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erratio comments on Humans Shouldn't make Themselves Smarter? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Of course, that assumes that autism should be considered a mental disorder. Many of those on the autism spectrum don't, whereas most of those with depression or high levels of anxiety do consider their condition to be a disorder. It looks a lot to me like status quo bias: if being more intelligent will cause our minds to become qualitatively different then we shouldn't try to be more intelligent.
As a high-functioning autist; I would love for there to be a higher representation of fellow HFA's in the population. Our learning functions would still be different from the baseline population (as it currently exists) but... I feel the world would be a better place if HFAs represented as much as 10% of the population. Beyond that, I have uncertainty.
It seems to me that some of the "high-functioning" / "low-functioning" autism distinction has actually to do with the comorbidity of various other disorders and disabilities; as well as with the quality of schooling and other care. There seem to be a number of autistic folks whose lives are complicated by PTSD from bad psychiatric care, institutionalization, abusive schooling situations, etc. Presumably, if ASD were more common and better understood, these would be less likely.
Then again, defining disorders by self-reporting isn't that much more accurate than going with "any mental condition considered weird by the society".
But that is how a lot of mental disorders are defined. See: attempts to medicalise non-heterosexuality.