My paternal grandpa was a mechanically/technically inclined person, a socially awkward, blunt and stubborn person with multiple failed marriages, and no friends ... who turned to tobacco and alcohol to cope... and he literally did have an extensive, hand crafted model train set and environment, the size of two queen mattresses, that he built, and often neglected his kids to spend time on/with. That and the alcoholism also caused some serious familial neglect.
My dad was a technically/mechanically inclined person, a socially awkward, very brash and overconfident, sutbborn person with a history of tumultuous romantic relationships, is still in a very unhappy marriage, no friends, who turned to alcohol to cope, which caused him to neglect his kids and wife... and then also went through various hobbies every 2-4 years or so, which became his whole personality untill he switched to another one.
I can remember him one time, piss drunk, explaining to 10ish yearold me the ins and outs of structural concepts in aircraft design.
I am also a technically/mechanically/computer programming inclined person, a socially awkward person with a history of tumultuous romantic relationships, who is overly literal and often quite blunt, with no real friends beyond the age of about 25... who would often isolate with the computer to get away from insane family drama... but at least I have not fallen into alcoholism nor had any marriages or kids, as I realize that social/traditional pressure alone is not a good reason to sign up for massive responsibilities...
But nope! Ask any of my dad's family if maybe Autism is a thing that runs in the male line of our family, and this is evidently a ludicrous, unfounded notion, but also at the same time there's 'just no real explanation' for the astoundingly obvious pattern I have here described.
They don't disagree that the pattern isn't there, they are all just massively biased/stigmatized against any concepts of mental illness or neurodiversity, choosing to view atypical, consistent behavioral patterns as simply indicative of the underlying, quality of moral character of a person.