Some people think autism means taking everything literally but that's actually kleptomania
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Similarly, if your answer to The Question of "Do you struggle with X?" essentially boils down to either "No, for you see I have A System™," or "No, for you see I have a series of Backup Plans for just for this Specific Scenario," then yes, you DO actually struggle with X.
I was getting my flu vaccine the other day and the nurse asked me why I checked "I don't know" in response to the question "Is the patient sick?"
She seemed genuinely annoyed when I told her that the only two truthful answers to "Are you sick?" are "Yes" and "I don't know".
If the question had asked "Is the patient showing any symptoms of illness?" it would have been a different story, but I answered the question as asked.
i went in for a surgery a couple of years ago. receptionist asks if I've had covid. i say i don't know. receptionist looks at me like im trying to be funny. i specify that i haven't had symptomatic covid. receptionist asks me again if I've had covid. my partner tells me to stop being difficult. receptionist rolls their eyes. as far as i was aware you can have covid without symptoms, so i really think answering 'no' is dangerously arrogant. or at least foolishly naive.
My trick for this is to replace "I don't know" with "not to my knowledge" or "not as far as I know".
Same sentiment, but much less pushback from others.
This is the way. "I don't know" could imply you haven't even thought about it, while "Not to my knowledge" implies you know but may be wrong.
Saying that and adding a small smile and a quick laugh does wonders
Meanwhile, I’ve never had Covid and whenever i tell this to medical receptionists they’re like “you’ve never been symptomatic” 😂 every time! You can’t win
I've had some of my family get annoyed at me for a similar thing lol. If someone asks me if I'd do something in a hypothetical scenario, I basically always answer with "probably" or "probably not". I just feel like no matter how certain I feel I would do something in some given situation that I've never experienced, I can't know 100% unless it were to actually happen, so answering as if I'm sure would be incorrect of me.
"too literal" is inherently subjective. Too literal to whom? What if my friends group is also neurodivergent as fuck, does this invalidate me then because it's the new neurotypical?
I conclude that we need tests for what's usually thought off as "normies". If they know about their rhetorical precision deficits surely they can get therapy to solve that issue and integrate better into society.
I've been told many times I'm too literal. They are wrong, I am appropriately literal. However, it is something people tell me.
Enough that people tell you that you’re too literal.
But also, this isn’t an age or disagree question, it’s a does this happen question.
Seriously. I get the impression that some people don’t like to engage with me at work because I try to be precise to the necessary degree. I work with software, so the degree of precision I need to use to express the behaviour of a system is decently high. I do a conscious effort to be only as technical as the context requires, often opting for being not technical at all when engaging people whose job is not technical.
A few days ago I was in an email chain that went something like this:
manager: we need to add asap.
me: is it for <other team’s software> so they can ? If it is, we did for that. <other team’s software> doesn’t need to check , they can just and <our team’s software> will handle it gracefully.
other team’s programmer: that’s what we do.
other team’s manager: so we do ?
other team’s programmer: yes
If that’s what passes for normalcy, I don’t understand the appeal.
That's why assessment is done by professionals who can interpret your answers, not online quizzes
Sometimes the professionals also give you quizzes just like this.
Ask me how i know
Unironically, when I did my tests, I did complain to my psychologist about how some questions were "too open for interpretation"
Because they are, dammit. I remember taking a test that had like 50 questions and it seemed like I'd answer every single one of them differently if it provided more context in one way or the other.
There were two questions far away from each other probing for readiness to use violence which I thought would make an for odd result because I answered them "differently". I filled in some more missing context, what else are you supposed to do to find an answer?
Well, apparently that just turned out to make my result unreliable.
I told my psychologist that the questions/answers were constructed so poorly that I had started to suspect that the real test was whether or not I would complain about them.
Autism tests are useless because I can already see which are the autistic answers and can manipulate the results either way.
Isn't that true to an extent for all mental health quizzes? The question rather is, why would you want to manipulate the test? Usually it is in the persons best interest to answer as honestly as possible
It is, I once manipulated an IQ test by giving all the correct answers.
People dont tell me anything. They usually just get uncomfortable and walk away or become my lifelong friends, and nowhere inbetween. Something like a 200:1 ratio on that, though.
Seriously, why do these assessments always say "People tell me [blank]"? I can speak about my own experiences! I don't need someone to narrate my behavior like a sitcom!
Like I get that they're trying to understand how you behave around other people, not how you behave in your own head, but at least phrase it as "People tell me or I believe people think I am [blank]"; because that's how I'm forced to answer these questions anyways.
People can misjudge themselves for a number of reasons. For instance, it's common for people to downplay certain traits they perceive as negative or rarely give much thought.
"Are you too literal?" - "Not often, less than 4/10 times";
"How often do people around you tend to consider you too literal?" - "Like 8/10 times"
All online tests are basically
Test: from 1 to 5, how much X do you feel?
You: 4/5
Test results: You are 75% X
You: so true
You can always tell immediately which question confirms your preconceptions, so you can never answer genuinely. It's all confirmation bias.
This is all amplified by the fact that if you are taking the test, you already think that you are the thing in the test (in this case, autistic).
P.S. this includes mbti tests. Don't let their sciency looks deceive you. It's all confirmation bias, all fake.
Myers Briggs is complete pseudoscience, if it helps. Literally nonsense made up whole cloth by some mother and daughter
You mean astrology for MBAs?
Autism test: Look at this picture of a face, what is this person thinking?
Me, an experienced masker: You can't tell what a person is thinking from their face, they expend a lot of effort keeping their face in a socially acceptable position to hide their true feelings.
As opposed to the cptsd answer: "what did I do to cause you to show me a bunch of pictures of people who are mad at me"
The most "fun" ones are the control questions askinging you exactly the opposite of something you've been already asked.
Except inversion also reverses subtext so your honest answer has to be different than just the opposite of the previous answer you have. But if the two answers are not a perfect mirror, you might trigger too many control questions and not get diagnosed. What should you do? AAAAAAAAAAAAAH
Part of the reason my therapist diagnosed me was because, when running a test like this, I was constantly asking questions to get clarification for the questions of the test because I couldn't answer them correctly because of this.
Probably around 8th or 9th test question, my therapist was already certain of my diagnosis.
I like to think people appreciate when I show them all the typos and errors and vague wordings in their contracts, tests, and EULAs.
oh btw, i was reading some legal texts yesterday (as a hobby) and it's surprisingly easy to read for me. yes, it's all convoluted language; but at least it's precise and clear. no swampy vague language.
so it's actually easier to digest than many small-talk conversations that i've had.
The thing about autism test is, once you start deconstructing the questions the psychiatrist already has what they need lol
"Here's a 50-question survey."
"Was 50 chosen for a scientific reason or just because it's a round number?"
"No, we usually have it figured out after one or two, the rest is to see how far we can push you before you finally refuse to answer more questions. Never had it finish at zero before, though."
"Oh. Alright. Well, let's get started."
"...and still waiting, I guess. Anyway, the first question is..."
The "people tell me I'm X" type questions on shit like this always annoy me because like, what exactly are you trying to gauge with this question? Are you trying to determine what I'm like, or are you trying to determine what other people's perception of me is? The way it's worded would denote the latter but I'm not sure that's in actuality what they're going for. In any case, I don't typically have people regularly telling me "you're so [personality trait]" so most of the time if I answer honestly then the answer will usually be "completely disagree" but then that probably skews the test towards an inaccurate result if what they're really trying to determine is "are you [personality trait]?"
They're trying to figure out how you compare to other people. It's terribly worded, but it's something people who don't take things literally would get. It's also really weird because other mental health evaluations tend not to use that sort of potentially confusing language.
Well yeah they're trying to see if other people see those traits in you because self perception is biased. I think the question is quite literal, either people tell you you take things too literally or they don't. I think that's the joke?
Am I autistic? Regardless of how literally you feel you take statements, I still want to know whether people complain to you about you being “too literal” because I want to know if it is affecting your interpersonal relationships. If I wanted to know whether you feel you take things literally, I would add that as a separate question? Please don’t project subtext on this, I actually want to know the answer to the actual question I’m actually asking you?
This is you on the autism scale:

People don’t tell you that. It would be rude. It would probably be someone else on the spectrum tactlessly telling you, if anyone. However, self-realization that you took many comments literally and embarassed yourself or screwed something up is why you tick that box “yes”.
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