The Philosophy of Autism

Autism isn't so much the philosophy where "I only talk if someone talks to me 1st," but, more along the lines that, when you do talk, you say the minimum required thing. Or put it another way, everything you say is your point. In this case, your conversations are organized. Basically, it comes down to, if you don't have anything relevant to say, don't say anything. If you don't have anything to say, then whatever you say will be dismissed as irrelevant. The big idea - talking requires consent.

Autism is in the business where we respect the privilege of other people not wanting people to randomly talk to them. This is especially for people they don't know.

Of course, there is a huge amount of loneliness in the world of autism, but, we must respect, that talking is a privilege, not a right. Your right to talk to someone ends in their right to not want you to talk to them. Your privilege of talking to someone is their privilege of wanting you to talk to them.

To the extent a person is autistic is to the extent they tolerate lack of friendship, being single, or and being a virgin.

The connection between autism and being single.

For high-functioning autism (which is measured by I.Q., so discounting autistic people that are retarded), there are over 5.5 times as much autistic guys than autistic girls. For that reason, the following is written from a guy's perspective. Autism, after all, is considered to be "an extremely male mind."

What is the pre-requisite to getting a girlfriend? Friendship. And the pre-requisite to friendship often involves talking. So if you don't have any friends, you can't possibly have a girlfriend. You need the pre-requisite 1st.

The hardest part about talking is coming up with something relevant to say. However, you shouldn't make something up just to make the conversation happening. That needs consent. Like sex, talking is something that requires consent. Like everything else in the universe, talking is a privilege, not a right.

This is why it's hard to make friendship. There are 3 broad ways to make friends, and in fact, it's very easy to make artificial friendship. Sometimes artificial friendship can become friendship, but if it's not spontaneous, the effort to try is just not worth it.

A lot of successful friendships and relationships, unfortunately, in this universe, resolve around the causality of coincidence: being at the right place at the right time. Classic examples are saving someones life, or being useful to someone. The best examples are loaning (or giving) someone money.

If we live in a world where half of the time, it's the guys whom court girls initially, and, the other half of the time, it's the girls whom court guys initially, then it makes no difference whether someone is autistic or not. It makes no difference if you're an autistic guy or autistic girl. It makes no difference because 50% of the time, and 50% of the time, each gender courts the other gender initially.

But if we lived in a universe where 99% of the time, it's such that 1 gender courted the other gender 1st, then it would matter if you were autistic or not on the topic of being single or not, for the gender that does do the courting, 99% of the time. Then, it would not matter if you were the autistic gender that did not court 99% of the time, because you would be courted at a very high probability.

The connection between autism and loneliness.

It is not the quantity of friends that makes an autistic person lonely, but the quality of friends that makes an autistic person lonely. However, if the number is 0, then there is no difference.

If we lived in a society where if 1 gender courted the other gender, and the statistics of that being creepy is the same as if the other gender courted the initial gender, then it would make no difference whether you were autistic or not because it would not matter if you were a guy or not.

But if we lived in a universe where it was 99% of the time considered to be creepy if 1 gender asked for the contact information of someone of the other gender, but not the same statistical outcome of creepiness when happened the other way around, then it would matter whether you're autistic and of the gender where it is 99% of the time perceived to be creepy if you asked for the opposite gender's contact information.

This is what it means to be lonely and autistic - to the extent you are against not being perceived as creepy by respecting the opposite gender's privilege of not being asked their contact information, or being courted.

The connection between autism and shyness.

There's a difference between being shy, and simply having nothing to say. It would be an error to perceive someone that had nothing to say, as being shy.

This is where awkward silences can come to play. It's impossible to start a conversation with someone without asking a question or making a demand. Ask an autistic person 10 questions in a row, and when you're done, you could have an awkward silence. Unless of course, the autistic person makes something up to keep the conversation going, then he might have had something to say.

The whole point of conversation in the absence of consent is to make the conversation as relevant as possible.

The connection between autism and friendship.

Friendship is a 2-way relationship. That is, the friendship between person A and person B is such that, person A is a friend to person B as person B is a friend to person A. A 1-way friendship would be just that, a 1-way friendship.

Friendship is something that should happen naturally, not because 1 of the 2 persons wanted it. In that case, it is initially, artificial friendship. If we lived in a society where people weren't popularity bigots, that is, bigots by popularity, then it wouldn't matter if you were autistic or not. It wouldn't matter because it wouldn't matter whether you were at the bottom of the popularity chain or not.