aspies of the world unite!

“aspies” is an affectionate term for people with asperger's syndrome, of which i am one. throughout elementary and high school, i was bullied and treated like dirt, even though i was really smart and had grades that were about as close to perfection as a fallible human could reasonably be expected to get. i did really well in all my classes and did not have to try at all; they were all dirt easy! and i was in the enriched and accelerated and advanced placement classes, the ones for smart people. but someone is just “smart” if they are smarter than maybe half or two-thirds of people. i am smarter than more than 99% of people. i do not say this in any sort of bragging way, because i have a mental disability that goes along with it. my brain is better at some things and worse at other things than an average human brain. asperger’s syndrome has made me very smart in an academic sense, at logical matters, but i am severely disabled socially. it has also allowed me to develop great interest in computer science and math, and all about computers.

people with aspergers are said to have a high-functioning form of autism. there is a lot of negative perceptions and generalizations people have about autism, although most people haven’t heard of asperger’s syndrome, which is just as common. you see, a severely autistic person has various tendencies that are drastically different than a normal, or neurotypical, person. someone with asperger’s falls right in the middle, between severely autistic and perfectly neurotypical. we are just barely normal enough to survive in the real world, but it is a precarious balance. because of our great difficulties in dealing with other people, which is very important these days, we aspies often don’t do very well. however, because people with asperger’s are often brilliant geniuses, some of us are very successful. and that all depends on whether we can capitalize on our particular gifts while minimizing the damage caused by our particular disabilities. asperger’s is a very balanced syndrome, in that it benefits and hurts you in equal amounts, but in different ways.

one example: i have been basically amounting to nothing since i graduated college. jack squat. zero. nada. zip. the null set. and i graduated with a double major in computer science and mathematics, from cornell university, which is perhaps the hardest ivy league school to graduate from. and while i was at cornell, i did remarkably well for a slacker who skipped class and didn’t do homework or any of the required readings. i had an almost perfect memory for every word the professors had ever spoken in class, and could easily call up those memories at a moment’s notice. but i don’t just have great memory. i also have unparalleled logical reasoning skills. and a great capability for abstract thought. but i tend to do better in courses about rigorous mathematical subjects than in courses about subjective things like art or music or history or literature. in fact, my performance in those classes was rather sub-par, since i was not really interested in the subject matter, and didn’t study; mostly i relied on memorization of everything i heard in class. or if i read a textbook, i remember every word i read with a photographic memory of what everything on the page looks like where a certain topic is discussed. i was a real slacker, and just relied on these amazing abilities to get through. and i was a dean’s scholar. at cornell, the dean’s scholars are one of several different groups of students, selected when they accept you to the university to be part of that particular program, who are considered to be smarter than all the other students who don’t get one of those honors. then again, a person does not have to be that smart to get into cornell. i mean, they do have to have above average intelligence, but simply the top 30% or so are good enough to get in. that doesn’t mean anyone is guaranteed to get in, even if they are in the top 10%, because the process of admitting people is very subjective and flawed. there were universities i was not accepted into because i lacked enough extracurriculars. anyway, the dean’s scholars are selected mainly based on the short essay they write on the front page of the application to cornell. whoever writes the best essays gets to be a dean’s scholar, provided they also did really well in school. since i was the valedictorian of my high school, and my grades were a full 3 percentage points higher than the nearest competitor, that part was no issue. as for writing skills, with us aspies, it is a mixed bag. i did very well on essays and term papers up until i got into college, often getting perfect scores (i refused to settle for anything less than perfection, and even a 99% used to make my blood boil). once i was in college, i mostly got c’s. c is for average. standards much higher there. and my real talent is in computers and math.

so anyway, the greatest unsolved question in theoretical computer science is the question of whether p = np, and the clay mathematics institute in cambridge, massachusetts is offering a 1 million dollar reward to anyone who can prove this question one way or the other. and guess what? i came up with a proof, and sent it to them! i actually came up with the proof during my junior year, when i was in the class where these topics were introduced. usually i am several steps ahead of what is taught in class because i logically deduce many things implied by what is taught. so, i was able to independently come up with the idea of the quadratic equation and derive it, in 8th grade, a few weeks before the teacher actually taught that matter, because it was a logical extension of the stuff taught right before. or in 10th grade, i independently came up with the idea of the derivative and calculus, although i only understood the concept as it applied to the function f(x) = e^x, and never thought of applying the same principles to any other functions. those are the 2 main examples from high school. and there is just one example from college. the question of whether p = np.

during that class in fall 2002 semester, professor john hopcroft described to us the concept of the complexity classes p and np, and a class of problems called np-complete. and he told us that the problem of whether np-complete problems are actually in class p is an unsolved problem, that many very smart people have thought a great deal about, for many years, and nobody has been able to find an answer. and he suggested that we all try to come up with proofs one way or the other, as an exercise which he was sure would almost certainly not amount to anything, but would help us learn the material. to add to the incentive, he told us that some multimillionaire is offering a 1 million dollar prize to anyone who solves this, and that great fame and fortune await them, just like the people who solved fermat’s last theorem and the 4-color theorem.

so, like everyone else, i set to work on this problem, and within a few weeks i arrived at a solution. but i became convinced that my solution was somehow incorrect, because my proof was too simple, too obvious, too short and elegant. there had to be something wrong with it that i was not seeing, because i had checked and re-checked and it was all completely logical! but it was so obvious, i was incredulous that nobody had ever solved this problem, with such an obvious answer lying right under their noses. so i kept quiet about it and i didn’t even discuss it with the professor because us aspies avoid social situations that make us uncomfortable more than anything. i never went to office hours for any professors or anything, because i was just not into that sort of thing, as a very shy person.

anyway, recently, my friend mike was telling me about how in this new game he is playing, the sims 2, in the university there is a freshman class entitled “p = np and other simple proofs”. this is obviously a programmer joke because all the programmers took computer science courses and know that is a great unsolved problem that many brilliant people have tried and failed to solve. this reminded me of the fact that i had written that proof, and i started wondering whether my proof was right. i still remembered how my proof went, and started arguing with mike about whether it was right or not. he kept finding flaws in it, but i ended up fixing all of them, and i finally decided to write the whole thing out in a microsoft word document yesterday and get everything in the proof really concrete and written out thoroughly and logically. so i finally did that yesterday, and suddenly realized that i had overcome all of the objections and supposed “fatal flaws” he had found in my proof. it turned out that the whole idea of np-complete problems is a chimera to distract you from the main question of whether p = np, and if you want to prove whether or not p = np, just think about finding a counter-example to the claim p=np, a problem that is in np but not in p. well i had already found that counter-example, in junior year, but the original proof i thought up used the concept of np-completeness in an incorrect fashion and basically was inspired bullshit, very much on the right track, but just a little off. but then i had an epiphany. what if i completely eliminate the very idea of np-completeness from the proof, and just talk about the problem being in np but not in p? that would totally solve the whole problem! and then, i came up with a simple and elegant proof that is flawless.

so, then i had to verify that it is correct, and had myself, my dad, and my friend mike all verify its accuracy. and i emailed the proof to the official contact email of the clay mathematics institute for matters pertaining to this problem, to make it official. but i still have a whole lot more hoops i need to jump through before this thing is done. and that is if my proof is correct. they could still find some sort of weird flaw in it that i hadn’t even thought of, one that would be unrecoverable and make my proof utterly without merit. although i think that is highly unlikely. i did notice that i used the phrase “finite state machine” instead of the phrase “turing machine”, which seems to be the preferred thing to reason about. a turing machine is a type of finite state machine that is special because it can do anything that any other finite state machine can do, if it is a universal turing machine. an electronic computer is an example of a modern-day universal turing machine. there are 2 variants of it: deterministic and nondeterministic. in the real world, computers are all deterministic. but the new technology of quantum computers is nondeterministic.

anyway, the proof was all fixed and i sent it off to the clay mathematics institute in an email. but i have to get it published in a peer-reviewed journal and have the majority of mathematicians find out about and agree with my proof, and have them stay supportive of it for a year or more. all of that before i can collect the million dollars. kind of annoying, having to jump through all these hoops. i don’t even know anything about peer-reviewed journals in the first place. all i know is i solved the greatest unsolved problem in theoretical computer science. but i am not going to show the proof here for anyone to see, it has to get published in a peer-reviewed journal first. and it is going to be really annoying to get that arranged.

in the meantime, i am running out of money and can’t seem to find a decent job. i hope that will change soon. but i might have to get a job in fast food or at a convenience store or something, just to pay the bills. for over a year i have been living off of my life savings, most of which is from money my dad deposits into my bank account every 2 weeks, which he has done ever since i was born. at one point my life savings was over $20,000 but now i am down to the last thousand or 2, and i get bills that are several hundred dollars all the time. credit card bills, cell phone bills, student loan bills, car insurance bills, etc. and it is really frustrating to have to think about how i am running out of money and not going to be able to financially sustain myself unless i get a crappy low-paying job, because it is practically impossible to find a good job.

because of my disorder, i am a creature of habit and feel much better in familiar surroundings, so i have been restricting my job search to the binghamton area all along. i couldn’t just get up and move to a new city in an apartment and start at a brand new job where i don’t know anyone. you see, besides asperger’s syndrome, i also have a severe case of anxiety/panic disorder. any abrupt and major change in my lifestyle causes very severe emotional problems for me, and it would take me a long time to recover. for everything good i have gotten from my intelligence, there is an equal amount of bad that i have gotten from my severe emotional and behavioral problems. really, i don’t have it any better or any worse than the average person out there, because it all cancels out, the good vs. the bad. i am a hypochondriac plagued by panic attacks where i think i have some strange medical problem and am about to die, and i get these attacks all the time. it is not very pleasant thing, when you are so used to thinking you have less than 5 minutes to live that every time you find yourself thinking that you are like “oh no not that again, but maybe this time it is real”. really nobody can know the hell i go through unless they have had severe panic attacks themselves.

but i do know god doesn’t exist. that is another simple, elegant proof. god is defined as all-knowing and all-powerful. if he is all-knowing he can predict the future and knows every decision he will make in the future. but if he is all-powerful he has the power to decide to do things differently than how he predicted. but then the things he knows are wrong. therefore, since his existence is a contradiction, he does not exist. i can think of many, many other proofs that god does not exist, but that is my favorite. another neat one is, since god is also defined as being the creator of the universe and all that exists other than himself, he also created satan and evil, and he is personally responsible for every lost soul that goes to hell, and if he wanted to do things differently so those people didn’t become sinners, he could have, but he did absolutely nothing to prevent that from happening, in fact he knew exactly how everything that would ever happen would turn out back when he created the universe in the first place. so, since god is the ultimate source of all evil, this contradicts him being infinitely good, and therefore he cannot exist. i know christian theologians have a silly retort to this proof, that says that people have free will and that god gave them that gift and to do that he had to create satan and evil, but that it was necessary for the greater good since free will is the ultimate greatest gift that can be bestowed. which is pure bullshit, of course. god’s existence and his ability to predict the future mean that everything is predetermined, which directly contradicts the idea of free will. there are those who claim determinism and free will are compatible, but that is utterly illogical and makes no sense whatsoever. either we make choices every moment, freely choosing from among various different possibilities which could equally well happen, or everything is predetermined to have a certain outcome, and our choices are already predetermined before we are even born. those are the only 2 possibilities. period. case closed, end of discussion, god does not exist. and this second proof ignores the glaring error that god is defined in a self-contradictory fashion, the subject of the earlier proof which is my favorite. christians like to dismiss out of hand these proofs without even giving them serious consideration, whereas i have spent many years thinking about these questions and considering every possibility. especially since i took a philosophy class when i was a freshman in college, where i first heard of the repugnant nonsensical so-called “idea” that free will and determinism are compatible. i think quantum physics has proved that we do in fact have free will, and that determinism is wrong. and if god exists, he cannot predict the future, so he certainly would not be anything like the god most people imagine him to be. that is the only way god can avoid contradictions, by being unable to predict the future; that would also get around my other arguments that god does not exist, and such a god very well could exist, but what is the point? if god cannot predict the future, and is prone to bouts of irrational violence like in the old testament, how on earth could we trust him to hold true to any sort of promises he gives us? just look at what happened to the jews after he promised them everything. oh nothing, hitler killed half of them. what did god to to stop that? nothing. so, anyone who wants to argue in favor of god has got some 'splainin' to do.

so anyway, i need to get a job and get my proof published in a peer-reviewed journal of mathematics or computer science. fun fun fun. it’s amazing how much my life sucks, even though i live a life of great luxury compared to most people worldwide. at least i’ll someday be able to use the pickup line “i wrote a mathematical proof that solved the greatest unsolved problem in theoretical computer science and won me a million dollar prize.” and that is only if my proof is accepted as correct, which is a big if. nothing is certain, you see. it could very easily be rejected, and i am all too used to being rejected by everyone. i should never count my chickens before their eggs are hatched. i had the same problem when i wrote a computer program to predict the stock market. i started having really bad panic attacks every time i even thought about my program and its implications. so i ended up abandoning it entirely, because i just could not take the emotional toll of it. maybe i should revisit that project. maybe. but i am still positive that my program could predict the stock market if i just fixed a few bugs and tweaked some things and fed it in a larger amount of data to analyze. although, unfortunately, my parents don’t believe i could ever write a computer program to predict the stock market. still... what do they know? the stock market isn’t entirely random, there are certain patterns, and the program just needs to be able to decipher what those patterns are and use that to predict future stock behavior in the short term. i know other people have written programs to make money off the stock market, so why can’t i do the same thing too?

anyway, i would like to show solidarity with my aspie brothers and sisters out there. aspie power! aspies of the world unite! insert howard dean-style screech here. this i say as a big supporter of dr. dean, mind you... i can still poke fun at the man even though he is my personal hero. it’s a damn shame what the media and john kerry did to him, but howard dean sure showed them! now he runs the whole democratic party! haha, suckers! guess who is sweeping into power in the 2006 elections? democrats, obviously. and howard dean is the big man in charge. hells yeah! now if only people with asperger’s were in charge of the democratic party, whoops i mean the republican party... they would really screw, i mean fix, things up... what i’m saying is they would fix the election through massive voter fraud... no wait... they already did. funny how exit polls not agreeing with official tallies causes revolutions in former soviet republics like ukraine and georgia, but not in the united states of america, and we call ourselves a “democracy”. for shame! elections here are rigged tighter than a... umm... i can’t say it because it is too offensive. think young girls. whoops, i said something offensive! ok, forget i made a dirty joke...