04-13-2014, 10:37 AM
(04-13-2014, 05:31 AM)crazysam23 Wrote: Well, there's two issues: 1) Even if he is autistic, that doesn't take him off the hook, in terms of bad logic or flip-flopping his opinions. Many autistic people are very bright...sort of (but not really) that idiot savant idea. Their sense of logic may be off, but most autistic people are still fairly smart (even if they're not always good at logical argument). They don't tend to be dumbasses; they're just not good at saying what they mean. 2) I wouldn't assume one way or the other that's autistic. If he is, well...whatever. If he isn't, then you would kind of be an ass for assuming he was. Just treat him the same way you would treat anyone else. When he says dumb things, react the way you would towards others. When he says smart things, same thing.1) Autism is a really broad spectruum of conditions, though. Even if most autistics are fairly smart, it doesn't mean that this guy's annoyingness is affected by his autism
Anyway...that's how I see it...hrug:
2) Yeah, if you don't have good reason to assume he is autistic, treat him as you would if he wasn't. Most likely he'd like other people to treat him normally if asked (although that is obviously not guaranteed), so you're doing just that. However, you should probably show some discretion now that you have some justified suspicion. If [the outragieousness of saying something to an autistic guy] x [likelihood of him being autistic] is too high, then maybe don't say it.
Rereading your post, it doesn't seem like you have a lot of cause for believeing he has autism, so it shouldn't affect you that much yet. Maybe just try to be a nice person in general, independently of whether people have mental conditions?
(04-13-2014, 07:02 AM)crazysam23 Wrote: He may just have a huge problem admitting he was wrong.Which would make a lot of sense for some subtypes of autism, I suspect.