Autism brought an advantage back in the day

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I forget where it was, but I read that autism was highly valued in Shamans...

I too have read that we are / were revered in some cultures. I've also read a possibly salient description of what it's like to be a Zen master, which I'll try to paraphrase:

PUPIL: What makes you so different to us?
ZEN MASTER: We breathe, we laugh, we cry.
PUPIL: But we do all those things too.
ZEN MASTER: Yes, but when we breathe, we really breathe, and when we laugh, we really laugh....(etc.)

I've felt for a long time that I'm somehow like that, kind of more "full on" than most. Not that I'm a Zen master.

I think Zen Buddhism is a wonderful place. I'm thinking to when I used to weed whip in the Santa Monica Mountains. It was a dirty, hot, and hard thing to do well. However, I found myself finding a very peaceful place when doing that job. It felt very Zen to me. I also remember watching Kung Fu and feeling like those lessons were speaking directly to me...

Don't get me started

I think it is a genetic coping strategy being over triggered lately by something environmental since the 20th century that is irritating autoimmune before birth. Pot smoking? The Pill? Prenatal vitamins? Vaccine overdose? Pesticide use on genetic mix crops? Something in those ranges.
I have a blood disorder called haemochromatosis which in the world region it mutated, having 30% more iron retention would be good thing since the regional fauna is iron poor. The effect mutated on 4 different genes depending north or south hemisphere. Since we don't need so much anymore, so we literally have our soft tissues rusted out. The victims most often being thyroid, pancreas, liver, kidneys and eyes, but not restricted to. And like autism, women are carriers more often and when the expression is full have genetic protection from the negatives through our unique physiology.
Control is best when blood is let. Women do not usually start have damage until after menopause (except case like my mom who is double gene double carrier) and if aware can make sure they control with diet and phlebotomy.
Autism would be less noticed in females until modern age (with more server symptoms) because we have a head start in speaking and communicating and social training (like an unsympathetic therapy) is enforced on us more and we are not expected to have physical prowess, only stamina.

I believe the mild expressions are the reason it wasn't wiped out as dead end to be avoided and recently (compared to human history)something is changed.

Yes, am also interested in who can [or can not] relate to the particular imitation experiment.

When I watched it, it blew me away, and gave me a whole new level of awareness of neurotypical behaviour. It also immediately reminded myself of a number of distinctive situations in my life where it became very apparent that I think and act differently from the majority of people. These specific situations are burned into my memory, because each instance felt like a big revelation:
1. When I was a teenager, at some point Rubic's cube became a popular fad, and I was amazed about all those who proudly claimed to understand it and know how to solve it – until I found out that all these people had done was to memorise a few algorithms that they had been published in various magazines. That kind of cheating and claiming this level of knowledge to amount to "understanding" struck me as extremely odd.
2. When I studied mathematics on a number of occasions I came up with alternative proofs / paths to solutions that seemed surprising to others.
3. I also discovered far too late that most students cut down the time they study for oral (Q&A style) exams by reading the protocols of exams from earlier years – they were reasoning quite correctly that the questions asked by a particular examiner tend to be limited to a particular set of categories. I was fine, but my exam performance was very raw, as you would expect if you had little idea of what to expect.
4. In the software industry, I was blown away by the extent to which copy and paste coding is practised, and I realised that the behaviour was exactly the same that I had seen as a teenager in relation to the Rubic's cube.
5. Early in my working life a colleague told me that in corporations people spend 40% of their time avoiding traps set by others, 40% of their time on setting traps for others, and only around 20% of their time on activities that correspond to their job description. When I heard this in my early twenties it sounded somewhat far fetched, and I interpreted it as an exaggeration or a bit of a joke. Over the following 10 years later I experienced a number of situations that made me realise that these statistics were much closer to typical work environments than I could have ever imagined.


The diagnostic criteria reflect the medical perspective, with the objective of identifying those who have acute unmet needs for support and assistance. The diagnostic criteria do not help to identify those who seem to cope on the surface, and who have somehow managed to compensate for their autistic cognitive lens and sensory issues via a few trusted people in their social context that act as a buffer and an interface to the insane neurotypical world, which is entirely self-centred on the neurotypical majority. It only takes one or two unlucky life events to completely shatter the level of "functioning" of seemingly sub-clinical autistics.


Yes, absolutely. And to label someone with hyper-focus and immense amounts of knowledge and understanding of a particular domain (to the effect that interest in other areas, including social conformance is limited) as disordered, says more about the norms of mainstream culture than about Aspies / autistics.

Since you're interested in how we relate to the imitation experiment, I'll share. As a kid, I remember trying certain things out, for the sole purpose of wanting to be seen as more grown up. For example, I tried high heels, but quickly gave them up for good when I hated the shoes more than I liked the grown-up feeling. I also tried home ec club because I had a couple of friends in the club. Home ec itself was boring, but I liked knowing how to do adult things, and I liked the feeling of being included in something, even though it was superficial. Does that make sense?

Mostly though, I questioned everything people did. I always wanted to know why do we have to do it that way? Why can't we do it this way? For example, I thought the kids who read out loud were boring. When the teacher called me, I started hamming it up, shouting when the character shouted, doing different voices, ETC. The teacher told me that the kids were staring at me because I was being different, and that I shouldn't do that. I started moderating my "performance," but I wondered why the kids didn't want to try to have fun with their reading.

I have an aversion to copying others.
I prefer figuring things out and doing things my own way and I have been criticized for trying to "reinvent the wheel".

when I was programming, I wrote my own algorithms rather than call routines such as sort-merge because I liked to see and understand exactly what was happening while the program was executing.
When I was tutoring programming languages, students told me they could do the assignments if only someone would give them the algorithms, but I refused to do that and told them if they wanted to be a programmer they have to write their own algorithms.

My father thought I was terribly eccentric for always doing things my own way, but really I just like to understand things and see the logic in things rather than blindly copying others.
I have always hated the idea of imitating anything without understanding or figuring it out myself.

I don't mind copying people as such, and I've sometimes found it useful, but if what they're doing makes no sense to me, I usually stop copying them. It's as if neurotypicals have more blind faith in each other's behaviour than I have.

It's interesting to see some of the responses here.

I do tend to copy and imitate people; I'll pick up mannerisms, phrases and even things like preferences from people I spend much time around. Later on I'll wonder "when did I start doing that!?" It even changes in different groups.

I relate of all of this. There is huge difference between acquiring the knowledge of how to perform a cultural transmitted ritual, which is an act of memorisation, and developing an understanding of how a system works, which involves developing a mental model
- of boundaries of the system and the limits of applicability of the system,
- of the dimensions of variability that characterise similar systems,
- and of the the specific forces that act on the specific context at hand,
- which in turn influence how the system needs to be configured and adapted to the concrete context.

Developing an understanding involves asking a lot of questions, conducting experiments, and looking at the results from as many angles as needed to capture the essence of system behaviour.

But Aspies are incapable of seeing the bigger picture

Copying other the few times I did was a disaster. It is natural to pick up the "lingo" and mannerisms of your peers or region no matter if you are NT or not.

I was always studying and sometimes daring to ask why people did what they did. Hypocrisy became a hot button as I have lived longer. I still find humans baffling and never am 100% on if strange activity or responses are NT/human or not.

There is also a pure joy in seeing and comprehending the working of systems.

My first experience with computers was back in the 80's in a computer lab, playing around with basic, making crude animations move around in patterns on a screen. It was so much fun just understanding how animation worked on a computer.

When I was a kid I saw a display in a museum that was a demonstration of the inside mechanics of a machine. I got such joy out of watching one gear turn another and another causing levers to move and other things to happen, and it was just comprehending it all that was so fascinating and I could have watched it for hours.

I have a collection of old fully mechanical cameras and I loved opening them up and watching the aperture open and close at different settings. It was mesmerizing like watching things spin.

Maybe I'm weird, but I'm wondering if others have a strong emotional experience connected to seeing and comprehending the working of systems.

I'm the say when it comes to programming and related problem solving, though I'm perfectly okay with copying people when it comes to social situations.

Regarding autism, I think the truth of the manner is that for some reason autistic women are less disabled (at least as far as reproduction is concerned) for some reason (maybe the social factors you listed, maybe something biological, probably some combination of both) than autistic men are, it's not that the "protection" makes them not autistic. As you should know from your blood condition, being a carrier of a gene does NOT mean you aren't effected by it on some level.

@Marybird
I love understanding how systems work,especially on a biological level (our bodies,other animals,etc.