>>13145521That's the thing is it's not a "severe genetic defect", autism is such a broad designation as to mean hardly anything at all as a term on its own, I really think getting rid of aspergers as a diagnosis was a mistake. Most people are bent on understanding autism purely as the Rainman/funko pop/anime club/fecal smearing condition, but I truly suspect that for the vast majority of people who have it are more or less ordinary people, or rather ordinary-looking enough as to live with all of the same expectations of them as any other adult.
I don't have in depth sources to cite but I've been close with lots of people, men and women, who are on the spectrum. Most of them appeared totally normal as acquaintances and their idiosyncrasies only grew apparent with time. Most importantly I can tell you they are across the board better at describing what they live with than any therapist whose experience with the condition hardly extends beyond having studied the DSM entry for their finals 90% of the time.
Sure, I went to school with cringe tard autists but those types tend to weigh heavier in the mind because they're so obvious from a distance. It's sort of like thinking you have excellent gaydar because you correctly identified a dude in assless chaps actively sucking off another dude in public.
I don't want them out of the general population because the general population, left to their own devices, often spirals into great feedback loops driven by social coherence without even realizing it. You need some anomalies in your populace to be just congenitally alienated enough to not fall into behaviors like that, to excel and specialize in their disciplines more doggedly than most people would be willing to, to bring about meaningful change. Christ this is the /sci/ board, like 50% of scientists and mathematicians who did anything worth remembering were blatantly spergs.
