Talk:Autistic Survival Guide

More importantly could experts create a survival guide, teaching what one should learn to be able to in an order

i.e. one should learn how to do this first, then this, and maybe "but you should read this short section first" there is far too much information to cope with, reading all this makes me suicidal, i have no way of putting it into order. it's far easier to learn to be an arsehole, go to martial arts classes, and scare people who mess with me. i'm not even kidding, far more confidence/self-esteem that way. Never found any problems with NTs in a martial arts class, except maybe the instructors, but there's not much they can do without risking losing income, or is there? But of course, if one follows this path, don't advertise that you do martial arts, unless you have to, as NTs might turn up with a gun :D

Needs warnings section, links not working

There should be some warning section where the reader is told things like not to go with everyone, etc. Some links are either dead or not linking directly to the other guides. 84.129.160.204 (talk)

Do you mean external links or links to subchapters? Logictheo (talk) 07:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts regarding whether the book should remain at wikibooks

Does this article belong here at all, or should it be at Academica Wikicity? Gerrit 17:29, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

It belongs here! Gerrit 15:47, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it belongs too, but maybe it's welcome on both wikibooks and academica wikicity, but if it is in both places then there would be 2 different versions of the book. I'm not sure whether it would be good or bad. Logictheo 22:57, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

POV (Point Of View)

"Non-autistic people seem to make a game of judging each other by how close they get to 100% (see section on confidence). This may be at least part of the reason that it is difficult to get explanations out of non-autistic people. "

This is aspergers cognicentrism. I know, I have aspergers. The reason why people aren't answering your questions is; A; They lack motivation B; They don't understand your question C; Your question has violated some taboo or social boundary D; Your question has made assumptions which they don't share E; Your question forces an intellectual attitude regarding a topic which the person has only regarded casually.

I'd have to say, please don't remove this wikibook, I could probably use it as source material for a quick game of analysis. Prometheuspan 00:17, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

My perspective of this is that it is true that life seems to be a social status game which is described in the confidence section for non-autistic people, which does not seem to be true for most autistic spectrum people.

Therefore, considering that status may come from knowing and using certain "social tricks", what I'm saying is that answering reasonable questions may represent giving information to the competition for a non-autistic person.

That said, I believe points A thru E are valid in and of themselves, but when they don't apply, it is still difficult to get useful information out of people, and there is obviously some reason for it.

Out of interest, what do you mean by "game of analysis"? I feel that this is a put down. Is there something constructive you can add in the way of feedback? 203.214.22.24 12:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

"My perspective of this is that it is true that life seems to be a social status game which is described in the confidence section for non-autistic people, which does not seem to be true for most autistic spectrum people." 203.214.22.24 12:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree. Aspies in general are more interested in their own intellectual stimulus than the outside world period, and so they aren't very interested in the game of socialization, pack psychology, and so forth. As a side issue, most aspies have some difficulty even comprehending that game, because it is so different a set of motivations and intentions than those aspies are generally operating from. This can be a spiraling problem, because aspies are the certain cure for Groupthink, but thus end up the targets of Status Quo preservers. People assume we are playing the same game they are and using tricks inside of that game. Instead, we are just observing things outside of the box. Prometheuspan 02:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

"Therefore, considering that status may come from knowing and using certain "social tricks", what I'm saying is that answering reasonable questions may represent giving information to the competition for a non-autistic person." 203.214.22.24 12:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I am very interested in game theory and psychology precisely because it enabled me eventually to generate a close approximation for my own purposes to the social game. I think that it is also sometimes true that people are playing the social game, and that is why they balk at aspie -outside of the box- questions and observations. However, MORE OFTEN, the case is the opposite; the person would freely give information, they just don't understand where the aspie is coming from. There are a variety of problems that are being mixed here together accidentally. Each has different causations and different solutions. The best and most important thing to remember as an aspie is to not get stuck in the "US-VS-THEM" destructive spiral. "Assume good faith". (Until good evidence prooves that the person isn't acting in good faith.)

"That said, I believe points A thru E are valid in and of themselves, but when they don't apply, it is still difficult to get useful information out of people, and there is obviously some reason for it." 203.214.22.24 12:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Reasons Prometheuspan 02:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

"Out of interest, what do you mean by "game of analysis"? I feel that this is a put down. Is there something constructive you can add in the way of feedback?" 203.214.22.24 12:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I am glad that you asked that question, because I am thinking of making an annotated version of the book to expand on its themes and add clarity from the perspective of Psychology. I am not trying to put the book down, but I am identifying problems in its reasoning process. Constructive energy is more expensive than deconstructive energy, and I apologize. The "Game of Analysis" would have to be taken in context, and I can't remember off the top of my head which way I used it. There are several different Games of Analysis I might have been refering to. The first and most obvious is that Game which Aspies must play in making sense of the strange world. The next is the game a logician must play in making sense of an Aspie. The root problem here is that Aspies and most people THINK in very different ways. Cognitive styles end up generating cognitive biases. The third game is sorting the difference between the first two; Trying to make sense of different cognitive styles. ah, i read my comment, and i meant it in the third way. :) Prometheuspan 02:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou for this.  :-) I'm a little frustrated these days that this book doesn't seem to have enough basics to attract other contributors, and I can't work out how to change that.

Please feel free to change it any way you like. 203.214.22.24 20:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it needs to be changed. It is a good book and you have done a fine job of retrofitting it. If I wasn't so busy with THINKSTARSHIP I would def come and do some work, but the way I would do it is to create an annotated version. Prometheuspan 01:57, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

203.214.22.24, please tell me an example of where you would like the basics page. (for example between 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 or at the beginning). Maybe we could have a section regarding on how to read the book in a way that makes the reader aware of the most "basic" ideas of the book. You are also welcome to register on Wikipedia. Logictheo 08:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

At the moment I'm toying with the idea of breaking the book into sections. The first one would be "basics" and would include all the sections up to but not including the sections about confidence and the social status game. The next section would be theory about how the non-autistic mind works and would be an expanded version of the section about confidence. The remaining sections would be about all the side issues that comprise the rest of the book. CrazyEddy 14:10, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Took a while to spell check and reshuffle bits and pieces

but I think JVM's work is well deserved and my contribution (even with the recovering due to my old master copy...) is miniscule by comparison. --28481k 82.28.210.194 01:23, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

It took me a while to analyze a lot of confusion for me in this discussion. A person replying to a text, split the text in parts and replied to each part separately, which caused great confusion for me seeing no whole original text beeing replied to. (which I'm used to in most discussion pages). Thus many new texts lacking a signing. Logictheo 22:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. I find the whole discussing things by editing pages extremely difficult. Wikipedia may know about the "never trust a skinny chef" rule but they sure don't know about the "never trust a moribidly obeise one either" rule. CrazyEddy 13:51, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

section "# 5 More distortions of the truth"

This didn't make sense to me, but after reading it for a while, it made some sense. Do you think this section belongs here, and did you understand it? Logictheo 09:15, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

The "looking on the bright side" section came early in Marcs original book.

Ok, but what does the section mean anyway? Logictheo 10:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

People who have comments regarding the article

VFD comment - Please Don't Delete

I find the writing by Marc Segar very helpful. I just want to add that a man is not supposed to bent down while in a public shower because it means that he is gay and he wants to have sex. Not knowing this can cause tension or misunderstanding between teamates. I think that this is what Marc Segar is trying to do. He does not teach you to conform. He teaches you to protect yourself in the world where most people don't judge you from the inside, but they judge you by your action and unwritten social rules and will tease you if you are vulnerable. We all know from our heart that the world is not a "happy" place. Notice that Marc teaches that non-austistic people sometimes making fun of other groups to boost their own ego. Marc teaches autistic people to protect themself but not to use the unwritten rule to pick on someone wittier or funnier or pick on someone more shy and quieter.

I don't know if I am autistic or not, but I have trouble picking up unwritten social rules. I suspect that I do not have parents, teachers, or counselors that talk to me about this. I did talk to a few conselors, but they were more damaging than helpful. I discussed to them about my trouble forming relationship with friends. Even though I insisted that there are things that I did wrong that people don't like, the conselors kept telling me that I was paranoid and insecure. Then they go on and lecture to me what a good friendship is. I even gave them some examples and asking them what I did wrong, all they did was laugh. I intuitively understand they they knew what the problem was but they didn't want to tell me that I had violated the unwritten rule. Why? because they are just like everyone else, they want to see me suffer to boost their own ego.

Also, I heard so many people proudly say that, "I don't believe in normal." My reponse to that would be "It's because you have not experience anything else but normal." It is okay to be different, but you just need to protect yourself and that is what Marc Segar teaches in his work.

After reading Marc Segar's book, I felt like finding a flowing river in the middle of the desert. I read somewhere that Marc is dead, but his work may be the eternal fountain of your for millions suffering.

Please don' get rid of this book. My Son is a person on the Autistic Spectrum and I was desperately worried about how to help him understand social rules etc that even I don't fully understand and this book seems to me more precious than gold and I want it to be available to him when he is old enough to read it.

Reorganising the book into wiki chapters

Some chapters are very large, and as the book is now it's about 100 kilobytes, making editing very difficult for me , and probably for others. I suggest we put the really great (in size) chapters in separate "wiki chapters" which make it easier to edit. You will still see all chapters but you won't load the whole book while coming to the main page, since you might also not be interested in everything but only some parts, and when you edit you will edit parts not the whole book at once. What do you say? Logictheo 19:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

This is not a reply but more info added to my original message. There is a guideline on wikipedia about article sizes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_size Logictheo 08:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I've often wondered how to break this book into chapters technically, and where the best places to break it are. As for actual editing, there's a FireFox addon called "it's all text" that will put an "edit" tab on every textbox and allow you to launch an actual editor on the content. CrazyEddy 06:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Issues that bother me greatly are that the "printable version" link in the toolbox doesn't actually link the separated chapters into the printable document and that there is absolutely no way to find documents that somehow become unlinked with the rest of the book. It's almost as if MediaWiki has been used for WikiBooks without consideration as to whether it is useful for the task. I'm running into all sorts of insane problems dealing with its interface. CrazyEddy 07:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Descriptions for wiki chapters

I've thought whether we could make small descriptions regarding separate chapters, so people can get more information what the chapter is about. We could maybe set it to at most 2 sentences. What do you say? Logictheo 09:02, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Again, I agree. I'm a bit of a techhead rather than a writer and at this point I'm just working on content rather than presentation and organisation, so at this point I'm happy to let you or anyone else organise things the way you want. CrazyEddy 06:43, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Braking the book in subchapters(MediaWiki)

Warning: this is an edited reply, purpose to clear out confusion.

(Undo revision 858809 by Logictheo What's wrong with it being a 
template? Do I have to change the way my book is written because 
MediaWiki is a piece of crap?)

is explained by CrazyEddy why the page is being brought back to a previous version. You deleted the subpages, and made templates with the same names. Why? I must revert history because of that. If you still wish to revert it, please say why here...because in this way this discussion can lead to some good results. Logictheo 16:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't fully understand what you just wrote. I didn't actually delete any sub-pages. I used the "{{}}" notation instead of the "[[]]" notation because the "{{}}" notation will insert the sub-document INTO the current document whereas "[[]]" simply inserts a link. The book may be too large to edit, but it is DESIGNED to be small and is by no means too large to load in a browser therefore I would like all the elements to be on one printable page.

Now, what exactly is the issue with templates that you have to revert history? I understand that using "{{}}" converts something to a template, but I don't understand exactly what, or what the issue with templates is. If mediawiki is doing something with documents with "{{}}"'s in them then surely there's another way to achieve the last paragraph, but if you don't mind, I'd prefer to have the document laid out the right way rather than pander to MediaWiki's bugs. CrazyEddy 16:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

One thing I would like to add is that breaking the book into sub-documents is a good idea, and I'd like to thank you for doing that. I've been looking for a way to do this for a long time. The way it stands right now, everything is included on one page for viewing, but the actual page is broken into separate documents, and until I can find a way to have a single printable page, I'd simply rather not break the book into interlinked documents if that's OK with you? CrazyEddy 17:17, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, we could make a separate page which is called "printable version", what do you say? I'm hesitating to make transclusion(yes that's a page on wikipedia I've found regarding the "{}" symbols). It might confuse regular users who have no technical understanding, and just want to add content. I'll do it, and if you object, reply. Even if you agree reply anyway if you like. Logictheo 18:18, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Making a printable version is an ideal solution to me. Also, I'm reading w:Wikipedia:Transclusion and I see nothing there indicating that using "{{}}" is bad. What exactly is wrong with it? Can you point me to any page that talks about that?

I must say that I've put a hell of a lot of work into this book and that have copyright on 95% of the content. If this issue is not sorted out I'm inclined to remove it from WikiBooks. CrazyEddy 19:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Remove it if you still claim copyright, and you do not agree to the text in capitals(I'm quoting) "DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!". Did you get any permission to submit this copyrighted work? If not remove it, although I've put some time, no problem, remove it. Logictheo 19:28, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

If I may interject here, it is actually not legal for you to remove content from Wikibooks once you have donated it. If I may quote Section 9 of the GFDL: "parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance." Wikibooks is the "party" with the license, the copyright holder is "you". By contributing your text to wikibooks, you are granting wikibooks a license to use that material. By the text of the GFDL license, you may not terminate that agreement so long as Wikibooks does not violate the license.

Also, on a related note, Wikibooks is a collaborative project and people need to work together. If people don't work together nicely, that's actually a violation of our policy. If you have a question about formatting, or if you would like to ask an outside party to mediate an argument, you may certainly do that. I would recommend posting questions to the staff lounge, and the community will help you out. If you have any questions for me, you can also ask them on my user talk page. --Whiteknight (talk) 20:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

It was not good of me to name this section "edit wars", it's not very diplomatical, and wiki projects should be. Logictheo 10:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Marc Segar's Death

I saw the note that staying in the non-autistic world may have caused Segar to kill himself, but I am unable to fine an article that supports this. The only item I can find is a French Wikipedia article that says he died in a car accident. Does anyone have a reference of his suicide?

---

My name is Emma Segar; I'm Marc's sister. I'm posting this on a few forums where Marc is mentioned, to clear up any confusion around his life, his guide and his death. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about Marc and his work. My e-mail is purplepooka@blueyonder.co.uk

This has been a difficult thing for any of his family to come forward and talk about. Obviously it is upsetting for us, and I think we've also felt for some time that it wasn't really necessary, or appropriate, to make public announcements about Marc on the internet. However, ten years on, finding Marc's name in unexpected places all over the net, from blogs and autism forums to Hollywood film proposals, I'm beginning to realise that, whether we like it or not, public interest in Marc is now a fact, and I would rather put up the facts from our perspective and an e-mail address for questions than keep stumbling across guesses and speculations.

Marc's death: Marc's death was a suicide, not a car accident. He drove out to the M1 in the middle of the night, parked at a services and walked onto the motorway. He was suffering from depression, but not panic attacks as has been suggested, and I believe that he was thinking clearly and knew what he was doing at the time. He had written a very brief note on his computer, which he hadn't shown to anybody or left anywhere it could be accidentally found. It wasn't a cry for help, just a confirmation of intent.

There was no one particular event that brought it on, but many contributing factors. We have been through the process of blaming his (mild) drug use, his difficulties in maintaining friendships, the stresses of his work, and of course we have blamed ourselves for not seeing it coming. I still believe that the greatest influence on his decision was the pressure that he put on himself to overcome the barriers of Asperger's Syndrome, and his difficulty in putting those barriers into perspective with his many achievements.

Marc's Guide: The Guide itself wasn't an enduring obsession but a passing interest, which he updated a few times and then dismissed as too incomplete to be useful. He began work on another guide to help with conversations, which was full of lists of band members, football teams, films and TV programmes, so that readers would know what NTs were talking about when they discussed these things. He gave this up when he realised how quickly it would become outdated, not to mention the enormity of the task of writing what was essentially a bluffer's guide to everything.

His view of the non-autistic world, despite his wide experience, extensive research and personal disregard for the conventional, remained irredeemably cut and dried. I remember arguing with him about the first draft of the Guide. I thought it gave the impression that it was somehow wrong or bad to be autistic, and that he should include a passage to the effect that readers didn't have to follow these rules if they didn't want to - it was just background information to help them make a personal choice. He said that those who read it all had to live in this world, and the world wasn't going to change, so there was no choice. I think he changed his mind later, after meeting more people with Asperger's Syndrome, but he never quite made the leap of extending the validity of that choice to himself.

I wish that Aspies For Freedom and all of these blogs had been around then. There was really very little at the time in the way of information or organisations run by and for Aspies, and perhaps a group of that kind might have persuaded him that he could lead the life he wanted to without having to put himself in such intensely stressful situations. I believe that he would have had a lot to say on these forums, and the most difficult thing about posting this is to see him being talked about here, instead of seeing him talk here. Even those who knew him best can't begin to speak for him, but I know he would have had a great deal to say.

Copyright uncertainty of the book - (95% ok. 5% uncertain)

Hi,

from a previous dicussion CrazyEddy mentions that he has copyright on 95% of the work.

> I must say that I've put a hell of a lot of work into this book > and that have copyright on 95% of the content. > <snip> CrazyEddy 19:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Who or which people hold copyright on 5% of the original work? Did/do they agree to Wikibook's license "Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL"? I had this uncertainty after you mentioned that you have copyright over 95% of the work, so I wondered about the 5% and if this work (95%) was based on a non-free work. Logictheo (talk) 08:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

My understanding on this is that a free license is still copyrighted by it's author, since this is the only way it can be held under such a license, and that although the work can't retrospectively be unlicensed, it can be re-licensed by its copyright holder for future works.

That said, I don't intend to relicense it. My main concern is that the work does have to be as readable as possible to a wide range of autistic spectrum people with a wide mix of intellectual abilities. The structure of the book is important. The questions section at the beginning needs to stay there for example, and not be melded into the conversations section.

The fact that people keep re-arranging, renaming and splitting off sections is deeply confusing for me because I cannot get a grip on all the changes happening without manually searching for all the individual sections and putting them on my watch list.

You need to decide if you want this book to achieve its stated purpose as best as possible or become another wikimedia work of art. You cannot have both. Or at least, I can't see a way. This is an important decision, because there are remarkably few effective self help guides out there for autistic spectrum people. CrazyEddy (talk) 13:01, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Also, I basically started writing this book HERE, on WikiBooks, based on notes I'd previously written which are now far less developed than this page. You can look at the list of contributors over the years in the history. I forgot to log in a few times while I was writing, but I basically came from the same IP blocks over that time. Does that answer the original question? CrazyEddy (talk) 16:40, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification, CrazyEddy. I hope this will help Logictheo and others m:Avoid copyright paranoia.

It looks like this book is like most books at Wikibooks -- and most published books -- there's one person who writes over half of the book, and a bunch of other people that interject a bit of material here or there, attempt to improve the arrangement of parts, and fix typos.

I agree that arbitrary and frequent re-arranging, renaming and splitting is confusing.

On the other hand, if we freeze the current arrangement of the book, then it will be impossible to make any further improvements.

I hope we find a middle way. A way that allows people to gradually make this book better and better, but avoids unnecessary confusion. By "better", I mean "more useful for the target audience", not "looks prettier". --DavidCary (talk) 22:32, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I keep hoping that it will continue on its development.

I still have things to contribute to it too, but its ground has been too unstable to walk on for me. CrazyEddy (talk) 16:28, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd be happy if the book were split into new works.  :-) CrazyEddy (talk) 19:16, 28 July 2010 (UTC)