why are aspies fascinated by everything

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why are aspies fascinated by everything slightly different from the norm?

We see things differently, and we are out of the norm...

I don't. I'm not really fascinated by anything really. Only things what the norm are.

Because everything is fascinating. Especially the norm..

Aspies are very curious, so they are fascinated by everything. In order to be completely socially adjusted, you can't be fascinated by anything, because that's a sign of weakness, and weakness is not OK. The military has some slogan like "Pain is weakness leaving the body" as well as "Failure is not an option" as if it was a matter of choice. And if you don't like the military, you can leave, at least in the U.S.

I suppose we don't have normal social instincts, everything "normal" isn't for us so we find it fascinating. I guess we pick up a natural inquisitive nature along the way.

I am usually fascinated by things I find interesting.....some of those things may be abnormal and some may be normal I don't care.

i actually got the impression aspies were prone to apathy

Because we're not mainstream.

yeah we're totally unique nonconformists.

Because the world is so beautiful and it has so much that you will never see if you just scratch the surface.

How can NTs be satified with only having a superficial knowledge of things, how are they not fascinated by things?

I'd like to see one of those drill sergeants say that to an end stage cancer patient....

Actually we have limited interests that change over weeks, months, years, etc. But compared to ADHD our interests are more limited. Each day I get obsessed with a new thing and sometimes it takes an hour for me to get over something. Plus I have like 10 billion interests in the same week/month and struggle to find time to spend on them.

I think our attention to detail makes us fixate on some things and get obsessed with them. When it comes to ADHD it's about stimulation.
And yes, we're curious.

Pain is subjective and can be filtered out entirely if the (would-be) experiencer chooses it. Most people consider pain saddening, and being sad as being weak, so therefore, pain would be weakness (the leaving the body part is not meaningful and can be filtered out ).

Pain is just another perception like sight or taste or whatever and with enough desire it can be ignored entirely.. I'm not saying this is always easy..

I have one consistent big obsession and one smaller temporary obsession at any time. I like extremely tiny details.

Well, two answers. Firstly, Aspies are fascinated by a lot of things, because quite simply a lot of things are very fascinating if you have the intelligence to investigate and understand what you are looking at.

Secondly, if you had the ability to near perfectly remember what you have learnt for the rest of your life I think it's quite natural to want to fill this memory with as much useful information as is humanely possible.

When I was 13 I joined the ATC, a military sponsored and uniformed youth organisation in the UK and learnt a lot about a great many things.

"Failure is not an option" is one concept that I did learn, and which has formed a central part of my life since. I would like to clarify it since I feel it is greatly misunderstood.

The point about this saying is not that you cannot actually fail a task, it's about your definitions of failure. Having accepted this philosophy mine are probably considerably different to many peoples.

In my world view, a task can be in one of three basic categories.

1) Completed; accomplished, etc.
2) Not yet completed.
3) Failed; Not completed, and reattempting the task is physically impossible.

Basically, in this world view failure is a choice. If you don't complete the task you can generally continue to reattempt that task until you do complete it. Failure is having the opportunity to continue and choosing to not attempt the task again. It is a choice to fail through giving up.

In this world view rejecting the possibility of choosing to fail means means you will succeed, even if this process is (viewed objectively) slow and messy. It's closely linked to another choice "There will be victory or death", which is simply an expression that you will never give up, and never surrender. You will succeed at your goals, or die trying. (and in civilian life, with an absence of people willing to kill you to prevent you from completing your objectives you can do virtually anything with this world view) I completely subscribe to this world view, and there is frankly nothing that will stop me from achieving something I am determined to do.

While admittedly I am a very, very bad loser over time I have developed a very good coping strategy for this which largely eliminates the problem.

I don't lose.