Fair enough. The main reason I commented (aside from a bet peeve about Ockham's Razor and other simplicity principles) is that while psychological problems can potentially stem from complexity, many more seem to stem from a lack of complexity. Individuals with profound autism (defined as needing 24/7 care for life and normally non-verbal or close to it and with an IQ below 50) typically have brains where their neurons, despite branching, tend not to extend far in their brains. So their brain is a network of mostly local connections rather than far reaching ones that extend into distant brain regions. While there may be just as many parts, that clearly seems to be a lack of complexity.

You don't have to play if you don't want to. I would classify that as denial though

When I retired (10y) I was a whiz with Perl, had learned enough Python to know I could switch over easily, and was being told by Paul Graham that if people were too dumb to see that LISP was the ultimate language that had made his fortune, that Ruby had the same deep structure allowing the ultimate trick of self-modifying code and true compactness and elegance and all that stuff the Great Programming Languages all had to have for the most-elite work.

Of course, I didn't have to work any more, and I hate writing toy programs, and didn't have a problem that really required it, so at 10y, the O'Reilly Ruby book is dusty, and when I have something too hard for a bash script, it's still perl. Which still works.

But I was feeling guilty about it, and now I can put the Ruby book away with satisfaction that the moment passed. (Giving up on FORTH was the hard one; loved that language.)

That's a simplistic principle that I'm sure your father did not actually follow in real life. Plenty of things that increase mechanical complexity actually also increase reliability. For example expansion joints or suspensions in cars. Arbitrary complexity added for no reason, sure, but I am sure that many systems your father worked on not only used lubrication, but had extra systems (adding complexity) to make sure that the other parts stayed lubricated.

That's actually a great example, but maybe not for the reason you think it is. Apparently, the Palisades fire was reignited from a fire that had already been put out and the firefighters on the ground wanted to keep working on it because it wasn't done smouldering, but their higher ups pulled them. So then high winds and other conditions re-ignited it and it caused massive destruction. So, that's actually a really great real world example of conditions where being good and thorough at your job trumps speed. Also of management clock-watching having disastrous consequences.

Several of your other examples present this same issue.

They will still do that without AC, they will just get extra sockpuppet accounts. Plenty already do so that they will post with higher karma and also be taken a bit more seriously.

This may all hinge on how you're defining "extremely productive" (and also "successful"), but most civilizations have actually rewarded the majority of extremely productive individuals with less whippings.

They kind of are in many educational settings. Plenty of schools give students who are falling behind special classes, makeup tests, extra credit work, etc. that other students don't get. That is even when the student in question does not have an Individualized Education Plan.

Uhhh... That category already exists. It's called visually impaired, and it does receive special accommodations. Back when I was in school, one of the girls in special ed had coke bottle thick glasses. She got treated by pretty much everyone like the other kids in special ed. Not too much bullying (though some), and mostly they just got socially ignored, but basically as far as everyone was concerned she was a **Slur Deleted** along with the rest of the kids. Her only disability though was that she was legally blind. Even with the glasses, she needed large print, etc. These days, she probably would not be thrown into special education classes, she would probably be in class with everyone else and just get help with reading materials, what the teacher writes on the blackboard, etc.

Now, of course, that is a spectrum as well, and you can argue that there are people whose vision is not that bad who are getting accommodations they don't need. However, it makes more sense to err on the side of caution when making the cutoff. You may complain about it being unfair to everyone else for someone you don't think deserves an accommodation to get one, but it's a lot more unfair for someone who really needs one to not get one and essentially be cast out.

Are you counting alcoholism as a mental issue? Because then the only thing that defies belief is that it's as low as 45 percent.

Based on what I know of your history of comments, you are almost certainly on the spectrum or at least neurodivergent in some way. There's a reason that people apparently keep telling you this, and it's not because there's just something wrong with all of them. Bear in mind that this is coming from someone who is almost certainly on the spectrum himself.

That is most like for a few reasons. One that you were probably just a kid, so there were lots of things you had not heard of. Two is because you probably just had a different word for the kids in special ed classes.

Also, I will note by your smashing head/feces definition, the character of Raymond in Rain Man was not autistic either.

So, neurological studies showing distinct neuromorphological differences in the brain even per-natally are wrong and everyone's brain is just a one-size-fits-all that only requires the right behavioral training to work just like everyone else? Right, and all it takes to be a professional basketball player is training hard enough and "heart". Got it.

Sure, except that in the link that you provide, the doctor says:

So, that second group he mentions are people with a genuine condition or disorder who get lumped together. As it happens, they get lumped together under the label ADHD. So, clearly, ADHD does exist, but it's a category rather than a singular, specific thing. Most of us already knew that. So this is just arguing over nomenclature.

I am wondering about that a bit. How is a physical switch "user configurable"? Is it through tiny dip switches or jumpers accessible through a back panel? Or is a software configurable physical switch? Because that second option would make it not really much different from a virtual button in the interface. It might be a little more convenient if you want to switch those things on and off, but it defeats the main purpose of physical switches for that sort of thing which is having an actual physical interlock that can bypass software and make sure those things are really turned off. Otherwise spyware, or a software glitch, or an intentional backdoor in the software (or later introduced in an update) could allow your device to be used to spy on you. Preventing that is almost the whole reason anyone wants such a physical switch.