Most people on this forum don't have Asperger's Syndrome

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Everyone entitled to an opinion; but thats just it, an opinion that most peole on here dont have AS. Like you would know us all personnaly and are qualified to then make a DX based on what is written by them. Its a spectrum disorder, some have it 'worse' than others, some appear as social cripples, where as some are superficialy socially adequate at least.
Frankly, I dont care what others may think of my DX, its not like I can or do use it for any form of gain from others, I managed just as well before I knew why I am this way, nothing has changed since, I just have a better understanding of myself. 'Aspie' is just a label on me that most people dont get to read, like the ones in my shorts!

Okay, since threads like this seem to pop up at least once every few months, and of course increase in frequency the larger and larger this site gets, let's look at this logically:

1) With the new stats from child diagnoses in the school systems, we're looking at probably about 0.6% of the school population. For most autistics, diagnosis comes earlier the more severe we are. So, actual occurrence rates are probably closer to 1%, maybe even closer to 2%, of the population by adulthood, assuming some kids have been missed especially if they are AS or HFA (AS tends to get diagnosed much later in contrast to autistic disorder). So, even if it's only 1%, that's actually a pretty common condition: that's 1 out of every 100 people who has an ASC. Think of how many people you've met in your lifetime, and probability would predict that one person out of every hundred you've come across also has an ASC (either diagnosed or not).

2) If one must use labels of “functioning”, those on this site would be considered towards the higher end, so we would not represent the entire autistic spectrum. But, since “autism” is a continuum it should adhere to some sort of statistical bell curve with higher-functioning people outnumbering lower functioning. Therefore, within the autistic spectrum, more people will be diagnosed with AS or HFA (or sometimes PDD-NOS, depending on its defined use) than those with MFA or LFA, making us the majority in the spectrum. So if it suddenly seems like there’s more aspies running around, there probably are.

3) This is the internet. All of a sudden, you can talk with people ALL over the world, that's billions of people. It may seem like there are a LOT of autistics on this forum, but it's really a very small percentage to the number one would predict would exist in the entire human population. Currently, there are approximately 16,750 registered members on WP; for the sake of simplicity, let's assume they are all autistic (even though some are parents, others are uncertain, and still others are double or even triple accounts). 16,750 x 100 = 1,675,000. That's less than 2 million people and, percentage-wise, actually slightly less than the number of autistics one would expect to find in my own home town of St. Louis with a population of 2,801,033 in 2006 (to put that more simply, there are more autistics in St. Louis than there are on WP). However, according to the US Census Bureau, they predicted that there is approximately 6,649,117,969 people on earth right now (Feb. 2008). That means that if 1% of the human population is diagnosable with an Autistic Spectrum Condition, that approximately 66,491,180 should have an ASC. That is nearly 3970 TIMES the population of Wrong Planet. Now, even though WP doesn’t house the entire world’s autistic population and specifically caters to the English-speaking auties, it’s certainly one of the largest autism sites out there, and definitely the largest Aspergers-related site. Therefore, when it comes down to it, even though it may SEEM as though there’s a HUGE number of autistics on this site, diagnosed or not, it’s really a very small number to the 66.5 million of us out there in the real world.

The assumption is probably related to the Availability Heuristic: because you are on WP so frequently and because it SEEMS like WP has such a huge population (which, compared to other sites, it does), it seems like there’s more aspies on here than there should be. When in reality, that’s not really the case, as the above numbers should hopefully point out.

High or low intelligence does not "cause" social awkwardness in itself.
Usually a ret*d will care.. less about what people may happen to think of him. He will keep laughing, if you see what I mean.

If people with high intelligence will sometimes be socially awkward, it is because as i've already said here once, asperger's is a degree of expression of Neanderthal genes, and every genes that are linked to intelligence found in "homo sapiens" nowadays have all been inherited from the Neanderthals.
It has been found that, when they think, people with a high IQ and aspies will both use some parts of their left-brain hemisphere more intensively while using alot of their right-brain hemisphere, while an average neurotypical will only use a bit of their left-brain hemisphere. People with high IQ but that still have a social compass are "light" aspies, in some ways.
Where you will find a high IQ, you will often find "aspie-ish" traits. I have got a high IQ myself, and am a neurotypical, but I have the obsessiveness and a few other "autistic" traits.
I don't think that a high or low IQ will "cause" in itself social awkwardness.

So.. It may be likelier that someone socially awkward may have asperger's or autistic traits, but not "highly likely".

Get up to speed OP. Are you an expert?

Well I don`t even trust experts!

Re lack of empathy ...
recent thought suggests that many aspies are actually Hyper-empathic
(ie. Aspies have MORE EMPATHY NOT LESS than NT`s)

....(in my simplified words) ......... which kind of leads to functional overload of emotion......
.....which leads to a need to dampen down these feelings so they can cope.......
.... creating a `buffer` for empathy/emotion
.....which exhibits to NT`s as lack of empathy.

I have Aspergers but I dont officially have Aspergers... what does that make me?

Anyway according to DSM 5. Aspergers is no longer Aspergers but a facet of ASD.

Ultimately does it matter? surely what matters is the common experience? don`t be so dismissive

OK. I didn`t know that.
so really this thread should be scrapped or updated then as the initial premise is surely out of date

Old thread, these threads don't bother me anymore nor does it bother me if anyone says it's over diagnosed or how most people with it don't even have it. Old old old. I got tired of taking offense so I stopped being offended by all this so it's all boring. Now it's "Oh look, one of those threads again."

Yes I realize this is an old thread right when I clicked on it.