Opening statement

• Neurodivergent people have trouble communicating and empathizing with neurotypicals, and vice versa, because of the double empathy problem.
• I’d like to explain why this happens, how it wreaks havoc, and how we can fix it.

Personal background

• Degrees:
  • BA in political science (Florida Atlantic University, 2008)
  • BS in cybersecurity (University of South Florida, 2021)
• Diagnoses:
  • ADHD at age three
  • Autism spectrum and obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders during high school
  • Several mood disorders at various times:
    • depression
    • anxiety
    • PTSD
    • depersonalization-derealiziation

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Rethinking “ignorance”

Socrates

• I’d like to open by quoting Socrates, and I apologize to any Greeks in the audience for my pronunciation.
  • Greek: «Ἕν μόνον ᾰ̓γᾰθόν εἶναι, τὴν ἐπιστήμην, καὶ ἓν μόνον κακόν, τὴν ᾰ̓μᾰθῐ́ᾱν.»
  • Romanized: «Hén mónon ăgăthón eînai, tḕn epistḗmēn, kaí hén mónon kakón, tḕn ămăthĭ́ān.»
• I have a longer explanation on my website, but I’d translate this as:
  • Literal: “There is only one good, learning, and there is only one evil, willful ignorance.”
  • Figurative: “Learning is the only good, refusal to learn the only evil.”
• That may come across as a slight exaggeration, but amathia, or refusal to learn, causes numerous problems.

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Two forms of ignorance: amathia and agnoia

• What we call ignorance, the Ancient Greeks divided into two words with separate etymologies and meanings:
  • Agnoia, not knowing, is curable and our natural state.
    • We’re not born with knowledge; we have to learn.
  • Amathia, not learning, is intentional and incurable – which is why Socrates calls it evil.
    • To twist a familiar proverb: “You can lead a horse to knowledge, but you can’t make it think.”
• The word ignorance carries an implicit moral judgement that agnoia doesn’t deserve.
  • It also doesn’t diagnose the source of the problem.
  • Therefore, I’ll use amathia and agnoia throughout this talk. The distinction matters.

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The double empathy problem

• The autism researcher Damian Milton coined the term double empathy problem to explain neurotypicals’ and neurodivergents’ trouble communicating and empathizing with each other.
• Contrary to popular belief, autistic people often find it easy to communicate and empathize with each other.
  • But we can have more trouble communicating and empathizing with neurotypicals.
• The reverse is also true: neurotypicals also have trouble communicating and empathizing with us.
• But there’s a catch:
  • Many of us know we have trouble communicating and empathizing with neurotypicals and take steps to alleviate it.
  • However, neurotypicals rarely realize they have trouble communicating and empathizing with us, and thus don’t try.
    • Thus, neurodivergent people may actually practice empathy more often than neurotypicals.
    • I said practice empathy deliberately: I consider empathy an action, not a character trait.

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Neurodivergent communication

I’ll quickly explain neurodivergent people’s natural communication – which is, by necessity, a generalization; probably everything I’m about to say will have some exceptions.

Innate traits

• We tend to be much more direct, without engaging in much small talk.
  • We can learn to do small talk, but we rarely find it easy.
• Neurotypicals can perceive our voices as monotone even when we’re actually feeling strong emotion.
• Our body language differs from neurotypicals’ body language, and even from each other’s.
• Neurodivergence is diagnosed less often in women.
  • This may be because their symptoms present differently and are less popularly understood.

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Mirroring and masking

• Neurotypicals misreading our natural body language causes us such trouble we learn to mirror – to mimic the nonverbal communication they expect.
• Mirroring is in turn a form of masking – concealing our true selves from others.
• This is draining, and we can’t always do it, especially when stressed.
  • This can be misread as anger towards specific people, which causes further stress and turns into a self-reinforcing feedback loop: stress causes more stress causes more stress, ad nauseam.

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Impacts of communication barriers

Communication barriers cause us problems in several areas of life.

Work

• Hiring is overwhelmingly tailored to neurotypical skills and preferences, even in disciplines like STEM where they’re less important.
• Miscommunications can also cause problems - again, stress being misread as anger.
• Many public-facing positions expect soft social skills that many of us never learned and that can create additional stress for those of us that did.
• Overall, we’re tremendously underemployed. Estimates of our unemployment rates range from 38.58% to 85% – vastly higher numbers than the neurotypical rate.

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Social lives

• Our social lives can also suffer from our different communication styles.
  • Many of my dates probably thought I was less interested in them than I was – eye contact causes me trouble at the best of times, and dates make me especially nervous.
  • I think it’s sensible for neurodivergent people to have relationships with each other.
    • We wouldn’t expect the kinds of nonverbal communication that we find stressful and that neurotypicals find effortless.
    • We also probably wouldn’t need to mirror or mask with each other.
• We also have high comorbidities with several mood-related disorders.
  • Our suicide rate is nine times the median.
  • Neurotypicals’ life expectancy is twice ours. Childhood deaths are one major cause of this; suicide is another.

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How to improve communication: a two-way street

• There are several ways we could improve neurodivergent-neurotypical communication.
• Most importantly: communication is a two-way street.
  • Many neurotypicals blame communication trouble solely on us.
  • But, as the double empathy problem suggests, the problem is reciprocal.

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Active listening

• Active listening is an important skill everyone can practice.
  • Rephrase the other person’s statements in your own words.
  • Ask substantive clarifying questions about what they just said.
• This is an important, effective way to ensure you’ve understood each other.
  • It also helps us practice empathy.

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Rethinking the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule is self-centered

• The Golden Rule is a fundamentally self-centered conception of ethics.
• Rephrased, it says: “Treat others how you want to be treated.”
  • This centers your entire ethical system around your preferences.
  • This has a fundamental flaw: your preferences aren’t universal.
  • This might be appropriate to teach kindergarteners who haven’t moved beyond solipsism (the inability to perceive that others are people). But adults should do better.

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The Platinum Rule: a simple one-word fix

• The Platinum Rule fixes this by changing one word:
  • “Treat others how they want to be treated.”
• This is a vastly superior principle that centers ethics around understanding and respecting others’ varied preferences.
  • This alone could vastly improve neurotypical-neurodivergent communication.
• We begin with agnoia of others’ preferences.
  • But assuming we know them turns this into amathia.
  • Don’t assume you know what others want. Ask.

How specific groups can help

• I have more recommendations for several groups.
• I’m not judging you if you haven’t addressed these yet: again, agnoia is our default state.
• But please think about these questions going forward.

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Questions for employers

• Does your current hiring process advantage extroverts or neurotypicals?
  • If so, how can you reform it to avoid rejecting qualified neurodivergent applicants?
• How well do you try to understand employees’ needs?
• Do you make assumptions about nonverbal communication that might stress neurodivergent employees?
• Do neurodivergent employees feel safe disclosing their neurodivergence in your work culture?
  • Some employees will have had prior bad experiences that would make them reluctant to disclose even in the best of environments.
• Without knowing, do you assume employees are neurodivergent?
  • Assuming this might not be bad if you work to accommodate their needs and preferences.
• Do you pay people a living wage at 40 hours a week?
  • Outside of brief sprints, humans’ productivity tops out at a median 40 hours a week.
  • Thus, having to work 60 hours a week to make ends meet results in 20 unproductive hours at work – which doesn’t even save employers money.
    • If 60 hours a week at $20 an hour only nets 40 hours of productivity, 40 hours a week at $30 an hour would cost the same amount of money and result in the same productivity – if not more.
  • In fact, low wages arguably cost many employers money.
    • Not pushing employees past their capacity will reduce burnout, increase employee retention, improve institutional memory, and save on training costs.
    • Living wages will also attract more qualified applicants.
• Giving people noise-free, interruption-free environments helps immensely. Larger rooms can help too.
  • Computers can multitask. Humans can’t, much as we might delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.
  • Interruptions break our trains of thought, after which we have to spend time getting ourselves back up to speed.
  • Focusing on one task at a time gives us objectively better results faster.

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Questions for educators

• Do you make assumptions about your students’ nonverbal communications?
• How well do you accommodate neurodivergent students?
  • For instance, ADHD students can be entitled to more test time or lecture notes.
• Do you attempt to incorporate different learning styles?
  • For instance, visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic.
  • Other learning models exist as well; Wikipedia has a good overview.
• How approachable are you?
• Do you help students deal with trauma and stress?
  • If you’re unable to do so, can you direct them to people that can help?

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Questions for neurodivergent students and employees

• Are we disclosing our neurodivergence?
  • Is that a good idea?
    • If so, when is it a good idea?
  • These questions can even apply to friendship and dating.
  • I have no definite answers and doubt one-size-fits-all answers exist, but they’re worth considering.
• Are we self-advocating when we’re the best equipped people in the room to do so?
  • If we aren’t, are we trying to learn how to become self-advocates?
• Are we attempting to be aware of and to respect unspoken and unwritten rules?
  • Not all rules should be respected, but we should at least be aware of them, so that if we’re breaking them, we’re doing so intentionally.
• How much do we network?
  • Often, getting a job is a matter of who you know, not what you know.
  • I don’t feel good about that, either, but I’m also a pragmatist.
    • Deal with existing systems: not the systems we’d like, but the systems we actually have.

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Things everyone can do

• Practice active listening. Rephrase others in your own words. Ask clarifying questions.
• Don’t assume what others’ preferences are. Ask.
• Seek to fix agnoia. Respect good-faith engagement; state unspoken or unwritten rules that people find unclear or confusing.
  • But don’t tolerate amathia.
    • If people continually engage in bad faith and refuse to learn lessons they’re continually presented with, they’re just taking advantage, which isn’t respectable at all.
• When you ask someone to do something, explain why.
  • “Don’t interrupt” is far less memorable than “Interruptions make others lose their train of thought and make the discussion harder for other participants to follow”.
  • The latter explains why you shouldn’t interrupt, making it far more memorable.

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Flaws in societal norms

• Be willing to learn and try new things.
  • Don’t be afraid of failure. It’s a harsh teacher, but it’s often the best and most memorable.
  • Trying the same thing over and expecting different results is not insanity. It’s practice. We improve at tasks through repetition.
• Also, stop trying to see yourself as the hero of your own story.
  • To fix flaws, we must acknowledge them. Trying to see ourselves as heroes makes that harder.
  • Actions and beliefs can be good or bad, but unless we’re talking monsters like Hitler or Stalin, people are too complicated to sum up in such black-and-white terms.

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Quotes

• “The more intensely that the light shone, the darker a shadow it cast.” –Ren, “Hi Ren” (paraphrasing Carl Jung)
  • This describes enantiodromia: without balance, many things become their opposites. Seek balance.
  • “Hi Ren”, the source of this quote, is one of this century’s profoundest statements on mental health.
• “The best is the mortal enemy of the good.” –Montesqieu
  • Don’t seek perfection; just seek to improve. We’re all works in progress. Freaking out too much over mistakes, imperfections, or flaws makes them harder to fix.
  • Flaws can make art more powerful. Kurt Cobain’s voice cracking at the end of Nirvana’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” makes the song.
• “Be the change you want to see.” –Arleen Lorrance (rephrasing Mohandas K. Gandhi)
  • Change starts within. Lead by example.
• And since I opened by quoting Socrates, I’ll close with wisdom from another famed philosopher:
  • “Be excellent to each other.” –Bill S. Preston, Esq.

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