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masfuertetoday at 2:38 PM2 repliesview on HN

Schrodinger's hackers. They are simultaneously autistic and skilled at social engineering.


Replies

d-us-vbtoday at 3:05 PM

Autistic people are unusually good at studying patterns objectively. While each individual person is... an individual, studying a sample from a population yields patterns, and thus the justification for the "social sciences". While autistic people may struggle with in person communication and upholding norms of human interaction, they do not generally struggle with understanding game theory, motives, and other aspects of rational decision making. So they can indeed make brilliant (and ruthless) social engineers if only when hiding behind a computer keyboard.

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illliilllltoday at 3:44 PM

Why assume they’re skilled at social engineering? The victims tend to be trusting and helpful, they’ll just do what you ask because they want to help.