[lostcolony]

We know that people aren't perfectly rational. The point of the article is that autistic people tend to be more rational on average than neurotypicals. The emotional weight that affects neurotypicals and causes them to fall into biases more often (on average) doesn't apply as often (on average); an autistic person will be less likely to behave differently when confronted with "80% fat free" vs "20% fat", to borrow an example for the article.

[empressplay]

That's likely because (many) autistic people (myself included) have to learn to function with emotional regulation issues largely by second-guessing them. So the 'gut feeling' a neurotypical would tend to go with gets overridden by subsequent analysis in the autistic individual, in their attempt to 'calm the storm'. In my case, this causes me to 'throw out' most political hyperbole.

Unfortunately, if the shit really does hit the fan, this process can lead to validation of the emotions and an 'autistic meltdown'. So it's a double-edged sword, to be sure

[lostcolony]

Could be; was just pointing out that the parent maybe wasn't really speaking to the point of the article.

Still, I find stuff like this super interesting. It helps dislodge the narrative that autism is a problem or disease, something that needs 'fixing', rather than just being different.

[gmfawcett]

Supposing autistic people are more rational than the neurotypical: then couldn't we generalize the thesis to, "highly rational people challenge preconceived ideas about rationality"? I don't think the research claimed that people with autism have rationality-enhancing properties that are unavailable to people who don't. For example, "reduced use of stereotypes" applies to some otherwise-neurotypical people -- we would probably call these people "highly rational".

Put another way, I suppose I'm saying that there may be a second group -- "highly rational people" -- that intersects and overlaps significantly with "people with autism", and we could be making statements about one group that should be attributed to the other.

(I'm not trying to touch any nerves here. I'm putting aside the fact that the article is a positive piece about people with autism and makes some enlightening points. I'm just claiming that the "challenging preconceived ideas" may be mostly true, but also too narrow and possibly misleading.)