@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs have you read Iain Banks (rip 😢) Culture novels? They’re the best space opera ever written, with a Culture of humanoids from various worlds all living together in post-scarcity hierarchy-free orbitals and giant interstellar ships. They live with (and possibly for the amusement of) the godlike AIs that run the ships and stations and wander around as various embodied robotic beings.
(I don’t believe in any heaven other than what we find here, but the Culture is pretty ideal.)
His last Culture novel, The Hydrogen Sonata, most definitely featured a neurodiverse autistic-coded character. The thing about living at the top of the tech tree among unbelievably powerful ai Minds is that you can change whatever you don’t like about yourself - switch genders, grow some wings, enhance your body to be covered in hundreds of functional penises (another character), etc. This autistic-coded character was deeply unhappy around other people (humans and Minds both) and didn’t want to undergo changing himself to like society. The Minds - who act very much like asexual, detached Greek gods - asked amongst themselves for a while and finally found the antisocial human a place to live. They stashed him on a ship, run by a similarly quiet and inward-focused Mind, that sat and watched over a fleet of sleeping warships, hidden away between the stars just in case there was another big war.
He spent a lot of time making sailing ships in bottles. He and the ship Mind were very content being alone together (until the plot found them, of course). I often think about how suited I would be to his lifestyle. Sounds so nice, right?
@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs I agree. I typically get along with autistic people better than neurotypicals because they are usually more open minded about my odd behavior, but I can’t assume tht just because someone is autistic I will get along with them (or vice versa). And when I’m very burnt out I can’t deal with [anyone] else, regardless of their neurotype.
Socializing with other ND people is still socializing, and I have a cognitive disability related to socializing…
@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs Many of the worst conflicts I’ve experienced were with ND former friends and acquaintences of mine. Autistic people don’t magically get along with each other. This isn’t DND, we don’t get a bonus to socializing with ND people to offset a penalty for socializing with NT people
@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs I guess similarly to how while I would lead a much happier life and struggle much less with executive functioning in such a hypothetical society, I would still struggle with it much more than most people it’s just that it wouldn’t have such huge negative consequences and the way society would be wouldn’t additionally worsen it and shame people like me for it (not inducing the guilt and low self esteem that so many ADHDers struggle with, impacting our mental well-being and quality of life a lot)?
@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs It's an interesting thought experiment. I wonder if you took it a step further to say: it's an imagined utopia where there's no neurodiversity and everybody's Autistic.
@ItsTrainingCatsAndDogs@dave I'm dubious about the "double empathy" theory, because I don't feel any more ease in communicating with autistic people than with anyone else in particular. I recognize some behaviors as analogous to mine, and perhaps I'm more accepting of what others perceive as odd behavior, but that's all conscious and learned.
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