You Don't Exist, Duncan

The year is 2022.

My smoke alarm chirps in the middle of the night, waking me up, because it's running low on battery.

It could have been designed with a built-in clock that, when it's first getting slightly low on battery, waits until the next morning, say 11am, and then starts emitting a soft purring noise, which only escalates to piercing loud chirps over time and if you ignore it.

And I do have a model of how this comes about; the basic smoke alarm design is made in the 1950s or 1960s or something, in a time when engineering design runs on a much more authoritarian paradigm of "yes wake them up the user-peon needs to change the battery", clock circuits aren't as cheap; and then in modern times if you propose changing anything, somebody somewhere will claim it's less safe.  Of course it's much less safe if you build smoke alarms that hurt people, and the people quite reasonably remove the batteries and take them out of their bedrooms, and then you try to compensate for that by passing a law so that you can say any harm is their fault for ignoring that law.  But that's the paradigm for how it is, and now if you try to design a smoke alarm that's gentler or slower-escalating about how it lets you know that it's running out of battery, people will - on a purely intuitive level - assume that the damage the smoke alarm does to you must be buying something, and that a smoke alarm which tries harder not to hurt you must be less safe.  There's probably a law mandating those chirps; it's probably illegal to build a better-designed smoke alarm.  Just guessing, there, partially because the better product doesn't seem to exist, and partially because Earthlings just fucking love passing laws about everything.

Every day, in every way, I'm reminded that this is not my world.  The world of eliezera wouldn't design smoke alarms like that, nor larger societies in a way that lets those larger societies fail like that.

It doesn't bug me in the same way and structure that it bugs Duncan, or so I model him and me; and I think that's because I genuinely deeply know, including in my emotions, that I am not wrong, Earth is wrong.  There's a correct way to design a smoke alarm, and Earth's way is not it.

I wish I could give Duncan the mental motion of what it is to have the sense of your own world about you and its sensibility, by which this world of Earth cannot press in on you; so that if among their many other errors the Earthlings think you don't exist, that genuinely doesn't feel like you being wrong, it feels like them being wrong.  But that's probably something in the brains of eliezera that maybe isn't native to the brains of duncanni, and so the thought is useless in the end.

Even so:  Earthlings be weird, but that's a them problem, not a you problem.  Maybe your System 1 never quite believes it, but let your System 2 never lose track of the difference.

Man, this essay... feels like there's a mistake being made. Hard to put my finger on exactly what it is, though. (Apologies for some implicit unkindness here, I don't intend to say "you should feel bad for feeling bad", but it feels like there's an important and true thing in need of exploration which I need to be somewhat unkind in order to explore.)

One angle: someone says something, and I realize that their model of people is literally unable to account for certain properties of me. And then I'm like... duh? I am in fact an outlier. You are in fact an outlier. Obviously many peoples' world models will just totally fail to account for you and I in various ways. Obviously insofar as the world is built for in-distribution humans, you or I will will not fit it. So what's the angst about? Is the problem that, like, you wish to "be seen", and that just totally fails to happen? Or maybe it's something like... people implicitly asserting that their model, which totally fails to account for certain properties of you/me, is "supposed to be true", like it is somehow a failure on your/my part to fit that model?

I'm not quite sure where the angst is coming from, but it feels like the sort of angst where there is some true fact about the world such that, upon emotionally updating on that fact, the angst would probably mostly stop happening. Like, if you could find the true name of the angst-generator, you'd be like "oh well duh" and then it would just stop seeming significant? Or maybe you could grieve a bit and then move on?

Not wanting to disagree or downplay, I just want to offer a different way to think about it.

When somebody says I don't exist - and this definitely happens - to me, it all depends on what they're trying to do with it. If they're saying "you don't exist, so I don't need to worry about harming you because the category of people who would be harmed is empty", then yeah I feel hurt and offended and have the urge to speak up, probably loudly. But if they're just saying when trying to analyze reality, like, "I don't think people like that exist, because my model doesn't allow for them", the first feeling I get is delight. I get to surprise you! You get to learn a new thing! Your model is gonna break and flex and fit new things into it!

Maybe I'm overly optimistic about people.

Anxiety is a tendency to interpret ambiguous information in a threat-related manner.

That's rough, buddy.

↑ comment by Duncan Sabien (Deactivated) (Duncan_Sabien) · 2023-02-02T21:28:57.254Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks for this, and thanks for the intro that reminded us that it's intentionally in a reactive rather than analytic frame.  I'd call the experiment successful - this conveys and explores a different level of experience than more typical LW style.

I feel a lot of alienation and isolation, which has resonance with what you describe, but I don't assume it's the same, and I am resisting the urge to give advice or share my reactions.  I'll instead say that you're right, but probably not completely right.  You are alone - enough of an outlier on common social dimensions that the availability heuristic when someone says "everyone" or "nobody" does not include you.  And also MOST people (unlike you; typical mind fallacy happens in both directions) don't mean it literally when they say "everyone" or "nobody".  They're not denying your humanity, they're just denying your typicality.  Scott Card's a well-known wierdo, and I can only assume "Nobody does that!" was meant in admiration.

Damn, I failed to avoid giving advice.  Sorry.

I appreciate this essay because I have experienced a (much milder) version of this "not existing". It helps me feel seen in certain ways. I also like that it helps me understand a different kind of perspective, and that it helps me make sense of Duncan's behavior in some of the comment threads. However, I must admit that while I understand intellectually that this is how Duncan experiences things, I myself can't really imagine it; I don't understand it on the gut level. The below response is influenced by this essay and also recent discussions on other posts.

The spectrum

There seems to be a spectrum in terms of how much weight people give their own experiences compared to things other people say.

On the one end, we have people who believe so weakly in their own experiences that if someone asks them "Why didn't you lock the door?", the first instinct is to doubt themselves and ask "Oh no did I forget?", even if they know that they had locked the door and even checked it multiple times. (If they hear someone say people like them don't exist, they conclude "Maybe I don't actually exist?")

On the other end, we have people who so firmly believe in their own experiences that even if multiple people tell them something that contradicts their own experience, they will simply laugh it off as ridiculous. (If they hear someone say people like them don't exist, they think "Of course I exist, therefore they must be wrong.")

People don't necessarily belong exclusively to one group. One may be very opinionated about taste in music, while at the same time sensitive about their food preferences.

The need for both sides

Both are important:

We need to be able to listen to alternate explanations of our own experiences and to be able to accept that other people can have experiences that are different from ours, because our personal experiences are just a very tiny part of all of human experience. We want to be able to learn from and cater to all the different perspectives, not just our own limited perspective.  

Yet, firm belief in our own experiences is useful for ensuring that we don't end up with societal beliefs that are divorced from reality. If everyone is too willing to believe others' words over their own perceptions, if there was no child ready to point out that the emperor is in fact not wearing any clothes, then it seems society would end up with nonsensical beliefs touted by charlatans, beliefs that no one has actually ever personally experienced.

We want, of course, to strike a balance. We want to be able to trust our own experiences: other people's opinions should not be able to negate our own experiences. And yet, we must also be open to the possibility that we are wrong. We should be able to hold both things in our minds at once and weigh them carefully rather than defaulting to one or the other.

It's really hard though (for me, at least). In some areas I default far too easily to believing others over myself. And yet in other areas, I find myself slow to update when I hear about experiences that don't match mine. There's no vocabulary or concept in my world to describe their experiences, so it gets rounded off to something that matches my world without me realizing it. I can't tell that I'm doing it until someone explains it to be in a way I can understand. (And sometimes I get the sense that people on the "own perspective" end are simply incapable of realizing that people can have experiences that are different from theirs.) 

Working with people from different parts of the spectrum

Some discussions I have with people feel more collaborative. We both believe the other has something useful to say. If I am struggling to express my thoughts, they help by rephrasing or suggesting possibilities based on their understanding, until we converge upon a common understanding. They may disagree with me, but they make what feels like a genuine attempt to understand what I am trying to say and see if there is some truth to it. It feels like we are working together to figure out the truth. I think people like that are on the "believing what others say" end of the spectrum.

Some discussions feel less equal. It feels like they are so sure and confident in their own perspective that it is my job as the person with the different perspective to convince them that they are wrong. I have to explain things from their perspective; they won't help me understand or clarify my thoughts. It feels like the burden of shifting both of us towards what is true is almost entirely on me. I am the salesperson, trying to sell them my version of reality. They are the customer, waiting to be convinced. I think it's part of what Frame Control [LW · GW] was talking about?

Talking to people like that can be exhausting, and quickly becomes very frustrating when I am under high stress. Maybe this is because I have such weak belief in my own opinions. In some areas, it feels like there's some kind of mental/emotional cost incurred when I try to express something that is different from what people commonly believe, because a part of myself believes I am wrong and so I have to expend energy to go against both my beliefs and other people's beliefs.  

There are certain conditions, however, where the second type of discussion feels collaborative. Like in the second case, they don't help you express your thoughts, they don't reflect back at you, they poke holes in your argument. And yet, moments later, days later, weeks later, you realize that they are thinking about what you said and that they do actually take into consideration the things you said when they make decisions. If there is equality on a higher level (i.e. there are also conversations where they try to change my mind, and in those cases they are the ones putting in the work of convincing me) and they show that they are listening and willing to change their minds, then it also feels like collaborative discussion, just of a different style. The tricky thing is that I don't think you can tell the difference between the second and third cases immediately, only through repeated interactions.

In other words, sometimes it feels like I'm talking to someone from the "own perspective" end of the spectrum but it turns out that they're more central, it's just that they are conversing in a different style.

A better culture

I'm not sure how true this concept of the spectrum is, but if it were true, is there anything that would help? Here are some ideas based on what I've found helpful:

Help people build trust in their own experiences:

• Stop outright invalidating people's experiences, e.g. "It hurts." "No, it doesn't."; "I hate my baby brother." "No, you don't."
• Take care (sometimes? when you have significant influence over someone?) to distinguish between one's opinions and reality, e.g. "The drink is too sweet for me" instead of "The drink is too sweet". "I think that X, but I may be wrong." (I think it's important for people to learn that "The drink is too sweet" is just someone's opinion, rather than end up thinking that it is other people's responsibility/ to phrase it as an opinion.)
• Teach people to pay attention to their own experiences (needs to be balanced by the concept that we can have blind spots, we may interpret things wrongly etc.), e.g. instead of saying "It is wrong for anyone to touch you in these places", we say "This is your body. If anyone touches you in any way that makes you feel uncomfortable, you can say no etc.")
• Take care to listen to people when they aren't being heard, rather than just dismissing their concerns (e.g. "I'm sure he didn't mean it"), especially when they are people you are close to or you have power over them

Help people see that people's opinions are a reflection of their models rather than an indication of the truth or validity of other people's experiences:

• Take pride in harmless differences, especially if they are things that society typically frowns upon (needs to be countered with respect for society's comfort level with things that are 'weird'): e.g. "People think it's childish, but I like reading children's books!", or "I know people think I have bad taste, but I really like X."
• Celebrate differences in opinions: e.g. one person says "The first one was the best", the other person says "Really? I think the last was the nicest, because X", then the first person responds with "Ah, interesting! I think ..." (or anything genuinely positive)

Create space for individual variations:

• Acknowledge and accommodate differences, e.g. "You can observe first then join in later if you'd prefer."
• Accommodate (on a societal level) the different types of needs (e.g. wheelchair accessibility) and talk about it, so people know about it (e.g. kitchenware for the blind)
• Make it safe for people to express differences e.g. if someone states a different opinion and your response is a "No way! Really?!" and they seem to withdraw or react unexpectedly, make it clear that you are interested in their opinion (e.g. ask a question to learn more) (needs to be genuine)

Help people understand that everyone is different, in ways that we consistently underestimate:

• Share about your experiences (like this essay), or write/share articles/essays about people who experience the world differently (e.g. news articles about difficulties faced by people who have learning disorders) or about typical mind fallacy 
• Things like personality quizzes are perhaps harmful in some ways but they do seem quite successful at encouraging people to talk about their differences?
• Encourage people when they share their opinions and participate in conversations (even if badly), because the best way of learning that everyone is different is by having discussions with people who are different. (note that the needs of all parties should still be considered)

Thank you, Duncan. I've never met you, but you seem very real and very existing to me. I don't quite share the same history as you, I think I got used to defensively ignoring what the world implied about me pretty early, but I am aiming to become a psychotherapist, and attempting to connect with how people actually are, rather than what I think they might be, seems central to my journey. Your post is an inspiration to me.

I also get annoyed at claims like "everybody does X", when I don't do X. However, some time after this post, I read statistical models & the irrelevance of rare exceptions [LW · GW], and found it an interesting counter-perspective:

Yes, the general case is drawn from instances, I’m saying that we shouldn't get caught up in the details unless they really matter. And if there is a clear statistical generalization, the details matter very little.

...

Rare exceptions are irrelevant because almost all models of the real world (not physics) are statistical claims about what’s usually true, not absolute claims about what’s always true. So a rare data point that doesn’t fit is actually *not* a contradiction! Pointing such cases out is just reiterating the tautological fact that statistical models are not absolute, which seems like a total waste of time to me. (Especially if the speaker agrees with the model!)

I’ve noticed this happens more often with careful, intellectually humble thinkers, who often include caveats of the form “But here’s an exception to this strong model I’ve just presented.” I think often they're trying to proactively defend against others pointing out this case. But to me, this is wrongfully falling into the frame that rare exceptions are relevant criticisms or corrections of a statistical model.

So, rather than defending by acknowledging the rare case, I think it’s far better to break the false frame that rare exceptions are counter-examples and pointing them out is a relevant thing that needs to be addressed. Move into the new, correct frame that this is a statistical model - say by asking them if they actually disagree that the suggested pattern fits in the vast majority of cases and thus is statistically true.

...

Finally, I do find rare exceptions relevant when there is a pattern to the exceptions... As an example for this topic, note that in extreme distributions like power law, a “rare exception” that happens at 1% frequency could have 100x intensity compared to the other 99%, and so need to be weighted equally in a model. The generalization of this exception is that the more extreme the distribution, the more rare a rare case has to be to be irrelevant. This generalized exception now improves our model of statistical models.

Though to tie this back into the original post: many of these anecdotes, like the one with the pillow, or the one about Tom Hanks, are in fact not statistical claims where "most people do X" gets rounded to "everybody does X" or "everybody who does X is Y". The exceptions to these statements aren't necessarily rare, or even in the minority. So these claims are far more wrong than Orson Scott Card's "no one does that", which does seem obviously statistically true.

I feel like I'm hearing disappointment from you directed at people who could have done better.

I don't feel that disappointment, and also I don't think they could have done better.

I have experienced something that takes a similar shape -- probably less often than you do, probably less cuttingly toward my own self-image than you experience it -- because I have met a certain category of generalizations often enough to can "I guess I'm nobody, then" as my default reply to them. Sometimes people cringe and sometimes they laugh, depending on the context and how the line is delivered.

Some people can't see some things. To most of the world, good code looks identically esoteric to bad code. To me, a poorly executed sports play looks indistinguishable from a well-executed one. A non-coder could infer the difference between good and bad code by watching an expert read each; I could infer the difference between a good play and a bad one by listening to the crowd's response.

The feelings I hear in this would make sense to me if they came from someone who imagined that others were doing some special favor for everyone else and withholding it from them. That's how the phenomenon can look, from a certain perspective. But the way I model it in my own experiences, others are giving the same treatment to everybody. They're modeling everyone around them in these small, simplistic models, and if the model predicts the subject accurately, it looks like the subject was "really seen". If the subject is larger or more nuanced than the model can hold, the subject seems "ignored".

Maybe your world extends far enough beyond those of observers, in certain directions, that there's a lot of you that they really can't see. To be egalitarian and avoid causing offense, we could tack on an argument about how there are probably nuances to them that you can't see either, but realistically it's rather rude to pretend that those should matter to anyone as that person matters to themself.

If somebody can't grasp the meaning of a function no matter how carefully it's explained to them, if they tell the function that it doesn't exist in the way that it's defined to... Yes, and?

I don't know that I have more useful to say, but, I did appreciate reading this.

I'm reminded of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, an essay on the problems with handling "weird" data inputs that are normal for the people involved.

Oh man, this one hits home. Fantastic.

Edit: I especially like the succinct meme "you don't exist". I hope it takes off.

 I think there are at least two levels where you want change to happen - on an individual level, you want people to stop doing a thing they're doing that hurts you, and on a social level, you want society to be structured so that you and others don't keep having that same/similar experience. 

The second thing is going to be hard, and likely impossible to do completely. But the first thing... responding to this: 

It wouldn't be so bad, if I only heard it fifty times a month.  It wouldn't be so bad, if I didn't hear it from friends, family, teachers, colleagues.  It wouldn't be so bad, if there were breaks sometimes.

I think it would be healthy and good and enable you to be more effective at creating the change you want in society, if you could arrange for there to be some breaks sometimes. I see in the comments that you don't want to solve things on your individual level completely yet because there's a societal problem to solve and you don't want to lose your motivation, and I get that. (EDIT: I realize that I'm projecting/guessing here a bit, which is dangerous if I guess wrong and you feel erased as a result... so I'm going to flag this as a guess and not something I know. But my guess is the something precious you would lose by caring less about these papercuts has to do with a motivation to fix the underlying problem for a broader group of people). But if you are suffering emotional hurt to the extent that it's beyond your ability to cope with and you're responding to people in ways you don't like or retrospectively endorse, then taking some action to dial the papercut/poke-the-wound frequency back a bit among the people you interact with the most is probably called for.

With that said, it seems to me that while it may be hard to fix society, the few trusted and I assume mostly fairly smart people who you interact with most frequently can be guided to avoid this error, by learning the things about you that don't fit into their models of "everyone", and that it would really help if they said "almost all" rather than "all". People in general may have to rely on models and heuristics into which you don't fit, but your close friends and family can learn who you are and how to stop poking your sore spots. This gives you a core group of people who you can go be with when you want a break from society in general, and some time to recharge so you can better reengage with changing that society.

As for fixing society, I said above that it may be impossible to do completely, but if I was trying for most good for the greatest number, my angle of attack would be, make a list of the instances where people are typical-minding you, and order that list based on how uncommon the attribute they're assuming doesn't exist is. Some aspects of your cognition or personality may be genuinely and literally unique, while others that get elided may be shared by 30% of the population that the person you're speaking to at the moment just doesn't have in their social bubble. The things that are least uncommon are both going to be easiest to build a constituency around and get society to adjust to, and have the most people benefit from the change when it happens.

A-ful B-less type guys in the house tonight :)

content warning: I initially tried to avoid the ?inflammation? of ? overconfidence? you ?seem to me? to be describing. but, I'm pretty sure I failed badly. I do not know how to confirm I understood or clearly say how I didn't, so I will just speak. if you are emotive in response to my comment, I would appreciate hearing the emotion; I currently expect it will be angry and hope to have a useful, comfort-calibrated argument, but I don't know what you need. so ...

holy crap I love this post... your rendering of pain created in me feelings that seem to be echos of things I also felt in life, but... of course that feeling is in a funhouse mirror;

I love this post ... because of the horrified way I feel reading it: I feel erased by it in a way I could describe using similar words, and not knowing if the words mean the same thing to you, I feel lost and confused. I want to yell "of course I understand you!" but the urge to do so angers because not only do I not understand whether I understand you and maybe cannot soon, reading this makes me feel you don't understand me and maybe cannot soon, and reading this makes me feel that if only we understood each other it would turn out we never truly misunderstood each other and this was always a confusion between metaphorical and literal language or something. this post is about you, and yet the only thing I can take away about you is that I'm not sure I know what it means, because to claim to know what you're trying to share would be to fail to acknowledge my understanding of the thing you're trying to share.

ugh. like I said, incredible post. sorry I snap at you so easily. I don't like to be told what's in my head, such as by being told that I've been telling you what's in your head when you tell me I've been ...

I don't get it. I don't get it! I don't know what you feel! I hate this! I want to think I understand! I do understand! you don't understand! I don't understand why you don't understand that you do understand that I don't understand! wait no I think that last one lost track of symbols. gah

@_@

I think my approach, to my own personal version of this, is: anytime someone acts like someone like me couldn't exist, that proves they're stupid (and, in some cases, rude), and I get to feel smug and contemptuous of them.  (Whether I show this is a different question.)  That helps.  It's overall somewhat depressing that a lot of people are in fact stupid, but that's something one has to get used to anyway.

Meanwhile, I do have to be in charge of making sure my own needs are met, since I can't trust others to handle that.  (As one example: my tolerance for spiciness is zero, as in "I find black pepper unpleasant" and "sometimes people tell me they can't detect spiciness in food that I find painfully spicy" and "on a few occasions at a restaurant, I've asked to confirm that a dish has zero spiciness, and found they were wrong about it".  For that reason and others, I carry Meal Squares with me approximately everywhere, so I'm prepared.)  On the plus side, I do consider it admirable / a virtue to have this kind of independence, so my brain rewards cultivating and exercising it.

Reading this was a curious experience. While my memory is abysmal, rather than eidetic, even I vaguely remember hearing relatives say dumb stuff to me as a kid, e.g. "you'll change your mind about X when you're older", and being frustrated for many reasons: they thought they knew me better than I did myself (and turned out to be wrong about it; I never changed my mind about X), they made bad arguments from their supposed authority of being older than me, etc.

And I have definitely experienced complaining about absolute statements like "everyone does X". But I don't think I cared that they didn't include my opinion, I just didn't like that they made a wrong statement, which would've been easy to correct with some amount of hedging.

And I certainly detest the style of parenting that says "you're not feeling X". There's even a technical term for it, called "emotional invalidation".

---

Some other sections of this experiential essay I can't relate to at all, especially the desire that it's somehow important that random people perceive me accurately. I don't understand why that would be something to care about in the first place. But even if it was, it doesn't seem like an attainable desire, either. Is there even a single person on this planet who is perceived accurately by everyone else? Is this even something human brains are capable of in the first place?

And even if it were somehow possible to convey language accurate enough to never mischaracterize anyone, the amount of hedging required would presumably make communication impossible. (Consider the already absurd word counts of the average LW essay and comment, including this one.)

When I read the section about the guru talking about desires, I thought, aha, this must have been the point of this essay. That the author realized that their idiosyncratic desire (to not be rounded off; or whatever the sufficiently accurate version of this statement would be) is painful and unsatisfiable, but that desires can't be manipulated away. That would've made sense to me. But if the guru is wrong, why *didn't* the author manipulate this desire away? What's the alternative? (EDIT: Having read more of this huge comment thread, it did contain somewhat satisfying answers to that point.)

Finally, I read this post after the whole LW moderation situation. I now can't help but think that there was no possible way for that to have ever had a satisfying outcome for all involved.

I have given you an adequate explanation.  If you were the kind of person who was good at math, my explanation would have been sufficient, and you would now understand.  You still do not understand.  Therefore...?

I felt this; I still wonder if not-prioritizing clarity (or even intentionally-being-unclear) is a useful filter for maths/logic ability, outside the costs felt by others.

My most recent published blog post had in the 2nd paragraph "I bet there’s nobody reading this who has never used a phrase like..." and this article made me think it would be kind to change it.

Then I searched your facebook posts and you have indeed used the phrase, so in this case at least you aren't nobody. But I'm still changing the post.

(The phrase is "part of me", which if any of my friends were to somehow have never once used I wouldn't have been surprised to discover it you.)

I’m new to this community, so I don’t know why you have DEACTIVATED in front of your name. I’m sad that you do, though, because maybe it means that you have given up on this community. This post is so painfully lonely. I’m sorry if you didn’t find what you needed here. You have touched me with the loneliness in your writing. I also value other posts that you have made and would welcome hearing more of your thoughts. Maybe, you won’t see this message, but I hope that, if you still have friends in this community, they are checking up on you.

Wow, this hit home in a way I wasn't expecting. I ... don't know what else to say. Thanks for writing this up, seriously. 

I don't know if this helps at all, but I believe that a large number of people sometimes feel like they are "not part of everyone" and it makes them feel bad. My main piece of evidence for this is that saying "Oh, no one has asked for that before" or "I didn't think anyone would do that" is a tactic used by people who know they have messed something up to try and make the victim of their mess up feel like they are responsible for it. Such a tactic could only work in a world where a significant number of people felt an anxiety about being "not part of everyone".

I think the Monty Python example is particularly informative. Lots of people actually dislike Monty Python. In my mental model their are two types of person who claim to like Monty Python; people who actually do like it and people who feel like saying they like it fits them into a particular group (something like simulacra levels)*. Someone from the former category might find it a shame that they can't enjoy MP with you, but someone in the latter category has a much bigger problem - by being honest about your python dislike you have made their attempt at social camouflage backfire. If they say they like python and you say you don't then on that axis (which they have already identified as important) only one of you can be a central member of the group, so it is essential to minimise the fallout from the failed signalling tactic by putting you squarely in the "other" box. I am sure it hurts, but if it helps at all remember that the person who said it probably knows exactly how these things feel and was trying to avoid it themselves. 

* At university I was in a board game society. The level of self-reported passion for Lovecraft stuff was insane, and would arise without any context. The board game society obviously can't all be into football, because that is what the mainstream people are into. So they make Lovecraft the new football. It sounds like you were in a place where they were making Monty Python the new football.

I have given you an adequate explanation. If you were the kind of person who was good at math, my explanation would have been sufficient, and you would now understand. You still do not understand. Therefore...?

By the way, I think this is a common failure mode of amateur tutors/teachers trying to explain a novel concept to a student. Part of what you need to communicate is "how complicated the thing you need to learn is".

So sometimes you need to say "this thing I'm telling you is a bit complex, so this is going to take a while to explain", so the student shifts gears and isn't immediately trying to figure out the "trick". If you skip that intro, and the student doesn't understand what you're saying, their default assumption will be "I must have missed the trick" when you want them to think "this is complicated, I should try different permutations of that concept".

(And sometimes the opposite it true, the student did miss a trick, and is now trying to construct a completely novel concept in their head, and you need to tell them "no, this is actually simple, you've done other versions of this before, don't overthink it".)

One of the reasons I am a stricler for possibility is that I have found it more productive to think that if a situation or a human type is not logically inconsistent it probably rather exists rather than not exists. Even if it does not yet exists thinking as if it does makes you already to have accomodiated the possibility.

If you do this by each subtype it gets combinatorily explosive. In order not to do this kind of thing via exhaustion you identify critical points where things would flip/break when certain conditions are hit. In coding it means when you divide you always give attention to what happens with zero division. Even if you identify that a certain combination of ethnicity, neurotype and sexual orientation gums up some social system, you might not have a solution, but atleast know there is a gap there. The same reason why you know application area of newtons laws and where you need to switch to relativity or something else, you define your apporach border so you know to throw it out when overstepping. Yes, this means you will always deliberately disinclude someone. But arguably it is better to knowingly disinclude than unknowingly disinclude.

The post is written from the point of view of not being seen. I would like to point out that this comes pretty systematicallly coupled with the other not being able to see. Doing complex educative or interpretative labour for others on the spot is often not practical. So the solution I tend to apply when I perceive that no easy correct interpretation is within reach I give the plainest, most uninterpreted, signals/hints to what feels authentic to my pov. Should the situation repeat enough and the seer be interested in working to seeing more there is basis for things to develop.

One of the hard-to-state benefits of neurotype peer support is that persons have some context where they do exist. Which can function as the 

It wouldn't be so bad, if there were breaks sometimes.

Why let the lack of imagination of others impinge upon your happiness?

I am very glad that you wrote this post, and just want you to know that You Are Not Alone. Hearing over and over again that you are Not Normal, do not fit within any of the boxes, and eventually you start believing it yourself. So thank you for this reminder that It Is Okay To Be Weird.

This does seem like a lot of words to say "sometimes when people say 'everyone', they really mean 'a typical person in my mental model'". There isn't a person who conforms to everyone's mental model in this way. If there was, then they just failed to conform to mine.

It just doesn't seem to me to be a big thing to get upset about. I've known since about the age of six that I didn't conform to most people's expectations of how most people behave. It would be a much stranger world if most people did conform in such a way!

Unrelated to the post, but I'm not seeing the usual agree/disagree buttons on this post. Is there a reason for that?

Edit: looks like it's been fixed

At times I want to be different, I like being different from others but I also want others to accept and understand me while been different. It’s quite sad whereby at times I voice my opinions or act otherwise the way people expect me to, and then their response is to ostracize you or try to make you feel inferior for not being the same as them. After reading, I thought of your post as pathetic. The kind of pathetic whereby you realize that there are certain people who are unable to grasp your point of view and are unwilling to. Then you realize that it’s not just certain people, but nearly everyone around you. That sadness when you realize that there’s also a high probability that you’ll never meet someone who doesn’t expect you to act like society’s paradigm of an ideal person, and then you think “I feel so pathetic”. That’s the pathetic I’m talking about. I relate to your post so much and also learnt that irrespective of me being a teenager, I’m very much able to perceive your perspective.

Your text almost had me crying.

You do exist. You do matter. An account of humanity where you have been conveniently struck out of it is crucially incomplete. An approach that excludes you has lost not just something, but someone.

I do not think you are as alone as this feels. I think many of us get excluded, for many different ways of not fitting the norm. Silently, subtly disappeared.

There is an increasing appreciation that neurodiversity is a richness and opportunity, that one size fits all approaches make us lose people, valuable people with rights and feelings and skills who we need. And a lot of the groups working on inclusion and diversity on topics like racism, sexism, LGBT, disability etc. are increasingly including it as part of an intersectional approach, and would not protest the parallel. They are talking about needing more diverse ways of teaching content, or making stuff accessible, or reflecting how we speak about people and who that excludes, or considering radically different needs as legitimate. I'm involved with people who do, and I think we are beginning to make some headway. I've been increasingly encountering the results in activism and academia, people asking questions they did not before, making accommodations for problems where before they were saying these problems were imaginary, or faults one should just push through.

And this is a side note, but the way you and I were taught math is fundamentally broken, with painful consequences. Math is an incredible and beautiful tool, and the way it is taught systematically screens out the people who would love it the most. I grew up thinking I sucked at math, due to getting bullshit explanations like this, compounded by sexist prejudice that messed with my head, and the anxieties and choices resulting from that mean I now lack math skills I could really use for my work, and simply a connection to a field where, everytime I have seen it done properly, I have been mesmerised by its clarity and beauty and strength. I've seen logic taught the same broken way, and have been fighting that as hard as I can. I am fucking sick of people saying things are obvious when they are not. My girlfriend works in theoretical physics, and has had a similar issue of feeling stupid for not understanding the explanations, and slowly spelling out this confusion, and realising that the explanations are objectively faulty, and that trying to spell that out addresses fundamental problems that need to be targeted; and that if you explain stuff with that in mind, suddenly, a lot of students that were breaking down and thinking this field isn't for them can suddenly thrive.

Point is, this is wrong, and it can change, and it should change, and your pain is fucking valid.

So most of these are things I'd try not to say myself (and would mostly succeed). But there are some where I can imagine versions that seem to me bad, and versions that seem to me innocuous.

And who does the world want to get back the most? Who's the one person that everyone in America wants to save? Tom Hanks. Everyone will pull for Tom Hanks. Nobody wants to see him die. We all love him too much.

This is the bad version. But the actual quote was

And who does the world want to get back the most? Who does America want to save? Tom Hanks. We don't want to see him die. We like him too much.

Which seems fairly innocuous to me. There's no "everyone" here. I feel okay with saying "America" likes or wants something in a way that I'm not comfortable with "everyone in America".

(Tom Hanks is probably not the one person the world wants to get back the most, but that seems like it's probably not the issue here.)

(Seems maybe worth noting here that your memory was pretty close, up until the bit that seems to me most important. But if the actual version actually isn't any better according to you, then less worth noting.)

nobody's ever requested that before

Assuming true, then as written this seems innocuous to me. The bad version is if said with a tone of voice conveying "you weirdo" or something.

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable ... The details of people's accounts cannot be trusted.

This seems basically true to me. The innocuous version is if it's talking about people-in-general. Like, "the courts don't depend much on eyewitness testimony because..."

The bad version is if it's about a specific person, "we can't trust what Dave says he saw because...". In that case I'd want to include something like "...and afaik we have no reason to expect that Dave is an exception", and then it becomes innocuous again.

Do the innocuous-to-me versions still seem painful to you? Do they seem less painful, at least? I can totally imagine something like... "the things that seem innocuous-to-me are painful-to-you, but mostly because you've been sensitized by a barrage of the things that do seem bad-to-me. Without those, the innocuous-to-me things wouldn't be painful-to-you".

I can also imagine that they're just as painful as the versions that seem bad-to-me, but if so I expect there's something that didn't come across to me.

Jeez... this was, somehow relatable.

I wonder if autistics in general tend to experience this.

The LessWrong Review [? · GW] runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2024. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.

Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?

Even though a lot of these things have never happened to me, I related to this post in a very painful way.

I have a deep-seated fear of standing out in a negative way. And it's not an inborn, instinctive fear; it's a fear born of painful experience. I always seem to be the odd one out. I always seem to be the only one who didn't understand something and embarrassed myself as a result. I always seem to be the only one who wants to do something in the only way that's ever seemed normal for me. And yes, I am often that person who asks a question no one's ever asked, or does a thing no one's ever done, in a way that just makes things awkward and embarrassing rather than interesting or exciting. I always end up being memorable in a bad way.

(I've also once or twice been accused of being a troll, for asking a completely sincere question that was apparently considered so stupid that it couldn't possibly be sincere. That really hurts. Because they're not only saying I don't exist, they're also saying that the only way I could exist is if I were incredibly, unbelievably stupid.)

I'm sorry you keep getting cut in the same place over and over.

This was mildly painful to read, probably because I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't think I've ever paid attention to it the way you have - I don't socialize much and I tend not to pay much attention to other people even when I do - but my "family" do this to me all the time, attempting to read my mind, being sure they're right, and completely missing the mark in such blatantly obvious ways that it's gradually (along with many, many other reasons) made me just mostly stop talking to them. So to some extent, albeit not a perfect one, I think I know how you feel.

Browsing through the comments section it seems that everyone relates to this pretty well. I do, too. But I'm wondering if this applies mostly to a LW subculture, or is it a Barnum/Forer effect where every neurotypical person would also relate to?