I think I’m referring to something much more difficult. In most of the places I’ve worked, if your boss says that the plan is… actually they won’t call it a plan they’ll call it a strategic direction… that we will all flap our arms and fly to the moon and mine the green cheese that is there, it’s not ok, even as a moon expert, to reply that the moon isn’t made of green cheese. That would hurt your boss’s feelings. They won’t say “It hurts my feelings when you expose my ignorance”, they’ll just say you have a poor attitude, or that you don’t know how to communicate.

There are unwritten rules about how people need to restrict knowledge to themselves and those they trust in order to gain power. To these people, loyalty is more important than the truth, so in order to demonstrate that I am trustworthy, I have to at least appear to accept the green cheese strategic direction, even if I manage it by gradually using different words until the actual work that needs to be done is included in the strategic plan. To a neurotypical person this is just basic office politics and they just nod and say yes to their boss and work it out from there, but to us it hurts not to be able to speak the truth and discuss ideas openly.