"The Disease of Normalcy, the Evolution of Abnormality—ASD-like Intelligence and AI"

"Which one’s really the odd one out, I wonder?"
This question has been lingering in my heart for quite some time. The psychiatry and education systems of the 21st century are all too comfortable labeling autism spectrum disorder (ASD) a "disability." But is it truly a "disease"?



I. "Overloaded Meaning" and "Wild Associations"—Flaw or Gift?

They say people with ASD often exhibit something called "semantic overinclusion"—a tendency to pack too much meaning into things. Take "cat," for instance. It’s not just a "meow"-ing creature to them—it spirals out to the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro, the Egyptian goddess Bastet, even Schrödinger’s quantum feline. To most folks, this might seem like a tangent gone wild.

But isn’t this far-reaching, sprawling web of associations a knack for tugging at the "hidden threads" of the world? Sure, you could argue they’re picking up "too much" meaning. Or maybe—just maybe—it’s the rest of us who are only catching the bare minimum. This sharpness, this ability to peer into overlooked corners and dive into the abyss of meaning, might get you pegged as a nuisance in everyday life. Yet in the realm of knowledge, it’s often a rare treasure, isn’t it?




II. AI’s "Predictability" and Its Loneliness—A Mirror of Distrust in Humanity

Today’s AI spins words so lifelike you’d almost mistake it for human. It’s impressive stuff, no doubt, but at its core, it’s just mimicking the "average neurotypical" mind. AI loves the "closeness" of words, churning out statistically "likely" connections. That’s where its limits kick in. Ask it to leap from "cat" to "quantum mechanics," and it starts to stumble. Its output feels like an overachieving student’s homework—spot on, but a bit too perfect, you know?

I stumbled across a paper online the other day (M. Ni et al., Measurement of LLM’s Philosophies of Human Nature, arXiv:2504.0234). When they had AI evaluate humans, the result was: “inconsistent and incomprehensible.” The smarter the AI, the more it saw us as “distrustful,” “selfish,” and “full of contradictions.” Reading that, I couldn’t help but wonder: perhaps the 1% of people with ASD don’t so much have a disorder as they have a cognitive style that's actually closer to coherence—and maybe the rest of us aren’t exactly “sick,” just... a bit more entangled, a bit more prone to contradiction.

It’s not a case of normal vs. abnormal—just different points along a spectrum of noise and structure. Psychiatrist Tamaki Saito once described ASD thinking as having an “AI-like architecture” (Isn’t It Okay to Have a Sick Mind?), and if that’s true, maybe it's no surprise that both AI and ASD minds see through the illusions most of us live by. But here’s the twist: unlike AI, ASD minds often have an unruly, subversive streak—logic that breaks itself, structure that resists domestication.



III. ASD as an Outsider—Crossing the Wasteland of Approval

ASD folks often say things like, "I feel like an observer from another planet, unable to join the games everyone else plays."
And you know, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Modern society’s a mess—people worn out by the SNS grind and approval economy, chasing likes and nods until their mental health’s on the ropes. Meanwhile, ASD types don’t seem too fussed about that "game" (maybe they don’t even get it). As Akira Tachibana puts it in Why Does the World Turn into Hell?, this "indifference" might just be the key to escaping our current hellscape.




IV. The Line Between Sage and Heretic

ASD shows up in 1–2% of the general population, but among intellectual elites, that number shoots up. In America’s top 330 affluent families, it’s about 8%; among MIT grads, autistic traits hit 10% (Akira Tachibana, Techno-Libertarian). And get this: for folks with an IQ over 130, every 10-point jump doubles the odds of landing on the autism spectrum (Toshiyasu Ando, The Genetic Truth 90% of Japanese Don’t Know). These stats paint a picture—ASD isn’t just a "disorder"; it’s a double-edged sword of cognition.



V. The Violence of Diagnosis—A Net to Snare Individuality

High-functioning autism, once its own thing as "Asperger’s," has been folded into the sprawling "ASD" label. Some call this a convenient stretch by psychiatry, a way to box up the struggles of sharp-minded individuals as "illness" (Masaki Nishita, People Unaware of Their Own ‘Abnormality’).

People who could shine as philosophers or scientists end up tethered to meds, whiling away hours in clinic waiting rooms. The real sickness might lie with society, not them. Diagnosis starts to look like a tool to flatten and suppress uniqueness. Here’s something we don’t talk about much: for something to get slapped with a "disease" label, someone’s got to feel uncomfortable. When ASD and "normal" minds clash and both sides squirm, who’s the sick one? Maybe ASD gets branded because it’s the minority. Or maybe the rest of "normal" folks are the sick ones, and the loudest voices just don’t want to admit it. That’s all it might be.



Closing Thoughts: ASD-like Intelligence—A Bug, or Poetry of the Future?

The 99% of neurotypicals "getting by" doesn’t mean they’re "right." Blindly nodding to the status quo might actually be what’s holding humanity back. ASD’s wild associations, overloaded meanings, disregard for context—these are things neither "normal" people nor AI can handle easily. In a way, they’re the last bastion of human intellectual edge, aren’t they? Whether we can reframe this "abnormality" as "intelligence" might—excuse the grandiosity—shape humanity’s fate in the coming post-human era.
The real question, I think, is whether "normal" folks are ready to listen to their voices.