would have had to conclude that our slow and steady pace leads us to ideas about ourselves and about the nature of existence that are, if anything, more deeply considered than those of our NT peers.


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GregCav
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12 Jul 2013, 1:59 am

The man is a fool.

Bering’s model suggests that people with autism would be
much less likely to engage in “existential” thought or to consider
mental states surviving death, given that they generally fail to
consider a person’s mental states even when they are alive.

According to whome?

Although we know of no systematic research that has tested
this hypothesis, anecdotal evidence suggests a more complex
picture.

They have nothing... but that won't stop them drawing a conclusion.

On the one hand, although people with ASD do form
emotional attachments (Rutgers et al. 2004), in our experience,
it seems that they do not respond with the same degree of distress
to the death of a loved one as do non-autistic individuals.

Same degree? So what?

OH God, I'll stop here. This is MoonCanvas redux...



Verdandi
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12 Jul 2013, 2:11 am

Much of the writing about autistic people is either:

* Concluding things about autistic people without testing them
* Observing behavior, brain activity, etc. and then concluding things about it without asking the autistic people for their perspective
* Taking material written from autistic people's perspective and both sabotaging its credibility at face value and dissecting it to show how autistic people really are exactly like such professionals say we are.

For example, the grieving comment in that article apparently requires an elaborate rationalization to fit it into the author's theories about autistic people. Here's a more parsimonious possibility: Many autistic people have muted or flat emotional affect and do not display a wide range of emotions to begin with. Grief is an emotion, and thus likely to be impacted by such alexithymia. This is not an inability to grieve, but an inability to express it (and sometimes to understand that one is experience it) in a manner that NTs expect.

As far as requiring language to imagine life after death, I think a different possibility for autistic and neurotypical people is much more likely: Our brains are not really properly equipped to deal with the idea of "not existing." This was covered in another recent thread. I know in my case, the concept of death required linguistic explanation and understanding. Prior to that I had no concept of life after death because I had no concept of death in the first place.

Of course, the authors of said article, if they were to read this thread, are likely to rationalize what we're saying so that we do not actually know what we are talking about and thus are unable to properly disagree with the article, and that our disagreement is itself a symptom of our autistic thinking.



Quazar
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12 Jul 2013, 2:34 am

thats a lot of words for an ignorant trash speach... I "engage in "existential"" on a regular bases and i'm sure (even though i usually don't like to generalize) that most of you guys do too


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whirlingmind
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12 Jul 2013, 5:51 am

Ganondox wrote:
Okay, I was looking up "prevalence of belief in afterlife" on a work computer and this popped up?

http://www.bu.edu/autism/files/2010/03/ ... g-BBS1.pdf

Excuse me? My belief in afterlife came from my own accord. I do not need you to tell me what I can or cannot do, or what I can or cannot feel. Hmph, maybe mindblindness is not making up BS about other people. I find this type of thing more offensive than anything else. Does anyone else feel the same way?


Might I suggest that all us diagnosed Aspies (being scientists they wouldn't listen to undiagnosed people) inundate them with messages refuting their hypothesis and putting them straight (I love how they say "on the one hand" and then because they know they are talking s**t they then say "on the other hand")? They most obligingly provide email addresses for this very purpose... :wink: :twisted: They are a cutesy little husband and wife team, Stephen Flusberg and Helen Tager-Flusberg who had nothing better to do at the time:

Well, having no empathy or ToM I have no care for how they will feel when swamped with emails...egg on the face anyone?

[email protected] & [email protected]


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whirlingmind
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12 Jul 2013, 6:05 am

Callista wrote:
We don't engage in existential thought? Uh-huh. Tell that to the average Aspie, to whom existential crises are commonplace.

If anything, we engage in more existential thought than most people. Did the author of this article even bother to talk to any autistic people about their beliefs? Even for those autistics who don't believe in an afterlife, it isn't because that's the idea they default to because they can't conceive of the idea of existence. It's because they have actually thought about it and drawn logical conclusions. And those of us who believe in an afterlife--similarly. We thought about it and decided one way or the other. We don't pick up culture nearly as well or automatically as the NTs around us do; if we believe in something, it's our own belief, something we think about and either accept or reject, even though the idea may have been something we first heard from someone else.

Oh, and by the way: Yes, we do grieve our loved ones. Just because some of us don't wail about it in as showy a fashion as a dramatic NT does, doesn't mean we aren't sitting there thinking to ourselves, "But what am I going to do without them?" and trying to adjust to a life that doesn't have that person in it. People with autism often grieve more quietly. For me, grief is the problem of learning how to re-arrange the pieces of the puzzle of life to form a new picture, now that a piece is missing.

What does the author of that article think we are--some kind of robots? It might be hard for us to juggle thinking about multiple viewpoints all at once, and it might take us more careful thought to understand who we are and what our place in the world is, but if they had actually talked to any autistic people they would have had to conclude that our slow and steady pace leads us to ideas about ourselves and about the nature of existence that are, if anything, more deeply considered than those of our NT peers.


Yes, for many of us the duration of existence itself is existential crisis.

If they think we can't or don't (talk about generalisations) grieve in a "normal" way, they should have seen me at my dad's funeral. Everyone else was calm and sombre, I was almost exploding with grief, I couldn't contain it and one relative said she started crying because she could hear me desperately trying to stifle the sobs behind her. I showed more emotion than anyone else in that church, and was the only one who whispered "Goodbye dad" at his graveside, and was the only one who when a relative took photos of me and my siblings at the wake, was clearly unable to smile properly with a face shaken with shock (how odd anyway, to smile and laugh after someone has died) so I think my grief was more appropriate than all the NTs there. I was the one who cried out in guttural pain from beneath my duvet and locked myself away when he died and couldn't go to the door when a friend brought flowers. Everyone else just carried on. And all this was after not having seen my dad for years after we were estranged.

And I score highly on the DID test and alexythemia test too. Honestly, these researchers should try asking autistic people ourselves for once.


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Last edited by whirlingmind on 12 Jul 2013, 6:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Skilpadde
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12 Jul 2013, 6:09 am

WTF?? I started looking for spiritual answers when I was 12, which lead me to read about the big religions to learn more.

I have always thought I have stronger emotions than most because I take deaths harder (or seem to) than most people I know.

Thank heavens for "experts" :roll:

I'm with Callista, if anything we're more into existential thought than most people are, and any belief held by us are conclusions we have drawn after thinking about it a lot rather than going with the flow.


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Schneekugel
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12 Jul 2013, 6:11 am

Callista wrote:
We don't engage in existential thought? Uh-huh. Tell that to the average Aspie, to whom existential crises are commonplace.


Nono, they dont mean that minor existential crisis dumb people like us care about. They mean REAL existential crises, like not getting the Mascara done the way you like it, or not being able to afford brandcloths, that we are too dumb to understand.



EMTkid
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12 Jul 2013, 7:20 am

Anybody can write anything, and to people who don't know what they are talking about, it sounds deep and scientific. This makes them neither right nor intelligent. For instance, I know nothing about cars. Someone could write a well-written article using scientific language and sounding authoritative, explaining that it was fully possible that you could substitute Pepsi for gasoline and to those of us that don't know any better it sounds right. And most people don't bother checking it before they pass it on. Sad commentary on our world...



Skilpadde
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12 Jul 2013, 7:30 am

Schneekugel wrote:
Callista wrote:
We don't engage in existential thought? Uh-huh. Tell that to the average Aspie, to whom existential crises are commonplace.


Nono, they dont mean that minor existential crisis dumb people like us care about. They mean REAL existential crises, like not getting the Mascara done the way you like it, or not being able to afford brandcloths, that we are too dumb to understand.


*applauds*

well put, Schneekugel!


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Jainz
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12 Jul 2013, 9:12 am

I think most of my existence has been occupied by existential thinking.



Jainz
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12 Jul 2013, 9:13 am

EMTkid wrote:
Anybody can write anything, and to people who don't know what they are talking about, it sounds deep and scientific. This makes them neither right nor intelligent. For instance, I know nothing about cars. Someone could write a well-written article using scientific language and sounding authoritative, explaining that it was fully possible that you could substitute Pepsi for gasoline and to those of us that don't know any better it sounds right. And most people don't bother checking it before they pass it on. Sad commentary on our world...


Also, this. ^

If it sounds clever, sheeple will believe it.



vanhalenkurtz
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12 Jul 2013, 10:34 pm

Jainz wrote:
If it sounds clever, sheeple will believe it.

And if it sounds dumb, inculcation will suffice.


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the_grand_autismo
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12 Jul 2013, 11:58 pm

It's funny to me that they seem to be implying that autistic people use language/concepts to pass these sorts of tasks instead of innate theory of mind (theory of mind tasks, afterlife beliefs) and then on the other hand, they cite philosophers who believe that EVERYONE is influenced by language/concepts to develop these sorts of abilities.

I specialized in cognitive science and philosophy in undergrad and I'm familiar with Jesse Bering's work (the guy they're responding to). I think I might go searching for some of their later work (this was in 2006) to make sure they haven't corrected themselves since then, and if they haven't, I'll write up a rebuttal and shoot them an e-mail. I'll keep you guys updated!