Business Autism. (condition). An acquired social impairment, common in small business owners, characterized by a failure to understand human needs and desires beyond the superficial range of goods and services their business provides. This condition is a result of [availability bias](https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/availability-bias) combined with a long term exposure to one's industry. The owner of a typical restaurant or bar exists within a highly non-random sample of human behavior. All complaints and all praise they recieve on a day to day basis concern the price, service, or quality of food. They are not exposed on a daily basis to the deeper strata of human desires, needs, and concerns, such as loneliness, social isolation, or the breakdown of community and belonging in modern life. As such, the absolute majority of such small business owners eventually become an approximation of the chef in the following scene: ![[pig-restaurant-scene.mp4]] The most effective treatments for Business Autism are a steady exposure to the reality of human desires outside the narrow range one encounters in the service industry. War, loss of a loved one, a mid-life crisis, or other intense emotional and social experiences have shown promise in treating the symptoms of this condition. Shared vulnerability with one's customers in a context outside of one's business is often the most effective path for showing those who suffer from this condition that they have optimized their business for superficial human desires, and overfit their business to that small subset. While the owners have indeed become skilled and knowledgeable about what their customers prefer in the narrow window of food and beverages, they have failed to see that those customers are not those preferences, even approximately. In other words: ![[pig-restaurant-scene-theyre-not-real.png]] ![[pig-restaurant-scene-none-of-it-is-real.png]]