Show HN: Autism Simulator

Agree. The idea that autististics rely on a large box of daily pills is insane. -chugs coffee

I don't really relate to a lot of it, it's mostly a crude caricature of my experience, though it's still funny.

I believe the medication here is for ADHD, given there's a "special event" at one point.

The only medication I know about that some people on the spectrum take are antipsychotics and that's for specific situations, but maybe if you're in that situation life seems even more like a dystopian text based adventure game.

> a bit whiney

> owning your problems

What do you mean? That makes me think about how people react to others having depression symptoms, saying that they should "just" get better... The best course of action is to ask for help.

I guess the main point I took away was that the expectation of masking creates a lot of pressure on everyone. Maybe the optimal solution is us all dropping the pretense and being chill with it.

Lol. They made a game, and shared it publicly. How much more can they own it?

I am guessing your definition of “owning” involves not talking about your problems ever. I don’t think that’s healthy, but you can find out for yourself.

Half true, Half snuffing out lamps to trick you.

"blaming external factors for your situation inherently diminishes your sense of your own power, even when external factors are actually to blame" - some redditor

i wonder how a slave would react to the idea of autistic burnout ... isn't 'masking' just a way of shifting blame by juvenilizing impulse control ?

Replied a bit more on another comment, tl;dr this is a quite silly simulator that is not representative of autism and you’ve found the biggest tell (almost everything is masking by the scoring algorithm).

You could replace it with an HP bar or Foobar bar and it’d have just as much meaning. I grew up taking care of my autistic sister and have a couple diagnoses of my own, I found it almost offensive that this claims to be representative of autism because of how generic and distanced it is (ex. “Masking” is collapsed down to being the same as “spoon” discourse with depression)

It's a valid frustation... sadly the social bits are often useful.

E.g. communication tends to work best if you have A: trust and B: a mental model for the other person. A is a buffer against friction. B is essentially API documentation about this specific person

The social bits are how most people build A and B

let's put a pin in that, circle back

Had a "people" guy at a previous employer. At every corporate social thing, he'd run around with his huge DSLR camera and take pictures to post on the company social media, to show how this is a great place to work.

He was an irritating person even without his camera. I hate having my picture taken, and I don't consent to having my face posted on social media. Later, when the company realised that setting money on fire isn't a solid business strategy, he was thankfully fired.

I agree, which is why it drives me crazy to be on HN and see people be like "if you want to work as a programmer you must live breathe eat sleep code and have a resume of Github commits three miles long."

It's a job, not a religion.

Thank you I was quite proud of it. The popup topics are from various special interests of mine :)

> Treat other people as you want to be treated

I want to be left alone, and when I do that to others (leave them alone) they think I'm arrogant.

Wouldn't be an autism thread without all the self diagnosers coming out to throw in their two cents.

Pay attention to people and try to be empathetic. Do this to everyone, not just those you suspect of being autistic. That's all anyone can ask of you, and it works. Autistic people aren't aliens - if you engage empathetically they will respond positively, like any other person.

This is generalisations and doesn't work as all autistic people are different, but I'll give some tips anyway. Let them do what they are good at and gives them motivation. Ask for their opinion, and you will likely get a straight answer. If it's a highly ambitious and motivated person you need to protect them from over-working. Protect them from internal politics and bullying. Also be a good example for social interactions and culture because they will do like you do, so better be nice and smile.

Create an environment where people feel safe requesting adjustments. (This is a general disability thing, not just a neurodivergence thing.) Nobody can tell you how to do that, because any public description of a reliable signal will be diluted by bad actors. (See also: signalling theory, euphemism treadmill.)

Chew with your mouth closed. And no apples or other crunchy foods.

I think you can have empathy for their situation and also recognize the gluttonous amount of self pity in this.

How do you tell someone earnestly asking vs "cosplaying the confused person"?

“You can’t tell people anything” I read this on a blog article a long time ago and I’m constantly reminded of it. This gives me that same feeling where someone is attempting to give some insight into their POV (precisely /because/ it’s alien to so many) and the responses (well, some of them) miss this point entirely.

It's all so tiresome. I find it amazing people are not as tired of adult make-believe.

While everyone deals with some version of these issues, what you’re missing is the scale and quantity of these issues for autistic people. Would you want to work in an office that smelled like rotting garbage, loud distracting music was constantly playing, and strobe lights randomly flashed in your eyes? This might get you close to what it’s like for me to work in an open office.

I can often smell the people around me. Generally, they don’t smell good. I can often hear conversations that are on the other side of the office. (Have you ever tried to add up numbers while someone else says other random numbers at you? It’s like that.) When people walk past my field of vision, I can’t focus on my screen. When I try to tune out all of these distractions, it consumes a lot of energy. Doing it hour after hour, day after day would leave me depleted, exhausted, unable to focus. I’d be unable to do the work that I was hired to do. How is that reasonable?

“Get up out of that wheelchair and stop being lazy! You’re an adult!”

> Getting "old internet" vibes from this one. Good job.

Thank you. Neovim has radicalized my design sensibilities and I really miss the internet I used in the 90s as a kid.

> I'm not at all familiar with Autism, and I have no idea what "Masking" means at all, but every option I choose seems to lower that stat, to the point where I never make it to day 2. Is there a cheat sheet that lists the "correct" selections at each step?

I got a chuckle out of this because it's how I felt IRL for a long time. Especially "every option I choose seems to lower that stat" This is a good rundown https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behavio...

No cheatsheet but I'll opensource the code in a few days when i clean it up a bit

Masking is just acting in a way that you normally wouldn't, but have to. Think of a spy blending in avoiding to get caught, it's a conscious effort not to screw up and it takes more energy/willpower from you than not having to pretend to be someone else. I guess it gets harder the more different from yourself you have to act, like having an itch you can't scratch or will get "punished" somehow, damn.

Masking is someone suppressing their natural autistic behaviors. It's not even necessarily conscious but it takes a large toll on mental energy. Besides the energy required for the masking itself there's the compounding effect of setting unrealistic expectations in others. The better someone is at masking the more is expected of them which creates an even larger drain on mental energy.

Hahaha good catch will patch this.

Nobody in India has mental health problems. Yep. That checks out.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10438407/

It might as well be that the prevalence differs between different populations.

Similar experience here. I used to just be able to brute force mask and burn energy against the problem. Eventually it caught up with me.

The side-effects are vaguely evocative of antipsychotics or some sort of antidepressant.

There's no specific autism medication that I'm aware of, but psychiatric diseases often have plenty of comorbidity. There's some ADHD popup in the game that distracts you with Wikipedia, there's misophonia, it sounds like the character has a whole mix of different things.

There's no medication for autism, nor there really is supposed to be any.

Autism is a super diverse condition so varies pretty wildly person-to-person.

Yeah, I wish there was a bit more clarity on the medication prompt.

IE, medication can be hit-or-miss. Did I (as the person in the game) go to a pill pusher and thus the medication causes more problems then it helps? Or, is the medication something where the benefits outweigh the consequences?

As many other people in this thread point out, there is no "medication for autism," so I assumed that it was a case of poorly prescribed medication from a pill pusher and didn't take it the first time I played.

Xanax, Zolpidem, Belsomra, and a fifth of your favorite.

People are touting Leucavorin. (It doesn't work) There are a lot of different things people have tried.

A lot of times they take an SSRI to be able to manage their emotions better and not be triggered by daily life. That’s what I remember when I was trying to help an autistic friend deal with having autistic children that were having a lot of issues.

Edit: Just asked her and the final cocktail they have settled on is aripriprazole (Abilify, an atypical antipsychotic) and hydroxyzine (first-generation antihistamine with anxiolytic and sedative properties).

I sent her the game and she said it was hard haha. I asked if that was what autism feels like and she said this-

“Not for me but I have ASD. For my son, it would be similar but different since he can't tell me what is going on in his head. I can only guess with him, poor lamb.”

Do you view autism as a pathology or a difference?

This is one of those things where I think autism has become a tag for the shared experiences of things like awkwardness, feeling out of place, or running out of the desire to socialize. Everyone wants an answer for why they have unpleasant experiences that aren't, "That's just life".

There is no normal experience, only the kinds of experiences that people have. Some people have buckets of experience that are worse or more challenging than others, everyone has shared experiences that cross-sect.

These labels are useful insofar as grouping experiences together that tend to co-occur makes it easy to talk about certain categories of aggregate experiences or strategies for navigating life, but I think too many people relegate too much importance to these arbitrary labels, like "autism", derive too much of their identity from them, and too often use them as excuses to not deal with life's challenges and complexities head on.

I can't speak for everyone, but for myself the scenarios in this simulator basically don't affect my life at all. Annoying radio ad, "That's annoying". People team requests my participation at some event, "No thanks". Don't want to go to work, "oh well". If someone suggested we get coffee I'd be excited. I've never even considered not taking meds I've been prescribed. Other things seem normal to me. I put on ANC headphones at my office job all the time.

While going through the simulator, I was shocked with the response to some choices and situations. I was not aware that these things were so disruptive to some people.

The normal simulator is the negative space in this game. The people on the party committee. The networking event. Your mom who has called three times. Just imagine those activities boosting all of your stats.

I don’t think it would be possible, as a lot of what ASD people process consciously is processed subconsciously by neurotypical people (which contributes greatly to ASD burnout).

Something I’ve thought might be a helpful AI app, for a product like smart glasses or earbuds with integrated cameras, if it were possible, is a live nonverbal communication translator, to help with the cognitive load of ASD people, as cognitive empathy is often a performance issue socially.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism that using AI as a cognitive crutch is unhealthy, but the same argument could be made about mechanical advantages, beasts of burden, or machines, reducing humanity’s physical fitness. AI’s potential to be a cognitive force multiplier is its killer app.

What's 'normal' for me is pretty much the same thing, but without the intense reactions to the light and sound stimuli. And the rest generally toned down.

It’s pretty great. You don’t have to find ways to interject in conversation that you are on the spectrum like some weird ass non sequitur.

I played it a couple times and found that a lot of scenarios just didn't have an option for what I would actually want to do in real life. A few examples:

- One scenario had a team unboxing an espresso machine and making too much noice by using it, clinking cups and laughing. The options were to put on noise canceling headphones, find a different desk away from the noise, or just endure it. Personally I'd take a break and go join them, and I don't even like coffee.

- The scenario where the user is in a room with a PM and a couple other people debating the tone of copy on a website, and the conversation is meandering without clear turns (iirc): there were only options to essentially hurry the conversation along or not participate at all, but IRL I'd join in with the other three debating the tone and just generally be bullshitting/sidetracking/meandering the conversation because I like to talk to people.

- The scenario where somebody comes up and asks for a new feature without clear acceptance criteria: the options were to turn to the computer and type out acceptance criteria in front of the person (which feels passive aggressive to me); tell them you'll do it; or ask them to schedule time with you to hammer out the criteria. I would've just chatted with them right there about the feature they wanted, let them know that XYZ is what I think the acceptance criteria is at the end of the conversation, and if that's wrong they'd correct me.

The burn out due to unproductive meetings would probably be at a similar scale

Imagine having basically infinite social energy and no situation where you'd tend to react super negatively to socialization itself. But most things extra are very boring and you only live for things not related to your work.

Or that's how I imagine it at least

Modify all the social interactions that subtract energy and instead have them add energy.

It is mental effort to have to recognize what is triggering you and to take positive action to fix it. The radio is more symbolic of having to do it 40 times a day across all the things you find triggering, or having to find ways to live your life outside common neurotypical ways that take more energy. For example, finding dishes clinking to be really triggering means I have to use ear protection to unload the dishwasher, and if I can’t find ear protection that I have to spend time looking around for it, and now dishes have taken me 3 minutes longer than it would someone else. Over a dozen instances a day of something like this adds up

It's extra fun when you manage to get positive feedback from colleagues and hit all your concrete performance expectations, but then at review time you still get poor marks because it's a stack ranking system, so, as far as your manager is concerned, there was never a realistic option to give one of the limited supply of good scores to you instead of one of the people who have enough spoons left at the end of the work day to permit some enthusiasm for the quarterly optional-but-actually-mandatory after-hours team Whirlyball outing.

@giantg2 dude I feel you. I've never disclosed but I've heard about people being retaliated against for doing so over the years.

I wish I could have added this story knot. I'll open source it soon and you'll see how crufty dealing with inkle is https://www.inklestudios.com/ in JS. Credit to the folks working on inkle but something like this is pushing the tech beyond what it says on the tin.

Non-autistic people also get this. It's in your salarypayer's best interest to keep you thinking you're on the precipice of getting a raise (so you work harder), but without actually giving you one (so they don't have to pay up). This is just ordinary capitalist paperclip-maximization, and we need way more people to realize their employers are not their friends, and it's a simple exchange of money for work where at least one party employs people whose entire job is to shift the exchange rate in their favour while convincing you they aren't.

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I think this clip of Man of Steel did a very good job of showing how Autistic people get bombarded with sensory information. There are comments under the video claiming that this mirrors their experience.

Man of Steel - The World's Too Big, Mom

https://youtu.be/VcdFURryKjA

Zack Snyder described perfectly the ADHD/ Autistic experience growing up in one single scene. Intentionally or not. This movie made me feel less alone in this world. Superman helped me realize that wasn't a freak. I just perceived the world differently. Thank you Zack. I will forever be grateful for Man of Steel for many years to come

> As with most mental things, because people can’t see or sense it, they don’t understand and it gets very very difficult to even acknowledge or respect it.

Compounding this issue is the fact that people often refuse to accept that a mental thing is actually a physiological thing, albeit harder to fix because it’s currently poorly understood. People’s mental models of brain-related conditions often create a separation of the person from their physical self, either due to some subconscious or conscious belief in a metaphysical representation of the condition.

Pretty big. The key word is "comorbidity"; having one of them means you are more likely to have the other than a random person.

There's also an overlap in traits.

I'm AuDHD (autism + ADHD). You can read about my ADHD side if the experience (with memes!) here:

https://romankogan.net/adhd

It's not clear how distinctive a lot of mental health conditions are. For the most part we're just making up labels for groups of signs and symptoms, after all. To the extent the labels are "real" things mostly rests in their utility—I mean, that's sort of true of all labels for everything (what's a chair?) but these are far more fluid than most.

It could be that autism really is, exactly as we describe it and conceive of it, in some meaningful way defined by actual reality, a thing.

It could be that it's ten different things that aren't actually connected at all, but happen to look kinda similar. Some of which either are a variant of ADHD (or vice-versa, doesn't much matter) or just happen to include similar symptoms and behaviors that respond well to the same drugs and therapies we use to tread ADHD.

(now, to some degree we do have real tests we can do to pick up e.g. genetic markers of certain disorders, but these largely remain just another clue, not exactly solid proof, with some exceptions)

To illustrate: imagine we couldn't ever see the inside of a human body and just had to guess at what was going on when something went wrong. We'd probably have something we just called "bad kidney" that was actually several different problems, and we'd just throw drugs and other therapies at it until (often, but not always) some set of those relieved the symptoms. Meanwhile, sometimes it's a kidney stone, sometimes it's cancer, et c. And maybe we even have a whole step that's trying to figure out if it's "bad kidney" or "bad bladder" and sometimes we'd get that right, but sometimes wrong, but also some of the same medicines work for either (depending on the actual cause) so we might incorrectly diagnose "bad kidney" then accidentally correctly treat "bad bladder", and think we were right all along.

> how big could a potential overlap be between ADHD and autism?

The lack of executive function is overlapping, but this particular post might be more of an ADHD simulator.

The very first "Follow the morning routine" or not is where this veers off my experience of the spectrum.

"Changing plans because of situations internal or external" is hard.

The option should've been "Spend 20 minutes making eggs again, because the yolks weren't the right kind of runny", miss the train, take a cab to work, but tell the driver that you've now got a system for eggs which you didn't have today (yeah, fun fact, the recipe was off because they don't refrigerate them over in France).

There seems to be a prevalent pop psych view that a bunch of these conditions (Autism, ADHD, Anxiety-Depression, OCD) are sort of clustered together and people who manifest one will often manifest symptoms of others. It gets muddier because a lot of these conditions are understood as spectrums and different people who identify with them may manifest them in vastly different ways. I'm still hesitant that "autism" these days may describe either someone who's completely nonverbal and living in assisted living, or someone who's a successful academic/engineer/entrepreneur.

The diagnostic criteria and symptoms have substantial overlap, ultimately everything in the DSM is a descriptive diagnosis not based on a mechanistic understanding of neurobiology so it's VERY likely that our categories don't map 1:1 to the underlying causes.

One is impulsive, the other requires structure. The two are not mutually exclusive though, because both conditions are pretty diverse. AuDHD is a term used to describe people with both.

I've seen Twitter use "AuDHD" for the intersection. It's big enough to have its own label and subgroup who identify with it.

Not offensive at all, in fact there's a massive overlap. See the chart at https://neurodivergentinsights.com/adhd-vs-autism/

Not at all - the stat I've heard is that 30-50% of autistics also have ADHD

Significant enough that the DSM-iV recognized ADHD symptoms as symptoms of autism and didn't allow a comorbid diagnosis of both conditions because of this. (The DSM-V does recognize both as possibly occurring together.)

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Do you honestly think in the future, Gen Z and Alpha have demonstrated any willingness continue the childish "neurotypical" LARP?

Moderate consumption of coffee is fine. I'm not aware of any severe damage from drinking a cup a day. I don't think the comparison with alcohol is apt.

Now I'm wondering how far on the spectrum Robert Moses was.

We might be best friends.

I survived one day. Feels accurate. I don't get why there are so many serious comments around this game. Its not rocket science. We often make fun of autism in the team, its just a nice way to chew the fat in the modern workplace.

Fun fact, everyone IRL loses the game, eventually.

This is actually a huge part of "getting better" as an autistic. A large amount of this masking is a trauma response from childhood when authority figures were a threat and not understandable so you pretend and "mask" and appease.

But once you are older and able to sieze your own power and set your own boundaries? The healthiest high functioning autist I know share this "don't give a fuck " attitude.

Very sad for the hell lower functioning ones must live in... Almost like the horror stories of locked in comas.

I mean they say it's a spectrum.

Maybe you are just not diagnosed LOL

Thank you so much!

> who fires an employee for falling asleep once?

Happened to my grandfather even though he was probably the best damned cab driver in all of Michigan.

Bummer - this has been the hardest code I've ever had to write test coverage for. I'm using https://www.inklestudios.com/ink/ for the story routing with inkjs so I'm not surprised that there are some lingering weird-paths.