IMO the issue is that we use the term "autism" for two wildly different things. We use it for perfectly functional people who are more sensitive than usual to crowds and noise and prefers a somewhat different style of communication than most people. And we use it for completely non-functional people who can't communicate at all and don't understand what's being communicated to them and throw violent temper tantrums as adults. I understand that there are probably reasons why these share the same medical term, but I believe we should use different colloquial terms for the two.