Zen-
Zen said:
I'm beginning to think I may have Asperger's Syndrome. If you don't know what it is, give it a read on the web about what it is and who has it. Between having poor social skills and oblivious to social cues, where does one draw the line?
Thoughts would be appreciated.
I've had some people around me at various times with Asperger's, including one guy who was very good with women. He spent a lot of time learning seduction mechanically, and became a machine at it eventually. Despite having loads of success with women, he'd always seem a little bit "off" or mildly insincere when you were talk to him, though he improved on this over time (I imagine as he learned how to better comport himself in social situations). On the plus side, he was more driven at learning seduction and contributed more to the field than most of the people I've ever known. On the minus side, he'd frequently miss very obvious social cues, and this led him to falling outs with more or less everyone he was close with at one time or another as he trampled people's emotions or overstepped his bounds without realizing it, and they attacked back and the two would end up in a combative emotional death spiral.
In my mind, the clear distinguishing marks of Asperger's are:
- An inability to learn intuitively / a super ability to learn mechanically
- Frequently and repeatedly missing what are extremely obvious social cues to most others (e.g., other people being tired, other people being bored of a conversational topic, etc.)
- An inability to read other people's faces (unless specific facial gestures are learned to be read and associated with specific emotions mechanically)
- Launching off into very long, protracted speeches about topics of interest, with little awareness of others' interest levels (or not)
- Little or no native empathy / a great deal of difficulty correctly imagining what it's like to be another person and experience what that person feels
Essentially, you trade empathy for mechanical piece-by-piece learning. Most people learn far more intuitively than people with Asperger's do - they just need to be around something and kinda sorta be focused on it, and they'll soak up the lessons naturally. People with Asperger's though need to zero in on every minute detail and learn things one piece at a time. This often makes for slower and much more painstaking learning, though they often learn things to a level of nuance that other people can only dream of.
Probably the best question for someone with Asperger's to get used to asking is, "Why do you do that?" about every little thing, to start soaking up data points on why people are doing various things, coupled with an innate curiosity. e.g., someone makes a weird looking smirk, and you say, "Why do you do that?" in a very curious voice, because you genuinely want to know. This helps to compensate for the lack of ability to empathize over time - if you can't read people's minds, you can at least learn with time and asking enough questions what it means when people are doing this thing or that.
Chase
