Maybe I'm missing something here, being on the wrong side of the equation, but this is just wierd. Some people have a hard time reading and responsing to emotional signals, like facial expressions. Now a machine is going to read them for you?

I guess it's a case of very verticle application. It looks for a very narrow set of conditions and flags them to the user. Having floundered my way through the learning process, I'm not inclined to hand my judgement over to a machine, even if mine is flawed.

However I do see some use here. It shouldn't be a crutch. It should be a training tool. It should teach people how to recognize the signs themselves. If a person just starts ignoring the signs and relying solely on the machine, then this is worse than nothing. Maybe they will never get to perfection or normal recognition, but they should try to learn at least a little. With something like this, the learning process might be a little easier than trial and !!ERROR!!.

Then, as I posted here, there is more to the situation than recognition. I'm not sure the machine will be any help there.

Introspection is the study of onself. Look into onself and try to objectively see what the motivations and reactions are.

I had a hard time understanding other people for the longest time. I didn't know why until recently, but long before that I found a way to cope with it.

Someone described it as An Anthropologist on Mars . I see it as the idea of trying to understand the human species from a point of view outside. I'm not quite outside, but I felt I needed a way to approach when everything else failed.

What I came up with over the years was this:
1. Identify some action or trait in others that I didn't like.
2. Assume they had some real reason or emotional motivation for doing it (rather than just dismiss them as idiot or whatever).
3. Try to find a mix of motivations in myself that might move me to that action. Try to understand what the motivation might be. This could be easy or hard. It might be an obvious emotional reaction that I also would feel but was too weak in me to make me overcome other restraints. It might mean subduing my emotional restraint to allow the action. It might be a very subtly mixes of motivation that I barely recognize.
4. Look for things that I do or have done that were similar. This can be the tough part. Take a hard look at meself and say "I was upset when someone else did this. Now I see I did it too." And remember it. When the situation comes up again, don't do it. Stay calm or whatever, but avoid doing things that I don't like in others.

It works on the positive side too. See positive things others do, what they overcame to do it, and do that myself too. I use myself as a mirror, reflect what I like in others, not what I don't. I'm a human impersonator.

It is somewhat awkward to try to objectively review my own emotions and motivations. Maybe most of my emotional responses are lowered overall, and it makes them more objectively viewable. My self esteme has varied over time, so on occasion I can puncture it a little without too much resistance.

I can't really feel the differences between autistic and typical any more than anyone else. I only have one point of view: mine. Whatever that is, a mix of some autistic, some typical, some just me.

Some things that I think may be autistic tendencies are:

It has been said by others that autistic people are less likely to see through lies or maniplation, and that they don't lie well. I am probably a lot like that. I recognized that fairly early, and as a result became somewhat closed. I didn't trust many people at all as a result. I'm over a lot of it but I feel it behind a lot of what I do with other people.

I have a tendency not to think in terms of controlling or manipulating other people. It just feels like I should wait and see what they do. It's not so much that I can't do it as that I don't see it as the best may of dealing with people or even not an acceptable way of dealing with people. It just feels dirty. All too often I see others who thrive on manipulation, for good or bad, and it's that manipulation that bothers me more than what they are trying to do with it. It just seems so dishonest. In many circomstances, this can be a weakness, but I have found it an advantage: People who know me trust me.

It is often said that autistic people are very pattern sensitive, in that they expect specific situations and specific events in their daily lives, and are very upset by disruption or change. I suppose I can see a little of that. I do have a tendency to avoid things that interfere too much with my regular routine. It's hard to explain exactly why or how I feel about it, but disruption really is rather offputting to me. As a result, I often find myself procrastinating about doing things that would disrupt my regular routine too much, even of only for one day. Not much of a deep explanation, but there it is.

On a personality evaluation I took as part of a job application once, it indicated that my response to confrontation (in the work place anyway) was to "gather as much evidence as I could and bury them with it." I actually laughed when I read it, because its funny but sooo true. There's a lot of ways this could go, but I'l leave it with: I enjoy learning usefull stuff and don't have much patients for evasion or emotional ploys.

The topic of Autism comes up again every once and a while on Slashdot. It's come around again today.
I like that it is getting more attention in regular society, and not just relegated to some edge condition.

In the last few years several topics have come and gone on the subject. One of the most controversial is the possible link to mercury bearing vaccine perservatives. There is a lot of genetic connection as well.

In my case, I am very mild, and my father decided he fit the pattern as well once he read more about it, also very mild. His father may have been more severe. He's gone now, but the people who knew him said he hardly ever talked to anyone, even his own family.

My wife is smart and typical (code word for normal). But she comes from a very smart family, and there may be some symptoms in there somewhere just not clearly defined.

Which leads us to our son, now five, who is more autistic than me. He is very late in developing language, and has many of the symptons of autism. We had a little trouble getting a diagnosis, but I attribute that more to vagaries of the definition of Autism than to his condition. It's just one of those things that noone wants to try to nail down (and take responsibility for). "Somewhere on the spectrum" is usually the best we can get.
He was born right in the middle of the time the mercury bearing vaccines were used, but our doctor gave us the option of an alternate vaccine w/o mercury, so we took it. We may have dodged something there, it's hard to say. Or maybe something else he did get was just as bad. Who knows.

I like the observations and discussions I've seen on slashdot, and hope others will to. As always, it's a learning experience, even from the inside. :)

Five months ago, I discovered that I am Autistic.

It was not a complete surprise. Things like this had tipped me off to the possibility a while back. But it is the sort of thing that can rearrange your outlook on life. I started this journal to meet with people who are also autistic to see how they view life, people, issues of autism, or just simple chit-chat.

I'll start with my discovery:
I have a son who is two and a half. He does not talk. He has some strange habbits that drive my wife nuts, but seem OK to me (I guess all mothers worry more than fathers). He was diagnosed with mild autism in August.
As part of the early assesments, we were asked if there was any autism or other related conditions in our families. We didn't know of any, but we went and asked around to be sure. My wife cleared her family fairly quickly. When we were asking my mother, she said that she didn't know of any. As the discussion went on, she finally piped in with "Well, you know, when you were a baby, you didn't talk until you were three, and then you started talking in complete sentences. And you often went and played for hours with your own toys away from everyone else. And you didn't listen to orders at all, and you didn't respond to your name, and you had some learning disabilities in school and ....". As the descriptions rolled in, I'm reading down our symptoms list going "check...check...check...".

"Guess what mom?"

I haven't been officially diagnosed, but it all seems to fit. Until then, I was just a someone who behaved strangely in groups and was mostly shy. I had often had trouble dealing with people in school or social situations, but had always marked it up to shyness or something similar. Autism provides a framework in which to hang my experiences with come clearity.

Since then, I have read a lot about autism and related conditions. Temple Grandin is a very interesting person and very informative on the subject. Autism covers such a wide variety of symptoms that it is hard to classify them. In my case, I am mild and mostly in the high function branch. I am very good with math and logic topics. I am also physically capable (I did competative gymnastics in high school). My son is also very physically capable, shows signs of being good with spatial problems, and is fairly attentive when necessary. (As I write this, he is staring intensly at the "Flying Stars" screensaver.) I have met children with more severe cases, and the differences are certainly noticable.

I hope others will share their experiences here and let us all know how it feels or works or doesn't work.