is it still disregard to authority if i only break rules when i don’t understand them or think i would be better off without them? like i wouldn’t go out of my way to possibly get in trouble without any personal gain but i will (mostly) openly disrespect rules i think unjustly make things harder from me.
This sort of depends on how well you relate to other criteria and your frame of mind about following the rules.
I pretty much do the same thing as you mentioned here, and the reason for that in my case as someone with ASPD is "it's not worth the headache of getting in trouble", and that alone is good enough to keep me following laws and rules most of the time. Sometimes the rules are stupid, and I don't like them, but they inconvenience me less than the punishment for ignoring them, so I grit my teeth and deal. For laws, I follow all of them bc *any* inconvenience is less annoying than jail time and/or big fines and/or court.
For some pwASPD, that's not enough to keep them following the rules/laws. For others it is. But unless you genuinely respect the rule/lawmakers and believe that smart, good people who are more capable than you made rules because they have a right to control your behavior, then you're technically showing a disregard for authority.
The disregard for authority part of criteria is very much more about mindset vs actions. I may believe a manager is a totally incapable baboon who cannot even be bothered to follow state employer laws let alone decide what is the most efficient or safe way for me to do things, and occasionally I may get the STRONG desire to make sure they're aware I feel that way, but I usually follow the rules anyways because either the baboon managed to make a rule that makes some amount of sense (broken clocks are still right twice a day *shrug*), or because I don't want to tolerate the consequence for not following them. That's not respecting authority just bc I'm following the rule. I still very much do not respect the salaried baboon. I don't even respect the capitalistic society that gave the baboon power over me. I *do* however understand the situation I'm in and act accordingly.
I think about it this way - if someone gives a monkey a pew pew and taught it to use it, you don't have to believe the monkey is smarter than you to recognize that you should give it what it wants. You don't have to even believe the monkey actually knows how to use it to recognize that. You give the monkey what it wants because anything it wants has to be easier to deal with than what might happen if the monkey gets upset enough with a weapon in their hand.
And for that same reason, I'm usually quite sweet to my managers no matter what I think of them.
If you relate to this line of thinking more often than not, then like me you have "issues with authority".