If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
So, let's take autistic vs. neurotypical people as an example. As a general (but not iron-clad) rule, autistic people tend to read less social connotations into the meanings of words. As a result, they are often less likely to take offense from things that a neurotypical person might read as insulting. And as a result of that, they're more likely to prefer the kind of communication that's more direct and to the point. In contrast, with more neurotypical people, exactly the same kind of communication might come across as cold and blunt.
Knowing this lets me optimize my style of communication to the kind of person I'm talking with, more direct with autistic and more careful with neurotypical.
Now of course there are some autistic people you need to communicate carefully with, and some neurotypical people who prefer direct and blunt communciation. But if I have a higher prior probability on someone preferring direct communication, that lets me make some cautious probes to measure their reaction to that style of communication. Probes which could have a negative expected utility if I put a higher prior probability on the person being easily offended by more direct language.
This doesn't necessarily happen on a conscious level. Just having the background knowledge of neurotypical and autistic people differing on this dimension, helps me do this on a partially instinctive basis.
I wasn't explicitly taught this thing about how autistic and neurotypical people differ. It was something that I picked up by experience, from interacting with both kinds of people. But for learning this, it was important to have some kind of a mental handle for hanging the differing experiences on. If I hadn't known that there was such a concept as an autistic person, I couldn't have noticed the correlation between autism and the preferred style of communication. Rather my experience would just have been "different people react totally differently to the same kind of words, and it's totally mysterious to me when to use what kinds of words".
If you have more mental categories to put different people into, then if anything about them happens to correlate with those categories, it will become possible for you to notice that correlation. Without those categories, it'll be harder for you to generalize anything you learn about one person to other people you interact with. Maybe you learn that this particular person prefers direct communication and this other person prefers indirect communication, but when the third person shows up, you don't know what style to use with them. This will slow down the development of your social skills.