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Autistic people don’t lack empathy. I learned that as a kid too and it was a real barrier to getting diagnosed, because there are few qualities I more obviously possess than empathy.
Autistic people and allistic people use different signals to show their emotional state, so it’s easier for autistic people to interpret the emotions of fellow autistic people (and vice versa).
The other guy answered you.
There's empathy like "theory of mind" to understand others, and there's empathy like "compassion". It's not hard to see that these are completely different things.
I also replied to them that that’s not the current understanding. Autistic people are able to demonstrate both types of empathy with other autistic people, and neither autistic nor allistic people can do it as well with each other. There are just way more allistic people, so we used to think the empathy disconnect was one-sided.
OK, that was often true in my experience, but not always.
Autistic people lack cognitive empathy, which is the ability to read minds to see what other people are thinking.
That’s not true, they can infer emotions with similar accuracy from the nonverbal communication of other autistic people. The double empathy problem prevents this from happening between autistic and allistic people (in both directions!)
Cognitive empathy isn't about emotions.
True, I thought that’s what you meant by mind reading. Nevertheless, from the linked article:
Of course. The theory of mind stuff is all thoroughly debunked, and drag is proof an autistic person can have strong cognitive empathy. Drag is talking about averages, which in drag's opinion are derived from social isolation in childhood and lack of passive learning ability due to attentional focus. Drag doesn't think impairments in cognitive empathy are driven by a fundamental misunderstanding. Rather, it's unfamiliarity. Cognitive empathy is a skill that autistic people are presented with fewer opportunities to practice.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00791/full