Opinions on Simon Baron-Cohen's response to critics

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They would if they weren't able to fully grasp the concept that others can have information and POV that they don't. Kinda like the kid that plays hide and seek and thinks that if they can't see the other kids, then the other kids can't see them. I remember thinking that when I was a child. I read something about that in a book about silly people (a child's book) and realized that I was wrong about the 'if I can't see you , you can't see me' stance.

I really don't like to call it lacking empathy, as much due to the varying views of what the word empathy actually means. I'd prefer the term Theory of Mind, or mindblindness. Something I thought about yesterday about lacking theory of mind. It's that if I wouldn't do something to someone else, then I don't expect them to do it to me. My son has this issue, too. I have learned a lot in the series of my life, so I have acquired knowledge, but have been manipulated and bullied quite a lot to get that knowledge. Since I don't read people well, and don't always get that their intentions might be less than nice I (especially as a young lady) have found myself in some pretty bad places, with some pretty bad people that most NTs would have been able to know way before I figured it out that other's intentions were to do me harm. I think it's really important no matter what terms we use that we teach young autistics not to be paranoid, but to learn to pay attention to certain things, because we don't always understand that other people's motives may be to harm us, because we ourselves would never think to do such a thing. They need to be taught some of this by rote, because we don't always do it intuitively.

All I know from personal experience is that NTs have extreme difficulty empathizing with me. It seems that other autistics have also observed this phenomenon of being constantly misinterpreted by NTs, the supposed mindreaders, because NTs have no clue how autistics think and feel. NTs can only empathize with other NTs. If I didn't know better, and I wanted to make up theories and write books, then I could easily stretch the observed phenomena into "NTs lack empathy", and I could even create my own Empathy Quotient to prove what I wanted to prove, the stuff that I made up in my theories and wrote into my books.

If I had taken the fabulous Sally-Anne Testimony of Empathy and Humanity when I was little, I would surely have failed it, because every weird-worded question would have been translated into "Where is the ball?" in my mind. You? Me? Sally? Anne? Whatever. It's all about the ball.

Begeezus, I didn't know that I had a point of view, let alone others. I guess others know better than me. They know that they have a point of view, and they know that I have a point of view, but they think that I have the same point of view that they do. Cue "WRONG" button sound here. Why can't they figure out that different people have different points of view?

While Simon Baron-Cohen's at it, maybe he could come over to interpret all my non-verbal cues to tell me how I think and feel in front of him. I sure would love to see his amazing mentalizing at work. Maybe some of his empathy rays will rub off on me, and I could slink away with them My Precious My Precious My Precious to my recharging chamber.

Since NTs have such great empathy with everyone, why are they still slapping those ugly Puzzle pictures on everything related to autism? After all, what can possibly be puzzling to a bunch of Mindreaders The Science Guys?