Aspie Quiz

anotherusername

Ok, I successfully managed to convince the broken site to let me get this far...

ben_lubar

@xaade said in Aspie Quiz:

you'll see a whumlraly at rfroomlrohu

I see a whumlraly, but I'm not at rfroomlrohu dammit what the fuck did I just say

Jaloopa

@boomzilla dunno. I'm also terrible at recognising actors. It drives my wife mad.

: what's this guy been in? I'm sure I've seen him before

: {reels off a list of films I haven't seen}

: {looks it up on IMDB}. Oh, wait. He looks a bit like this other guy. That's probably why I was getting confused

xaade

You ever notice when you're starting to fall asleep, and your brain turns off sound?

You'll know because it's not a sense of quiet, it's a sense of void.

It's hard to catch. You have to be going in and out of sleep.

That happens halfway when I'm listening to people talk.

boomzilla

@ben_lubar said in Aspie Quiz:

@xaade said in Aspie Quiz:

you'll see a whumlraly at rfroomlrohu

I see a whumlraly, but I'm not at rfroomlrohu dammit what the fuck did I just say

I guess a topic about an aspie quiz is as good a place as any for logjam posts.

Jaloopa

@Yamikuronue said in Aspie Quiz:

Haha, that sounds more like ADD*

Only with directions. It's like I just assume I'll be able to work it out once I've found the first part of the instructions, then I find it almost impossible to keep listening.

A list of instructions on how to put a flatpack desk together, though, no problem

ben_lubar

@boomzilla said in Aspie Quiz:

aspie quiz

I filled out the first page and it presented me with about 5000 radio buttons and a similar number of unicode replacement characters and then I closed the tab.

masonwheeler

@Jaloopa said in Aspie Quiz:

I have trouble because people start with "take a left at {landmark}", and I'm like "yeah, I know that. I can probably stop listening at this point, surely it will all be that simple. This person's voice sounds a bit like that actor, who am I thinking of?..."

You know what drives me up the wall?

When I ask someone for an address, and they start giving me directions. And then I say "I have a GPS. What's the address?" And then they continue giving me freaking directions!

ben_lubar

@masonwheeler said in Aspie Quiz:

You know what drives me up the wall?

When someone tells me that I should really learn to drive so I can get around to all the important places I need to go like my basement.

Jaloopa

@masonwheeler it's blocked at work, but there's a relevant XKCD for that. I think it ends with him saying "I just remembered, I wanted to send you a birthday card. Can you tell me your address?"

ben_lubar

@Jaloopa

Jaloopa

@ben_lubar that's the one

djls45

link for my results:

Auto-render for link to my results:

Why are they different?

Yamikuronue

@djls45 said in Aspie Quiz:

Why are they different?

I think NodeBB ignores the long list of parameters at the end of the link. If you paste it into an img tag, it works fine.

boomzilla

@ben_lubar said in Aspie Quiz:

When someone tells me that I should really learn to drive so I can get around to all the important places I need to go like my basement.

Some day someone else from your residence is going to have to go to the store and stuff.

xaade

@djls45

Because against the general population, you're mostly neurotypical.

Against tdwtf though... you're so typical, you're off the charts.

xaade

@ben_lubar Did you accidentally something?

remi

@masonwheeler said in Aspie Quiz:

From the quiz:

Do you have difficulties judging distances, height, depth or speed?

Seems to me that one says more about your need to see an optometrist than what they're supposed to be testing for. :P

That comment is, like quite a lot of the other questions, what makes in my experience Aspie difficult to explain to other people. Once you've given a few generic ideas, you start reeling off specific "weirdness" examples (more or less the kind in the quiz), and most people tell you that they also do this one, or that everyone has moment where they do that one, or that it's rather a question of vision, hearing, age (like the remark from @The_Quiet_One) or whatever.

(to be clear, I know you're joking here... I'm just using that to make a more general point)

What is apparently difficult to grasp is that there is no single clear list of symptoms, and that at the end of the day the decision to classify someone as Aspie or not is a purely arbitrary threshold (kind of "if you score more than X, you are in, but X-1, nope" -- it's actually more complicated and that's why you need a professional for a true assessment, but that's still the idea).

Polygeekery

@Yamikuronue said in Aspie Quiz:

@masonwheeler I actually answered a strong yes to that one. I can't really judge distances well*, and I can't construct an accurate 3D model of the world in my head, especially if I need to rotate it. That's because I have some degree of dyscalculia, though. Which is technically another way of being non-neurotypical, in that I have a brain disfunction

* I can SEE distances fine, but I can't tell you how far that is. How far away is the car in front of me? I can gut feel it, and say I need to apply breaks, but if you ask me for a number it'll be wrong.

I have always been great with distances, sizes, depths, etc. Either shooting and construction helped me learn the skill, or maybe that is why I was skilled at them. I can easily tell from a distance differences in elevation and quantify them, etc. Back when I was running a dozer or excavator, I was usually pretty close to dead on with my rough passes. With shooting, I am usually within a few percent of a laser rangefinder with my guesses.

cvi

@masonwheeler said in Aspie Quiz:

When I ask someone for an address, and they start giving me directions. And then I say "I have a GPS. What's the address?" And then they continue giving me freaking directions!

I've been really baffled by people who ask me for directions and show me their smart-phone with the maps application open and their destination keyed in. What exactly are you expecting me to tell you that would improve the situation?

Either way, I suck at giving directions. I can get myself to places no problem via some weird vague sense of direction, but if I need to explain that to other people, it becomes a mess. I suck at distances, plus I don't know (with very few exceptions) street names or names of landmarks.

Yamikuronue

@cvi said in Aspie Quiz:

What exactly are you expecting me to tell you that would improve the situation?

Sometimes google maps is wrong, it doesn't know about road closures or construction or traffic patterns perfectly. So sometimes there's a better way to go.

masonwheeler

@masonwheeler said in Aspie Quiz:

Apparently this is me:

It seems like most of the neurotypical posts on here look a lot like mine, mostly smooth but with a little spike at the Communication axis.

I wonder whether that means their test needs better calibration, or if it says something about a group of individuals who choose to communicate socially on a Web forum for developers?

remi

@cvi said in Aspie Quiz:

I've been really baffled by people who ask me for directions and show me their smart-phone with the maps application open and their destination keyed in. What exactly are you expecting me to tell you that would improve the situation?

Some people are really bad at mapping (ha!) the map to their surroundings. They might know very well how to read a map (for e.g. plotting a route or analysing the landscape and such), but are unable to relate that road on the map with that road in front of them...

I'm like you, I have no clue what to do when someone like that asks me for directions. I generally point them in the right one, but I'm pretty sure they must get lost again at the first corner, so...?

Yamikuronue

@masonwheeler said in Aspie Quiz:

if it says something about a group of individuals who choose to communicate socially on a Web forum for developers?

I suspect it means "you know how to talk to aspies because you work in tech"

xaade

@remi That's why it's called a spectrum.

The real measurement is whether it impairs you to the point where life is uncomfortable, then whether it impairs you to the point where life is impossible.

Outside of that, it's good to know where you are challenged, because that helps find adjustments you can make.

cvi

@Yamikuronue said in Aspie Quiz:

Sometimes google maps is wrong, it doesn't know about road closures or construction or traffic patterns perfectly. So sometimes there's a better way to go.

Both times this occurred involved walking to the destination (and, FWIW, were in places where Google Maps shows road closures and such in a very timely manner). But, OK, I can accept your argument. It'd just never get into my mind to ask for directions with a map in my hand, and a distance of less than a few hundred meters.

anotherusername

@Yamikuronue said in Aspie Quiz:

@djls45 said in Aspie Quiz:

Why are they different?

I think NodeBB ignores the long list of parameters at the end of the link. If you paste it into an img tag, it works fine.

No... it's helpfully replacing all the & in the image URL with &.

masonwheeler

@Yamikuronue said in Aspie Quiz:

I suspect it means "you know how to talk to aspies because you work in tech"

Most of the people I've worked with as a developer are actually surprisingly normal people who are just into geeky stuff.

The exception would be this one guy who is either legitimately schizophrenic or a troll who really enjoys playing up the image, (it's hard to tell sometimes,) but everyone puts up with because he has half the codebase in his head and he understands the tricky parts better than anyone.

Yamikuronue

@masonwheeler Really? I've definitely run into a couple people on the far end of the spectrum.

cvi

@remi said in Aspie Quiz:

Some people are really bad at mapping (ha!) the map to their surroundings.

Yeah, but with interactive maps and GPS, you just find the mapping between meat space and map space by just walking for a couple of 10s of meters in one or two directions?

@remi said in Aspie Quiz:

I generally point them in the right one, but I'm pretty sure they must get lost again at the first corner, so...?

The other problem is when I (try to) give somebody directions and afterwards remember some error or something that I missed which will surely lead them to the wrong place.

flabdablet

@xaade said in Aspie Quiz:

You ever notice when you're starting to fall asleep, and your brain turns off sound?

That only ever happens to me when I'm in the car. If I'm driving at the time, I've learned to interpret that as PULL OVER AND NAP NOW, DICKHEAD.

remi

@xaade said in Aspie Quiz:

@remi That's why it's called a spectrum.

I know, but the usual perception of it, from people that don't know much about it, is that they can envisage easily some more benign form of the "full" autism but they have trouble imagining the point where it starts to become a problem. As you quite rightly say:

The real measurement is whether it impairs you to the point where life is uncomfortable, then whether it impairs you to the point where life is impossible.

The problem with that definition (which I fully agree on) is the same as with many psychological things, what is uncomfortable for one is not for another. Or rather, what one describes as being uncomfortable and which is normal for another is difficult to accept as being uncomfortable... (does that still makes any sense?)

Still, the "spectrum" notion does make it easier to explain, yes, as you can easily point out to the end point and work back from there. I do find that it easier to explain when combining the spectrum idea with a statement from the start that it's a question of where the threshold is set and that it's an arbitrary decision that is going to vary from person to person.

boomzilla

@masonwheeler said in Aspie Quiz:

I wonder whether that means their test needs better calibration, or if it says something about a group of individuals who choose to communicate socially on a Web forum for developers?

So many questions I answered with a one! Like..."Yeah, I've done that at least enough to not want to say 'never.'"

remi

@cvi said in Aspie Quiz:

@remi said in Aspie Quiz:

Some people are really bad at mapping (ha!) the map to their surroundings.

Yeah, but with interactive maps and GPS, you just find the mapping between meat space and map space by just walking for a couple of 10s of meters in one or two directions?

I guess that's why it's so difficult for you and me to understand... my experience is that no, walking 10m and seeing the dot move does not help... Sometimes seeing the map rotate in front of them as they turn around might help, but even that... as I said, the representation and reality simply don't map!

(bonus points for the first non-A reference here...)

@remi said in Aspie Quiz:

I generally point them in the right one, but I'm pretty sure they must get lost again at the first corner, so...?

The other problem is when I (try to) give somebody directions and afterwards remember some error or something that I missed which will surely lead them to the wrong place.

Oh yeah, I do that quite often! I even sometimes wonder if I should run around and find them... I think that's because while I may know the area well enough, their destination is usually not one I go to, so I have to imagine a new route, and blend it with what I know of my usual routes, and try to remember to keep it simple 'cause they won't remember much anyway, and not spend 30s staring in the void before answering, and, and...

anotherusername

@cvi said in Aspie Quiz:

@Yamikuronue said in Aspie Quiz:

Sometimes google maps is wrong, it doesn't know about road closures or construction or traffic patterns perfectly. So sometimes there's a better way to go.

Both times this occurred involved walking to the destination (and, FWIW, were in places where Google Maps shows road closures and such in a very timely manner). But, OK, I can accept your argument. It'd just never get into my mind to ask for directions with a map in my hand, and a distance of less than a few hundred meters.

Walking directions? That's different. It's pretty likely that Google Maps doesn't know the best way to walk from point A to point B, unless you're going to be walking entirely on streets or paths that it knows about.

flabdablet

I'm apparently mostly neurotypical. However, as a disciple of Tufte I am quite pleased to find that NodeBB is refusing to upload my spiderweb chart.

Seriously, ? I'm not sure what kind of talent it takes to design a presentation format that so comprehensively mangles a multidimensional qualitative score into something with all the worst features of pie charts and inappropriately interpolated line charts.

What is the line between the "Perception" and "Talent" scores supposed to represent? How is it different from the line between the two "Talent" scores, or the two "Social" scores? Why is Neurotypical Talent diametrically opposed to Neurodiverse Social? What information is conveyed by the blue-green-red gradient? FORSOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH!!1!

xaade

@flabdablet I'm betting it ignores the "sometimes" answers, and the distance from the center is the score. Therefore, there's no relation between vectors.

Dragoon

0_1475514188446_upload-bb2d7add-908b-4ccf-b5e0-f01841cb0aa8

So I guess I am normal. HA!

Fox

@xaade said in Aspie Quiz:

@Yamikuronue said in Aspie Quiz:

especially if I need to rotate it.

That's what is odd.

I have difficult perceiving depth.

But I have NO difficulty simulating it.

I can take objects and spin them in my head easily. Even from underneath, where there would be a floor in the way.

I'm the same way. I'm shit at actually looking at something and saying "that's about 30 feet away" but i can form a 3D model of the area in my head, and I'm pretty good at directions. My problem is more that I can't relate this model to specific measurements or anything like that.

The_Quiet_One

@xaade said in Aspie Quiz:

@The_Quiet_One

Pretty sure my oddities are not psychosomatic.

I've tried pretty hard to be different.

I'm not saying this about everyone, just certain people. I suspect if, at age 10, I was diagnosed with autism or aspergers, even if it were mild, because I answered a test like this differently than I did today, I'd probably carry that label with me into adulthood and have been a different person today.

I came from a childhood where because I had an imagination and couldn't sit still for 6 hours a day while teachers droned on about stuff I only gave 1.58 shits about, they did diagnose me with ADD. I haven't swallowed an ADD pill since I was in 5th grade, and while I'm disorganized and can sometimes find myself distracted by stuff, I disagree with the notion that every single personality trait that differs from the norm is a disorder that should be medicated. Obviously there are people with more severe ADD symptoms that should, but I'm talking about the more mild cases where some self improvement should manage the issue more appropriately.

Back in the day, I think there were a LOT of mild cases diagnosed which were "solved" with a pill, and I'm worried that, to some extent, there are "mild" cases of autism which are treated the same, and it can be destructive if handled incorrectly. I mean, in a good portion of my grade school I was lead to believe the only thing that can "save" me from a life of constant interruptions and distractions was to take pills, and I was at the mercy of psychiatrists for the rest of my life. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of kids who, due to their more introverted or less social lifestyle, or because they've taken to a hobby which they've become a little more obsessed about than the average kid, they're lead to believe they can't lead a "normal" life because they lie on the spectrum. I think that's an awful thing to say to a child and their parents. Nevermind that the anti-vaxxers seriously think autism is worse than polio, but that's another discussion altogether.

boomzilla

@The_Quiet_One said in Aspie Quiz:

I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of kids who, due to their more introverted or less social lifestyle, or because they've taken to a hobby which they've become a little more obsessed about than the average kid, they're lead to believe they can't lead a "normal" life because they lie on the spectrum.

A year or two ago my daughter took some sort of online quiz and told us that she thought she might be on the spectrum, which my wife and I immediately called bullshit on. She had a friend in 8th grade who was supposedly diagnosed with some kind of autism / Aspberger's like thing, and she was definitely kind of weird.

This girl also declared herself to be a lesbian and so, of course, my daughter said she wasn't sure. Observing her, she's never shown any such tendencies that my wife or I (or our daughter, once she started reflecting on things) could see.

If you think you're weird, you're going to be more weird.

Fox

@flabdablet said in Aspie Quiz:

What is the line between the "Perception" and "Talent" scores supposed to represent?

Nothing, just like the line between "Intel" and "Str"

@flabdablet said in Aspie Quiz:

How is it different from the line between the two "Talent" scores, or the two "Social" scores?

It isn't because they're both worthless.

@flabdablet said in Aspie Quiz:

Why is Neurotypical Talent diametrically opposed to Neurodiverse Social?

It's not - they're related across the vertical midline, not directly across the center of the whole graph.

@flabdablet said in Aspie Quiz:

What information is conveyed by the blue-green-red gradient?

A metaphorical "good/bad" binary comparison which seems to counter the inclusive terminology such as "neurodiverse" that's meant to say that neurodiversity is not necessarily a bad thing, just a different thing. Good job, quiz people. Still subtly saying that being neurotypical is good (blue) and being neurodiverse is bad (red).

Fox

@xaade said in Aspie Quiz:

@flabdablet I'm betting it ignores the "sometimes" answers, and the distance from the center is the score. Therefore, there's no relation between vectors.

It doesn't ignore "sometimes", it just scores them differently than "often" and "never" answers. If you read the .pdf it gives a more detailed breakdown.

masonwheeler

I saw a presentation a few weeks ago of some very interesting technology.

The underlying idea is called TCMS: trans-cranial magnetic stimulation. Most people here probably have never heard of that, but are intelligent enough to figure out what it is just from the name, because it's exactly what it sounds like: you stick a really powerful electromagnet up against someone's skull, over a specific portion of the brain, and you turn it on so that it will stimulate brainwave activity. It's been in use for decades and is fairly well-understood in the medical community, and is generally known to be a safe treatment, though it does cause seizures in a very small percentage of patients. But it also creates very real, well-documented effects, such as causing the behavior of autistic children to revert to neurotypical. For about five minutes.

Anyway, the guy who was presenting this talked about how these researchers in California have worked on refining the technology. First, they use an EEG to scan a person and determine their brainwave type. (Yeah, distinctive human brainwave types are a thing, sort of like eye colors or blood types.) They match it against a database of neurotypical brainwave patterns, then take the difference between the two waves. What's left is "problem" brainwaves.

They have a computer controlling TCMS electrodes, and they feed it a precise inverse of the problem brainwaves to try to cancel them out--the presenter used the analogy of noise-canceling headphones--so that what's left is the optimum neurotypical pattern for your brainwave type.

Apparently it's had some really surprising amounts of success at training brains to work on a more optimal pattern, and actually working long-term. They've used the technology to help autistic kids come out of their shell and relate to their family and others around them normally, they've used it to help soldiers with PTSD get back to normal, (apparently it can smooth out the brain waves responsible for "hypervigilance," the medical term for the paranoia typical of PTSD,) and they even helped this one Japanese car accident victim come out of a coma that the doctors said was terminal.

It's very interesting stuff, and worth watching out for in the future, IMO.