It's sort of like telepathy, seriously. On Star Trek, there was Deanna Troi who was empathic, telepathic with emotions only.
I actually think it goes even beyond feeling to thought as well. We are extremely sensitive to the inner mental lives of others and respond both consciously and unconsciously. It takes a sociopath or an extremely practiced actor to fool us. For the vast number of people, we can read their inner mental states as easily and effortlessly as reading a roadsign, even if they don't want to be read and are trying to hide their true feelings or opinions. Children are especially easy to read, which is why they can't hide anything from their parents.
And since we can almost all do this, many conversations, especially work conversations exhibit a sort of continuous doublespeak where there's what I say and what I mean and I can't tell you what I mean outright since it would be rude or unprofessional but I know you know what I mean.
But when I notice someone on the spectrum, I start speaking explicitly with the understanding that the content of what I say will be much more important then what I'm feeling.
> We are extremely sensitive to the inner mental lives of others and respond both consciously and unconsciously.
This is so wrong it's hilarious.
Humans are terrible at ascribing meaning to what other people do. It even spawned a saying: "We judge others by what they do; we judge ourselves by what we intend."
As such, we, as humans, generally have zero idea what is going on in someone else's brain when they do something unexpected (it is unexpected after all). An individual has to work very hard to "cut others slack" under most conditions.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few bad social actors nowadays who attempt to take advantage of that, and there don't seem to be quite as many people who will take those bad actors on.
I don't think it's really wrong to say most are sensitive to external indications of others' internal experience. Simultaneously, as you point out, we're often pretty bad at inferring intentions from this information. But we have much more than zero idea what's going on, in most cases; the amount we know and our level of certainty could be viewed as a function of cultural context, group cohesion, cooperation/competition under stress, individual differences, power dynamics, social norms, etc.
> It even spawned a saying: "We judge others by what they do; we judge ourselves by what we intend."
There is much evidence for an effect like this in social psychology, commonly called the fundamental attribution error.
I'll just suggest to you personally and quite seriously that even if you have zero idea what's going on in someone else's head, most other people have an immediate and intuitive idea of what's going on, so intuitive in fact that they often mistake the thoughts and feelings of others as their own. This is my daily lived experience, as fundamental as gravity and atmospheric pressure.
>
As such, we, as humans, generally have zero idea what is going on in someone else's brain when they do something unexpected (it is unexpected after all).
The thing is, we don't do unexpected things in front of each other all that often. Which is why neurotypical people generally do have a sense for each other's state of mind.
Aspies have trouble with this even in normal situations.
I actually think it goes even beyond feeling to thought as well. We are extremely sensitive to the inner mental lives of others and respond both consciously and unconsciously. It takes a sociopath or an extremely practiced actor to fool us. For the vast number of people, we can read their inner mental states as easily and effortlessly as reading a roadsign, even if they don't want to be read and are trying to hide their true feelings or opinions. Children are especially easy to read, which is why they can't hide anything from their parents.
And since we can almost all do this, many conversations, especially work conversations exhibit a sort of continuous doublespeak where there's what I say and what I mean and I can't tell you what I mean outright since it would be rude or unprofessional but I know you know what I mean.
But when I notice someone on the spectrum, I start speaking explicitly with the understanding that the content of what I say will be much more important then what I'm feeling.