Advantages of autism – autism and high sensitivity.

One autistic trait often touted as negative by non-autistics that I see as advantageous is high sensitivity, as in, an inability to compartmentalize negative emotions and develop coping mechanisms, but you could also simply phrase it as positive, as in, the ability to not delude yourself, which is largely what I think it is.

Non-autistics kind of automatically blend out sensory stimuli – noise, touch, sight, etc. For example, an autistic individual might be overwhelmed by all the noise in a supermarket, not able to focus therefore on finding the items they want, or in a larger group setting with more than 2-3 people, they might not be able to focus on having a conversation with one because they can loudly hear everyone and do not filter what they are hearing automatically like non-autistics.

My theorization here is that this doesn’t only apply to overtly physical symptoms that people notice in autistics, but also psychology.

Autistics are for instance less likely to be religiously delusional than non-autistics.

BOSTON—Why do we often attribute events in our lives to a higher power or supernatural force? Some psychologists believe this kind of thinking, called teleological thinking, is a by-product of social cognition. As our ancestors evolved, we developed the ability to understand one anothers’ ideas and intentions. As a result of this “theory of mind,” some experts figure, we also tend to see intention or purpose—a conscious mind—behind random or naturally occurring events.
As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response—for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/people-with-aspergers-less-likely-to-see-purpose-behind-the-events-in-their-lives/

Autistics are for instance less likely to have optimism bias than non-autistics.

Previous research has demonstrated irrational asymmetry in belief updating: people tend to take into account good news and neglect bad news. Contradicting formal learning principles, belief updates were on average larger after better-than-expected information than after worse-than-expected information. In the present study, typically developing subjects demonstrated this optimism bias in self-referential judgments. In contrast, adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were significantly less biased when updating self-referential beliefs (each group n = 21, matched for age, gender and IQ). These findings indicate a weaker influence of self-enhancing motives on prospective judgments in ASD. Reduced susceptibility to emotional and motivational biases in reasoning in ASD could elucidate impairments of social cognition, but may also confer important cognitive benefits.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27757736/

Autistics are for instance less likely to have good frustration tolerance than non-autistics and can experience rumination a lot (again, inability to blend out).

Rumination has a large direct effect on psychopathology but has received relatively little attention in autism spectrum disorder despite the propensity to perseverate in this population. This study provided initial evidence that adolescents with autism spectrum disorder self-report more anger-focused rumination than typically developing controls, though there was substantial within-group variability. Anger rumination was positively correlated with autism symptom severity with both groups combined.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6070295/

All this points to this particular difference in processing – non-autistics automatically blend out and distort reality.

Religion is frequently a coping mechanism made to make people feel good, so is optimism bias and only assuming the best will happen, which many autistics find offensive/stupid because it’s not fact based (”Everything’s going to be fine! Positive karma!” – well, how do you know? What’s your evidence?), constant rumination, possibly angry rumination implies you don’t really filter and compartmentalize unpleasant emotions.

So the high sensitivity to reality and inability to cope and compartmentalize that autistics sometimes experience can be a great benefit in my view, because it partially (to perhaps completely in rarer cases) safeguards you against delusions, I don’t see how it’s beneficial to constantly automatically delude yourself into believing what is comfortable even to the extreme detriment of others, it is in fact what fills the world with suffering.

These are just some examples highlighting said psychology, there are many:

Example 1: Just world fallacy – walking past a homeless person.

Autistic person walks past a homeless person, they come to the conclusion that this person is homeless in fact.

Non-autistic person walks past a homeless person, they come to the conclusion that this person is a total asshole. Otherwise this would mean that we live in a world where good people do not get what they deserve. Believing that you live in a world where good people do not get what they deserve is painful, so instead you believe that this homeless guy is an asshole who beat his wife and kids, he had it coming, homeless piece of shit.

But this also applies to other phenomena than just homelessness obviously, I frequently see it when it comes to loneliness as well. Those who are lonely are conveniently labelled as evil and defective, because otherwise the delusional would have to deal with the fact that they live in a world where there is no fairness and you get punished even if you’re good.

Example 2: Labelling the suicidal as irrational and confused.

Admitting that there are circumstances in life that are so horrible that they would make you want to kill yourself is uncomfortable, you do not want to admit that.

So in order to avoid that thought, you start advocating against the right to assisted suicide and label all suicidal people as irrational morons that only think they are better off dead because they are unreasonable.

Life isn’t so bad, if it could be, then that would make you feel bad to know that you could end up in a spot like that, so instead you go for pretending that life can’t be so bad and everyone who kills themselves is a delusional moron who doesn’t know how great life with PTSD from war and fibromyalgia is.

I believe autistics tend to be less delusional than non-autistics, not necessarily more intelligent.

You can have a 150 IQ but spend your entire life only with coming up with more intelligent rationalizations as to why you believe santa clause exists, there are more than enough religious people like that.

They are not clinically stupid, i.e ”a retard” by medical standards, they are simply delusional, because they automatically blend out anything that makes them feel uncomfortable. Coping machines, whatever it takes to not admit santa clause isn’t real.

On the other hand, you could imagine a below average intelligence, severely autistic who is very literal minded though being told ”GOD IS IN YOUR HEART AND THE HEAVENS!” (or some variation of non-sense that is supposed to be understood irrationally/non-literally) and all they would think would be:

”I don’t see god anywhere in the sky, it’s a little bit cloudy today but that’s it, and how can this god thing, if it is the same person be simultaneously located in my heart and the sky?”

People often see the inability to blend out negative emotions and compartmentalize events as a downside, i.e the lack of what they call ”frustration tolerance”, but even this can have an upside in my view.

So take the typical example of your boss being unfair and only noticing your mistakes, calling you out for them, like being late for work or working too slowly, but not your coworker because she has big tits.

Now a non-autistic person will probably engage in coping again, self-deluding – making it more bearable in their mind, escaping to fantasy land. ”But my boss is just jealous, everyone who hates me is jealous”, ”but my boss probably has a smaller dick than me”, ”my boss favors her for having big tits because he’s more sex starved than me, I get much more pussy”, etc. They get home and get drunk, forget about it, out of sight, out of mind.

The autistic person might on the other hand be prone to point out this is unfair, and when it is not acknowledged, they might have a meltdown and start screaming and punching in front of everyone at work, get fired.

People consider this a downside of autism, but the only way that this can actually be a downside in that context is because your boss is lacking that trait. If your boss weren’t a delusional asshole duped by halo effect who thinks you are a better person if you have bigger tits, he wouldn’t make the unfair judgement he’s making in the first place.

What I’m saying is that non-autistics deluding themselves is leading to harm, and then autistics are labelled as defective for not being able to suppress the feelings of anger and depression over the harm caused by their delusions – that is essentially what is happening.

The autistic is depressed because they cannot ignore that the nazis are gassing the jews, the non-autistics don’t understand this and think it’s a pity that the autistic can’t automatically blend out and compartmentalize negative events just like they do and feel happy, but the very reason why the negative event of jew gassing is taking place in the first place IS because of their ability to blend out their empathy and compartmentalize the atrocity.

You may argue that deluding oneself and automatically blending out reality can be an evolutionary benefit, indeed, that seems obvious, if you are able to always portray it as such in your mind that you are justified in harming others because you’re simply good at pretending they are mindless objects, then you are advantaged when it comes to parasitizing and exploiting others.

But I would point out that what is evolutionarily beneficial is not at all necessarily what is beneficial for civilization. Sure, rape and racism can also be beneficial evolutionarily, doesn’t mean it is ideal for a civilized society.

Downsides of not being autistic enough/why I believe autism is the better cognition.

An explanation of what I think are the greatest weaknesses of non-autistic humans.

1: The ability to blend out and ignore objective reality, thus higher likelihood of becoming religiously delusional.

There is some research (e.g. this one and this one) suggesting autistics are less likely to be religious, I think this can be easily explained by what the one of the core differences between autistics and non-autistics is.

Non-autistics automatically blend out reality, autistics cannot do this as easily. Non-autistics filter unpleasant stimuli more, which is why they generally don’t have sensory overload like autistics from lights, noise, texture as easily.

But not only these overt triggers such as light, noise, texture can be perceived as unpleasant, one can also perceive facts and criticism as unpleasant – and what we know is that non-autistics are better at automatically filtering and ignoring unpleasant stimuli, whereas autistics tend to hyperfocus on it and can’t let go of it until they collapse.

I think this perfectly explains the higher likelihood of non-autistics being religiously delusional. You believe in god, although there is no evidence for god, but you would make fun of someone believing in the easter rabbit, because there’s no evidence for it.

Is this stupid, as in, clinically low IQ? Not necessarily, there are highly intelligent individuals who behave like this, so often times when the word ”stupid” is used to describe such hypocrisy, a better explanation would be lack of autism.

The main function of a non-autistic brain seems to be to blend out what seems uncomfortable, they have an automatic filter, autistics do not, they are forced to perceive intensely and in detail, as soon as someone told them ”but you don’t believe in the easter rabbit either because there’s no evidence for it you fucking retard” – this would likely sit with them and affect them deeply, the non-autistic on the other hand is more likely to just delude themselves again and think ”this person used a bad word, so therefore, they must be wrong, angry people are always wrong : ) If you say the earth isn’t flat with an angry voice then you must be wrong : ) : )”.

It’s often said autistics have a higher sense of justice, this could likely be explained by the same mechanism. Sometimes committing harm against others can enhance your position in life, so as that is evolutionarily beneficial, it is the norm that humans are capable of coming up with inane rationalizations for harming others, autism, the inability to blend out reality is a deviation from that rather harmful and destructive norm.

Example 1: You see a homeless person in the streets, believing that you live in a world where bad things happen to good people would be uncomfortable, therefore you immediately make a negative judgement about said person and tell yourself they’re probably an asshole, because if they aren’t an asshole, that would mean you live in a world where bad things happen to good people, and that would make you uncomfortable.

Example 2: Admitting that there are some circumstances in life that would make you want to kill yourself makes you uncomfortable, therefore you pretend that there must be no such problem in life and everything can be fixed with a slight attitude change, to sustain this delusion, you label anyone who wants to commit suicide as irrational and speak out against euthanasia.

Feel bad about owning a slave? Just pretend the slave is a rock, problem solved, rocks don’t have feelings. Feel bad about hearing the jew being gassed? Just automatically picture a pretty meadow and pretend it’s not happening. Problem solved.

Autistics cannot as easily blend out the discomfort, so the only thing that helps is to eliminate the source of the discomfort, which means that if everyone were autistic, lots of problem in the world causing a lot of suffering would be more likely to be solved, as the population would not be able to tolerate it by severe denial as easily like non-autistics are doing it.

Non-autistics might in this psychotic state of mind even think that this is somehow a bad thing, if no one could blend out reality and pretend it’s not there, then we’d just be depressed about all the harm that exists on earth! Failing to comprehend that what enables the existence of that harm in the first place is the fact that no one is fixing it, and they are not fixing it because they are denying its existence – they don’t get that admitting the problem is often the first step to solving it.

So while non-autistics might not have sensory overload, I also think that they therefore also have a dangerous ability to deny reality and rationalize cruelty towards others much more efficiently than autistics, religious feel-good lies like heaven, karma, law of attraction are pretty much just a manifestation of this ability to blend out unpleasant stimuli, harmful coping mechanisms.

2: Extreme susceptibility to peer pressure, the inability to separate truth from majority consensus, an innate desire to conform.

On each of five trials, each child was asked to watch carefully as a demonstrator showed how to retrieve a toy from a box or build a simple object. Importantly, each demonstration included two necessary actions (e.g. unclipping and removing the box lid) and one unnecessary action (e.g. tapping the top of the box twice).
The box was then reset behind a screen and handed to the child, who was instructed to “get or make the toy as fast as you can.” They were not specifically told to copy the behavior they’d just seen.
Investigators discovered almost all of the children successfully reached the goal of getting or making the toy, but typically developing children were much more likely to include the unnecessary step as they did so, a behavior known as overimitation.
Those children copied 43 to 57 percent of the unnecessary actions, compared to 22 percent in the children with autism. That’s despite the fact that the children correctly identified the tapping action as “silly,” not “sensible.”
Researchers now plan to investigate precisely what kind of actions children copy, and how that tendency to copy everything might contribute to human cultural transmission of knowledge.
Hamilton said parents and teachers should be aware of the social value in going beyond the successful completion of such tasks.
https://psychcentral.com/news/2013/04/09/autistic-kids-tend-to-imitate-efficiently-not-socially#1

Whereas non-autistics would throw the accusation at autistics that they are often incapable of not only focusing on themselves and taking others into consideration, I would make the exact opposite accusation against them – they are incapable of thinking independently and not immediately giving in to whatever the majority consensus is.

Normal humans more or less automatically copy the behavior they see in others, this can accelerate learning processes, but can it also result in you learning falsehoods and harmful behaviors, whereas autistics process it more consciously and slowly, evaluate each thing regardless of whether or not they would be looked at as ridiculous for questioning things by their culture.

We’re not just talking about peer pressure in certain situations, I think normal humans have a profound problem separating what is true from what is believed by most, their first instinct is simply always to think that if something is believed by many, there must be some truth to it, as though the number of people believing it is determining the reality.

If we all believe the earth is round, then the earth becomes round. If we all believe the earth is flat, then the earth becomes flat somehow.

They have a whole intricate list of silly social concerns of what they think makes a statement true or false, with logic and evidence being the last things they care about, they care about all sorts of things that have nothing to do with it before that:

How does the person making the statement look like?
How popular is this person making that statement?
What is the person making this statement wearing, do they have a tomato ketchup stain on their shirt?
Could I make this statement in front of my family and friends without being judged?
Would I be more likely to get into trouble with authorities for believing this?
Would belief in this statement make me happier?
Would belief in this statement help me find more friends?

So on and so forth, and then the question that comes last is ”is that statement actually true or false?”, anything but that is registered as more important first.

If they grow up in the western world, they might believe the christian god is real despite there being no evidence for the christian god and laugh at people believing in allah because there’s no evidence for allah. If they grow up in Saudi Arabia, they might believe in allah is real despite there being no evidence for allah and laugh at people believing in the christian god because there’s no evidence for the christian god. Just depends on where they grow up, there’s no real logical understanding of anything behind it, it’s delusional behavior.

So while non-autistics may learn faster sometimes, they also learn tons of falsehoods and harmful behaviors, what is put in front of them is copied, e.g. religious bigotry (how could this religion be wrong if everyone here believes in it?), nazi behavior, slavery, witch hunts, etc.

Hitler and his comrades were well aware of the non-autistic condition and had a few quotes directly related to this phenomenon of mindless repetition/mimicking: ”A lie told once remains a lie but a lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth.”

3: Inability to appreciate details and nuances, making associations between things that are not intrinsically associated with each other because they share certain similiraties.

One of the core symptoms of autism is being detail-oriented (again, reality is not blended out as much automatically, autistics don’t have an automatic filter).

Non-autistics generally are not as detail-oriented, they have a tendency to gloss over vital details that could lead to a completely different conclusion, this is one standard problem motivating almost all forms of bigotry.

One black person stole my bike, therefore, black=bad.

One ugly guy grabbed my ass, therefore, ugly=rapist.

One angry person made a wrong statement, therefore, angry=wrong.

One jew lied to me, therefore, jew=liar.

They automatically make associations because spending time on thinking through everything costs more energy, it’s no wonder autistics feel more exhausted and overwhelmed, but this also carries the downside of connecting things to each other that are not connected to each other, leading to misplaced/false judgements about reality, whereas an autistic might take 5 hours before of looking at thousands of excruciating details before making a decision.

Sloppy, un-detailed thinking is the cause of a lot of bigotry. The non-autistic in the 40s and 50s already felt revolted by homosexuals, the media outlets and other individuals (like prison owners and scam artist psychologists) interested in making money off of putting homosexuals in jail make sure to always mention homosexuals in a negative context – ”sick homosexual commits rape in parking lot due to his homosexual disorder!”

This is enough for them to start hating homosexuals – they can’t help but to make automatic associations between things that way. More controversial every day examples of this phenomenon that many non-autistics in my day and age would be too delusional to see would be pedophiles (original intended definition: someone attracted to children) and incels (original intended definition: involuntary celibate, someone who has a hard time getting laid and is upset about it).

Some pedophiles are violent kidnappers and rapists, media mentions they’re a pedophile, now non-autistics start to hate all pedophiles. Some incels are misogynistic and have committed mass shootings, the media mentions they’re incel, so now non-autistics start to hate all incels.

But I think that this character trait can also in general make it easier to rationalize inflicting harm/cruelty on others outside of any specific witch hunts/moral panics, i.e their sloppy evaluation skills lead them false conclusions in their favor, glossing over the details and nuances makes the process of rationalization easier.

Example 1: You accept animal testing/vivisection in cases where it is necessary for medication that will reduce a lot of harm, animal testing for cosmetics is also animal testing, therefore, you now automatically equate the two with each other, how convenient, now you can make money off of testing on animals for cosmetic products because animal testing for medication is necessary.

Example 2: The existence of law results in the arrest of people that cause a lot of harm, like serial killers and rapists. Laws against people that smoke marijuana are also laws, therefore, you are justified in making money off of arresting harmless drug users because it’s the law and law is good period, you’re preventing serial killings and rape by harassing someone that snorts cocaine in the privacy of their home, law=good. Law is right, obey law mindlessly no matter what.

Example 3: Sometimes, you have to bear pain/suffering in order to avoid even more pain/suffering in the future, i.e a painful vaccination to avoid a more painful illness, or a stressful workout to avoid becoming weak and unhealthy. Now the un-detailed idiot ends up thinking that because of this it means that pain/suffering itself is good, even when it doesn’t lead to a reduction of more pain/suffering. Starving kids in Africa? Some suffering is necessary, pull yourself up by the bootstraps you pussies! War? Suffering builds character! Childhood cancer? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger bro! It was never supposed to be easy!

These I believe to be the overall greatest weaknesses of non-autistics and why I would think an autistic society is more civilized than a non-autistic society.

Social mimicry.

Molly Helt discovered an interesting aspect of her son’s autism somewhat serendipitously, during a plane ride. When the plane descended, in an attempt to help relieve painful pressure in her son’s ears, she tried to get him to yawn by yawning right in front of him.
About 45 percent of us yawn when we see someone else yawn, but Helt’s yawns had no such effect on her little one.
The observation prompted Helt, a clinical psychology researcher at the University of Connecticut, to investigate the contagious yawning in children with autism.
“Yawning when you see someone else yawn requires empathy, on a certain level,” Helt said.
She found that most children with autism are unlikely to copy this behavior, and the finding may help scientists better understand important aspects of human communication and social behavior that children with autism don’t experience.
https://www.livescience.com/10076-kids-autism-experience-contagious-yawning.html

Social mimicry is a social behavior largely exhibited by non-autistics, in simple terms, they automatically copy what they observe in someone else – monkey see, monkey do. Autistics more often are not as susceptible to it, all to differing degrees.

Social mimicry had certain benefits althroughout our evolutionary history. Let’s say one caveman is running away from a wild animal that isn’t visible to their tribe yet and now signals with panicked hand gestures that there is a danger to the tribe, then it is simply beneficial for the other cavemen to be susceptible to social cues and body language, understand what the caveman is signalling, then starting to run away as well.

If you’re too autistic to register the social cue and focused on analyzing objects, you might be the first one to get eaten by the wild animal, only taking notice of it once it is too late to act on the evidence of its existence.

As with many other biases and social behaviors exhibited by neurotypicals to this day, evolution did not necessarily favor a 100% accurate, rational, systematic perception of reality that is closer to that of an autist, but often rapid acting based on social intuitions and gut instincts instead.

On each of five trials, each child was asked to watch carefully as a demonstrator showed how to retrieve a toy from a box or build a simple object. Importantly, each demonstration included two necessary actions (e.g. unclipping and removing the box lid) and one unnecessary action (e.g. tapping the top of the box twice).
The box was then reset behind a screen and handed to the child, who was instructed to “get or make the toy as fast as you can.” They were not specifically told to copy the behavior they’d just seen.
Investigators discovered almost all of the children successfully reached the goal of getting or making the toy, but typically developing children were much more likely to include the unnecessary step as they did so, a behavior known as overimitation.
Those children copied 43 to 57 percent of the unnecessary actions, compared to 22 percent in the children with autism. That’s despite the fact that the children correctly identified the tapping action as “silly,” not “sensible.”
Researchers now plan to investigate precisely what kind of actions children copy, and how that tendency to copy everything might contribute to human cultural transmission of knowledge.
Hamilton said parents and teachers should be aware of the social value in going beyond the successful completion of such tasks.
https://psychcentral.com/news/2013/04/09/autistic-kids-tend-to-imitate-efficiently-not-socially/53604.html

What must be pointed out in all of this is that many behaviors that have been selected for also have immense disadvantages, especially in our modern environment, which is often missed by neurotypicals that exhibit these certain biases and social behaviors themselves, thus often fail to critically examine its negative effects and only think of the autist as deficient for not acting like a copying machine.

Social mimicry is also why neurotypicals are susceptible to social indoctrination and many people to this day still value what their culturally isolated tribe/group says instead of what science indicates.

The earth is not flat, but their tribe says that it is flat, so because there have been certain survival benefits to following the tribe, they fail to reject the false information (that the earth is flat) because they want to keep being a member of the tribe, which entails rejecting the correct information (that the earth is not flat).

They are bad at logical argumentation and subconsciously run every argument they hear through a list of vapid social concerns rather than to address the argument itself.

Would saying this in public enhance my social status?
Would saying this in public enhance my social status, thus my sexual success?
What does the person making this argument look like?
What is the social status of the person making this argument?
What is the consensus of my primitive tribe on this person making this argument?
What is the hidden intent of the person making this argument?
What is the legal (majority voted on) status of what this argument proposes?

It influences public morals and laws – the neurotypical develops a strong attachment to certain rules without being able to exactly explain why said rules are important, they simply copied it at some point throughout their development and never questioned the belief, then said neurotypicals are often angered by an autist rejecting and questioning their inconsistent beliefs that they cling to simply for membership of the tribe.

Some examples of beliefs resulting out of automatic social mimicry would include:

Religion:

A normative human may be more likely to believe in god over allah, although in objective reality, there exists no evidence for the existence of either any more than for the existence of the easter bunny. They can see the insane belief for what it is when they witness someone who believes in a different fantasy world narrative, but they can’t see it in themselves, they believe in their particular god as it is written about in the book about their particular god simply because they grew up in a culture that believed in said particular god.

Speciesism:

A normative human may be more likely to believe in the sacredness of one animal over another, in objective reality, of course any sentient animal wants to avoid harm, you don’t want to avoid harm because you have human DNA, you want to avoid it because you’re sentient, if you were braindead you wouldn’t care about avoiding the knife in your throat.

Non-human animals and human animals are alike in their interest not to experience suffering, the pain of a dog is the same as the pain of a pig. But for no other reason than that they grew up in a cult where dogs are worshipped and pigs are put in gas chambers, a majority of social pantomimes end up believing that there is just something inherently ”wrong” with killing a dog but not a pig.

They can see violence and cruelty when they look at a different culture that mistreats the sacred dog, they get angry and want to torture the perceived heathens of this different culture to death slowly for the atrocities (it’s bad because it causes suffering, not because it’s a dog) they commit, whilst chugging down the tit juice of a tortured cow, and if they lived in some different part of the world, they’d be chugging down cow’s piss without thinking about it, it’s the same exact function of a social copying machine.

Drug laws:

Alcohol and cigarettes are drugs, but ”drugs” are thought of as something that is illegal, forbidden by the tribe, so often people say ”alcohol and/or drugs” as if ethanol is not a drug, this is because of social mimicry – they learned that certain drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, heroine are forbidden in their tribe, so they only call those drugs drugs, drugs that they take legally they fail to even consider as drugs intuitively.

The alcohol they put in their bodies is probably much unhealthier and dangerous than many other potentially illegal drugs they could be taking, but they don’t acknowledge that, when it comes to the illegal drug they say ”but people could do bad things on these drugs and die of it!” without acknowledging that people do bad things on the socially acceptable drugs that they’re taking and they still accept the usage of said drug because they understand that the usage of the drug alcohol doesn’t cause harm to someone else, so it’d be unfair to arrest everyone that drinks it just because some do bad things on it.

But they only see that when it comes to the socially acceptable drug, when it comes to a drug drug, they are perfectly fine with ruining someone’s life for taking it, because they’re ruining their lives with that drug….so let’s just lock them up and ruin their life for them so then it’s ruined anyway!

Age of consent:

Although you could argue that the lower we go in age, the more likely a person might be to be manipulated into sex due to their lower intelligence, this doesn’t mean that just because a person of said age is having sex, it must be the result of some sort of evil scheme or abuse, they could just be wanting to have sex at an earlier age than is socially acceptable as well.

Regardless of an official age of consent law, it can made illegal to rape, force and manipulate someone to have sex with you, the age of consent serves to arrest people for having sex with someone who consented under what is considered the holy number, it offends religious sensibilites, different groups of neurologically normative humans deeply believe that the age of their particular location is the correct one and harmless sexual encounters under that age are simply never possible, only because they grew up in that particular location.

Even if there were some kind of particular IQ you needed to consent to sex scientifically speaking, which I don’t believe exists any particular evidence whatsoever for, and you showed these normative humans that the 15 year old under the holy age of 16 possessed all the same exact attributes the average 16 year old possessed to consent to sex, they would still reject the idea because it’s not 16, so it’s always unacceptable.

Genital mutilation:

Even if there is no medical reason (to avoid some sort of actual, greater harm) to cut the genitalia of a child, many cults still believe that it must be done, often times because of another belief based in social mimicry in one of many fantasy creatures like god or allah.

They will use all sorts of rationalizations for this from hygiene (as if soap doesn’t exist in the first world) to straight up denying cutting a sensitive part of someone’s genitals off, leaving it without protective skin could ever impair sexual function at any point, otherwise they’d have to admit that their genitals also have been harmed and their orgasms might not be as satisfying as they could be, they’d have to go against the tribe’s belief, this produces discomfort.

Supporters of genital mutilation in the form of ripping foreskins off will then often times be outraged that one would compare their barbarism to the mutilation of vaginas, also primarily because they from social hear-say blindly parroted from members of their cult that female genital mutilation is of course much much worse than male genital mutilation and ought never be compared under any circumstance.

Although in reality, it of course simply depends on how you are mutilating the child. Some cultures cut off more, some cut off less. Some cut the girl’s skin around the clitoris off, this is more similar to the process of cutting a foreskin off, some more violent cultures cut the entire pussy open, some cultures cut the entire penis open and then stick their penises in that cut open penis, it’s just social mimicry – wherever you grow up (without being autistic enough to see through it).

A question that comes up in all of this though is that if neurologically normative humans are predisposed to copying social behavior so much, where has the behavior started? Generation after generation, neurotypicals copy the behavior of other neurotypicals, but at some point, the trend must have been set for them to copy, someone must have started engaging in the behavior, and this is where it gets a little bit darker.

The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals.
Joseph Goebbels

Despite there being autistics and non-autistics, there are also psychopaths and narcissists. Psychopaths lack empathy, but they are also good at manipulating neurotypicals to do their bidding.

At first blush this may seem counterintuitive, even outrageous. We tend to think of psychopathy as the province of criminals, with leadership qualities that may land someone atop a fringe religious cult, say – not in a boardroom. But before discussing the research, let’s consider for a moment why this possibility is actually less bizarre than it may initially seem.
The hallmarks of the psychopathic personality involve egocentric, grandiose behavior, completely lacking empathy and conscience. Additionally, psychopaths may be charismatic, charming, and adept at manipulating one-on-one interactions. In a corporation, one’s ability to advance is determined in large measure by a person’s ability to favorably impress his or her direct manager. Unfortunately, certain of these psychopathic qualities – in particular charm, charisma, grandiosity (which can be mistaken for vision or confidence) and the ability to “perform” convincingly in one-on-one settings – are also qualities that can help one get ahead in the business world.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/#5361dfe14104

Just as in the earlier example I gave of social mimicry having the benefit that when another caveman ran away from a wild animal, signalling danger to the tribe, you get the social cue if you’re susceptible to body language and run away as well, whereas if you’re too autistic, you might not get the cue and get eaten – some humans that are called psychopaths have also evolved to take the role of the caveman signalling that there is a danger to the tribe, resulting in all the other cavemen running away and to then take all the resources from their cave and run away, psychopaths falsely signal danger to take advantage of others for their benefit.

Here the benefit would be with the autist again, being left to wonder how these normative lifeforms could be so stupid as to not notice what is going on, as the autist would be the only one left in the cave, able to recognize what the psychopath is doing. A wild animal never arrived, the psychopath simply took all the resources from the cave and ran away.

Adolf Hitler and his nazi comrades successfully studied the non-autistic condition:

So the answer to the question of why normative humans for instance believe in certain gods over others, or that certain animals can be tortured but others can’t, or certain ages of consent are correct but others aren’t, or certain drugs are bad because they’re drugs so they’re bad but other drugs are not drugs so they’re not bad, or certain parts of genitalia must be sliced but others not so much is because humans higher on the spectrum of psychopathy most likely set the trend for them to follow, because it’s a profitable niche to be working in, you can make a lot of money off of exploiting social pantomimes.

If they believe in god, you can make them pay for salvation on a piece of paper to not go to hell. If they believe in happy cows that are gladly made into milk machines, then they’ll pay you to factory farm these animals. If they believe that exactly 16 (or better 17, 18, as high as possible so that you, as a prison owner can make as much money as possible) is the right number, you can make money from arresting someone for having a partner under that holy age they believe to be holy. If they believe that certain drugs are innately dirty and associated with evil criminals, you can make money from arresting someone for taking said drugs. If they believe that certain parts of their children’s genitals are inherently diseased, you can make money from cutting said parts off of children’s genitals.

There is close to nothing that is insane enough for them to not believe in, it is a simple matter of repetition as Hitler already pointed out, this happens with youtube comments and memes all over the internet all the time.

That’s how moral panics (social trends where they believe something to be harmful that isn’t harmful, exaggerated risks of harm) or let’s also consider the opposite, let’s call it moral calms (social trends where they believe something to not be harmful that is actually harmful, normalized cruelty) are easily established.

Once something is repeated frequently enough and has been integrated into the society you as a psychopath are about to parasitize and form to your benefit, all that the non-autistics have to do is essentially to breed more children into it in order for them to start automatically mimicking the proposed model of behavior.

Autism and a more accurate perception of reality.

Autism is in many ways just a more intense, detailed, attentive, increased perception of reality in numerous senses, be it auditory, visual, tactile, etc, which is why certain noises, textures, lights or other sensory triggers that normative lifeforms simply blend out might even be painful for an autistic individual.

In more complex neurological terms, these different processing modes of the brain are often referred to as task positive (TPN) and the default mode network (DMN). You could describe the TPN processing as more attentive, conscious, analytical, whereas the DMN processing is less detailed, subconscious, intuitive.

An autistic individual might process an entire day like a non-autistic individual would try to process a more demanding, complicated math test, they’re always attentively and detailedly processing reality, which can result in sensory overload, all the little sounds, lights, textures they come into touch with are not as easily, subconsciously blended out as in a non-autistic brain.

While this higher capacity to perceive can result in many sensitivities to particular sensory stimuli, there has been more and more proof emerging over the years that this comes with an increased ability to comprehend reality in general, autistics are less likely to be religious and believe in fantasy creatures for which no evidence exists, to attribute some kind of fate-esque meaning to every day events, that seems to simply be the result of increased analytical processing.

Persons with autistic spectrum disorder were much more likely than those in our neurotypical comparison group to identify as atheist or agnostic, and, if religious, were more likely to construct their own religious belief system. Nonbelief was also higher in those who were attracted to systemizing activities, as measured by the Systemizing Quotient.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.207.9951&rep=rep1&type=pdf

As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response—for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/people-with-aspergers-less-likely-to-see-purpose-behind-the-events-in-their-lives

This indicates that people with autism use a different strategy when making decisions. Instead of using intuition and emotion like people without autism, they were not following their heart and don’t use emotional information to guide their decisions. Instead, they viewed differently framed, but numerically equivalent, options more rationally than typical people. So they gambled just as much as non-autistic people, but did so using the numerical information instead of making decisions based on how those numbers made them feel.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-with-autism-make-more-logical-decisions/

The reason why a sharper, less distorted, more accurate perception often to the surprise of those with it is in the minority is likely because evolution favored rapid, intuitive acting rather than prolonged analysis, there was with all chance more pressure to be processing with the default mode network for the ”social stuff”, rather than with the task positive network.

It was and is in some ways arguably evolutionarily beneficial to function in a way that enables religious delusion, you could provide many easy examples of how a certain way of thinking that would help one comprehend reality objectively and critically, is on the other hand not really conducive to evolutionary fitness.

Rationalization:

If you use logical fallacies to exploit others, such as it is what it is, it’s normal and what everyone else would do, it’s in my nature to do so, then it is obviously beneficial to not notice that you are contradicting yourself and these bad arguments could be just as easily applied to yourself, a caveman who would even be able to ponder such things when about to slay another caveman and take his resources would not be as successful.

Organisms rationalize to block negative feelings they may have about what they are causing to happen in the world, as in this example, let’s say it’s one caveman vs. the other, you steal his resources or you die of starvation.

Bashing him over the head with a stone might elicit some kind of empathetic response from the understanding that the other caveman is a sentient, pain-feeling organism similar to yourself, so at some point humans developed all sorts of different coping mechanisms to be able to get the job done, whatever it takes to advance their position – the nigger is just a subhuman animal, and non-human animals are of course worthless anyway because they have no souls, says god.

Hyperactive agency detection:

A caveman stands in a front of bush, hearing noises from it. It could be the wind, or it could be a wild animal waiting to attack.

Guessing wrongly that it is just the wind before you see objective evidence for a wild animal waiting to attack could have fatal consequences, he gets eaten by the animal, guessing wrongly that there is a wild animal when it was just the wind blowing would not be as big of a problem.

As cautionary measure so to speak, it made sense that they developed to assume consciousness everywhere, but this is also how humans learned to interpret consciousness and intent into nature where there is absolutely none, think of ”mother nature” as a person with intent, came up with explanations like the thunder or rain god for simple wheather changes, believe in karma, fate, conspiracy theories over science.

Given the disproportionate consequences for guessing wrongly, natural selection seems to have selected for caution. As a result, early man may have developed a “hyperactive agency detection device”—an overactive tendency to see agency (that is, intelligence) in nature, even where there is none. The HADD may also be where we detect patterns in things—superstition, concluding that odd events are more than coincidence, or even conspiracy theories.

If this gave early man the ideas of spirits of the dead and gods, this may help explain where early religion came from.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2012/02/word-of-the-day-hyperactive-agency-detection/

Generalization:

Kind of has the same benefit as hyperactive agency detection, better safe than sorry, if the primitive ape picks an apple from a tree and one of those apples is poisoned, it’s easier and the safest route to assume that all apples from the tree must be poisoned, even if that might be wrong, avoid the unknown for safety’s sake, continued, detailed analysis might sometimes become dangerous.

But this type of thinking also motivates ingroup favoritism, one jew did something bad, therefore all jews are poisonous and must be gassed.

Social mimicry:

If a caveman comes back running to his cave, running away from a wild animal that isn’t visible to the tribe yet, but signals in body language that there is danger, then it’s beneficial for the other cavemen to get the social cue and automatically start copying his panicking behavior and thus run away from the signalled threat as well. Plus, it’s simply another safety measure to follow the tribe.

Someone who is immune to social cues and hyperfocused on analyzing a stone in great detail would fall victim to the wild animal first, wondering why everyone is running away. Going with the tribe is another cautionary measure, but going with the tribe is again not something that necessarily helps you to arrive at correct conclusions about objective reality.

It’s also why humans believe in majority rather than scientific consensus, it produces discomfort to go against the tribe, so they’ll believe that the earth is flat because saying that the earth is round is socially inappropriate and linked to a loss of social status, it’s why they are prone to also be manipulated by psychopaths and narcissists crying wolf, signalling that there is a threat when there is not a threat, that is what happens when a moral panic takes place, like in Nazi Germany where Hitler signalled that there’s a wild jew waiting to attack.

Normally, kids copying adult behavior will go out of their way to repeat each and every element of the behavior even if they realize parts of it don’t make any sense.

But a new study shows that when a child with autism copies the actions of an adult, he or she is likely to omit anything “silly” about what they’ve just seen.
https://psychcentral.com/news/2013/04/09/autistic-kids-tend-to-imitate-efficiently-not-socially/53604.html

Optimism bias:

Having positive delusions, overestimating your odds and chances in life is simply beneficial to stay motivated and competitive. If you overestimate your abilities, believe you were chosen by god to win, it can motivate you to then actually compete with others for resources.

A sober, analytical caveman is not going to be super-competitive and have some kind of delusion of grandeur that he’s always going to win no matter what, because it’s destiny or karma or some other non-sense a neurologically normative hominid could very well believe in.

Previous research has demonstrated irrational asymmetry in belief updating: people tend to take into account good news and neglect bad news. Contradicting formal learning principles, belief updates were on average larger after better-than-expected information than after worse-than-expected information. In the present study, typically developing subjects demonstrated this optimism bias in self-referential judgments. In contrast, adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were significantly less biased when updating self-referential beliefs (each group n = 21, matched for age, gender and IQ). These findings indicate a weaker influence of self-enhancing motives on prospective judgments in ASD. Reduced susceptibility to emotional and motivational biases in reasoning in ASD could elucidate impairments of social cognition, but may also confer important cognitive benefits.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27757736/

As we can see from all these examples I’ve just given, an accurate, detailed, rational perception was not necessarily favored by evolution, it was beneficial in certain ways to delude yourself and ego-preserve, to think and reason in a way that doesn’t necessarily lead to an objective, accurate observations about reality.

Non-autistics don’t suffer sensory overload and meltdowns like autistics, but as such also have the downside of being unable to recognize non-sensical, inconsistent, religious beliefs that are beneficial to them that they hold as false, every evidence or valid counterargument to their delusion is simply easily blocked into subconsciousness automatically, this is how the religiously delusional are able to maintain delusion, no matter how much evidence to the contrary is shown.

The ability to spout grotesquely, blatantly inconsistent arguments and to ignore what their conclusions would be, such as it is what it is, therefore you should accept it if I harm you, although they wouldn’t accept things as they are if someone harmed them, just because that would then be how things are.

I can beat my neighbor to death with a club and rape his wife because it’s natural, but he shouldn’t do the same although that is also just as natural, it’s easy to see how it has a primitive evolutionary benefit to be able to perform such mental gymnastics.

Autistics perceive more and try to order the chaotic surroundings, use logic and create predictable systems, routines, which is then completely destroyed and molested by neurotypicals constantly creating contradictions and rationalizations for creating more and more suffering.

This is why life amongst the normative lifeforms can be extremely frustrating, miserable and crippling for autistics hardwired for logical thinking and analysis to the point some become extremely hateful towards them and perhaps even more likely to become mass shooters, they’re driven to homicidal rage by their constant non-sense, incoherence, disorderliness.

It doesn’t have much to do with a lack of empathy, which is what the media always makes it about. Autistics don’t lack empathy, they lack primitive social instincts that motivate religious delusion that lead to harm.

An autistic, as an alienated outcast of the tribe might be able to see the logical flaws in the arguments of nazis or slave owners prior to them recognizing (if ever) they’re doing anything wrong, then feels urged to shoot them all as he generally starts noticing the irrational normative lifeforms don’t even respond to logical argumentation most of the time and just spout more fallacies at him.

One could even say it’s the opposite of low (affective) empathy, the autistic is the one that ”fails” to rationalize and come up with logically inconsistent arguments to justify their behavior, the non-autistics are ones running on these coping mechanisms and incoherent thoughts to justify their behavior.

But this is a slightly different topic. In conclusion, I believe autism is simply in many ways a more intense, accurate perception of reality that was simply not favored by evolution, a delusional condition persisting to this day was largely favored.

Just because something has an evolutionary benefit though, that doesn’t mean it is truly the ideal, as in, most harm-reducing behavior, rape has a primitive evolutionary benefit, but we still recognize it as a harm causing, bad act.

Negative sensation avoidance could be said to be the ultimate goal of every sentient organism, every action sentient organisms take is in some way conducive to this goal (e.g. even a masochist wouldn’t inflict pain onto himself, if he didn’t ultimately experience any sexual frustration by not doing so, he’s just in a predicament where he has to inflict the pain onto himself to get relief) and how the organisms feel is something that evolution of course cannot care about.

The non-autistics essentially developed to the point where they can deny, ignore, blend out that unpleasant sensations exists to keep them going, they’ve acquired rationalization, coping skills, the ability to delude themselves into blissful, naive ignorance, but not to become better at analyzing and systemizing, ultimately conducive to the reduction of unpleasant sensations.

Someone who can blend out and rationalize the fact that they’re harming others temporarily feels better, but if every organism acts in this way, it ultimately creates a more unpleasant sensation-laden planet, the non-autistic perception is better than autistic perception in the same way as being a rapist is better than being a non-rapist.

The rapist has a primitive evolutionary benefit, he overpowers others and produces more offspring, same for non-autism, by suffering from religious delusions en masse, accumulating into large groups sharing the same distorted reality perception, due to sheer numbers, not intellectual superiority they can crush everything in their path beneath them, but it’s nonetheless harm-promoting behavior.

Autism, asperger’s syndrome, higher TPN activity, etc is better for analzying ethics, comprehending reality and improving its conditions, considering normative humans at least recognize pain as a problem when it happens to them, want it to be recognized and taken into ethical consideration, benefit from various technological improvements of reality manufactured by those with a more autistic mindset for systemization, it’s rather hypocritical they would just declare their condition to be per se superior to the autistic one, just because their behavior has a primitive evolutionary benefit in the same way one could say rape does.