Right, he's creative in the way a person who's had issues with dyslexia tends to be. They're sort of forced to put things together differently, which is disorienting when it comes to doing mundane things but also means when they're presented with data they tend to make connections few "normal" people would. That's why NASA loves dyslexics.
Personally, I always question if "autistic" is just a normal pattern of psychology, and it's only when someone with that psychological makeup is or becomes low functioning enough to drop below a certain threshhold that it becomes pathologized and labeled.
Like imagine someone who had a psychological makeup like Chris' but was "smarter", and developed enough brain power to where they'd be able to learn and piece things together fast enough that they could very effectively mimic ongoing social normalcy. They'd still have similar strengths and weaknesses, but obviously nobody would ever think of calling them "autistic" because their weaker attributes would appear functionally adequate. To everyone on the outside that person would just look like someone who was maybe a bit introverted but very creatively gifted.
To me it doesn't seem unlikely that there are and have been tons of "creative" people out there who are fundamentally very similar to autists like Chris, it's just that him and people like him are very low IQ examples of it.
TL;DR: I wonder if Chris isn't actually that autistic, but rather just really, really fucking stupid.