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Notes -
My model is that socialization rolls off of autistic people like water off of a duck by default. So they're usually less socialized by the time they reach adulthood. They instead get socialized once they make socialization a special interest.
It turns out one of the communities where everyone's special interest is socialization, and people get technical about it, is the trans community, for reasons I think should be apparent (they have to learn gender roles after losing neuroplasticity and childhood mirroring habits, plus as autistic people accumulate, the norms become more autistic). So Autistic people are likely to gain their first socialization special interest when coming in contact with it.
I also model high functioning autism as more adaptive than it was in the ancestral environment for a number of reasons, which may help to explain its rise.
We have more control of our environment, so it is less crucial to be able to filter external stimuli internally.
We punish lack of social awareness less than in the ancestral environment.
We are more specialized, focusing our entire beings on a special interest is less maladaptive than it was in the ancestral environment.
Our world is more technical. High precision behavior, focusing on mathematics, and so on are more important to success than in the ancestral environment.
Autistic norms are becoming better accepted and better known. A more accommodating environment also makes high functioning autism less maladaptive.
I think a lot of people underestimate the rate at which humanity adapts to it's environment, and I believe our world contains pressures that push adaptation towards certain traits associated with high functioning autism.
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