Hypothetically contagious AS

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Earlier a thread was posted by Irulan on the hypothetical situation of AS being something that could be contracted and when in his/her life would the respondent have most favored being "infected." The thread led me to extend the hypothetical situation such that AS would be contagious, and led me to raise the question: if you could give someone AS, would you? Under what circumstances would you do it? Revenge or malice, maybe? What if the receiving party explicitly asked for it? Would you sell it to someone? Would you take precautionary procedures to prevent yourself form spreading it?

Deliberately triggering late-onset AS would be a bad, bad idea. AS is something that you have from the very beginning, and your brain grows on an AS-style framework. You learn to process your environment and handle information based around your differences.

Say you're NT. To suddenly change that would mean that all the things you've learned that take NT brain wiring for granted are no longer useful. And not only do you not have the skills that an AS person of your age would have learned, you also wouldn't have the flexibility that they had when they were younger and learned them.

So the effect would be like giving them brain damage. I don't know if it would even count as AS, because of how the atypical development is so critical to what ASDs are.

At the very best, assuming you could keep their brain functional, it would be equivalent to brainwashing, forced personality change. Brainwashing and forced personality change is probably one of the worst things you could do to somebody. Right up there with torture and rape. Anybody who deliberately infected somebody else with something that would fundamentally change the way they thought and experienced the world should go to prison and stay there.

I'd give it to some people I don't like. Even if they didn't want me to do this. Like my ex-bullies.

I hope you're not serious... changing somebody's brain like that is an extreme violation. Not that it's possible, but it still kind of creeps me out.

Still I guess it's nice to think about forcing them to experience your life from your perspective. Maybe they'd realize what dicks they've been all this time.

Making them spend a few days with AS might be a better lesson...

I am serious. I'd put them among those who, like themselves, don't like people who are different.

...that's pretty vengeful.

I hope you can let go of the anger someday. I really can't blame you for feeling that way, though. Bullying is torture, stalking, assault, slander all rolled into one--what these people do is truly reprehensible. I experienced abuse from two stepfathers who were basically grown bullies.

I only hope that we can go on with our lives, leave them behind and learn not to hate, to get our revenge by living satisfying lives despite it all.

What if we think about forced personality change in general and not just giving someone AS. If it were possible I would consider giving myself some harmful conditions just as an experiment.

Then again, if it were possible to give somebody AS or some other neurological disorder then wouldn't that mean being able to take it away.

I know the original post is talking about infection but if we could medically rewire peoples' brains it could be helpful instead of harmful.

I'd still be tempted to experiment with harmful changes.

Callista, what you describe is actually what kind of happened to me in the last year or so... ironically after the diagnosis. Before I simply went through life kind of auomatically, but after I just started seeing everything from a pathological point of view... I realized I had AS but I might have become so sensitive to the traits that I became more autistic.

Lets try to envsion this.

You have the infective agent in a serum in a hypodermic needle.

You meet with the head of the Sopranos. You inject him with the serum. Within minutes he morphs into the rainman, and starts babbling about numbers and dates- and his crime empire melts.

Problem?

You drive through the inner city. You see a stable of hoes on the street and their finely attired pimp.

You sneak up on the pimp and inject him with the serum.

Before he and his minions can grab you you bolt down the ally.
Suddenly - this mack daddy morphs into- Erkel! Or into a black version of Sheldon from the big bang. He abandons his stable and leaves the streets and locks himself into his room- to watch the entire Cosmos Series hosted by Carl Sagan.

Problem?

I think some folks in society could use a little autistification.

Don't let that worry you--it's a natural consequence of diagnosis, especially acceptance and understanding of one's diagnosis. Knowing you're autistic leaves you free to "let go" of some of the NT act. You'll find your own equilibrium, given some time. You'll probably burn out less now that you no longer spend all your time policing yourself for proper levels of normalcy, and can ask yourself honestly which parts of the NT act you want to keep and which ones are more trouble than they're worth. You may look weirder afterward, but if you're anything like me, you'll be more functional in the long term.