[blargey]

Yes, if we could pin it to a linear scale of Degrees Autistic (Farenheit), that could be estimated with reasonable precision for all day-to-day relevant values by feeling the nearby air on your skin, nobody would complain about "Austism" being too broad.

[o11c]

Usually it's at least 4 scales with no strong correlation (and a couple more that are correlated more). They do have them.

Thus, it is incorrect to refer to Autism as a "spectrum". Instead, we should correctly call it a "manifold".

[greesil]

Locally euclidian?

[Spivak]

Am I missing something you can though. That's actually kinda how it is. I detest the phrase "high functioning" but that group is roughly your outside temperatures. You'll notice the difference between 30° and 80° and the same temperature 72° can feel different in the summer, winter, before it rains, when it's humid/dry but is still the same intensity. Then there's 1000° degrees where (and this is someone I know) he stripped naked, ran through downtown, and yelled at random restaurant workers calling them fascists for not lettting him in and then got into a fight with the cops.

I think broadly that's what the "spectrum" characterization is meant to convey. And you should expect this, in code there's one happy path and a million different ways to err, some more catastrophic than others.