> you'd just start any conversation with "hey, I'm autistic, so if I appear a bit weird..."

Then people will criticize you for making autism your whole identity.

Which is a silly point to make but people can be pricks. Not saying you gave bad advice, just saying, it a damned if you do, damned if you don't with some people. I think it is generally good to be open about it, if not just to filter out intolerant people faster.

You might even say that some neurodivergence is an adaptive strategy to quickly identify a potential threat.

Many sapiens like to believe they are good people, but they don't like to to think about what that really means. It seems we are talking about a filter that identifies such people very quickly.