My brain doesn't do that, though

I posted the following on Facebook seven years ago (it popped up in my memories today) and I find it's still true. Being an autistic person with low support needs means spending a lot of time being misunderstood, trying to explain your brain to people who have little or no context for how it operates, and not being quite believed (if at all) as a result. We're very different across the spectrum, but hopefully, this reflection on my own neurodiverse brain will help make sense of how many of us process data. If you teach, manage, or work with other neurodiverse folks, I'd ask you to give it a perusal.

"Dear normal people, [Note: today, I would say neurotypical people, but I didn't have the terminology in 2014]

My brain and your brain do not work the same way. Most of your brains come factory installed with a filter of emotional perception. It allows you, to a greater or lesser degree, to differentiate between the substance of a statement and its intent. You can, in short, usually tell the difference between bare fact and encouragement or optimism or frustration or whatever. My brain did not come with that filter and there is, apparently, no way to retrofit it (trust me I've tried). The lack of filter has an upside. It's a big part of the reason I can process data so quickly and accurately. I will take what you say, analyze it, evaluate it, think through its ramifications, and determine what, if any, action is required on my part before you can blink. If you hand me a problem, I can probably fix it (and, FYI, if you're not asking me to provide you a solution, tell me up front or I will automatically do so). But please understand that I have absolutely no mechanism for differentiating between what you *say* and what you *mean*. I will base all of my extrapolations on what you actually *say*. If you say something other than exactly what you mean, I will, perforce, give you an invalid solution. If you intentionally give me inaccurate data for the purposes of making me (or you) feel good, it is exactly like feeding a computer bad data. I cannot process it. If I *know* it is bad data, I have no choice but to assume that you either don't have a grip on reality or are intentionally misleading me. Either way, I will then not know when you're giving me accurate data and when you're just talking to talk. That is horribly confusing. It makes my head hurt. And if you keep feeding me garbage data, my program will freeze up, rendering me practically useless. Please, if you want to make me happy -- or want a valid outcome -- give me accurate, clear data to work with. Further, please know that, once you start my processing loop, it will continue running ad infinitum until it is manually stopped or we have finished the project. If I think you're giving me additional data, I will leave the window open and it will run and run and run while I wait for you. This is exhausting. If you start me on something, please either give me the data you say you're going to give me or tell me to pause or shut down the program. I realize this is a pain in the ass, but I can't do anything about it. If it makes you feel any better, consider that you probably have a handful of friends with similar brains and only occasionally have to accommodate them. I, and those like me, on the other hand, spend all day every day trying to interpret people who make no sense to us whatsoever. Please try to remember that and give us some grace."