This is not always true at all. I used to be the kind of person to always follow the rules just because they exist. I have a neurodivergent friend who still does and always gets worried when stepping slightly out of line.

Exactly. Put the fucking shopping carts where they belong! But also don't get onto me for riding it into the coral like a bobsled led by imaginary bears.

This isn't a neurodivergent thing. It's an intelligent / ethical person thing.

This has little to do with autism and more with being smart. No, seriously.

From the English Wikipedia, stages of moral development:

1. Obedience and punishment orientation (''How can I avoid punishment?'')
2. Self-interest orientation (''What's in it for me?'') (''Paying for a benefit'')
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity (''Social norms'') (''The good boy/girl attitude'')
4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (''Law and order morality'')
5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles (''Principled conscience'')

1 and 2 are "Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)" (according to the same article, children and animals have this), 3 and 4 are "Level 2 (Conventional)", 5 and 6 are "Level 3 (Post-Conventional)".

The last one is basically thinking around "what if everyone did that?". Unfortunately, lots of people are at either stage 2 or 4. Sometimes downgrading from 4 to 2 once they become the authority.

This really hits home, so much so it's uncanny. As a child, constantly questioning the rules got me in trouble a lot. But that wasn't the hard part. The hard part was observing I was alone in doing this, completely alone. Nobody else my age seemed remotely interested in the "why", and seemed to have no problem complying with rules they didn't understand. That was true for both school rules and maths class : what's the application of this theorem? ->do not concern yourself with this, I'd hear. The adults were quick to scold me for something that was intrinsically natural, because they thought I was challenging their authority. I was just trying to understand. I was unfit for this world and it nearly broke me on several occasions.

Neurodivergent people are not a monolith.

oh thaaat's why I have a fundamental need to explain the reasons why when detailing a process to someone

Hahahaha. That's not "autism". That's just "normal". Right?

This is massively over-generalized. I'm sure some people on the spectrum do this. I don't talk to a lot of people, I am very reclusive, so I couldn't give you an actual irl baseline from experience, but I'm on the spectrum. I have a job with plenty of rules I don't think make any sense. I have a vested interest in keeping my job, so I follow the rules. One of my coworkers has been in the same job for over a decade, and she is quite proficient at following rules she personally doesn't like or understand. She wouldn't have a job here if she didn't.

I agree with others in this thread, this has more to do with ethics and critical thinking than with nuerodivigence. And that nuerodivergence seems to be getting conflated here with autism, specifically.

sort of tangential, but this discussion reminds me of a recent conversation. we had a plumbing leak recently so we had to have these water damage mitigation guys come out and check all the floors and drywall and figure out what needs to get replaced, yada yada. and they've all got these things they call "moisture meters" which are little black plastic boxes with a digital display on the front, and you hold it against a surface and it shows a number that somehow indicates how much water is absorbed into the material. so I asked one of these guys "hey, how does that work? like what's it actually measuring?" and he gave a response that sounded in tone like a technical explanation, but the actual information essentially boiled down to "it tells you how much water is in there, and if it's above 20 it's bad." and I'm thinking like, yeah, I got that, I figured that out from hearing you call it a "moisture meter" and watching you use it for ten seconds. is that what you thought I was confused about? obviously I mean like, what quantity does the number represent; what are the units; what physical thing is being measured to generate that number; is it based on a physical property, a thermal property, chemical, electrical; you're using it the same on wood, drywall, carpet, insulation, how does it apparently treat all materials the same when they have different physical properties and absorb, hold, and release water in different ways? it just baffled me that I could have all these questions less than a minute after seeing one for the first time, but this guy who uses one professionally every day only needs to know water>20=bad

Well yeah, there are only two kinds of rules:

1. The right way to do things
2. Stupid bullshit that serves no purpose

If you can't at least give a basic reasoning for the rule, it's #2

I dislike this as a concept because I've seen it applied to other groups, and it's almost always used as an excuse to ignore certain social norms that are clearly in place to keep people from hurting each other.

It's a sign of intelligence to question the status quo.

And if being intelligent is neurodivergent because the rest of the populace is stupid asf, so be it

If you don't have a good damned reason, then fuck your rule. Do you have any idea how many rules exist simply because it favoured one group or person over others? And now we're stuck living with it? Question all the rules. Many of them are selfish bullshit. Like this new everyone has to use AI, or OSs needing photo ID to function, or why rich people get to avoid prison for their numerous rule breaking crimes, even become president FFS.

Rules need to be wise or they shouldn't be followed and I'm not trusting most ppls opinions of whether they are wise or not.

Relevant story:

I worked in a pharmacy during COVID. Once vaccine supply balanced out to the point we could take walk-ins, we were told by corporate that even if someone was walking in without an appointment, we were to go into the system and make them an appointment for the current date and time. To clarify, this is a separate system than what bills insurance, notifies doctors, documents the vaccine etc. It's just an appointment system.

Dumb rule. Stupid. Did not follow it for weeks because we were busy, y'know, administering vaccines and dispensing medications.

Until I found out why we were supposed to do it...

This was the vaccine that you got one dose of, then a follow up dose ~6 weeks later. When you book an appointment, it automatically schedules the followup appointment and notifies the patient when it's coming up, helping us not get slammed with walk-in appointments and the patient not forget their second dose.

From that point on, I was adamant that appointments be made for every vaccine with multiple doses.

All my teachers in school hated me for this lol

I genuinely thought that was everyone. Who just follows bullshit roles that lack substance or explanation - oh, right.

This is not a valid excuse to go into asshole territory. Occasionally, you might not be in a position to understand why things are done a certain way - mostly because of inexperience, or your higher-ups might not have the time to explain the rules to you. Some examples might include regulations or standards.

It's alright to be humble and recognize that you may not understand some things sometimes. That's actually how you learn, and avoid pissing off your colleagues.

The problem is that all the rules contradict each other in one way or another. If you know the reason for the rule, then you know which ones take precedence in each situation. Otherwise, you're just making arbitrary choices on which ones to follow and which to break, and if you can just arbitrarily break a rule with no obvious consequences, then why bother ever following it?

So the neurodivergent folk converge on it? This rule of thumb makes no sense to me.

There's some people who aren't neurodivergent and do the same. Some people just don't want to follow rules they don't understand, which can be pretty annoying