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Kim Peek, aka Rain Man Focus of NASA Study
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "Kim Peek - an autistic man who has been deemed a "mega-savant" for his astonishing knowledge of 15 grand subjects ranging from history and literature, geography and numbers, to sports, music and dates - is a part of a new NASA study to explore the changes in his brain since MRI images were originally taken in 1988. Not only was he the basis of the main character in the movie Rain Man, but he apparently is getting smarter in his specialty areas as he gets older. The study has scientists hoping that technology used to study the effects of space travel on the brain will help explain his mental capabilities."
But he also is severely limited in other ways, like not being able to find the silverware drawer at home or dressing himself.
What's his
Trolling is a art,
While definitely a "savant", Kim Peek is not behaviorally autistic; Rain Man's character was modified to be an autistic savant. (Autism, like many disorders, is merely a set of diagnostic criteria, and Kim may share some in common with classic autism. However, some critical benchmarks for autism are not shared, making Kim not strictly "autistic".)
The above article and the brief wikipedia story are very interesting reads. For example, did you know that Kim was born with "an enlarged head and missing corpus callosum, the connecting tissue between the brain hemispheres, damage to the cerebellum and no anterior commissure"?
Can we make a beowulf cluster of him?
...Ken Jennings is a genius at every subject.
...how many queens are there?
That's right. All your base.
Maybe NASA is too lazy to count stars in Hubble images for density studies, and hope this dude can do it in one shot.
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe he could give Ken a run for his money. Also, I'd love to see some "rain man" style banter with Alex as an alternative to the usual tepid small talk.
I welcome our new autistic all-knowing overlords.
"The goal is to measure what happens in Kim's brain when he expresses things and when he thinks about them."
Personally I'd be curious to look at the difference in his brain activity when he is dealing with one of his specialities as opposed to when he is trying to find a spoon.
vampirical
Smarter or more knowlegeable? If he maintains his fascination in those areas, why would we imagine that he wouldn't gain knowlege?
Smarter would mean something like ``better able to reason with a given set of information.''
Since the article is on CNN, I suppose that we shouldn't expect any sort of detail or sense, and not much fact, either.
See what I've been reading.
Be your own savant for a little while... with magnets. Really! Maybe.
... to Ken Jennings (the $2.3m winner of the last several months of jeopardy.) I gotta say, Ken has taken the fun out of Jeopardy.
They really just want to play home version Jeopardy with him - they think they can win. As proof, notice that they didn't ask to study Ken Jennings!
There, I've run rings round you logically.
sigs, as if you care.
Hi
;-)
I have a eigenpoll for books on accelerated learning techniques,
in case there is anybody else which likes to get smarter as they get older
Dumper than average?
Dump chimp?
You fail English? That's unpossible!
As an interesting side note, both Ken Jenning and Kim Peek are Mormon. In fact, Mormon doctrine is one of the subjects that Kim has mastered in mind-dumbing detail.
It's great living in the 21st century. Victorian evils such as freak shows have been abolished. We respect people's privacy. Oh, hang on... I guess his daddy's got to earn a dollar.
The study has scientists hoping that technology used to study the effects of space travel on the brain will help explain his mental capabilities.
Does he look anything like Jack Black, perchance?
Seriously, why is this being done by NASA? This is a neat thing happening with this guy but don't we have dozens of people who've actually been in space for extended periods of time? Why aren't CAT scans of them enough?
I can't see how this has any practical relevance to the space program from the viewpoint of manned space (we have more than enough data on that front) or unmanned where this is completely unrelated.
What ever happened to NASA being the Aeronautics and Space administration. Wasn't the VSE supposed to put the kibosh on all this science fair side issue stuff? Shouldn't this be relegated to some university psych program with a government grant?
Blaze a trail to the New World
how he can remember all these things but cannot remember simple things like the silverware drawer.
:unlimited knowledge:, no. :-\
maybe his brain catagorizes things as important/not important? truely interesting, maybe he has one of the secrets we need to further our learning abilties.
but would i trade the ability to do common day tasks for
So... where is this guy? I want to take him to the casinos. Two for good, one for bad. :)
Definately a waste of money. Big waste. yeah.
= Grow a brain...
According to the following link, Kim Peek is not autistic, he's just a savant:
i mp eek.cfm
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/k
Along the way to its completion, the original script for the movie Rain Man underwent a number of modifications. While Kim Peek served as the initial inspiration for the story, Raymond Babbitt, as portrayed so admirably by Dustin Hoffman, is a composite savant with abilities drawn from a number of different real life individuals. The main character in that movie, Raymond Babbitt, was modified to be an autistic savant. The story thus is that of a person who is autistic but also has savant skills grafted on to that basic autistic disorder. It is important to remember, therefore, that not all autistic persons are savants, and not all savants are autistic. In preparation for his role, Dustin Hoffman spent time with several other autistic savants and their families, as well as with Kim.
Fran Peek describes his son this way: "Kim is not behaviorally autistic. He has a warm, loving personality. He truly cares for people and enjoys sharing his unique skills and knowledge capacity.
It is important to distringuish that Kim Peek does not demonstrate the disassociation portrayed in the Rain Man movie.
In fact, Kim Peek (along with his dad, Fran) spends a lot of time doing "charity work" with elderly people.
Supposedly, he's quite a nice guy to talk to, if a bit mentally retarded (or whatever the proper term is these days).
It sounds like he is good at memorizing lists of stuff. Is he really good at 15 different subjects?
That is a great station and it still broadcasts online: http://www.woxy.com/
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
...featuring Valeria Golino.
I don't mean to sound how I probably do, but I've found (and while I dont mean on the level of intellectual knoweldge bareance as Kim) that most people have close to an endless amount of memory, and if people spend their time Learning and absorbing information, they tend to retain most of it... I know intelligence is a factor, but persay in this country, we are raised to think of education, work, and learning as a burden, and hence we don't like it... When I was in school, I failed classes, didn't do test's or homework, slept through classes etc... Now I love learning so much I can't find the will to do anything with my life BUT work or study 24 hours a day... When I thought with the mindset i was raised with here, that learning was burden, I hated it and didnt retain near 30% of the infromation I processed... Now that I enjoy learning, I tend to bare memory of closer to 80% of what I learn, and at other times in my life I would of thought it impossible to know as much information as I do now... And of course, im not saying I am any more intellegent or am more adept to learning then anyone else, especially here on /. where almost anyone is my intellectual peer, but my point is meerly someones will to learn, or more of lack of will to limit themsleves, is highly responsible for how much a person knows....
And yes, of course, this person is impressivly and extremely knowledgeable in a wide array of topics, more then the average person can ever expect to be, my point being though that I consider it easily humanly possible for me or anyone reading this to posses the same knowledge...
Im sure most of you are as geeky and me, and like learning as much as me, if you were able to spend all your time studying eg full time student, and studied every topic this man is knowledgeable in, I think it enitrely possible for humanity itself to reach that level of 'genius'...
I blame the stunt of humanitys growth(or atleast, partially this countries) on how we are mentally raised... We are raised being told you will go school and hate it, then go to work and hate it. Almost anyone I know raised in America has this mindstate, and becuase of it, their idea of a productive night involves doing nothing but sittin on a couch... Where as my japanese friends, even my younger ones, are fierce when it comes to educational and work concepts, they are FAR FAR more diciplined, and they were raised with a 'learn to succeed, its good and you NEED TO, you almost have no choice but to learn as much as you can' mindstate, and becuase of it, their lives much more reflect a productive and educational lifestyle....
As this post is starting to wander FAR off topic and ill probably get negatively modded for it, ill wrap it up and try to bring it back to the original content...
Yes, this person does have genius-level learning and knowledge posession, but imo, alot more of earth is capable of it if they didnt waste so much time :D
(and yes I know people dedicate their lives to this and don't acheive, but my point is if society, espcially american society, produced differnt veiws to people, they would be far more willed to educate themsleves further then the 'minimum' ; eg most people get degrees just to get a job, not to learn what they are being taught, becuase yet again, here thats the mindset we are raised with, not to go to shcool to learn, but to have a peice of paper that says you can work somenwhere'...)
I supposed my thinking is biased and flawed, but still, If humans didnt waste so much time, I think all of humanity would be genius by now ;P
Probably not. Jennings has made it as far as he has because he knows a little bit about seemingly everything, whereas Peek effectively knows everything about a narrow set of fifteen subjects. Jeopardy covers a wide set of subjects in each game (sixteen categories per show, usually one or two of which is a sort of grab bag where all the answers have an O in them or something, but cover completely unrelated topics), with relatively little repeat subjects from show to show. Somebody with a lot of knowledge about a few subjects can win one or two shows if the topics go their way, but they'll lose in the long run because the topics change dramatically.
"I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Chinese savant-expansionist policy. I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other savant technology, in order to create savants more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out with superior savants!
Mr. President, we must not allow... a mega-savant gap!"
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo | It really works!
ok, what does the mri show about his brain that's different than Mr. Normal Person? Are there different neuron interconnections, higher density, what? Any clue as to how his memory works?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I know I shouldn't respond to this troll. But I personally know many chinese, and can tell you they are not morally bankrupt.
Upon questioning them about Tibet, it is obviously apparant that their government has severily altered the truth. Basically the offical line is that the Tibetians (spelling?) are poor and need Chinas help. Tibet is basically viewed as a welfare state by the rest of China. Many Chinese only want Tibet to be part of their country because they feel compasion and want to help them.
Sadly I could not convense the chinese I talked to that Tibet was anything different, as they assumed that different views were lies by the Western Media. Oh well. Now the Chinese Government being morally corrupt, I could definatly agree. But, I would not be so quick to assume that the civilians are such.
MEGA-SAVANT
Interesting that he can describe driving directions and specific geography but can't apply the same skills to locating the silverware - they seem like very similar tasks.
I find it increasingly distrubing that the level of racist remarks on /. has increased of late.
/. does have a history of really mind-numbing trolls, but this is just overt racism, and in no way acceptable.
I realize that not everyone has the capacity for expressing their xenophobic tendencies in hopes to confront and thereby conquering them. But there are some who feel this is funny/mind-fsck'n, and is 'ok' for them.
--
Kim Peek - an autistic man who has been deemed a "mega-savant" for his astonishing knowledge of 15 grand subjects ranging from history and literature, geography and numbers, to sports, music and dates
That's dates as in "When was Christopher Columbus born" not "Take me in your strong arms and make passionate love to me"?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
they could mutate him into a Guild Steersman and fold space. He who controls the spice, controls the universe. ;)
Thats because there is no spoon drawer!
HAHAHAH, bugger. Most of my attempts at humor fail in this way. I'm so dumb I can't spell dumb correctly. I think I'll go and look for a job digging ditches now..
NASA's findings to date:
1. K-Mart Sucks
After all he is an excellent driver!
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
Personally I'd be curious to look at the difference in his brain activity when he is dealing with one of his specialities as opposed to when he is trying to find a spoon.
Well, the CNN article is characteristically light on details, but it says the tests will include MRI and "computerized tomography" (i.e., a PET scan). The PET scan can be used for examining things like flow of blood and oxygen, as well as which parts of the brain are utilized for a given task. Unfortunately, even though PET research can focus on a specific "task", it can't really be used for monitoring tasks that last very long.
I think I would actually be more interested in EEG test results. One can monitor EEG during longer tasks, but I'm especially interested in what kind of "zone" Peek is in when he's consuming information. Certain states of consciousness or "arousal levels" are conducive to super-learning, but are ill-suited to other tasks.
Btw, if you're interested in what Peek looks like, check this page from CSU Fresno's University Journal.
I've started posting comments on slashdot news articles in 16 different areas - Apache, Apple, AskSlashdot, Books....
and I've also started having trouble counting things, and remembering what I just typed.
and I've also started having trouble counting things, and remembering what I just typed.
.
Kim was born with "an enlarged head and missing corpus callosum, the connecting tissue between the brain hemispheres, damage to the cerebellum and no anterior commissure"?
No wonder he can't find the silverware drawer at home. That requires coordination of the parietal lobe via the corpus callosum.
No wonder he can't dress himself, that requires a cerebellum for detailed motor movements.
Now what can he do, this modern day human with a massive conjoined cortical apparatus?
Kim Peek sounds like he is probably the only person that will be able to take down Ken Jennings before he breaks the bank.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Is that 15 grand ("thousand") subjects then? Well, that's much more than a monkey or a ton of subjects!
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
There, I've run rings round you logically.
"Oh, intercourse the penguin!"
Ya know, that came from a Monty Python sketch but it takes on a slightly different meaning here. Eeww.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
In soviet Russia, Russian thinks in YOU!
The most interesting part of the session was the question and answer portion at the end. For about 30 - 45 minutes Kim fielded various "trivia" questions from the audience. They ranged from obscure baseball facts from 50 years ago, to a student standing up, stating his name and hometown and asking for his address and phone number. No-one succeeded in stumping Peek.
Peek's visit was certainly one of two most interesting speakers to visit my college while I was there. (the other would be Desmond Tutu)
Because autistic children and people don't learn the way we do. Most autistic people are lucky if they can spell their name. A few happen to be autistic-savant as this person is, and his learning is incredible because it's not normal for an autistic person to be able to learn like that.
A slashdotter gets a brain scan. And the scientist are looking how to understand the results...
Nothing new here just go on...
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
So that's why the psychohistory curve is going into a singularity. NASA using "space technology" to "study human brains?" You don't need a tin foil hat to see this doesn't make sense. What's probably happening is the Mul.. er, Kim Peek took over NASA and is getting them to convert their Star Wars lasers into mind control ray emit>!*(!#%!^&#@$ Hey, CSI Miami was pretty cool last night.
What makes racism a more important brand of thoughtcrime than any of the other forms of anti-socialness? This ain't 1940 any more.
Oh wait, yest I am
MOD PARENT UP!!! Very interesting post.
Anyone have a link to research which shows elevated levels of heavy metals?
You didn't happen to notice by any chance that he had blue hands, did you?
Ken's real mastery is the timing, not his knowledge. On most Jeopardy questions, all three contestants know the answer. It is simply a matter of who buzzes in first. On Jeopardy, you get penalized for buzzing in early: your buzzer will be locked out for a moment or two. Ken has mastered the timing and is able to buzz in at the perfect moment on almost every question. Check out his opponents. Some of them will get visibly pissed off at the buzzer.
Ken does have a vast knowledge and in many cases is able to answer the $2000 questions when the other 2 contestants cannot, but he generally has the game wrapped up by the end of the Jeopardy Round due to his timing, imo.
Since this guy is so smart, should we not let him make the final decision regarding the Hans Solo/Greedo debate? Kim? Oh, that's right, he probably can't use a typewriter, either.
Why don't they put in in a room with ALL the available data on HIS condition (autism), let him make autism his latest subject to be a "mega-savant" about; then ASK HIM ABOUT HIS OWN CONDITION ?
I doubt that this comment was meant to be racist but more a condemnation of the Chinese government. It often sounds like a condemnation of the people because in most democratic countries the people for the most part identify with themselves with there government. That parent statement should have read " the morally bankrupt Chinese government". My question is can the average Chinese person read slashdot?
Maybe the new metric should be this. If your government will not let you read Slashdot it is moral bankrupt. If you read Slashdot you are morally bankrupt? Just kidding.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Dude, he's memorized 6,700 books. I don't think my local libary HAS that many books. I'd think that with all that knoledge he's got enough memorized to make a few bucks on jeopardy.
--Forest C. Adcock--
namely, that there is no spoon.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Does anyone know to how many digits he knows pi. On tv I once saw a guy who was supposed to know pi to a million digits.
You're right of course; and off-topic, so I won't use my mod points to mod you up. Perhaps someone else with more karma to burn will.
I just assumed that since my parents get smarter as I get older, I must be getting dumber as I grow old.
OK, can someone tell me why this is surprising?
I probably couldn't 10 years ago. Now, I'm not so sure.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
You're right....
;)
Only when someone starts to display incredible knowledge of potent potables will Mr. Jennings have to really worry.
Kim Peek Versus Ken Jennings on Jepordy.... Wow that would be an episode to remember. Put that on prime time.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
He's obviously not married with children.
Fucking unbelievable.
That's like saying that the hijackers are not to blame. They did not know any better.
The majority of Chinese support their government on almost all matters of foreign policy. Time/CNN poll in 1997 showed that the majority of Chinese in Hong Kong cheered the unification of Hong Kong and mainland China. That ain't whistling dixie.
yeah, definitely Wapner
Shouldn't you be hiding under a bridge somewhere ambushing and eating children?
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The Chinese are animals
A large proportion of the world thinks the same of Americans, dude...
Actually, I'm modding it down because it's totally offtopic, not because I disagree. (Though, he's only actually won one election...)
StoneCypher is Full of BS
A small town might have that many books. A large city could easily run to more than that. The Vatican, Amazon.com, or the Library of Congress easily runs into the tens of thousands of volumes.
But separate out the fiction from the nonfiction and I'm sure you'd limit the number of volumes needed greatly.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
this should be modded down for off topic.
Beside, if was Karl Rove genius that one him the election...Bush brought the money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
is it based on a chemical reaction we can isolate in the lab?
Cause I might be willing to take a pill that makes me twice as smart. Think of what I could do with a 360 IQ!
heh
I'd rather take a pill that made me rich.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Man gets a LOT smarter as he gets older. His intellegence in certia arenas has probaly raised more then your total IQ. ;)
Pretty astounding.
What makes this guy different from other people with autism? Can we figure it out? can we isolate? duplicated? congigate?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
why is there soup?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... I just haven't found my savant yet.
He's a nice guy. I've met him several times. Frankly it's odd to see him in the news like this.
I was in a meeting with him and about 20 other people. They had us all go around and introduce ourselves. After anyone said who they were he'd say "Yah, you live at, you live at blah blah. Your phone number is blah blah."
The person with him kept saying "Quiet Kim, nobody needs to know that." Very disruptive but fun.
If you're more knowledgable, odds are you're going to be smarter.
That's because you'll have (in some ways) memorized large portions of what others will have to deduce. Sure, you could re-deduce it each time you need it, but why?
Of course, this line of reasoning completely fails if you don't take care to stuff your head with an accurate representation of what you're studying. Considering that one of the topics is History, where interpertation and point of view play major roles, I'd gather that Kim isn't some sort of super-encyclopedia, but someone actually processing and incorporating ideas into his internal visualization of the world.
Yes sir, I too find the racial stereotyping here at Slashdot to be much out of line! Asians and Indians are software engineers just as talented as the White Man!
Sanjeep Arahuapu
... but he apparently is getting smarter in his specialty areas as he gets older...
Heh, don't we all?
Proverbs 21:19
42
I remember watching a documentary or two about autism and something that was repeatedly found was that as an autistic individual tried to remedy their problems with autism (usually getting better with age) their savant like knowledge began to deteriorate. I have always thought that there is almost a finite amount of brain capacity any one individual is able to have. Meaning, while a savant is able to have incredible knowledge of some things, their brain is so devoted to that knowledge that things, like knowing where the silverwear drawer is, get sacrificed. Specifically, I think that the autistic savant's brain begins to lose the amount of speicfic knowledge in their savant areas as they are adapting to a more social lifestyle and expanding the functionality of their brain. (Others have pointed out that Kim doesn't lack the social skills to be considered classically autistic. However I feel that this explaination may still be able to apply to some degree.)
really communism in Russia came out after a monarchist government, and in China it came after a nationalist government.
The IQ extrapolation is great, but even if it's accurate for back when he took it, I doubt it is now, after years of boozing and snorting coke
It's lost on some people, but morality isn't a universal constant (like c) but is influenced by point of view.
The Chinese Government has constantly tolerated and even promoted the mass violation of most product protection laws. As a mainland Chinese why they are burning copies of MS Windows instead of buying it, and they'll look at you as if you've lost your mind. Only when the Government decides that it's no longer in their interest to promote this activity will the moral values of China shift.
But it's not just limited to China. Many Christians should remember that many of the Biblical characters were poligimists (Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, anyone?) and had less than perfect lives (Noah exposing himself in a drunken stupor). But today's moral values don't permit any of this behavior.
Blaming someone about their lack of your moral values makes little sense, especially across culture divides as great as those in the U.S.A. and China.
No one gives a rats ass.
Take you cult ravings elsewhere.
Latter days,...Saint!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What I'm curious about, it while he may be a walking encyclopedia of fact, how good is he at reasoning? I Googled the name, 'Kim Peek', to read some articles about him, but they are not clinical descriptions of his abilities and limitations.
.00001% greater chance of dying on one carrier over another. Most people would see this point very quickly, and simply buy a ticket on the fastest flight, or cheapest fair. How is the real Kim at this sort of reasoning?
For example, if we can take Dunstin's performance as a roughly accurate description of how he might behave, an interesting scene is the 'Quantis is Safer' bit. Tom and Dustin are trying to get somewhere. Dustin's character insists on flying on Quantis, on the grounds that it has the best safety record, having never crashed a plane. That is a fact that has a bivalent value that can be checked as being true or false. However, the scene illustrates that the character portraied by Dustin cannot deal with relative 'Fuzzy' concepts very well. Since major Airlines are very safe, and the relative numbers of accidents are so low, nobody worries if you have a
I mentioned 'Fuzzy' concepts above; there happens to be a branch of logic called 'Fuzzy Logic' that deals with set logic, and vague concepts. Things like getting a computer to work out how tall you have to be before you can be called 'tall'. It would be interesting to give Kim a book on the topic and have a discussion with him about it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Wards to keep away succubi & incubi? Or perhaps just over-eager SOs. Whichever.
Surely nothing Slashdotters have need of, with their vast array of natural defenses against this sort of thing, like odor, personality, etc. In fact, I doubt many here encounter this sort of thing at all, unless playing Nethack.
I wonder if the symbols spell "Elbereth" in those pseudo-hieroglyphs the Mormons use? I mean, so many great Moron scholars have studied those symbols. Hmm...
Speaking of which, what were you doing with Mormon underpants, anyhow?
I propose that we catch Chinese folks and use them for medical experiments. These experiments will produce far better results than rat experiments.
I hear he's an excellent driver.
--Residential Interior Design
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think analysis may be a good first step, but for best results, the army should simply 'recruit' a few savant babies/youngsters, exposing them only to militarily useful references, offering surrogate family relations, etc. I'm sure they'll all perform perfectly, but ass-covering decisions by middle management will ensure that their resources and abilities will be wasted, just as information resources are wasted now whenever they don't confirm to the reality that our job requires that we create and project.
This is informative? Sheesh - you guys are taking all the fun out of the parents patent troll.
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
Is when your wife MOVES things that have been in the same place for a while, and totally messes up your "physical" memory... I still go to the wrong cupboard every time I want a paper plate - and it's been three months since she switched things around.
In the fictional Dune universe, there was a Matrix-like AI revolt, followed by an extended war between humans and AI. After the war was resolved, the humans decided to use human computers known as Mentats, which were "giga-savants", that had their minds altered by injesting a special form of the spice.
Well that is an intersting except things like censorship, Tibet, and Tiawan are not considered foreign policy in China. Also I would not trust polls in China. They do not have a free press or political system. Again can the average english speaking chinese read slashdot?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The 53-year-old Peek is called a "mega-savant" because he is a genius in about 15 different subjects, from history and literature and geography to numbers, sports, music and dates.
Wow! Slashdotters, this guy could probably help us out with the girls!
I'm surprised nobody has said this yet. We just have this guy count all the votes!
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Well sure, maybe. But can you MEMORIZE them all the first time you read them? Maybe I'm just dumb, but I sure as heck can't.
Autistic children who are helped by this diet often crave milk and wheat, sometimes refusing to eat almost anything else.
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
The vast majority of the Chinese baboons support censorship and the occupation of Tibet.
You must be a Chinese fucker since you defend Chinese behavior.
Maybe 'funny'... Is this supposed to mean he could cure himself? Oh, wait, he would just know what everyone else knows about the disease and not how to cure it...
But he is still just a friggin retard
Maybe they just don't like you.
All this requires is a talent for memory- anybody can learn to memorize. The key with Kim is that his brain is hardwired for memorization in a way yours and mine isn't.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The USA president appears to a man of limited intelligence on the surface. Yet his college entrance test scores give him an IQ of 128. And he manages to win elections and run the country, more or less.
Whoah... this has been modded from 2 to -1 since I loaded the page. But I'll reply anyway.
My personal belief is that Bush probably has some form of undiagnosed dyslexia (*). The "humorous" mistakes he makes remind me of a dyslexic flatmate I had at university. Smart enough guy, who occasionally made incongruous mistakes with his speech. I later found out that some dyslexics are known to do this- IIRC this was at the same time it was suggested that Bush was dyslexic (**).
This doesn't dampen my view that Bush is anti-intellectual, insular and not particularly intelligent where it matters, who serving as a tool for corporate America and the Christian right-wing.
Just that we don't need to laugh at what might be a mild form of dyslexia.
(*) Or maybe it *was* diagnosed, and hushed up. Who knows?
(**) OTOH, I had another flatmate (in the *same* flat) who was also dyslexic, but never did this.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Mega-complexioned
"January 12, 1965. Very snowy that day. 12.2 inches of snow that day."
-- "Life's not fair, but the root password helps."
Couldn't we get him to study the election figures, by county for the last 10 elections and see if he noticed patterns indicating corruption (for instance, if electronic voting has helped any one canidate more than others relative to exit polls)?
He should be able to visualize patterns better than any computer because the program has to be pre-programmed to look for a pattern related to a specific cause, he should see it as easily as we would a peak in a graph.
If only we could get this guy to study neurology or something like it to such detail - maybe he could tell us what makes him so smart?
memory capacity does not equate intelligence. that is why these folks are "savants" he can recall everything he reads, but he can't really extrapolate new data from it. that's the issue.
Maybe we should resurrect William Sidis then, and ask him?
They ranged from obscure baseball facts from 50 years ago, to a student standing up, stating his name and hometown and asking for his address and phone number. No-one succeeded in stumping Peek.
So, what I want to know is, if I had several of this guy's brain, could I form a RAID array from them?
Uhm,
Should someone make sure that after he enters NASA,
that he comes back out ?
We should apply for a research grant.
I noticed that some people mentioned MMR (Measles Mumps Rubella vaccination) as a possible cause for autism. Looks like it has just recently been retracted - Controversial MMR and autism study retracted
Yep, the grandparent article is correct. It has solid evidence to indicate that the Chinese overwhelmingly support Chinese nationalism and Beijing. What kind of baboon would enthusiastically support unification of mainland China and Hong Kong? The Chinese kind would, apparently.
"But he also is severely limited in other ways, like not being able to find the silverware drawer at home or dressing himself."
So, apparently he has exceptional abilities ONLY in things which are interesting.
And everything else, someone else has to do it for him.
How conveeeeeeeenient...
Slickest scam I've ever seen.
I thought the main character in Rain Man was Charlie Babbitt played by Tom Cruise. Not Dustin Hoffman didn't deliver a good performance but Tom's character is the one developed and grew as a person.
Or are they trying to figure out why they can put a man on the moon in the 60's but can barely keep things in orbit in the 21st century.
Well, it seems to lead to oppression. I mean, the government locked up thousands of people post-9/11, and hate crimes went up, and racism rose to some of the mainstream.
Instead of scientists working so hard, why don't they just ask him himself?
I thought the Tom Cruise character in the film Rain Main was loosely based on Dr Oliver Sacks. Turned out I was wrong. However, there are many similar cases of autism described in his great book "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat".
This is a fascinating and slightly frightening book. One of the cases there WAS made into a film, Awakenings with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams.
Some of the other cases include the title character; a man who keeps adressing his hat as if it was his wife, a woman who has lost all "sense" of her body and feels as if she is trapped in a tomb of someone elses dead flesh, people who can see only details and not wholes, people who are unable to form new memories (exactly like in Memento), people who seem to have lost "nodes" in the "tree" of knowledge that they use to experience and interpret the world.
Great book, defenitely worth a read.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
EXACTLY, its the same thing, if the US government told us someone needed our help (iraq sound framilier) the country tends to generally take their word for it. And while both Iraq and Tibet are in considerable conditions (while in far differnt ways) its easy to say you want to help but doing it in a way the people of the area your 'helping' would rather not be helped by... I mean, if you can't turst your government... oh wait....
"framilier"?