You're performing a good bit of mental gymnastics to arrive at that interpretation of what I said. Clearly, if you know the exact type that would be deduced, there would be no penalty for explicitly using it.

The use of auto is not laziness, nor is it abusive. It is correct and idiomatic modern C++. Bjarne Stroustrup and most members of the ISO C++ standardization committee actively advocate for its use, to the point where AAA - Almost Always Auto - has become a common mantra. The simple fact is that, most of the time, the compiler is smarter than you, and understands your code on a level that you never could. Allowing the compiler to determine the type automatically, as often as possible, allows for optimizations that may not be possible if you coerce an explicit type. People who reject evolutionary features of C++ are the same sort of people who would reject fuel injection on cars, because they learned how to drive a car with a carburetor, so everyone else should be fine with it. Technology advances. Try to keep up, or be left behind.

Don't blame the language or its standard library for your inability to RTFM. From std::map::operator[] - cppreference.com: operator[] is non-const because it inserts the key if it doesn't exist.

Technically, the "average" intelligence is not the midpoint. So half of people are not necessarily smarter or dumber than the average. To get that grouping, you use the median, or middle value, which is defined, statistically, as the value that separates the highest half from the lowest.

"The Gov isn't asking hem to unlock EVERYONE's phone" No, that's exactly what the government is demanding. They want a tool that will unlock any iPhone. And that is a dangerous precedent. If history has taught us anything, it is that no government should be trusted, at any time, to do the right thing, when the wrong thing is an option. It also represents a significant reduction in security, whose primary purpose is preventing hackers/crackers from gaining access to your data. If a backdoor is created, attackers will find it, and they will exploit it.

What can this strange device be? When I touch it, it gives forth a sound It's got wires that vibrate and give music What can this thing be that I found?