It's easier to categorise the intelligence of a neurotypical person

I'm useless at anything even vaguely mathematical.

Iain said:

Doing ridiculously dangerous things was also quite common for me in spite of being a respected computer technician early in my career - my therapist thinks it is a response to early traumas where I was scared and then I was trying to prove I'm not afraid of things, but on a daily basis (think driving down the local dual carriageway at 150mph on my motorbike daily).

Doing ridiculously dangerous things involves autism essentially as being a consistent state of fight or flight ~ rather than so much of if at all being compensatory ~ meaning that our boundary testing range can be somewhat more extended than most people, and being able to stay particularly calm as our narrow range of sensibilities cut and slipstream through irrelevant details whilst our focal point remains fluidly fixed on the objective or desire outcome.

My things were BMX bikes in my early teens involving mostly freestyle flatland, earthen ramps and a bit of vert ramping due to availability issues; then Skateboards in my late teens until my early thirties involving street-skating but mostly ramps as their transitions were a lot more forgiving than concrete banks, edgy concrete steps, handrails and hard paved surfaces etcetera, and finally freeride mountain-biking up until my mid forties involving down-hilling and joy of joys big drops ~ previously addressed equipment-wise etcetera on the following thread, with appealing amounts of mechanised eye and power candy from other community members also.

Basically stimulation hunger (for serenity sake) was satisfied by being part of what was jokingly called either 'The Big Jump, Air and Drop Brigade', or else ‘Airborne Division’ more usually,

firemonkey said:

I've  been called everything from a genius to a fool

I get this. I managed to graduate uni quite literally as a rocket scientist in spite of making the most appalling life decisions and barely attending (typically due to booze and women).

Doing ridiculously dangerous things was also quite common for me in spite of being a respected computer technician early in my career - my therapist thinks it is a response to early traumas where I was scared and then I was trying to prove I'm not afraid of things, but on a daily basis (think driving down the local dual carriageway at 150mph on my motorbike daily).

I still have little fear as an old bloke now and take the odd risk (painting the windows 11 floors up by standing on the outside window ledge) when I know I should be using safety gear. I guess you need to get your kicks somehow.

I'm OK at most maths if I have a pencil and paper, but totally useless without. Except for statistics, I just cannot grasp the concepts behind it - I can feed data into a statistics package, but that's about it.

With me it's geometry. Forever useless at it.

I had a long career in biomedical research, published many papers and wrote 3 book chapters, but I cannot do mental arithmetic to save my life. I have no idea whether the change I get after buying something is correct. I think that autistic people tend to have a much higher degree of variation in skills than neurotypicals. I am almost tempted to say neurotypicals are mediocre at everything, but that would be just mean, and incorrect in some cases.

My learning started with a simple google search for something similar to, can't remember exactly, 'good verbally , not so good non-verbally' . That lead to results about non-verbal learning disorder and from there to autism. Those articles about autism often  mentioned uneven cognitive ability. 

I had wondered for a good number of decades why I was reasonably intelligent, but that was not reflected in my academic achievement . It  was purely by chance that I found the answer in coming across the following article- https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.958013/full     Within it it mentioned that academic achievement in those of school age has more to do with executive functioning than to do with IQ.

My EF is far from the best , especially when it comes to organising and planning. I have difficulty prioritising what needs to be done within  multistep tasks. That, and other things I've mentioned, has lead to ADD being mentioned by several people. As I've got to 67 without any (mental) health professional flagging that up, I  don't think it applies in my case. 

Golly, How do you find out about cognitive profiles and such? I had a learning difficulties assessment and a diagnosis of Aspergers as it was called then.

I  have a somewhat complex cognitive profile, based on research I've done. One where crystallised intelligence >fluid intelligence, but the gap differs  significantly based on which measure of fluid intelligence is used.

Foolish and a genius, arn't all the best people refered to that way?

Definitely. I think the hardest thing is the spikey development and he assumption that if good enough in some areas, you should be good enough in other areas and the feeling of lacking moral fibre and effort if not. 

I grew up very confused about this.

I had therapy to help me realise I'm not lazy. I speak to many other extremely busy Neuro divergent people who think they are lazy. 

Yes I understand your point. Conversely, us autistics and often ADHDers usually have a spiky profile due to our monotropic cognitive style.