Context: I've never been formally diagnosed, but based on informally discussing things with therapists and various self-assessments it seems pretty likely to me

Context: I've never been formally diagnosed, but based on informally discussing things with therapists and various self-assessments it seems pretty likely to me that I'm somewhat on the spectrum, probably on the shallow end. Maybe this means I understand both the neurotypical and neurodivergent worlds a bit, or maybe it means I understand neither. But many of us experienced "listen to me because I said so" as children, and continue to experience that in school and into adulthood in the workplace. It's meaningless, but many neurotypical people neither notice that it's wrong or understand why it's wrong, perhaps because their brains aren't wired a way to unconsciously detect those red flags. I feel extremely confident in saying that everybody hates this. Honestly, it might be the first thing I've been certain of all day long. I'm less confident in this, but: I certainly also think it's possible that many on the spectrum underrate how much literally everybody hates because-I-said-so's. I know one other thing. If a person is in the upper N% of intelligence, "gifted" if you will, they will have a natural curiosity about how things work, and have probably improved many things in the past, and will naturally tend to chafe at doing things in sub-optimal ways for unexplained reasons, and will therefore tend to hate "because I said so's" even more than most people. Does autism sort of act like a force multiplier when combined with that trait? Maybe. Probably? I mean, one of the traits of autism is that we tend to need our own ways of doing things. growing up I always knew that arbitrary authority doesn't exist for me I think one possible issue is that neurodivergents can't understand the reasons why neurotypicals (sometimes) like authority, or seem to like it. Imagine Bubba, a guy with USA and police and military stickers all over his pickup truck. This guy just loves the imaginary absolute authority of the USA, right? It's probably more complicated than that. In the micro sense of things, he probably hates being told what to do just like the rest of us. He probably grumbles when paying taxes just like the rest of us. But he probably likes to imagine the USA as a superpower that will crush its/his perceived enemies. But maybe Bob just kind of wants an identity to cling to. Also maybe he and/or many of his friends and relatives are in the military, possibly because it's one of the few stable career paths for people without higher education, and he would like to think there is some kind of positive thing being done. Maybe he's sending a dog-whistle signal to "liberals" or immigrants. Or hell, maybe he does just have pride in the cool things that do happen in America. Maybe he's an American history buff! But for all of the complex factors in Bubba's enthusiasm for America, actually doing what America tells him to do probably isn't the part that delights him.