Published on 12, July, 2020
It seems a lot of Autistic folks have shaped our world, maybe the stigma of autism is that normal people are scared of the evolutions next step.
We are not better than normal people, we are just different and that scares them, I know there is a spectrum where some people can cope better than others.
Its information overload which can be difficult to decipher.
I have recently self diagnosed with Autism, I think its caused by a gene mutation in DAT1 which is over expressed as a dopamine reuptake channel. This means that dopamine, is sucked out of its receptor site before it can do its job, so this leads to anxiety for no reason and studies have shown anxiety affects memory.
So anxiety causes a cloudy head and difficulty in communication, which might make it hard for people as they don't know what to say, this becomes a negative feed back loop.
www.appliedbehavioranalysisprograms.com/.../
If you go to the Natural History Museum they have an interesting area dedicated to human evolution and how prevalent Neanderthal genes are. The exposure to them is geographic and I'm not aware of any prevalence of autism in those places.
I'm answer to your question, I don't believe that autism is the next stage in human evolution any more that any other generic variation. Humanity needs a mixture of different skills and mind sets. Thousands of years ago people needed to hunt so if you were short sighted you would probably die. In modern times we value mental abilities at least as much as physical ones.
Stephen Hawking was not the next stage of human evolution but he made a significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the universe. Humanity didn't have to be moving towards autism as the norm to be able to benefit from and value the condition.