What are the advantages of being Autistic?

I was 18 years the Finance man on Europe's CFSP crisis management team, leading the guys who sorted out the crashed Albanian economy in 1997, pathfinding Malta's accession into Europe, and stuff I can't talk about. Roughly equal to Nick Hine, the Second Sea Lord, in terms of authority: we were gonged with a Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.

During my diagnosis in 2015, my X-Men weird did its thing in front of the Savile Club, half the Cabinet, including Boris: they saw me handle a major strategic issue with plenty of foresight, and hand it over to the one person capable of delivering without a ripple. This may be one reason the Cabinet Office is looking for weirdos and misfits: we pay attention to and are good at pattern-recognition at the heart of superforecasting, which was just my starting point: I spotted the fall of the Iron Curtain a decade ahead, earning myself an MI5 Viva, but it took some Intervention from on high to place me where it mattered when: I got to actually complete the join of East and West a couple of years later. Banks are desperate for the skill, too.

I got the "Alex and me" book for three quid from amazon. That really is enlightening about what surprises you can get out of a small brain, if you look for them! 

cool word "eidetic"

i kinda feel i understand cats a bit better than most too. not allowed one though as my dad hates them and i live in his house lol

my neighbour had a cat and she was surprised it got on well with me as it supposedly doesnt like people so much, trick is to respect its space really. and if it looks like its ignoring you or sleeping them, well yeah you wouldnt start poking a human while they are sleeping so you just dont do that.

sisters neighbor has a cat that goes to her house too. sits and stares at me with one paw up like its tryna tell me something, from google search it says it either wants food or it wants to be stroked. so they do kinda have their own body sign language to speak to us that they all weirdly have in common.

Pets are a whole lot more fun and companiable, when you allow that they can have an actual mind of their own, and are sometimes very willing to share with you if you can listen instead of being all stuck up in your own human "supremacy" bullpuckey all the time.

I think my autism does give me an innate advantage dealing with animals.

2days!! I lasted 2 days before cluttering up this thread with irrelevance...!

i was watching youtube vids of this woman that trained her cat to use buttons to talk to her. seemed pretty accurate, even one time she played some music and the cat kept running over to a button pressing it and the button said "noise" the cat clearly didnt like her music lol kept pressing it every time she put music back on.

Neither, but there's a book I'd love to read that appears to back up some of what they say, it's called:

Alex and Me: (can be found on ebay easily). Looks to be an interesting read, I ain't paying 12 quid for it though... 

I knew a hamster that was bright enough to originate and play a game with me regularly a few years back, and cats can be just plain "spooky" in their understandings even with me, so there is clearly a rewarding little seam of not genuinely known things to be mined in the field of animal psychology/conciousness I which I have come to believe includes our own. 

But as ever with stuff that is is not simple mainstream pap, YOU have to collect, test, and follow the evidence yourself, if you want to learn the truth, rather than being a "true believer"..

In fact I wish a great many more of you would spend some time testing the veracity of your mainstream propaganda/fake news. Real Reality seems to be diverging alarmingly from popular reality and it's becoming increasing hard to keep a foot on both sides of the divide. 

is one of them called doctor dolittle?

I know at least two Autists who whilst otherwise appearing sane and reasonable people do claim to have an authentic telepathic connection to their pets, including direct exchanges of imagery and concepts from pet to human..

I can be seen in an early edition of "Brainiac" (With Charlotte Hudson not Richard Hammond sadly) doing exactly that. If you listen carefully you may even be able to hear them cracking under my feet.  

I miss working in T.V... Apparently I had "natural comedy" which has at least two meanings I believe.

advantages?
you get eye lasers, and super strength and the ability to fly... but all of these things probably require some hallucinogenic drug to kick in first lol

Troubleshooting, problem-solving, doing a thing without being intimidated by oppressive NT rules like 'staying in your lane'. Hyper-focus, making faster seemingly nebulous connexions... being able to tap into my senses as the tool for calcuation they're supposed to be. If one is able to find or stumble into the fundamental principles of a system, being able to grasp deeper sets of knowledge. 

When I've seen brain imaging of Autistic individuals and they continue to be presented as brains which are making faster connexions, but clearly overwhelmed, it makes me think it's similar to an escape room with stuff that just keeps appearing and needs to be contniually moved or suddenly gone around in order to get to the exit (from thought to communication). An NT brain on the other hand, is less murky. There's a task or an item and then, the exit door. 

I proofread my wife's PhD thesis, this was before we were married, 'walking on eggshells' is not descriptive enough.

I appreciate being able to focus on one particular thing for a sustained period (even though it might take me a while to get there). Also I find mind modelling really easy. I’d almost describe it as natural. Trying to explain to NT’s how you’ve planned something out and where everything is going to go and how it will work, when you’re stood in an empty room, is always fun. The dumbfounded look on their little faces!

I proof read a PhD once.  Never volunteering to do that again 

Eye for detail and eidetic memory.

I have an enhanced eye for detail, both my master's and doctoral theses were passed without correction or revision, a relatively rare occurrence. I also proofread over a dozen PhD theses for other people, and all were passed with minor corrections. I am very good at problem solving and seem to approach problems from a slightly different angle to that of other people. When I started in scientific research I worked on a cell culture method that required manipulations every other day. This required me to travel in to the lab. to work for a few hours on Sundays, which I was not keen on. Within a month or two I had developed a method, and proved that it worked, where the cells could be left alone between Friday and Tuesday of each week. It was a method I later expanded on greatly and was eventually published as a chapter in a protocols book.

My thoroughness and focus on details has helped me in certain aspects of my eduction and career. But on balance I think it's disadvantageous. If I could trade my autism to be normal I would, even if that meant being a lot stupider. Intelligence or remembering things others don't or experiencing senses differently hasn't made me happy. It's a struggle. And I wish I could understand people and social things would come to me automatically. I'm so analytical and I'm sick of observing and mimicking what others do in order to appear normal.

i when i was in science,,,,,  i investigated an already established procedure and proved it to be highly defective.

As a results my laboratory results increased accuracy by 90%. This helped hundreds of people get the right results.

i tend work more than other software testers so I tend to find more bugs and other issues than them.