>This is great, now we are going to have a bunch of autistic developers walking around the office clicking like dolphins while we're trying to concentrate on work. When we ask them politely to stop whilst in our vicinity we'll be screamed at as being "ableist" for preventing their triangulation of the location of the coffee machine. Great for everyone's work productivity.

As an AuDHD person, and saying this with utmost sincerety and politeness:

Fuck you, you ableist piece of shit, for talking this shit about autistic people.

You really didn't have to go out of the way to make up a non-existent scenario to produce this word vomit about autistic people, but you did, so here's your due reward for the effort.

The number of times you've tried asking someone to stop doing anything and being called ableist in response is precisely zero, isn't it?

The entire ableist thing is, first and foremost, about expecting others to be able to do something just because you can, and it has nothing to do with the scenario you made up.

Bigotry towards others on account of their disabilities (which autism may or may not be) is the other side of ableism, of which your comment is a shining example.

We understand being sensitive to noises others make far more than you'll ever imagine.

In case we do something that upsets others, we are thankful for being politely told to stop, in clear words, because that spares us the effort of figuring that out from hints and unspoken protocols. We're glad to stop doing something that disturbs others, as anyone who's not a sociopath would, so — again, sincerely and politely — fuck you for assuming we wouldn't (and please, stop doing that if you can help it).

That's not to mention that the entire reasons people learned to do echolocation is because blind people figured it out. To help themselves navigate a world built for sighted people while needing less accommodation for their disability.

Not to annoy some piece of shit that preemptively has an issue with the entire concept (before even having any experience with it, and just assuming they'll be annoyed by it).

Thank goodness indeed for 100% WFH that spares us from having to interact with people who share your mindset.

Saying this without the need to hide behind a username. I've had enough, and I will stand by my words.

—Sincerely, Roman Kogan, PhD

https://romankogan.net/adhd

https://romankogan.net/math

____

PS: dang, if you allow the bigotry in the comment I'm responding to because it doesn't have the word "fuck", but have an issue with my response to it — consider what it says about you and HackerNews.

Not the first time I see bigotry getting a pass here.

That person's comment is a personal attack on autistic people that is actively harmful.

It equates autistic with sociopathic behavior. It adds zero to the discussion.

My response to it is, at the very least, educational. It explains what's wrong with that view, and what one can actually expect of autistic people.

One can learn from it, just as one can learn from my previous comment that explains the difference between echolocation and localizing a sound source in 3D by triangulation/binaural hearing.

I also allow myself to tell the person who claims I'm sociopathic because I'm autistic, and who says they're happy to not share office space with me because I'm autistic to go fuck themselves for saying that.

As I would to anyone who's a bigot to others on the basis of who they are. I'm not rewarding such behavior with polite verbiage.

I do this with intent. I do want to see which side this community will take:

— clear bigotry (in somewhat polite words)

— informative objection to it from the target of such bigotry

My experience suggests that bigots that add nothing to the discussion are preferred here far more often than people offering insights to learn from — and that form is valued over substance with near-certainty.

The best I expect is that both comments will be removed, even though mine contains information that plenty of people (like the person I'm responding to) could clearly benefit from learning.

Because not only I'm supposed to tolerate while being insulted and attacked for autistic, I'm also expected to be exceedingly polite while standing up for myself (and other autistic people), lest I offend the fragile sensibilities of the bigot.

It's not that kind of community, see. We're all polite here, and want everyone to feel safe expressing their views (including uncalled bigotry unrelated to discussion, of course — that's the Hacker spirit!).

Would be happy to be proven wrong on this account, for once.

_____

P.S.: re: we'll be screamed at as being "ableist" for preventing their triangulation of the location of the coffee machine

My favorite part is that the bigot still didn't get the difference between triangulation (locating a sound source by analyzing the signal from several sensors) and echolocation (locating objects by probing them with sound, and analyzing the signal that comes back).

In response to a comment which explains that difference.

Surgeon General warns: bigotry may be harmful for your reasoning skills.