This is purely speculation here, but it seems that Chris has probably been given a lot of leeway in his life with regard to comprehending things due to his being Exceptional and therefore not knowing any better. Therefore, maybe the thought process is, "If I don't fully understand the rules, I don't fully have to follow them." Perhaps the hope is that should Nintendo and Sega's lawyers come a-knocking, he can say, "Mmm, but I had da ropy- copyright sistificate an' I didn't know dat Sonic an' Pikashoo weren't on it," whereupon they will nod, pat him on the head and walk away.
When people try to explain things to him (e.g. Asperger's, homosexuality), he claims to be "close-minded" on the subject, which to me indicates a conscious refusal to understand - perhaps so he can maintain the "I didn't know" defence.
There are certain phrases that people, not just Chris, use as excuses. A few years ago, I had a colleague, who would use the "I am not comfortable with that" to get out of doing almost everything. We were hired to work about 15-20 hours a week, and the organization was fairly unstructured, so it wasn't immediately obvious to any one person how little she did. But after about 4 months, she had done maybe 5 or 10 hours of work in total, and had drawn the whole paycheck the whole time. Firing her took a month or two.
There is a man who lives in my building who "isn't comfortable" with his teenage daughter riding the elevator with men. When the elevator stops at her floor, he demands quite vociferously that all the men on the elevator get out and wait for the next one.
"I am not comfortable with that" is a weird phrase. If someone says it, other people tend to respect it, because their is a perception that we shouldn't make someone do something they are "uncomfortable" with. I don't disagree with the basic sentiment entirely, but people have different definitions of "uncomfortable", so it gets abused. It isn't supposed to mean that you always can have what you want. It gets misused, either because people don't understand what level of "comfort" they can demand from others. or because they realized they can get what they want that way.
Point of that rant is, I think Chris' uses his "mental state" or "stress" a lot like that. I have no doubt that due largely to his autism, he finds some situations a lot more "stressful" than most people do. My guess would be that when he was growing up, there were several times where he was overwhelmed and it was a problem. Well-meaning people around him told him things like "if you are stressed let us know". He would complain about stressful situations and they would help him out of them. I think there is evidence he did that for pep rallies in high school.
So far so good. No reason why Chris should have to sit through pep rallies if his autism really makes them a really miserable experience for him. But he learned that he could say "stress" to get out of things, and he started using it any time the prospect of him doing something he didn't want to arose, whether or not the reason he didn't want to was overwhelming, or related to his autism.
