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There are commonalities. IIRC, a diagnosis of autism requires significant impairment in all three of, and severe impairment in at least one of:

- social skills

- communication skills

- rigidity (reliance on routine)

That doesn't stop a wide variation in how those manifest in individuals, nor make the diagnosis meaningless.

Psychiatric classifications do tend to be problematic because personality is so complex. It's not like botany.

I agree. I wish the field of psychiatry would address these problems honestly and scientifically, rather than inventing and voting disorders into their manual.

The DSM exists for billing purposes. It's not exactly a scientific taxonomy of psychiatric disorders.

> It's not like botany.

Hell, even botany is complex. Every Wikipedia article I read on a plant species seems to invariably have a long section talking about various places the plant has been on the taxonomic tree at different points in time and how scientists still aren't sure where to stick it.

There may be general discernible commonalities, but autism is a spectrum and its symptoms do not prescribe a personality.