Re: nonverbal language

[Guest guest]

>

> > > ...Nonverbal language predated humans, and primates for

that

> > > matter. It was necessary then. It isn't now; we have

something

> > > better. Nonverbal language is like the appendix now, or the

> > > vestigial feet in boa constrictors.

> >

> > That's an odd thing to say. Nonverbal language (or rather,

inability

> > to do it) is what gets many auties fired from their jobs. It

keeps

> > many auties from being hired in the first place. It's what

keeps

> > auties longing for friends and/or romance alone in their

lives. It

> > gets some auties locked up (by cops or docs).

> >

> > My appendix never did any of that to me.

>

> You have to take what I wrote in context. I mean that nonverbal

> language no longer serves a useful purpose, now that we have

something

> better. It is a vestige of our nonverbal heritage, evolutionarily

and

> in the early days of the species. It's an idea whose time has

come and

> gone.

>

>

Hmmm...

I agree that NVs predate verbal and even hominid evolution,

although, it's only where verbal capacity is present that NV

becomes a meaningful distinction. Any question of " identifying "

NVs in a pre-verbal context just degenerates into arguing

arbitrary distinctions of what does or does not constitute

" communication " , because *that* distinction depends on

arbitrary distinctions of what does or does not constitute

" consciousness " , and so on, ad absurdum.

I will agree, provisionally, that for the sake of ethical human

pursuits, NV communication is largely obsolete. However, since

verbal language is anything but homogeneous, and likely never

will be, most of the same communication pitfalls remain

operative even without NVs. The only way to eliminate the

dangers of verbal misunderstanding would be to artificially

homogenize all verbal communication. Observe how difficult

and stilted such attempts been, even in the physical sciences, to

say nothing of the so-called " social sciences " . Even if this could

be done---to arrest, in effect, the natural evolution of linguistic

forms---it would lead to eventually debilitating stagnation in

human adaptation. That's assuming the population at large

would stand for it to begin with. One official language and one

official standardized dictionary, which shall henceforth be strictly

adhered to, under penalty of law? I think not.

So, given it's unavoidable heterogeneity, what would prevent

verbal communication from suffering the same " obsolescence " ,

in ethical terms, as non-verbal? The only thing I can think of is to

promote widespread acculturation of awareness regarding the

continuous variability of *all* forms of communication, and the

collective dangers of habitual " over-my-dead-body " reactions to

otherwise simple " syntax error " miscommunications.

(Oddly, in only four paragraphs, I have worked my way back to my

own pet perseveration, " attribution error " , and have begun to

reframe the discussion in my own preferred terms! Ah, life on

the spectrum!)

In other words, what is needed is widespread awareness of the

pitfalls of *all* forms of communication, the inherent fallibility of

habitual interpersonal inferences, and the inevitable injustices

stemming from unmodulated reactions to those inferences.

But this " anti-obsolescence device " seems to work at least as

well in the other direction (though perhaps purely of necessity).

Our own awareness, as spectrumites adapting to our

environment, shows that this communicative mis-interfacing with

regard to NVs can be greatly mitigated by our own efforts. This

may mean studying typical NVs on the one hand, and carefully

limiting contact with NTs on the other. But, we don't have to be

fluent in NVs (fortunately, since we never will be) in order to

prevent most tragic miscommunications in our dealings with NT

culture. We need only be aware, and act accordingly.

So, I don't think the form of communication is what's important,

here. The problem is one of simple ignorance. Awareness of

the amorphous nature of communication, whatever it's

" form " ---and most importantly, awareness of its inherent

limitations---seems to promise the most effective balm for our

interpersonal *and* intercultural inflammations. That limitation

is part and parcel of ourselves, and our awareness and

acceptance of such limitations is part of the road to broader

self-awareness. Self-awareness leads to other-awareness,

other-awareness leads to community awareness, community

awareness leads to cultural awareness, cultural awareness

leads to global awareness. Such awareness improves quality of

life for all of us, AS and NT, alike. Sounds worthwhile to me.

Now, as to the relative status of NVs, it certainly looks pretty

" obsolete " from *our* position here on the spectrum. But from

what I know of NT reliance on NVs, I think it is far too integral a

component in their adaptive bag-of-tricks to be considered as

disposable. Not in this millenium, at any rate. Perhaps one way

to think about it would be to look at both groups, NT and AS, and

ask: " which form of communication could *you* get by without? "

My guess is that the NT population could survive on NVs alone,

but *could not* survive on verbal language alone. In stark

contrast, for those of us on the spectrum, exactly the opposite

would be true!

So, in any debate on the relative " obsolescence " of verbal and

non-verbal communication (in practical terms---setting aside

questions of evolution), it seems one's position on the issue

would depend entirely on one's own neurology...

(So the issue is entirely subjective---well, gee, who saw *that*

coming?! " D'oh! " )

Well that's about as much as I can crank out on only one pot of

coffee, so I'll have to stop there. Even with virtual memory, my

wetware doesn't have enough RAM to tie my shoes without using

a cheat-sheet. " Short-term working memory " ? What the hell is

that?

:-\

Dave March

" When a man takes off his sunglasses, I can hear him better. "

--(a very NT remark from) Hugh Prather, " Notes to myself "

[Guest guest]

wrote:

> adamsCLAYADAMS@A... wrote:

> > It may not serve much purpose to you, or most aspies,

> > but I think that NTs still use it to great effect.

> I know, and it is part of my thesis that they're obsolete, so what they

> do with their obsolete nonverbal language is not terribly relevant.

VW bugs are obsolete, but there's still millions of them out there, as

they were still made until recently in Mexico and Brazil. What finished

them was a new law in Mexico against using them as taxicabs, because

they were used to kidnap unwary tourists (who had no way to get out of

the back seat). And VW bugs never did comprise 99% (or whatever) of

the total of car production. I guess what I'm saying is NT people aren't

VWs, and are still far from being obsolete, though I do agree with you

in essence.

> > Trust me, it's not a dying language.

> Sure it is. Nonverbal communication has been reducing in importance

> for millennia. Our preverbal ancestors used it for 100% of their

> communication. NTs today use it for a lot less than that. And with our

> numbers increasing, it has nowhere to go but down. It may take several

> thousand years to see a noticeable decline in the use of this stuff, but

> trends have been downward for much longer than you or I have existed,

> and there is no reason to think that will change.

Yes, it may take several thousand years to see a substantial change

in nonverbal language use, but it may take only several hundred years

for our particular mutation to complete its saturation of the population,

as I think it is becoming so now. This, along with rapidly accelerating

mixing of the " races " , and similar progress in civil rights work would

result in a very different world than we see now. Want to help it along?

- have some kids. (I don't say " get married " , just have some kids.)

That would be the most effective thing you could do to make the world

into what you would want. It's either that, or get busy on that civil rights

work (and I believe you could do it too). Let's make it okay to be autistic.

Clay

PS. I've had a bug, and also a Karmann Ghia.

[Guest guest]

K. March wrote:

> So, given it's unavoidable heterogeneity, what would prevent verbal

> communication from suffering the same " obsolescence " , in ethical

> terms, as non-verbal?

Nothing, I suppose. If somethning better comes along, then perhaps it

will replace verbal communications. However, unless we evolve into

telepathic beings, I cannot imagine what this would be, specifically.

> In other words, what is needed is widespread awareness of the

> pitfalls of *all* forms of communication, the inherent fallibility of

> habitual interpersonal inferences, and the inevitable injustices

> stemming from unmodulated reactions to those inferences.

Keep in mind, though, that nonverbal communication is particularly

dangerous in terms of misunderstanding, because of its non-cognitive

nature. When one NT sees another do something that violates the

unwritten rules, he does not think " Hmm... he just violated Southern

Arizonan NT code 454.43 " or anything like that. He simply has an anger

response. The nonverbal cues are processed unconsciously and resolved

as emotion. NTs get a " feeling " when someone is lying to them, when

someone is interested in what they have to say, when someone is ready to

yield the floor in a conversation... all of these feelings are the

result of the processing of nonverbal cues.

The problem with this is that there is no way a person can think

something like " Okay, this person is from a different culture; his

nonverbal cues may differ from mine. " It's a non-cognitive process.

There is no way to know that miscommunication may have taken place. The

very nature of a non-cognitive background process makes it inherently

untrustworthy. This is why NTs are best suited for small tribes, where

one is born and lives his whole life among his relatives, with little

outside contact. In that context, the nonverbal language is likely to

be reliable; everyone will have learned the same dialect of nonverbal

language, and theirs will always be compatible with everyone else's.

Verbal communication certainly can be difficult, and there is a

tremendous potential for errors. However, as a cognitive process, it is

something that we can take into consideration when dealing with people

from other cultures.

> So, I don't think the form of communication is what's important,

> here.

It is to a large degree in NTs, though-- while we can cognitively

mitigate some of the problems that come from not being fluent in NT

nonverbal language, it is much harder for them to mute their inherent

emotional responses that their brains generate from the

background-processed nonverbal cues. We can understand and adapt

because our singular channel is a conscious one, but they always have

that secondary channel (which for them may even be the primary channel)

working. As such, I hypothesize that their ability to adapt to us is

less than our ability to adapt to them.

> Now, as to the relative status of NVs, it certainly looks pretty

> " obsolete " from *our* position here on the spectrum. But from what I

> know of NT reliance on NVs, I think it is far too integral a

> component in their adaptive bag-of-tricks to be considered as

> disposable.

I consider NTs to be obsolete, so the fact that they cannot exist

without it is irrelevant.

[Guest guest]

wrote:

>You have to take what I wrote in context. I mean that nonverbal

>language no longer serves a useful purpose, now that we have something

>better. It is a vestige of our nonverbal heritage, evolutionarily and

>in the early days of the species. It's an idea whose time has come and

>gone.

Sounds like a species of wishful thinking, to me. You don't

need nonverbal communication, you believe everyone could do

without it (and would be better off without it), therefore

nonverbal communication is on its way out. But thinking so

doesn't make it so.

Jane

[Guest guest]

Dave wrote:

>In other words, what is needed is widespread awareness of the

>pitfalls of *all* forms of communication, the inherent fallibility of

>habitual interpersonal inferences, and the inevitable injustices

>stemming from unmodulated reactions to those inferences.

Or, as I posted a short time ago:

Spotted on a recent e-mail:

" The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has

taken place. " -GB Shaw

Jane

[Guest guest]

> > Now, as to the relative status of NVs, it certainly looks pretty

> > " obsolete " from *our* position here on the spectrum. But from what

> > I know of NT reliance on NVs, I think it is far too integral a

> > component in their adaptive bag-of-tricks to be considered as

> > disposable.

> I consider NTs to be obsolete, so the fact that they cannot exist

> without it is irrelevant.

NTs are no more obsolete than autistics are. The human world needs

both of us (and other neurological variations, at that).

But even supposing that NTs were obsolete:

What about the *vast* number of autistics who have trouble (ranging

from complete inability to general tiringness) with any form of

language, written or spoken, and find nonlinguistic forms of

communication (in whatever form they take) very much easier?

I would really hate it if, when my aide came in the morning, I had to

always immediately type to her to tell her what I needed to do that

day. Yesterday, she came, and we spent at least an hour getting stuff

done and generally interacting before anything required me to type out

instructions for her.

When one of my friends visits, she is often surprised at how long we

spend interacting successfully without me saying anything. It is much

more relaxing that way. I would hate to have to try to translate all

that into words.

One of the first friends I remember making was an autistic woman who

had enough trouble with language that she rarely used it, and what I

liked about that friendship was that the ease of (two-way)

communication was much greater than if we had been talking to each

other. I would hate to have had to only be friends with people who

could talk.

This isn't to say I have no trouble with nonverbal communication --

far from it, I can't interpret the social nonverbals of NTs any better

than a lot of autistics can, nor can they generally interpret many of

my nonverbal signals at all -- but that, when done right, it doesn't

have the absolutely hair-tearing-out exhausting and overloading

quality that linguistic communication does.

There are a number of us who, rather than finding linguistic

communication this wonderful cure-all for communication problems, find

it more like an annoying chore we have to do in a world that doesn't

recognize our other forms of communication. Autism includes possible

difficulties in both verbal and nonverbal communication, and some of

us have preferences for one or the other based on the balance of our

abilities in both.

Are those of us who dislike verbal (by which I mean linguistic)

communication enough to prefer imperfect nonverbal communication when

we can get it as obsolete as you claim NTs are? Your definition of

autistic seems to be " people who have trouble with nonverbal

communication but not as much trouble with verbal communication, " and

I can assure you there are plenty of autistics who have trouble in

both but don't fall down on the side of preferring language.

[Guest guest]

alfamanda wrote:

> What about the *vast* number of autistics who have trouble (ranging

> from complete inability to general tiringness) with any form of

> language, written or spoken, and find nonlinguistic forms of

> communication (in whatever form they take) very much easier?

They would be evolutionarily inferior, by means of being less adapted to

the environment, to the autistics that are good with verbal language.

[Guest guest]

> No, it doesn't, but you missed the step where I indicated that

> nonverbal communication has been declining in importance since the

> first days of our species, and that our numbers appear to be rising

> rapidly. I also presented my reasons for thinking that NTs are

> less adapted to the environment than (and I add this clarification

> to address 's point) the more mildly autistic people that are

> able to use verbal skills relatively easily.

This would definitely lead to a flaw in the idea that nonverbal

communication is on its way out. When people like my father, who has

minor difficulties with language, reproduce with each other, they

produce people like me, whose difficulties with language are the same

style but much more pronounced. If I had a child I would not be

surprised if it had even *more* trouble with language than I do.

I certainly have no desire to live in a world populated only by

autistics, but it seems that I'd be in some form of 'obsolete'

underclass who prefer a form of communication that is considered

pointless and essentially defective, whether in the world of NTs or in

this mythical version of the world where autistics somehow

reproductively overrun the NTs.

[Guest guest]

wrote:

> ...whether in the world of NTs or in this mythical version

> of the world where autistics somehow reproductively overrun

> the NTs.

" Somehow " makes it sound really improbable, but it seems

likely that the population is already becoming saturated

with autistic genes. Many people have the recessive gene

for autism, but it doesn't surface until those genes are

reinforced by the other partner. This is why there seems to

be an " epidemic " of it just now. It was barely known fifty

years ago, and now it's on everyone's lips, and they're

hysterical about it. The rush is on to reproduce, before

they make it illegal to do so, or find a way to detect us

in the womb. Make love, not war! 8<{)

Clay

[Guest guest]

> If you can figure out a way that I can do that without having to ever

> see or interact with the kid, or pay any money for its upkeep, let me

> know.

Sperm donation?

[Guest guest]

> > ...whether in the world of NTs or in this mythical version

> > of the world where autistics somehow reproductively overrun

> > the NTs.

>

> " Somehow " makes it sound really improbable, but it seems

> likely that the population is already becoming saturated

> with autistic genes. Many people have the recessive gene

> for autism, but it doesn't surface until those genes are

> reinforced by the other partner. This is why there seems to

> be an " epidemic " of it just now. It was barely known fifty

> years ago, and now it's on everyone's lips, and they're

> hysterical about it. The rush is on to reproduce, before

> they make it illegal to do so, or find a way to detect us

> in the womb. Make love, not war! 8<{)

I don't think it's all that probable that the human race will be

overrun with us, only that there might be a much higher proportion of

us than there used to be. Not all autism is necessarily genetic (it

can be caused by things like rubella, for example, during pregnancy),

and not all autistics who reproduce with other autistics will have

autistic children (I know a double-autistic couple in England right

now who keep turning out NT children, but there's a new one due any

day now so there's the chance that *she* might be autistic).

That said, I *do* find it despicable that some people don't think we

should reproduce. I just don't think the odds are very high that the

population will ever be entirely autistic, given that even two

autistic people reproducing can produce neurotypical children.