I geneuinely do not understand the points you’re making.

In a world of all autists, no autist is disabled. That’s the third floor of your wheelchair analogy.

But… they would all still be autists.

Whereas in a world that I guess is managed by humanoid, ambulatory scifi robots that do all construction, to physically create and maintain wheelchair world…

The wheelchair folks are still disabled, they need the help of physically capable beings or things to exist in and maintain society.

… That is not the case for autism world.

Really what is the point you are driving at here?

Do what I just exampled right there, that’s how you determine disability vs something else.

Dyslexic world could probably function differently, but overall, basically fine. They’d probably invent different forms of communication and symbolic langauge that work better for them.

Deaf world?

Could work, depending on what level of technological/socilogical development you choose as your starting point.

But if you pick an technologically/sociologically early point, well, lots of predators and threats make noises.

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To a great extent, I see what you are driving at, I suppose I am just trying to say that ‘disability’ is a hard thing to try to nail down with a very precise meaning.

Could we perhaps both agree that ‘disability’ requires considerstion from both the sociological and more direct, autonomy impacting viewpoints?

It also does seem to very much carry different connotations in the US vs UK.

You have clearly put a lot of thought into this, the vast majority of people I encounter are US, who are much more likely to simply view the term Autist as inherently an insult.

So, I apologize for the earlier snipe at you.

I assumed, and became an ass.

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As to the level 1 vs other levels of Autism thing…

I’ve read a good deal of research pointing toward significantly different chemical and neuorological activity in the brain, where those with ‘severe’ (catatonic) autism… well, they can and have actually been treated for this.

Whereas those with level 1, non catatonic autism… no measurable effect, for that same treatment.

And, there are substantially different propoderances of various genetic markers beteeen those two groups as well, enough to be able to well predict ‘severity’ of autism with it.

So, no, actually, I am inclined to believe those are closer to two different things that have untill recently been thought of as different kinds of the same thing.

Again, I favor a very literal, materialistic and mechanical approach to all this, as opposed to the primarily psychological way of just trying to describe behaviors/symptoms and then just making up wild hypotheses based on clustering and distinctifying those, in some arbitrary hypothetical framework, that is then almost always shown to be significantly flawed or within the next 20ish years.

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In fact, I would hazard to guess that you’re an autistic woman, based on your dispreference for thinking of people fundamentally as mechanisms with feelings.

(Well that and ‘SaraTonin’)

This is a fairly well established beavior/mental difference between autistic men and women.

In fact, if you lived in the US, and are a woman, chances are you’d never have even been diagnosed as autistic, unless you came from a quite wealthy family.

You’d have just been ‘gifted’, erudite, bookish, something like that.

Our healthcare systems and cultures are very much not on par, we suck ass at even realizing autistic women can exist.

I’m not even formally diagnosed myself.

I got referred to a formal adult autist diagnoser years ago, after literal decades of teams of therapists giving me all kinds of random diagnoses.

But, then, my family decided that I was hallucinating my referral to an adult autism specialist, despite me showing them the paperwork.

Long story short, I then became homeless, barely survived that. Last time I talked to a doctor, a GP, general doctor, far, far away from the adult autism specialist with a literal multi year waitlist…

… They said that realistically, pursuing a formal diagnosis would just be a waste of time and effort on my part, given the state of the US healthcare system.

So yeah, there are some ‘cultural’ differences at play here.

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I didn’t know human tetrachromats actually existed.

That is very intriguing!

I’d only heard of certain people, very rarely, essentially developing a kind of shifted or altered perception of color after some kind of eye or brain or neurological injury or surgery.