Can we think of the autistic as...

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...a more advanced form of humans? Though I don't mean "superior" by that, but more like having characteristics that increase the gap between humans and animals. Let me explain.

Us humans seem to have sacrificed instinct for mind. By default, we know less than animals do. We need to learn basic survival skills that other animals know by instinct.

As an Aspie, I found that I need to teach myself what other people naturally know, as if my mind started off as a blanker slate than most other people. I need to observe and analyze people's behavior to understand them rather than learning instinctively via interaction. This leads us to a deeper understanding of social mechanics, even if we fail to fully develop socially.

It seems like the autistic lose a few instincts in favor of their minds.

It's just a thought that occurred to me today. Not to be taken seriously.

I would think that an advanced form of humanity would be willful mastery of things like instinct and emotion, not the absence of any of it.

Well, that's why I said that it's not necessarily "better", just further in the direction humans are headed. It seems to me that we're living in a world where instincts are becoming less and less relevant to survival. Maybe a few hundred years from now everyone will be somewhere on the spectrum.

Actually, I think I'm more catlike than most humans. The way I naturally relate seems kind of like the human equivalent of how cats relate.

So I'm not seeing us being 'further' from animals in any way.

Not to mention, that implies animals are a unitary group, and they aren't. A dog has more in common with a human than they do with an octopus, for example.

From watching documentaries on primates and human evolution, I've realized how many quirks of my own and other humans' behavior is actually primate behavior. Such as stroking fur with your hands to show affection. Also, human fascination with water is something we share with elephants, and theorists think both humans and elephants went through a phase of being semi-aquatic (kind of like hippos are).

We really aren't any more unique than any other animal. I mean, mantis shrimp, angler fish and spotted hyenas are just as unique in their quirks as we humans are in ours. Sure, there are some traits that are uniquely human, but they are also some traits unique to other species as well, such as the 20 different kinds of cones (color-sensitive cells) that a mantis shrimp's eyes contain (we have only 3).

I don't think my behavior is any less instinctive than other humans. It is less instinctive than my kitten's behavior, though humans tend to overestimate how much instincts determine the behavior of non-humans. (I had a cat who was friends with rats. He was clearly fighting his instinct to kill them out of a desire to befriend them instead.) But from what I've read about human instincts, roughly a similar proportion of my behavior is instinctive as most people's behavior - even if some of the patterns are altered. (I missed out on the urge to reproduce and the 'faces should be attended to' instinct, but my fear-related instincts are overactive.)

I think of autistics as autistics. That's all.

Actually, I rely on my instinct a lot when I lack skills in something.
Like, when I'm in a social situation, I never know what to do because of my lack of social skills. Because of this, I always use my instinct when I'm in a social situation.
The same goes when I must do anything I lack skills in. I just do what my brain tells me to do. I don't know if it's right or wrong. I just do it.

It's been thought of a lot, and gotten to the point of actual autistic supremacy. It's nasty stuff--you don't want to go there. I care about NTs, and so do the vast majority of the autistics here, and I don't want to put them down. I want equality.

A fallacy you need to remember and stay away from is the idea that evolution is a "ladder" with steps from simple to complex. But that is not true. No animal is "more evolved" than any other. Evolution is more like a family tree, with each species branching off as environments change and natural selection favors those who best fit their environment. Successful species can be simple or complex. Humans are just one branch--though, in my opinion, our sentience makes it a very special branch, because we are essentially the universe studying itself.

In a way. Humans seem to be special, according to the latest theories, because we stay babies for so long. We're born essentially premature, and we stay children for a decade, our brains staying flexible to allow for individual adaptation and culture. Some animals have this in a more rudimentary fashion--apes have cultures; dolphins run with gangs. Humans have focused on having a very flexible brain and a very interdependent society, and that's what makes us successful.

We are missing some of the instinctive social responses, yes. But (see above) humans living in groups and being interdependent is one of the special abilities that our species has focused on and refined. Being naturally social lets us learn language faster.

Social instincts, yes, but we keep others. Savant skills like photographic memory are rare in humans, less rare in autistics, and commonplace in chimpanzees. For example, here:
Chimp solves memory test
Ayumu, the chimp in the story, is a bright chimp, but his abilities aren't that unusual for his species.

Many autistic people have made the argument that we are closer to other animals than most people are. Temple Grandin, for example, has used her autistic traits to better understand livestock. Many of us here are naturals at learning to communicate with cats, dogs, or even lizards.

I think what is happening is that autistic people tend to use some of their human special talents, like the ability to use logic, to compensate for the loss of others, such as the intuitive social connectedness. We are very flexible, mentally, just as all humans are. Instead of just missing skills and being otherwise close to typical, we grow into adults with a qualitatively different cognitive style.

On a larger scale, autism and other atypical minds are representative of the human brain's flexibility and diversity. The other day my professor mentioned that because humans are more diverse, you have to get a sample of 40 humans to get significant results, while if you were using lab rats from the same strain, you would only need 20. Humans are very different from each other and that's one of the strengths of our species, that we can risk having specialists which are good at one thing at the expense of others, because in an interconnected society, other people can pick up the slack on the specialist's deficits.