Yeah I seen a commercial the other day saying like 1 out every 400 children born every week / month whatever are going to be diagnosed with autism within their lifetime.

It's pretty hard to say whether having autism would be a good thing or a bad thing. It has it's ups and downs, and we can't really know how it is unless we experience it(but I guess that goes for everything else, as well.)

I think the lighter forums of autism wouldn't really be that bad, but then again you have all of the drawbacks lingering around like you said, but then again blindness in my opinion is one of the worst things that could possibly happen, I would get the feeling of closterphobia if I was blind ...

Well, for instance, those people who are non-functioning autistic. The ones that we would consider near-braindead. How do we know what goes on in their head? They might not show anything going on, but for all we know, they might be solving the meaning of life and shit like that. Perhaps the less functioning the autism is, the greater the mind-power. Who knows. I personally think it would be cool to be in my own little world where I just absorb all knowledge and have an understanding of everything.

Yeah but what sucks is their inability to discuss and show us new ways of thinking, etc. I'm sure with advances in technology we'll be able to read thoughts, eventually. Which we can also use to see if people need to be taken off of life-support, etc.

haha. When i smoked I used to wish I had a way of recording my thoughts without having to write them...I'm sure its on the way.

Well steven hawking has that sort of thing where he can talk using brainwaves, not exactly how that whole setup works, though..

Doesn't he type what he wants to say?

Idk, I thought he couldn't move any part of his body, or something... but maybe so.

Quote:

He gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and is now almost completely paralyzed. The computer system attached to his wheelchair is operated by Hawking via an infra-red 'blink switch' clipped onto his glasses. By scrunching his right cheek up, he is able to talk, compose speeches, research papers, browse the World Wide Web, and write e-mails. The system also uses radio transmission to provide control over doors in his home and office.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Illness

Same birthday as mine, he has.

How exactly can he talk by scrunching his cheek? I don't get how that would work.

Something to do with the infra-red blink switch, methinks. Maybe the scrunching up of his cheek sends out an infra-red pulse from the blink switch, to his computer?

Yeah, but how would you have that stand for different things? Like, I could see if scrunching his cheek made his wheelchair go forward, but how does it make different characters and click shit on his computer and stuff?

Haven't a clue. Could be done like Morse Code - different lengths and combinations of twitches do different things.

Don't they call him one of the greatest minds since Albert Einstein?

He's the cleverest fella alive, if that counts?

Mjordan told me his "A Brief History of Time" book is really good, I even ordered it but the delivery failed and got sent back to Amazon so I never re-ordered.

He's pretty much the most advanced Astrophysicist alive.

I constantly wish that, I have a poor memory and I have the problem of an overactive mind, so my thoughts fly much faster than I can write or type. I've thought of so many interesting things that I wish I could remember the details of...

The fully functional autistic guy is English also. He's some red-headed due that can recite pi to like 10,000 digits.

Blindness.