It’s really not. And a rather ironic choice of words given that mild autism can sometimes make one emphatically logical and “ordered” in how they think. This makes it harder to grasp weird, squishy concepts like language and emotion. So it’s common for autistic children to have language delay and difficulty picking up on social cues.
The more random, disorderly brain of the “typical” person is simply more predisposed to navigating the society made for “typical” persons.
It absolutely is. They are a deviation from the norm in a way that more often than not has negative consequences, in addition to any benefits that may or may not exist.
There are plenty of non-autistic people who are perfectly logical, so that point doesn't matter.
Autistic people thinking NT people need to be more like them is a result of their thinking being out of whack. Things like tolerance in society are irrelevant to that point.
The negative consequences almost exclusively stem from autistics interacting with neurotypical. In this case it’s more akin to a language barrier than a “deviation”. It’s only “out of whack” because you’re on one side of that divide and want to otherize people who are different to you.
And for the record, you can count me among the people who think that the average person could stand being about 20% more autistic. There’s nothing noble or special about being leashed to emotions and arbitrary social cues.
> The negative consequences almost exclusively stem from autistics interacting with neurotypical
When it's not something to do with sensory overload or having trouble navigating something in the world even without any interaction, sure, almost all that is left is problems with interaction.
And even then when the problems are due to interaction, it's not always due to a lack of tolerance or something, it's often due to the autistic person being unable to read social cues and similar, and so that's a negative consequence, not just a neutral difference.
> And for the record, you can count me among the people who think that the average person could stand being about 20% more autistic.
Yeah that's ridiculous. It's like deaf people wanting people that can hear to be deaf.
> There’s nothing noble or special about being leashed to emotions and arbitrary social cues.
NT's are not leashed just because some people are, anymore than all NDs need to rock back and forth or something to deal with sensory overload.
I could easily trigger sensory overload in the vast majority of people. Our society doesn't tend to trigger sensory overload because it's tuned to provide a level of sensory stimulus within a certain arbitrary range which is acceptable to the majority of people. Similarly, most of our built environment is tuned to suit people between 4 and 8 feet tall. Ultimately it's all relative.
Social cues are an arbitrary language, and you can find a very wide degree of competence among the NT, let alone ND. Meanwhile some people suck at hand-eye coordination, some people suck at maths, some people suck at social cues, and some people suck at logical deduction. Negative consequences can stem from any of these deficiencies. If you want to single out one of those and call it a disability, my response is whoop-de-doo.
Analogising autism with deafness tells me that you've never interacted with an autistic person in anything other than a shallow way, or in a cruel ABA-style setting, rendering this conversation pointless. I can only hope you're speaking from actual ignorance and have no influence over the support given to anyone with medium to severe ASD.
This whole comment and line of arguing seems like you're going out of your way to downplay the negative effects of autism while advocating for supposed benefits, and frankly the whole thing reads like you are in denial.
> I could easily trigger sensory overload in the vast majority of people.v
No, you couldn't. Not easily. It can certainly be easily triggered in the vast majority of autistic people though.
> Our society doesn't tend to trigger sensory overload because it's tuned to provide a level of sensory stimulus within a certain arbitrary range which is acceptable to the majority of people
It's not arbitrary, it's the result of human evolution. That's like calling the colors range we can see arbitrary. That autistic people can and often are more sensitive is part of the disorder.
> Social cues are an arbitrary language, and you can find a very wide degree of competence among the NT, let alone ND.
Again, not arbitrary. And yes many NT are competent, many more are not.
> Negative consequences can stem from any of these deficiencies. If you want to single out one of those and call it a disability, my response is whoop-de-doo.
I didn't say disability, I said disorder, but if you have trouble with the most basic human things, which math and logical deduction are not, then yes, you have a disorder, just like if you have very bad coordination to the point you can't catch, throw or maybe even jump or run well.
> Analogising autism with deafness tells me that you've never interacted with an autistic person in anything other than a shallow way
It was to make a point in a specific context, and that point is valid. Maybe don't make more of it than it is.
> I can only hope you're speaking from actual ignorance and have no influence over the support given to anyone with medium to severe ASD.
You say this simply because I think it's ridiculous that you think most people should be more autistic. Which again, is a ridiculous argument and stance, and you should be ashamed for having it and maybe do a whole lot of self-reflection and maybe be honest with yourself about why you think that.
This speaks to a lack of imagination on your part. Absolutely I could. Easily. Of course it would involve something outside of social norms, but that's the whole point. Go on, try to be imaginative.
> It's not arbitrary, it's the result of human evolution.
"It's not your kind of arbitrary, it's this other kind of arbitrary." Autism is a facet of human evolution too, by the way. In a sense, societal norms are nothing more than a tyranny of the majority.
> if you have trouble with the most basic human things
The most basic according to you. Somewhat ironically, society is already doing an excellent job of making some of these "basic human things" less relevant. Face-to-face interaction is less frequent. The "me too" movement is shifting the pendulum away from subtle social cues and towards arbitrary social rules. And the job market has never been better for people with the sort of hyper-rational mindset often correlated with ASD (if they can get past the job interview, which is increasingly automated too).
> It was to make a point in a specific context, and that point is valid.
It really isn't valid. Most mild to moderate autistic people have natural deficits which can be mitigated with targeted education. Some "normal" people have similar natural deficits with respect to sport, which can be mitigated with targeted education.
> Which again, is a ridiculous argument and stance
Which again, is an understandable reaction if you only had a superficial understanding of autism's extreme outlier cases. Here's an interesting little tidbit for you: there is a school in my city which has an enrolment exclusively comprised of ASD students. If nobody had told you this, you probably couldn't have guessed. The vast, vast majority of autistic people are really no different to the general population except for needing a bit of extra help in a few areas, but — much like the "normal" kind of social awkwardness or deficiency in physical coordination — can be overcome with empathy and education.
I'm going to bow out of the conversation at this point. At this point I'm arguing against feelings not facts, and I suspect you're being quite a bit contrarian also. So much of what you say is flat out wrong, and I don't have the energy for an extended is-too/is-not.
I also suspect you're one of those "needs to have the last word types", which is also common in autistic people (despite supposedly being less emotional according to you), and, well, that's not going to be a productive discussion if that's your motivation or even part of it.
> I'm going to bow out of the conversation at this point.
Except you didn’t. You kept going.
> I also suspect you're one of those "needs to have the last word types"
I physically laughed at that. Framing your opponent in an ongoing discussion as “having the last word” is just a low effort way of deflecting away from substantive conversion, and suggests a lack of seriousness in your prior discourse.
If you have anything useful to add, I’m happy to continue the discussion.
The more random, disorderly brain of the “typical” person is simply more predisposed to navigating the society made for “typical” persons.