Are people with autism borderline sociopaths?

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Having a cup is also instrumental in obtaining the drink. Which cup is incidental just as how spending extra when explicitly stated that you don't care the cost, you want the biggest one because you're thirsty, is incidental.

Yes. YES. YES!! !

(takes breath)

I agonized over the answer for 20 minutes without really feeling confident about either option. Is it really intentional if somebody twists your arm and throws an untenable "take it, or leave it" option at you, especially if it's something you barely care about (or notice) at the time, anyway?

Then again, maybe being obsessed with getting the large size, and being indifferent to any non-insurmountable price difference (at the time), is the "aspie+add" option

(oops, site doesn't use.nonces to prevent accidental double-posting if you hit the back button after posting)

Last edited by dr01dguy on 24 Nov 2011, 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Both my answers to those questions were "Intentional" so my answers were still different from NTs and autistics. I see it as this, if you know about something but you do it anyway, it's intentional. The boy was informed of the special cup, he was informed about the extra dollar. He had to do them intentionally to get the smoothie.


It be like me going to get a video game, the game costs $29.99 and I see the price, I pay for it. Did I intentionally pay that much for the game? If someone told me it was unintentional, I would ask them how would I not intend to pay that much? I knew how much it cost. It doesn't make any sense that it would be an accident. If the item was priced wrong and I paid for it and the cashier didn't tell me the total and all I did was gave her the card and she swiped it and bam I wouldn't know I paid that much so it be unintentional.


I remember on my honeymoon, I decide to take my husband to Silverwood after our honeymoon so that day came and i decided to take the scenic route to get there. I get there and it takes us two hours instead because I find out the theme park wasn't in Sandpoint, ID like my mom said it was when we go there every year in my teens when my brothers were still in elementary school. Mom told me it was an accident what i did. i told her it was not because I chose to go there other way so I did it on purpose. But she asked me "but did you know it was going to take that long to get there?" and I said no so she said "Then it was an accident" so I figured out it was an accident it took me that long to get there, it was not an accident I took that route. Sure I could have turned the car around to go back but then it would take me even longer to get there and that time I would full well know how long it take me to get there so it be my intent to have it take that long if I turned the car around to go the quicker route.

We go to a store, we are going to walk or drive or take the bus, did we intentionally walk to the store, did we intentionally drive the car, did we intentionally take the bus? I would answer yes to all those. But what if we were going to drive, the car won't start so we decide to take the bus? Did we intentionally take the bus? Lot of people may say it wasn't our intent to do it. I would say we did it intentionally because we had to. Honestly I don't even think of the words intent or unintent when I do them unless asked.


That's how I look at all situations. I think how most people look at them is if something wasn't the original plan, it's unintentional even if they had to do it intentionally. So I guess that would mean by their logic that if they didn't know what they were doing that day so they decide to be spontaneous. They are out driving and they don't know what they are going to do so something catches their eyes, they all decide to stop and go there, that be unintentional. Heck when a person hits a person due to speeding or drinking, some people call that intentional while some others call it an accident. I call it an accident but the reason why some others would call it intentional is because the person chose to speed, the person chose to drink so anything that happened with it was intentional. I say the speeding was intentional, the drinking was intentional, hitting the person was unintentional.

To answer Verdandi's question, smoothie isn't water. Water is good for you. Smoothie isn't water, soda isn't water, Gatorade isn't water. Water is water with nothing in it except ice. So when you are dying of thirst, you wouldn't go get a smoothie and you would want water instead. But some people do get pop or smoothies or juice when they are thirsty. I think it's a TOM thing, if someone always drinks water for when they are dehydrated or thirsty, they aren't going to understand why others would want to get a smoothie for that. They know because the other liquids arne't considered water for your body that it needs, they assume everyone else knows that too. They may not realize there are still people out there who do not know that. I learned in high school that water is water, and that soda isn't water, Gatorade isn't water because my track coach kept telling the kids that on my track team. She was always telling us to drink water. I then learned people were that ignorant to assume that and they had to be kept telling that over and over and how could they not grasp it?

'Instrumental' meaning like a tool that you use. You decide to hand over the money, you get the drink. You can't do anything with the cup until you've already got it.

Can't do much with a cupless drink either

i see what you mean League_Girl, and that is a very good explanation. you very clearly explained how both could be intentional, and it makes perfect sense. i can see how it could be true.

my daughter finally got the #1=unintentional / #2=intentional through my skull i think. she proposed that i try to consider it from the point of view of the cashier. the cashier might think he is simply ACCEPTING the commemorative cup, yet AGREEING to pay the extra money. she said that the way the scenario was framed i was thinking from the customer's point of view only, not from everyone's point of view including the cashier.

she basically said that getting the customer to explicitly agree to pay more money is distinct from implicitly accepting the cup. she said i am getting too caught up in the words and not paying attention to the various subtle meanings behind the communication.

NT explains the story by adding the cashier, I explain the story by adding the storyteller. Hm.

Is your daughter NT or aspie?

NT, sort of. she has ADD and maybe a learning disability and seems to have picked up some aspie characteristics in her personality just from being raised by an aspie. she "gets" me like nobody else. it's cool.

I guess accepting the cup is not considered a willful act because it's a byproduct. Paying the extra dollar is directly connected to obtaining the smoothie so it's considered a willful act. Thinking about it deeply, the notion of what is and isn't a willful act isn't really anything but an inbuilt gut feeling. The subconscious rules are more complicated than people think or there wouldn't be all these papers about it. Ultimately, it seems like willful intent is imposed on actions that have social or personal consequences. If there is a social consequence the person must be seen as accountable for the act. If there's a personal desire attached to the act it's also classified as willful intent.

i get this part, yay!! ! it makes sense!! !

erm, this part i don't get so much.

He was dehydrated and went into the store because his goal was to get the largest drink. It also specifically said he didn't care about the price increase.

Say you go to the store to buy a specific game for someone for Christmas. You have an idea of how much it costs and there is an approximate amount that you will spend. But the game goes 5 dollars higher than what you wanted to spend. I would say, I didn't intend on paying that much. I needed to buy that specific game for Christmas.

Also, I thought getting the smoothie was weird because I think water does a better job of quenching your thirst.

Jediscraps, do you find it interesting that NTs mostly don't see it that way? This isn't something commonly noted as an an autistic difference but it appears to be very fundamentally about how we see things.

I should probably clarify my definition of willful intent. It can be seen as a plan as well, but the plan is something that occurs "in the moment". However there are exceptions. If someone is assumed to have full knowledge of a negative consequence of his/her action, that action is also labelled as having willful intent, even if the negative consequence was not a direct part of any plan.

Also, I don't think NTs are really thinking about willful intent as an "in the moment" plan, even if that's what it really is. There's no conscious thought of what's going on inside a character's head. In more primitive times people attributed intent to all kinds of natural phenomenon as well as to human beings and sentient animals. The motions of the heavenly bodies were considered intentional. They were either willed by the gods or were gods themselves. The stuff is even ingrained in our language. We use intentional language to describe inanimate processes all the time. It's something very primitive ingrained in how humans think.

I'm just using the language from their papers. I see all human reasoning as post hoc rationalisation of animal instincts. I doubt the answer to this poser will refer to intentionality.