Well, actually, yes, lots of people who appear to have the brain mechanics of "sociopaths" are, in fact, extremely useful to society. If we completely eradicated those traits, we'd lose a lot of very useful people. The question is whether they learn coping skills that allow them to adapt.

Your cousin's situation sucks, but you're making a big leap when you assert that that is all "autism", and not some mix of autism, other cognitive disorders, or just plain mistakes made in raising him. Lots of autistic people are totally dysfunctional when no one has taught them usable skills.

A lot of kids who were believed to be "nonverbal and incapable of learning language" turn out to be perfectly able to read and write. Give them a keyboard or a pen and paper, and suddenly they're not only capable of communicating, but obviously quite smart. Give them these tools early, they grow up "high-functioning". Deny them these tools and torture them to try to make them stop waving their hands around, they grow up incapacitated.

The bulk of the problem there isn't the kids, it's the people trying to break them. Sometimes, you try to break people, they end up broken.

Well, that's the thing. "Different isn't necessarily good" is also so broad and obvious that it's meaningless.

The amputees case is significantly different in a key respect: People who have a limb amputated aren't suddenly a different person.

The rest of the body is what you have; the brain is who you are. I think people are entitled to a vote in whether they want to exist or not.

This is ... basically completely wrong. The sum total of the diagnostic difference between autism and asperger's in the DSM-IV was early language acquisition. That's it. There were no other real differences.

I don't "have asperger's". I'm autistic. Insisting that only people who can't process information are "really" autistic is pretty much pointless. That's not what the word means, and it's pretty insulting for you to sit around declaring what the terms "really" mean. Are you an actual qualified psychologist? No? Then why exactly do you suddenly feel qualified to dispute the diagnoses of the professionals so aggressively?

I'm not sure how many "many" is. I've encountered exactly one, and she was a victim of severe ongoing emotional abuse. It's a lot like the large number of people who want to be "cured" of being gay because everyone around them is a dick to them about it.

Take away the abuse, the problem goes away.

Hint: I've met dozens of autistics. All of them had learned to do social interaction things at least somewhat. The ones who had the hardest time weren't "more autistic", they were victims of parents who didn't bother to explain anything to them.

But different isn't necessarily bad, either.

How about instead of trying to eradicate people who aren't like you, you let them be?

I've found that it's extremely useful just to have a word for it, because people are a lot less annoying about "I'd rather use email than phone, I'm autistic" than they are about "I'd rather use email than phone".

So, if we find an example of a non-autistic person who's highly social and totally dysfunctional, should we claim that this is an example of "severe" non-autism, and therefore we should be trying to cure all non-autistics of their horrible condition?

Well, why would we expect anyone to be normal?

Also, speaking only for myself and also all the people I have ever known who are autistic: "Autistic" as an adjective is fine, "suffering from autism spectrum disorder" is insulting.

I would consider the death to be about the time of the Activision merger, so 2009-2010. Not really a decade yet.

Microcenter has a tolerable $400 2560x1440 these days, but yeah, they're a little rare still.

But as time goes on, that may change. I just wish more of them were 16x10, I really hate losing 10% of my screen space on the off chance that I never do anything but watch movies.

I consider it somewhat a good thing, simply because Steam doesn't fit my use case well, so I buy stuff from GoG.

I'd also point out that there's a fair number of 2560x1440 monitors out there now.

[citation needed]

No, quite the opposite, really.

People who don't make mistakes are either (1) perfect or (2) unwilling to try things without total confidence.

#1 doesn't exist. #2 is pathological and crippling.

People who don't have a history of interesting and possibly impressive mistakes are almost certainly a bad fit for any job important enough to bother with a background check. Thing is, if we were comparing the teenager to a much older person, the "irresponsible kid" comparison might be relevant. But that's not what's on the table; we're comparing two adults, one of whom did stupid stuff years earlier when their brain wasn't even finished growing.

I don't think that makes it a misquote.

Especially when you look at Google's ongoing practices when it comes to privacy, personal data, or people who could conceivably have a reason to care about their privacy.

I have a Wii U. I use it at least some. I have no intention of getting either the PS4 or the Xbox One. This is not unique among gamers I know.