Reflections from the Spectrum

Here’s a thoughtful email from an anonymous reader on the autism spectrum. Reprinted with his permission.

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Hi Bryan! I was reading Don’t Be a Feminist, and was reminded of a few personal things and struggles. I’m sharing below.

So I've always been a pretty sensitive person and neurotic kid: I've also been smart and knowledgeable, and despite not knowing the term, aware of Social Desirability Bias. So I always thought the world looked horribly broken. But I also applied the principle of SDB to my interactions with others: I would have horrible self esteem, and think that when other people said things like "I love you" or "You're such a good friend!" that they were just being nice, and not really meaning it. My autism meant that occasionally I would upset people for reasons I didn’t understand, which flared my anxiety about myself. Everyone was just supposed to say pleasant things when I asked them about their opinion about me, and if someone said nice things about me I would come up with all the terms for biases, or why I was secretly terrible. I was convinced that people were mistaken about my positive qualities, and that I needed to prove myself. So I worked too hard and eventually burned out.

Despite later going to therapy for two years (which helped! just not 100%), it was really really hard to start liking myself, and believing others did the same. My brain would come up with reasons for why even if they DID like me, it was irrational for them to do so because of opportunity cost, and that they should really go somewhere else, that I was scamming them by just being around them. Traditional therapy techniques helped me with my anxiety, but they never really helped this particular issue, because I hated the idea of "being happy by being anti-truthful." Even when I tried to think about it from an instrumental perspective, my subconscious rejected the idea.

The big breakthrough that other people actually genuinely LIKED me came after I went to an Effective Altruism meetup. Someone heard that I had these feelings and also that I'm a fan of economics, so they brought up "revealed preferences.” If I see someone spend hours and lots of money on movies, I don't think they are mistaken about their enjoyment of movies, so why should I think differently about someone spending their time on me?

Despite knowing about the concept of revealed preferences, it had never occurred to me to apply it to my own life like that. And funnily enough, this insight was probably the biggest thing that improved my self esteem: I started to second guess other people's "rational preferences" far less, and I’m probably 10% happier just from this realization alone.

Another big thing that is kinda sensitive to talk about generally:

I've always been pretty utilitarian in my morality, even when I didn't have the word for it: Part of the reason is that I don't really trust intuitions a lot for moral evaluations, which probably partly comes from my autism. My intuitions and emotions were really confusing, and I didn't know how to parse them! So utilitarian reasoning, and looking at consequences of actions rather than one's intentions helped me in daily life a lot more generally. People around me thought that I was a very moral person, and when I followed utilitarian logic in my life (with some extra steps for social games and game theory), people liked me more. If I explained my logic out loud, they thought I was weird and should just "know" what is right or wrong, and so I learned to not talk about it too much.

Of course there are plenty of issues that arise from diehard utilitarian logic, but that's for another time. No, the issue I have had for the longest time is struggling with thoughts about eugenics, and especially coercive eugenics. Since I’ve always been neurotic and sensitive and self-critical to varying degrees, l started worrying from an early age if I were a net good for society. (I have autism, newly diagnosed ADHD, and depressive tendencies). I've also been keenly aware about the role of genetics from a young age, reading about genetics as a kid, and wondered if I were just destined to be a burden.

So from a bizarrely young age, probably as early as being 14, I have had recurrent dark thoughts about whether I was immoral for existing because of my disabilities, and obsession about being a certain productive level. And I kept having really dark uncomfortable thoughts about whether OTHER people, with low IQ, or low character, or just plain old, should die. Or even be murdered. I now know that these thoughts were likely projections of my own suicidal thoughts, that was especially bad as a teen. 

But I didn’t realize that then, and so really struggled with these thoughts. Despite having trouble just trusting my intuitions, I knew on some level that those thoughts and deeds were incredibly bad and immoral. I didn't want to hurt anyone, and felt terrible whenever these thoughts came up, but my brain could for the most part not just dismiss them. So I thought about it from tons of angles.

Some deontological angles, that I didn't find super compelling because I wanted a moral system that encompassed everything in logical predictable ways (until I learned about moral uncertainty from William MacAskill, that seemed to me solid reasoning to respect the strong deontological ideas, and human rights. The idea of moral uncertainty helped me embrace the ideas of natural rights a lot more, and improved my mental health).

I thought about sorta flimsy utilitarian logic, like the risks of such crimes, and the damage that would do to movements I cared about. Other logic like the pain of such things and the riskiness and uncertainty I had about any one person helped to keep those thoughts at bay.

And of course, just the history and usefulness of eugenics, where the consequences were AWFUL despite at first glance "solid" science.

But since I didn't dare talk to ANYONE for a decade about these ideas, and was terrified of being seen as a Nazi and advocating violence. The dark thoughts just kept popping up from time to time, being especially prevalent in depressive moods, or when I felt like a failure.

There were several things that helped me to get away from the dark eugenic thoughts, but a big one was actually one of your old articles “Where Eugenics Goes Wrong: The Implications of Comparative Advantage.” I think I read it in 2021: and the logic in it ticked a lot of boxes and mental questions I had.

I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of the comparative advantage angle myself, since I had read so much economics myself, but the article helped me a lot: I think it probably lessened my struggles with eugenic thought about 40%, with the others being: moral uncertainty 30%, mental health improvement and therapy 20%, and history/utilitarian reasoning 10%. 

For me, the article wasn't vague flimsiness to be nice and thus biased by human excuses and Social Desirability Bias, but actual cold, economic reasoning for the terrible economics and consequences of coercive eugenics. And I'm really grateful you wrote that article.

Sorry for the super long email, but I wanted to share this. 

I hope you have a nice day.