Good question. I hope you get a few more answers, and I particularly hope Alicorn comments on this, since she’s also autistic but seems to have a different strategy for dealing with people than I do. Here’s my first approximation, which may not be completely accurate:
For intentional lies, simply keeping track of what they’ve said in the past, and the implications of what they’ve said, works well. Many people don’t have the kind of memory to be able to be completely consistent with their lies even without taking the implications into account, and keeping the implications of any kind of significant lie consistent with both reality and itself over time is practically impossible. Not every instance of that is a lie, of course—people also tend to change their minds or find new information and not explicitly state that—but it’s a good warning sign.
Figuring out that there’s a flaw in what someone truly believes is harder, and a more common issue. My strategy is to find the base assumptions that their view rests on, and evaluate those for truth. (This also sometimes works on intentional lies, though with those it’s often true that there are no underlying assumptions—which is another clue that something’s wrong.) Generally, at least one assumption will be questionable, which is okay—I just have to evaluate that assumption in each situation before I consider taking advice based on it. If one of the underlying assumptions is obviously false, or questionable, I consider the advice suspect.
Both of those strategies feel similar to what you described, so you might be able to figure out how to do them. I can do what you described, but not often; it seems to conflict with being verbal.
Good question. I hope you get a few more answers, and I particularly hope Alicorn comments on this, since she’s also autistic but seems to have a different strategy for dealing with people than I do. Here’s my first approximation, which may not be completely accurate:
For intentional lies, simply keeping track of what they’ve said in the past, and the implications of what they’ve said, works well. Many people don’t have the kind of memory to be able to be completely consistent with their lies even without taking the implications into account, and keeping the implications of any kind of significant lie consistent with both reality and itself over time is practically impossible. Not every instance of that is a lie, of course—people also tend to change their minds or find new information and not explicitly state that—but it’s a good warning sign.
Figuring out that there’s a flaw in what someone truly believes is harder, and a more common issue. My strategy is to find the base assumptions that their view rests on, and evaluate those for truth. (This also sometimes works on intentional lies, though with those it’s often true that there are no underlying assumptions—which is another clue that something’s wrong.) Generally, at least one assumption will be questionable, which is okay—I just have to evaluate that assumption in each situation before I consider taking advice based on it. If one of the underlying assumptions is obviously false, or questionable, I consider the advice suspect.
Both of those strategies feel similar to what you described, so you might be able to figure out how to do them. I can do what you described, but not often; it seems to conflict with being verbal.