If this means anything, I find you very neurotypical.
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I know I’m on the spectrum. I just figured, you know, not on the spectrum that much. 
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Autism, Personality, and Human Diversity Defining Neurodiversity in an Iterative Process Using Aspie Quiz
Behind the scenes of the Aspie Quiz. It’s Open Access.
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Your screen name is a contrived word, but if you want someone to refer to you in this forum that’s what they’re going to use. Because YOU chose it, as the term to use to refer to you.
Why is it so important to keep pressing the point that you don’t like a term that a group of people have chosen to use (at least as an alternate option) to describe themselves?
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I guess one of the experiences of having Asperger’s (for me, at least) is that my brain is never quiet. If it seizes on something, it goes over and over and won’t drop it. It’s all patterns, theories, ideas, questions, answers, almost never stillness. It’s usually the abstract principles behind something or the possibilities rather than specifics and what you see now. It can give you a big rush to explore this, and with a lot of lateral thinking it’s often possible to come up with creative solutions that other people don’t see. Since I actually really like people and I’ve been to a lot of countries and lived in many environments, I’m always thinking about how societies can improve well-being for everyone. What environments, laws, structures, philosophies etc. help to motivate people to be more cooperative and empathetic, even with the many flaws that we have? How do we get there from here? I tend to be quite optimistic, because there are many ways that things can be better than they are, many compromises that people can make that will make everyone better off, many people who are motivated and talking about positive change. It’s not some grandiose desire to lead, just to be part of positive change, because humans have a lot of potential.
Then reality bites, and I see how fragile a lot of the good things we have in society really are. Seeing the ugly side of our societies and how things are often going downhill in many ways, and how powerless we can be to stop it. Not only that, but it’s pretty funny to think this way, since I avoid people quite a bit and don’t understand them, and they often don’t understand me either. My internal world and what people see from the outside are quite different. My brain keeps thinking, but now I’m more like this:
There’s just no balance. Whether it’s anxiety, worry, existential dread… I guess there’s a strong feeling of alienation and isolation from everyone else, which in some ways is the case for everyone, but seems to be stronger for Aspies. The ways of thinking mean that you keep coming up against the meaningless of life and especially society’s values, or your limitations in time, intelligence, abilities etc. I mean, I could put my creativity into developing technology or something, but that would suggest that I think technology provides a way out of this mess.
So I try to recognise my limitations and do things on a more human scale. Helping people around me if I can, trying to improve other people’s lives, enjoying nature etc. Couchsurfing is one way - quite a few people seem to think that we have a rare inclusive atmosphere in our home and it gives them hope that things can change. And that brings a little of the optimism back…
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Poor executive function is another problem that many autistic people have. I could never understand how my older brother could sit down and do his homework or another assignment for hours at a time - for me, it’s hard to find a balance between obsession and lack of interest. A case in point: maths was very difficult for me in high school, but last year I basically relearned everything I’d struggled with and got further than before within a couple of weeks. There’s nothing particularly difficult about it, or any concepts that I was stuck at for long. People’s advice about how I needed to “apply myself” or something similar just didn’t work. Watching other people studying was like concentration porn. How do they do that? My parents were actually quite involved and I was coached in physics by a friend. It always seemed like I almost understood every module, but couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. In the end I just passed, even though my parents were at the point of paying me to study - that just made it worse. No matter how hard I worked, I was still lazy and couldn’t reach that state of flow, even though I cared about it, wanted to do well and knew I had natural ability in the area. I could even help other people concentrate, but it just didn’t work for me. Socially it was the same - I didn’t have many friends, even though I wanted to connect with people. I hung out with the weirdest kids, who were also the most accepting. I was a bit of an outlier in the nerd group, partly because I didn’t have their drive. I was so frustrated that I was looking for ways to move out of the house. When I left the school, I didn’t bother giving my photo for the yearbook. Someone drew a caricature of me and submitted it, which was not flattering at all - but it did highlight what other people thought of me.
I managed to pass my A levels, but not well enough to go to a good university, so against my school’s advice I decided to join a ship and do voluntary work for a couple of years. To be honest, there was a real sense in which I was literally wanting to go to the other side of the world, away from everyone I knew. It was amazing - I don’t know whether actual group homes for autistic people would have helped any more. Most of the ship’s crew was second language English speaking, so everybody adopted a simplified and straightforward dialect. We came from over 35 countries and travelled to others, so people were clear about what they expected from each other. If someone was offended, they told you that you had shocked their culture and that this would be a better way to act. They didn’t expect you to just know this stuff. There were written rules about what you could and couldn’t do, including socially. Nobody could date for the first year on board, so you could ignore that whole dynamic when interacting with the opposite sex. If you did want to date, there were specific ways to show interest and you don’t directly confront the other person or rely on hints. Asia is often a nicer place to be autistic too - in some places eye contact is even considered rude. In any case, cultural norms for dealing with other crew members and locals were explained to us. How close should you stand to someone while speaking to them? How should you initiate conversation? How do you make small talk and ask someone questions about their life? What are people likely to find offensive? It didn’t matter if you were a bit awkward - so was everyone, and we were all learning from each other.
Possibly best of all, nobody got paid for their work, including the captain and the rest of the senior staff. We were all on a level to a certain degree and there was a limited amount that your boss could do to make you work. There would be a budget for a team outing once in a while, but otherwise your boss couldn’t really punish you for doing something wrong or reward you for doing it right. This is amazing for building intrinsic motivation. Sometimes I’d work extra to support my colleagues, or help to unload shipping containers of books or food on my day off. I was known for studying a lot, because I didn’t have to and I was doing it for my own benefit in the moment (not because my parents wanted me to do it or because of some reward in the future).
It’s an interesting contrast with the ABA reinforcement techniques. In the ABA video, the child does a task and receives a reward (a sweet, a hug, clearing the table and doing something different etc.). It’s the same as the way I’d been taught all my life, although with added punishments if I did things wrong. None of this helped at all, and if anything it made things worse. On the ship, I learned to find enjoyment in the activity itself. Interestingly enough, this has been backed up by research since I left the ship. Incentivising a child’s behaviour reduces intrinsic motivation, and reinforcing the benefits of the activity itself increases it and provides better results than traditional rewards.
Since then I’ve retaken high school and am 2/3 of the way through my masters, while holding a job and doing my share in the home (which can all be a problem, and would have been a problem without my experience on the ship). This is one place where there can be real differences between people with low and high executive function, and giving people the right skills to understand and use their brain has significant benefits for them and the people around them. I’m not less autistic, but I am able to do things that were impossible for me before. Some of it is just growing up, but there’s also a sense where I’ve learned to stop trying so hard and accept the fact that I’ve got the stamina of a 7 year old, and learn to work with that.
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Problem solving, while good, and right, and even fun when done in the proper context, isn’t something I have a skill in off meds. If there’s a problem in my path toward executing an impulse off-meds, then I’ll take a stab at it. But I’m not going to fix it if it takes work. Unless it’s something extremely important in the moment.
Here’s my philosophy on lock picking that I developed off-meds, and generally still hold to:
If it’s important enough for me to get in, then leaving a mark doesn’t matter. Basically it’s a general rule I use. If I need to get in badly enough, then I’ll break a lock/door/whatever. If I’m not comfortable doing that, then it’s probably something too shady for me to participate in. That’s why I don’t feel bad liberating a dog from a solar oven parked in a grocery store lot.
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I think Sally knows what “kleptomaniac Anne” is like by now, and cynically assumed that she’d taken the marble while she wasn’t looking.
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I think the Sally Anne test may be focused on the wrong thing.
I have this problem with just me by myself. If I get a spoon dirty after I’ve eaten off it, my gut reaction is to worry I’m going to be sick because I ate off the spoon before it fell on the floor.
I have to carefully, step-by-step run through the sequence of events to successfully guess what’s going to happen. And who knows what weird things I got up to before I realized I had a problem divining causal flow.
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It’s an interesting test. I’d fail it because I’m hung-up on providing the right (most efficient, most helpful to the problem) answer, not the one that’s expected.
ETA: And the fact that I consider the wrong answer to be the best, right one is also pretty telling. Just realised this. 
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One of the things I really disagree on with the Aspie quiz is the labelling of the two ends of the X axis:
Isn’t the whole point of neurodiversity that we are all neurodiverse, and the NT-AS spectrum represents part of the overall spectrum of neurodiversity (which would also cover other neurological differences such as bipolar as well as neurotypical people)? If not, wouldn’t neurodivergent be a better term?
In any case, I was also thinking about the issue of undiagnosed adults who think they might have ASD, or people who pretend to have it. Of course, having ASD doesn’t stop you from being a jerk and using the diagnosis to your advantage, but in any case I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to seek a diagnosis (and I really think people should look into it if they do suspect that they are on the spectrum). Even if they’re not autistic, I don’t think it does too much harm if HFA diagnoses are treated well. Some scenarios:
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They are autistic, and it explains a lot. People know to be clearer with them. If they do something inappropriate, people can point it out more clearly. If they’re having meltdowns, throwing things etc., they’re able to work at strategies to get away from others if there’s a risk or to avoid meltdowns.
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They aren’t autistic, and are just using it as an excuse to be abusive. It’s not an excuse, even if you are autistic.
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They aren’t necessarily autistic, but they have some issues like low executive thinking, poor impulse control, sensory issues etc., or they’ve failed in life for different reasons. Here is where a proper diagnosis would be good, as it may be autism or something else. A lot of things that helped me would probably have helped others with similar issues such as ADHD, negative thinking, social anxiety etc. I want to know more about my own mind, but I’m hardly the only person to have struggled in school for different reasons. A system that recognises neurodiversity and provides accessible adult education and other benefits for everyone will benefit autistic people and many others. I think we need to be very careful about medicating these issues, but an ASD diagnosis doesn’t necessarily come with prescriptions for medications anyway. My psychiatrist didn’t even mention medication. I don’t want to take resources away from people who need more help, but this information has helped me a lot, despite the fact that I’m in a stable situation and I haven’t asked for any more support.
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They are autistic, and are functioning well in different environments. Great! Aside from the fact that the knowledge this opens up should help even high functioning adults, it’s important to move away from the idea that autism is necessarily a terrible thing. There are definite challenges, but only diagnosing people who can’t cope reinforces the idea that high functioning autistic people can’t cope by definition. I don’t think that’s true, and success stories will increase our knowledge of how to be more successful. Also, the terms high and low functioning can hide challenges that high functioning people face in actually functioning well, or abilities that lower functioning people have.
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My understanding of the term ‘neurodiversity’ is just as you described: a concept acknowledging the diversity—not gamut—of human cognition and its modern-day implications for education and industrial reform. I’m curious as to why the designers of this instrument seem to have applied the term only to a subset of this diversity.
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So what does that make me? I have always felt more comfortable around neural diverse people, so I assumed I was as well.
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 66 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 159 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical
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Human?
Comparing and contrasting, the overal difference between “typical” and “atypical” types and mentally healthy vs. mentally ill isn’t really all that large and this is on a pretty blunt instrument graph. If we were to use more variables, I imagine the differences would be smaller and more nuanced still.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s very helpful to me knowing that I could have traits in common with just about anyone.
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But… I’m not human, I’m a fish!
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OK, fine by me. I’m not arguing with anyone that drives a tank.
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Heh. Both of my kids passed. My 6 year old son should have failed since we and those with experience who have seen him strongly suspect that he has ASD, while my 3 year old daughter should be too young, even as a (probable) NT. My son explained that Sally (or Mulan, in this case) hadn’t seen the switch, so she’d look in the original box. My daughter ended up continuing the story, and Mulan and Rapunzel decided to share the coin.
Not that I go around diagnosing everyone, but I sort of suspect that my son’s teacher is on the spectrum too. Whenever I bring up reasons why we think he may be autistic, she says that everyone has those issues. She also interrupts all the time and starts long monologues on her pet topics that aren’t really related to the discussion (even if I make hints that we need to go - she has a class to teach and I’ve got another kid to take to school). We had to ask her to fill in a questionnaire with different traits, and she said that he didn’t have a number of traits that we know he shows at school (and he definitely does at home). She only mentioned in passing weeks after the fact that he’d had an hour long meltdown and had to leave the class. But he’s adjusting fine, no problems at all… 
(Incidentally, it can sometimes be the case that kids are able to hold things in while they’re at school, then they let it out at home. My school personality and home personality were quite different).
Interestingly enough, he also has a pronounced lack of concern for gender boundaries. His interests are Disney princesses, My Little Pony, Shopkins, Youtube toy reviews… Most of his close friends have always been girls.
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