I think high functioning autism is just a DSM-isation (label as disease) of people with high introversion, neurotism and/or disagreeableness. Read "The silent power of introverts" by Susan Cain. People are people. We all evolved traits to fill our biological niche. Highly vocal people with little fears (extraverted and neurotypical) are just that: more "confident" and vocal about how great they are. Corporate sociopaths will say you have a too high feeling for justice to silence you. Realize that this is your strength to realize what is ethical and a blind spot for them and their greatest weakness. Dark triad people will black/white label to control you since you are more prone to be sensitive and isolated. You have to realize that your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. That counts for every person where ever on the spectrum. As highly sensitive individual you are just more focused on the negative of your (in)ability to function in a certain biological niche. You are also more realistic of your and other people's abilities and talents (Dunning–Kruger effect). You are a animal on the savanna that is sensitive to the sounds of the predator approaching. And you survive. And the cycle continues.
>> I think high functioning autism is just a DSM-isation (label as disease) of people with high introversion, neurotism and/or disagreeableness. Read "The silent power of introverts" by Susan Cain.
Because you never met an extroverted autist or you were not aware. I am lucky enough to know one. Also, autism is not labeled as a disease but as a developmental disorder.
Autistic are not necessarily introverts. Autism is more like social blindness than introversion. Considering the fact that human is highly social animal it makes life harder. Calling people with ASD introverts is like calling people with depression just sad.
Autism is a problem with cognitive empathy (understanding and recognizing emotions in one self and others). Versus sociopathy and other dark triads which have a problem with affective empathy (experiencing an mirror emotion to the emotion of others). The latter makes sociopaths able to exploit people around them (recognizing emotions and no bad feeling exploiting it). You can also miss both but these will be severely ineffective interacting and being accepted by society (in extreme low functioning sociopaths like serial killers and mass murderers). Highly intelligent and/or sensitive people have the ability to process large amounts of information ("detailism" in a negative tone). They have complex emotions, mixed with their environment whereas less sensitive people have more control of how to filter the input of their environment. So highly sensitive and intelligent have a lot of input from technical information but also complex social situations (over thinking it). This makes it highly tiring to work in large social groups (vs extraverted people) and leads to isolating to small social groups (introversion) and diving deep in a limited subject of interest to limit this input. I posit that so called high functioning autists are not socially blind but actually very receptive for all kinds of information including social cues and emotions of their environment, overwhelming them. See the work by Simon Baron-Cohen.
In fact sociopaths are often exceptionally successful in society because they're very good at manipulating people. It's in some sense the opposite of autism: the actual emotion is not there but they are very natural at feigning it.
