Are autistics a subspecies of human?

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Better than that. The isolation between NTs and Aspies is close to 2 million years, enough to produce some profound differences.

What you are saying is that aspies were a subespecie (or even a separate species) some millenia ago bit now are the same specie than "regular" humans ("has been diluted into a spectrum ever since")

Our traits are a spectrum, with more or less random configurations between people. That's why we no longer can qualify as species or subspecies. However, the traits themselves, when viewed as a collection of traits, could very well qualify as another species (just look at all the species-typical differences in social and communication that is used to diagnose ASDs). The problem is that we no longer have any pure types, and also that the physical traits once diagnostic of Neanderthal no longer has any considerable correlation to neurodiversity, but rather only exists as random traits.

Only if the mating between a "pure" autistic and a "pure" NT does not produce fertil offspring (a thing that, today, is difficult to demonstrate).

Yes, and it's so easy to see because it's not even disordered behavior, it's completely different behavior. So many of us have no "problem" with communication at all around other aspies/non-NTs.

I disagree with this being presented as fact when the scientific community (and clearly, this community) does not agree. There is not enough data to support the theory, as I understand it. To be fair, that doesn't completely discredit it, either.

That makes no sense and is not backed up by any human evolutionary timelines.

Not yet, but it eventually will.

Exactly, and I really want to know what the evolutionary function of this kind of communication might be. There is no model for that, let alone any hypothesis.

Even when the scientific study of ASD only recognizes the absense of NT-typical communication, it is still impossible to explain the absense of typical communication in a species like humans. If we also enter into the picture a completely novel set of Aspie communication (where stims are central, but not the only thing), which psychiatry has decided must either be repetitive behaviors or tics.

That's not a useful definition of species. Tigers and lions are different species, and can reproduce (and they have 5 million years divergence, with shorter generations). Other examples are grey wolf and coyote. What long divergence creates is not primarily physical species barriers, but psychological. That means one species doesn't like the other (or has incompatible mating behaviors). That such differences exists between Aspies and NTs is clear, and it drives asortative mating, which keeps the traits related to mating together. That's why we have a neurodiversity spectrum.

There are many different causes for autism and also different types of autism, and people with certain kinds of brains are more likely to encapsulate, meaning close themselves off from life in certain ways by focusing inwardly and kind of withdrawing to some degree from the outside world. Also the tendency to do this can be caused by childhood trauma and/or certain kinds of parenting and/or even brain damage..Think of how many toddlers probably have had concussions, maybe more than one. This could even account for the incidence of more autism in boys....I do not know if anyone has ever thought of this but me, but it does make sense...

In any case, people from one family can have similar brains, for instance be smarter than the average population (but it would not be possible to isolate a gene for this---that is too ridiculous--there are probably sets of genes that interact to affect brain function), but because of social patterns in that family certain or all members would tend to encapsulate as a psychologically protective device (overly focus on 'oneself' in general as perhaps represented by certain interests, or an exaggerated sensitivity around various sensations),whereas another family with the same kind of brain might be socially adjusted so there would not be this kind of encapsulation in general, except if one person was brain damaged or experienced some kind of unusual trauma. You could call these other people with genetically similar brains who have not encapsulated and are socially more adjusted "nt's," but the way they fit in to society probably has nothing much to do with genetics, though maybe in some way they just are just a tad smarter than those other smart people who psychologically encapsulate:-)

I have a theory that the brains of people who are really smart have a genetic tendency to process data a little differently, and this works around encapsulation of data in certain ways,so that is a good thing but when such a tendency becomes psychological then it is a disorder..

It might interesting to look at studies of ashkenazi jews (and perhaps also asians), though I myself do not have the inclination to do so.)

I think that male "ligers" are supposed to be unfertile. About the coyote and the grey wolf, I don't know.

Possible, but given 5 vs 2 million years of divergence, and longer human generations, we would anticipate that lions and tigers are something like 3 times more different than NTs and Aspies, and thus we won't expect infertility between Aspies and NTs when ligers and tigons sometimes are fertile.

But it is extremely rare for them to produce fertile young.

NTs and Aspies are the same species. The children of NTs are regularly Aspie, the children of Aspies can be NT.

But aspies dont mate with other aspies either. They dont mate with ANY one. So thats pure irrelevent nonsense. The few aspies that do succeed in marrying and producing progeny are more like to do so with a nt mate than with another aspie. For one thing- there are 100 times as many nt's out there as aspies- so you're odds for either an nt or an aspie finding a mate are better with nts.

Yes, and it is infuriating that no effort has been made to explain what our behavior really is, anyone can see it is different from NTs, yes, but they should look deeper. They just point at it and go "That's different! Different means wrong! Fix it!"
If another animal displayed these differences they would rightly not be considered the same species (or at least be a subspecies). Just look at chimpanzees and bonobos, who primarily have behavioral differences - bonobos are a neotenized version of chimpanzees in a way and thus considered another species! !!
And as for tics - they should realize tics are involuntary muscular jerks and not whatever stimming is to us.



This should be painfully obvious for anyone.