The question I would ask is, does it help Alicorn to phrase your comment the way you did: “If you refuse to change your behavior in any substantial way I don’t know why you’re asking for advice.” That would antagonize anyone, rationalist or not. If you said that to someone with schizophrenia, the last thing it would do is cure their disease. There are medications for that...and unfortunately, I don’t think there are any medications for autism yet. And if anyone is bending backwards to accommodate it, it’s Alicorn herself; this is something that must be extremely annoying on a day-to-day basis. You, on the other hand, don’t have to change your day-to-day life at all.
That being said, I think your original suggestion (gradual habituation) was a good one. I don’t know if Alicorn’s tried exactly that strategy before, and there’s a possibility it might work.
As near as I can tell from the fact that I am sometimes forced into situations where I have to deal with sweat, gradual habituation does… drumroll… nothing.
I am no psychologist. I thought one of the benefits of gradual habituation was that it was in a controlled setting that subject could end at any time with essentially no consequences. This contrasts “sometimes forced in to situations”, I also have the impression that these forced situations there is no sequential order of events from the least discomfort to the most, in other words no gradualness(Also perhaps these events start at too high of a stimulus level.)
Finding someone capable of setting up a gradual habituation regiem and having the time to follow through with it are the biggest obstacles to experimenting with habituation regiems in my experience.
The question I would ask is, does it help Alicorn to phrase your comment the way you did: “If you refuse to change your behavior in any substantial way I don’t know why you’re asking for advice.” That would antagonize anyone, rationalist or not. If you said that to someone with schizophrenia, the last thing it would do is cure their disease. There are medications for that...and unfortunately, I don’t think there are any medications for autism yet. And if anyone is bending backwards to accommodate it, it’s Alicorn herself; this is something that must be extremely annoying on a day-to-day basis. You, on the other hand, don’t have to change your day-to-day life at all.
That being said, I think your original suggestion (gradual habituation) was a good one. I don’t know if Alicorn’s tried exactly that strategy before, and there’s a possibility it might work.
As near as I can tell from the fact that I am sometimes forced into situations where I have to deal with sweat, gradual habituation does… drumroll… nothing.
I am no psychologist. I thought one of the benefits of gradual habituation was that it was in a controlled setting that subject could end at any time with essentially no consequences. This contrasts “sometimes forced in to situations”, I also have the impression that these forced situations there is no sequential order of events from the least discomfort to the most, in other words no gradualness(Also perhaps these events start at too high of a stimulus level.)
Finding someone capable of setting up a gradual habituation regiem and having the time to follow through with it are the biggest obstacles to experimenting with habituation regiems in my experience.
I did not submit “help me figure out how to deal with sweat” as a True Rejection Challenge, so this line of advice is neither on-topic nor welcome.