What separates are interest from NT interest?

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Besides NT might be fashion etc. and an Aspie might not find those interesting I was mainly thinking of College. IMO you must be interested in say becoming a lawyer (reading about it do the work/studying etc. to become one but FIRST NT OR ASPIE you must first have an INTEREST in becoming a lawyer.) I think mainly we talk about are interests to much and devote 24/7 to said interest and some aren't school/career based so they are "odd" (No offense to anyone.) So anything that spearates ours from theres?

not just TYPE of interst, it's the intensity of interest and the frequency of said interesting field. E.g. higher frequency of Aspies in computer games, math, sciences, than say movie stars. But could you please explain youself better in case I misunderstood you?

I get emotionally attached to my films, my chest feels tight unless I can buy more stuff relating to my current favourite film (if merchandise is available), I want EVERYONE to know about said film.
I also got asked 'why is that important' when I got very excited about one of my favourites coming out on bluray and shouted it out to my sixth form common room.
I think NTs are more subtle and don't feel the need to share everything...

I agree that it's the amount of time we think about, and thus, talk about the special interests. I could talk about my strongest special interests all day long, and whenever I'm talking with my mom or best friend (the two people who know me the best), pretty much the only topic of conversation is my primary special interest. I have a need to bring it up in conversation, because that's the only thing that is on my mind. I can switch topics for a short time, but eventually, I need to return to my special interest. I don't ramble to many other people besides my mom and best friend anymore, just because I dislike when people either don't care about what I'm saying or when people try to switch conversation topics. But that doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about my special interest whenever I'm talking about something else.

There obviously is an OCD-like quality to special interests. I have both OCD and AS, so I can see the similarities. Like OCD obsessions, I cannot control my thoughts about my special interests. They just pop into my mind without any prompting. And whenever I hear or see something that even remotely reminds me of my current primary special interest, I automatically start to laugh. It's involuntary. Interestingly, though, my Anafranil has pretty much stopped my intrusive OCD thoughts, but my special interests' intensity and domination of my thoughts have stayed pretty much the same. And that's good. Because I cannot fully express the joy thinking/talking about my special interests gives me.
-OddDuckNash99-

Trying to market my special interest. Bet if I do sell it and it becomes an occupation I'll find another SI within twenty four hours.

Anyone ever swapped an SI for a day?

Nope. I've never swapped SIs. I'm a classic example of how my SIs pick me, I don't pick them. That's why I'm glad my mother never tried to get me to switch to a different interest, because it wouldn't have been able to have successfully happened.
-OddDuckNash99-

I was thinking swapping an SI with someone else.- not that you would : Be like driving someone else's car I guess- be weird though wouldn't it?

i think many aspies are drawn to patterns and sequence and order of things which could lead us to having more unusual interests like train timetables, car number plates, post codes, make and models of planes/boats/vehicles etc. also books on austism suggest that it's the intensity in which we focus on our hobbies that distinct us from the general NT population.

To follow your Law School example, a neurotypical student might choose to study law even though it held no particular passion for them, because they knew that once the rigors of the education were past, they could find a simple venue, like filing federal forms for the disabled, and make a very comfortable living for the rest of their life, complete with backyard swimming pools, big-ass SUVs and plenty of time for golf. Or they might go into the profession just because that's what a parent did and they grew up hearing about it until it just seemed an easy choice, since the family had lots of social connections already established. The neurotypical student wouldn't necessarily have to love legal issues in order to study them - they'd only need good study habits.

Whereas the Aspergian student would be more likely to choose law as a vocation due to a personal fascination with a specific type of legal procedure, or a prodigious capacity to memorize volumes of precedent cases, or perhaps a burning sense of social justice about discrimination - the point being, that to the Aspie, there would more likely be a detailed focus on some specific element giving them an obsessive reason to choose that path. Of course, their focus on a specific area would also mean that completing the overall course of study would be much harder, because they would likely find it very tedious to force themselves to focus on the areas that didn't interest them personally, but were required in order to graduate.

I have yet to meet a probable NT who came close to having what I can recognize as an interest. I use it as shibboleth. By the same token NTs cannot recognize what I have as enmotional involvement.

NTs if my acquaintance will have a hobby, yes. They will read up on a topic to solve a problem, yes. They will habitually tune into certain media, yes. But they just are not THERE.

My mother came very close. She was into gardening, and at one point was reading up on and collecting gourmet Hemerocallis. ALMOST. But she would never get out of bed in the middle of the night to check a detail, and frankly she was more interested in the technique and the pricing than I could ever understand.

One of my professors was deep into the same languages I was dealing with. One day I say to him, how wonderful it would be to get a good corpus of data on Xish, which is said to be related to Yan and may be a key to how the Zed group interrelates.

He just looked at me, said it would not be ecoinomically worthwhile. I am dying of culture shock as much as when a friend said she wore contacts to AVOID hiding behind her glasses.

They have constructs homologous to interests - but a wing is not a hand.

The intensity, and richness.

Sheer force of numbers(or lack thereof)

That's it.

We get more joy out of our special interests, than NTs get out of theirs.

My NT ex's interest is bikes. He even went to Thredbo to compete in a race. When I was dating him it was all about playing 5 different instruments and practicing with his band.
He's the only NT I know who gets this obsessed about things. I was even there to witness his growing obsessing with photography. I may or may have not been the reason for that one.

And how would you know that NT's don't get as much out of a special interest as people with AS? I thought we were supposed to be bad at knowing how NT's thought?

As for me when I get obsessed it's all I can think about. Right now I am thinking about dragging my telescope out and searching for the craters on the Moon. But first I'm going to look through it through binoculars because I've had two failed attempts at looking for moon craters. Is it to light? Is my telescope just not pointing in the right direction? Oh dear, there I go again.

I agree that with AS and even ADHD it's about the intensity of the special interest. Both conditions have people spending days on an interest and completely forgetting about the outside world, missing meals and at times forgetting to sleep.