Savants and cubing

[Kyle Barry]

If you believe Daniel Tammet, and I do, he does experience synaesthesia, and is capable of intense calculations, without using a normal method. I read his biography, Born on a Blue Day, (which I don't recommend, it has some interesting points, but it's mostly about his dull life) and the first page says he was born on Jan. 31st, 1979, and it was a Wed., which in his mind, is blue. Words and numbers for him connect with textures, colors, and shapes, which allows him to do some of the things he does. Again, this is only if you believe him. Skeptical scientists have tried to disprove this, probably in the documentary, it's on YouTube somewhere but I can't find it right now, and have changed their minds. His knowing 12 languages, maybe more now, doesn't impress me either because I don't know how much time and effort he put into it. I agree that we put too much emphasis on some of these feats, but some savant abilities, no matter if you care or not, are unexplained and certainly abnormal, in my opinion. Being skeptical is one thing, and reasonable in this case, but not to the extent of assuming that everyone is lying in a conspiracy. Either way, if you truly don't care, or aren't impressed by people putting in very little effort and achieving world-class talents, then oh well, but it's interesting to me.

Kim Peek's ability to recall what he read is pretty clear. He holds assemblies, plenty are on youtube, and the kids ask him any trivia question they can think of, and he can recall what he memorized, and tell them. This is not something a normal person is capable of, absorbing that much information and retaining it, as far as I know. I've never seen anyone capable of this, being it's not something you can really train, and no one else would put in this kind of time, sitting in the Salt Lake City Library, reading dozens of books per day.

 

[Stefan]

If someone came along and could solve the cube in 50 moves without knowing any algorithms or any specific method, and while being of below-average intelligence too, I think I would be impressed.

Yeah yeah yeah... IF. Show me one. Then we can talk about it.

It's an analogy, you retard. :fp

Doesn't matter. It could've been about anything, I didn't even bother to think about how likely that case would be. You just said "If someone did IMPRESSIVETHINGHERE then I'd be impressed". Well, ok... I'd be impressed if someone ran 100 meters in 7 seconds. So what? Nobody did, so I have no reason to ponder about it.

And now I'm out of here, got other stuff to do...

 

[MW1990]

... I'm with qqwref and bwatkins. Am I surprised at the content of Mr. Pochmann's posts? No, I was at the receiving end of them maybe a few hours after my first post here or so at this forum.

Also, these savants are really only extraordinary (i.e. more than ordinary compared to the average person<--- subject to opinion) because of their normal extreme mental and physical handicaps. Kim Peek's memory is beyond anything most people will ever be able to attain. "Anyone can learn how to do it, whoop-dee-doo." That's the thing, he didn't have to learn or practice, it was an intuitive trait, something not present within everyone (recent studies have shown that a part of the brain can be stimulated to simulate an extremely small dosage of savant like abilities).

Many people can train to do many of these things, i.e. calendar dates "I use an algorithms it's simple whatever, anyone can do it, etc.," but that's not what they are looking at. The autistic spectrum/aspergers syndrome causes many severe mental handicaps, which would normally prevent anyone from really developing social behaviors and learning anything past a low grade level. Daniel Tammet is a special case (as they mentioned on the documentary on savants, there are many versions/parts of it on "EweTewb") because at a point in time he did fit into the autistic catergory, but not necessarily so much now.

How much time has he invested in learning the languages? I'm positive (as I have faith in his abilites unlike a vast majority of people) that the time spent is a fraction of what an average person (yet again average is subject to opinion) would take to learn 12+ languages.

 

[Bryan]

If you're not going to believe any evidence unless it walks right up to you and proves itself, there's no point in arguing with you. ... Your arguments are becoming more and more childish as time goes on, now it's just "show me everything or whatever you say is false".

Quoted, in case we have another religion thread