Autism is a spectrum. Neurodiversity within and outside of autism is both intrinsically valuable and extrinsically valuable to society. However, not all phenotypes of autism should be viewed as neurodiversity, but as harmful. There is only so much that society can do to make severe intellectual impairments less disabling without identifying a cure for the intellectual impairment. The debate between medical versus disability models, neurodiversity versus pathology, inevitably gets pushed by those that want to classify everything into clean essentialist boxes, but that, I do not believe, is a helpful way to view the world. Not every condition is a pathology, nor is every condition benign if only society would do more to make it less disabling.

I mean, it's classified as a disability for a good reason.

I would guess that even if this platform has more autistic people due to being tech focused, autistic tech nerds and programmers are on the extreme end of high-functioning. Many low-functioning autistic people will never be able to have a job or live by themselves.

This is the same issue as high-functioning ADHD'ers saying "ADHD is my superpower", meanwhile people with severe ADHD do significantly worse than the general population in basically any metric, up to having a lower life expectancy.

This isnt to say its morally bad, theres nothing wrong with being autistic or having ADHD, but it is a disability. Just like someone who's deaf can live a totally happy life but still be disabled because they are not able to hear, someone with autism is disabled because they are not able to process social cues at the same speed, even if they are a great person and have a good life.

This isn't /g/ what are you talking about?