Yes.

I have a friend who is extremely intelligent, endlessly curious and was raised in a locally well-established and notoriously generous and civic-minded family. So he was raised in that milieu of sincere kindness and generosity, and whenever he’s come across anything that interests him (which is seemingly something new every week) he seriously researches it until he understands it.

So it pretty much doesnt matter what the topic is - he knows something about it, but his personality has been shaped so that he’s attentive and considerate rather than pedantic and self-absorbed. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen him engage in obviously mutually enjoyable conversations with complete strangers over… pretty much anything.

I vacillate between thinking that it’s remarkable that he’s the way he is and that it’s remarkable, in a different sense, that that’s so uncommon.

I’ve met a few.

What I’ve noticed is they rarely use the words “I” and “me”. They rarely talk about themselves, which is bloody unusual. I try to follow that example.

This whole comment is a failure of that philosophy. My bad.

No

In technical fields? All the time. It is super rare for someone to ignore your arguments or resort insulting you during a discussion.

I’ve met tons of these people. I think it’s sad the rarity this question presupposes. People like this are all over the place.

I know a woman who makes a point of telling her husband about her day, whether it was good or not. She talks about her hopes for tomorrow, and for days more distant in the future. She genuinely wants to know more about other people, and is really interested, and she is great at talking to people and making them feel important and unique.

The only part that is confusing to me, is that I am her husband. This vibrant and compassionate woman went and got hitched to little me, it’s been 14 years, and I don’t know why she stays.

But I’m glad she does.

Yes, I literally teach classes on how to do this, and why it’s hard

Yes, and I think I learned, in general, how to focus on anything by observing them do it. She was my first major, unattainable, love. She was just zeroed in, always, and I knew I had to learn the skill. I still can’t do it to the level she does, but it’s a remarkable skill to work on. Even at amateur levels, it’s extremely useful.

Absolutely! And I’m finally gonna marry her in less than 2 months.

Yes, and a lot of people but hardly straight off the bat. It takes a few rounds of small talk before engaging in something meaningful. In my experience, the more creative the person, the faster they will engage in a meaningful conversation, with musicians probably being the fastest ones.

Yes), there is people like that, they usually are unpopular because they don’t try to gain standing in society but instead enjoying what they do, they are very chill and wholesome, you see, society as a whole is quite egocentric even if they try to virtue signalling, people wrestling each other socially, and if you want to find people like that, then you need to step outside from the rat race, then you will see that there are alot of these type of people, they are actually all over the place)

Yes, I few people.

An old classmate of mine was fascinated about space and space exploration and could go on and on about it. It never was uninteresting to listen to.

Also a friend of mine. He’s a pretty smart guy and has opinions on a lot of things. He also knows a lot of things about different topics. We can talk about anything and it will be an engaging conversation. I love that guy.

I have met people who are able to do this, and believe that everyone can, already or eventually. Unfortunately though their willingness to do it with me never aligns, so I don’t get to do this much.

Yes, but only other autists.

I have met few people that can even accept my experience without trying to twist it into their own.