Certainly one of the strongest indicators of autism is that both autistic and non-autistic people tend to agree that autistic people have poor social skills, but quantitative psychologists often struggle with operationalizing social skills, and in my own brief research on the topic, I haven’t found a clear difference in social performance between autistic and non-autistic people. What’s going on?
I think there is a difference between skills (which are trainable), outcomes (which can be deliberately optimized), and innate ability (which seems to be actual source of struggle).
My current friends are usually very surprised when they learn that I was absolutely insufferable to interact with when I was 18 years old, but I just speedran social adaptation by hanging out with people tolerant of my sort of autism, and I still find it very tiring to be around people not from tech/science/artistic subcultures.
But that still raises the question of what your sort of autism is, and why that makes it tiring to be around people not from tech/science/artistic subcultures.
I think there is a difference between skills (which are trainable), outcomes (which can be deliberately optimized), and innate ability (which seems to be actual source of struggle).
My current friends are usually very surprised when they learn that I was absolutely insufferable to interact with when I was 18 years old, but I just speedran social adaptation by hanging out with people tolerant of my sort of autism, and I still find it very tiring to be around people not from tech/science/artistic subcultures.
But that still raises the question of what your sort of autism is, and why that makes it tiring to be around people not from tech/science/artistic subcultures.