[hellbender]

You're referring to Temple Grandin, an extremely high-functioning autistic person. I've never seen her express agreement with the OP's ideas. She thinks autistic humans have brain defects which disable some of the functions which normal humans have, making autistics think and feel more like higher mammals who never had those brain functions in the first place.

I highly recommend her books to anyone interested in animal behavior, real scientific psychology, and heroic effort to overcome adversity.

[muawiyah]

Thanks for the book references. I've read several interviews with her ~ which must have been very difficult to do ~ but it seemed to me she thinks there's some survival advantage to autism.

That's the writer's point.

Kind of like Heidelbergensis. They were among the first to bury their dead, but their immediate past ancestors were like animals and just left their dead behind.

[muawiyah]

BTW, yes, she is HEROIC.

We have a young friend with another form of all this ~ took him 25 years to learn to count but he learned. His ambition is to get a driver's license.

He is as aware of his plight as anyone is ~ and understands his limitations thoroughly. He is exceedingly heroic and works a real man's job ~ redirecting mail in a large office building using a computer.

My kids taught him how to use DOS commands back in the early days. That enabled him to load his own video games. Nothing stopped him after that.