Do you think autism has symptoms?

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If there are universal symptoms, I would guess social impairment and sensory issues. But it may turn out on closer inspection that even those aren't universal, and that there are people who look just as autistic but with a different set of deeper symptoms. Further research is needed.

I don't think any of the surface symptoms (eye contact etc) are universal.

Sensory issues are not universal, I know an HFA person who doesn't have any, or at least I think he is HFA, and he is for sure on the spectrum.

thats exactly what i meant only you worded it alot better

If it weren't for the fqact of the many other things that all autistics have at least 1 or more of, autism would be called social dysfunction disorder, as that is the only global symptom, social ineptness, social dysfunction, socially odd/awkward, or whatever else you might call it.

I think the common symptom is diminished ability to process info in real time. Whether it is trying to figure out what is going on during a group conversation, making a decision when standing at a fast food counter, knowing what to say next when a routine phone interaction suddenly goes off-script, or understanding what it was we said that has offended someone, people with AS need more time than NTs find acceptable to process things and take appropriate action. It's the reason we can't be "spontaneous".

That is definitly not it. To not be able to process info in real time would mean that if I threw a baseball at you, you wouldn't move to catch it, or move out of its way until after it hit you, and you wouldn't feel the pain from it hitting you for roughly 1.5-3 seconds afterwards.

I didn't say "not able", I said "diminished capacity". And I got hit by the ball in P.E. all the time.

The human brain can process information faster than the fastest supercomputers in existance today.

That's actually similar to my new theory. This is the thermosensitive neurons theory (building upon last november's heat theory, which now has fact status, no longer a theory ) as i thought it up yesterday at the mall:

Most parts of the body can handle temperature changes, your hand can get cold and it's ok. Brain cells however are much more sensitive, if the brain gets cold the neurons die. BUT if the brain gets just a little bit cold, neurons don't die but they do stop working properly. I believe evolution has used this principle and has arranged things so that some neurons are more sensitive to temperature than others. The result is that when your brain gets a bit colder, only some areas of the brain stop working, they are not dead, they are just not doing their entire job anymore. Behaviorally this would look like a loss of functions... lack of theory of mind, lack of empathy, lack of conversational skills, lack of motor skills, ... you get the picture. Lacking those neurons the brain would divert processing to other areas that are secondary for normal people, hence we get the "aspie skills": thinking in pictures and so on.