Ugh. This is abysmal.

Autistic people are just as likely to be cranks as anyone else. Perhaps even moreso because the degree of focus it usually requires in order to become a crank is not that common in the allistic population whereas autistic people are much more inclined towards hyperfixations and, thus, they are more likely to become a crank due to this ability to sustain their focus on a singular subject of interest.

We’re just as susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger effect as anyone else.

Just like how clumsily hammering away at the keys of a piano for 10,000 hours will not turn me into a concert pianist, so too is 10,000 hours of hyperfocus on a subject insufficient to turn me into an expert on it. With training and guidance, or in less common circumstances with a keen focus on self-teaching, devoting that amount of time can turn someone into an expert (which is why autistic people tend to be more likely to be a wealth of knowledge in their interests) but unless you’ve taken account of your biases and for the fact that information needs to be viewed with healthy skepticism and a critical eye then you probably aren’t going to end up an expert in a subject, you will likely just end up being a very proficient crank.

The word autism to me isn’t like “something I have” but rather just a descriptive term about me and my traits. It’s like

“That person is nice” = nice person “that person is mean” = mean person “That person is into art” = artistic person

Autism is just a label, an observation made that “hey people with X and Y trait also seem to have A, B, C trait in common”. I would be who I am with or without the word existing so putting it as something I “have” rather than am feels odd.

But you’re free to use and prefer what you want for yourself.

Of course.

It’s generally accepted that autistic people prefer to be referred to using language that uses the term “autistic person” rather than “person with autism” because the latter is considered to be externalising autism and denying it as being central to the identity and experience of the autistic person.

Just as we wouldn’t say “a person with blackness” or “a person with womanhood” or “a person with homosexuality” because that is seen as separating out the core experience of being a black person, a woman, or a gay person so too does the autistic community feel that phrasing it as “person with autism” has the same effect. (Also in the case of a gay person, the way of phrasing it above has implications of pathologising and medicalising the experience, which is what happens a lot for autistic people too and that has historically been to serious detriment to autistic people.)

For me, being autistic, there is no “outside” of autism; it colours who I am, it shapes my relationship to and understanding of the world (and this extends to how I experience myself) so to put autism as external to me is to imply that it’s sort of additional somehow and it gives the impression that there’s a “real” me beneath the autism, which I personally reject the notion of.

Note that this is just the general consensus here; some people don’t care, some people prefer to refer to themselves as “a person with autism” and that’s valid. But as a rule I’d say that it’s best to refer to autistic people this way around as it’s the preferred term.

That being said, I will sometimes say things like “excuse my autism”, “this might be my autism acting up”, “today the autism won”, and “this is just my autism speaking but…”, although I do this ironically.