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A Savant Explains His Abilities
numLocked writes "Of the few hundred autistic savants in the world, none have been able to explain their incredible mental abilities. Until now, that is. It seems that Daniel Tammet, a mathematical savant who holds the record for the most digits of pi recited from memory, is able to explain exactly how he intuits answers to mathematical problems. Tammet is quite articulate and speaks seven languages, including one he invented. The Guardian is running an article about his amazing abilities."
...if the savants' abilities are compensation for "ordinary" cognitive abilities.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Why is multiplying large numbers considered mathematical genius? Or memorizing PI to 1,000 digits? Perhaps arithmetical genius
If he solved Fermat's theorem over breakfast, that would be mathematical genius!!
I think of things like this all the time. So does everyone in my family. Maybe she'll have a career at NASA. I'd love to train her to be a little autistic DBA if she were to show an aptitude with computers. But right now she's still busy being a teenage girl (as in, not geeky), and I have a feeling that everyone with an autistic kid thinks this way. Look around- how many autistic people do you see working in computers? I see none where I work. Unless you count me- my mother insists I have Aspbergers and was just like her when I was growing up and that my sister will turn out just like me. (She does seem to have avoided the temporal lobe epilepsy that I picked up by her age, which is supposed to be an Aspberger's symptom.) But no one else shares my mother's optimism, and I don't recognize myself in my sister at all.
/. post I've ever written.
I think this is the saddest
Leviticus also states that eating meat on Fridays, shaving your beard and wearing blending fabrics are crimes punishable by death. Will you be casting the first stone?
A gay, churchgoing autistic savant in fact. That's a tough call for someone trying not to stand out.
As a gay, formerly-churchgoing, neurotic genius (i.e. a bit like like him but not as "out there"), I'm jealous that he has a boyfriend.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
This was exactly my point. Leviticus is the "moral code" for the perfect Christian. No Christian I have *ever* met follows even a fraction of this code. So how can they justify taking one quote out of context and hold homosexuals to it absolutely? I say that if Christians want to make homosexuality an unforgiveable sin, they need to make every "abomination" in Leviticus an unforgiveable sin. It's only fair.
Actually, Leviticus is the moral code for the perfct Jew...there nothing Christian about the old testament...it is the historical/cultural text of the Jewish people...Christianity did not exist until thousands of years after Leviticus...I bet 99% percent of "Christians" don't even realize that they only reason the old testament ended up in the "bible" anyway was because a small group of people voted on it 300 years or so after Christ....oh, but i forgot, its god's word...well 51% of the guys in the meeting felt it was god's word
But there is some hope to be gained from others' examples. I have a friend with cerebral palsy whose pediatrician said he'd never be able to care for himself but is now a successful business owner and head of household, another friend with learning disabilities who's doing well handling repetitive tech-support calls, and a great aunt who was born cyanotic with multiple disabilities but has lived a rather full and rich life. My boyfriend, whose brain hemorrhage several years ago left him unable to care for himself (let alone hold down a job) has ended up as "a burden on the family", but they - and I - still value him for (to put it crudely) what's left of him. A step mother I expected nothing from turned out to be his greatest caregiver. (And I sure as hell didn't turn out like my family expected.)
My point I suppose is that things don't always turn out as badly as you fear they will, and you have to let every situation sort itself out as best as you can. There's no guarantee that everything will all work out, but then there's no guarantee that it won't. Work with that.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Now go look that up in a few other translations. It is quite a bit different.
I've never understood how people can believe that the Bible is true, yet at the same time not find it important enough to read in the original languages.
1) Homosexuality only disrupts the nuclear family when said family or society deems it necessary to harm homosexuals. Many children are thorwn out of their homes for being gay without a second glance. In several states it is illegal for homosexuals to even try and have a family via adoption or fostering.
2) Homosexuality is not a vector for disease spread. The vector is massive ammounts of sexual activity without proper precautions (such as condoms, limiting partners [to a perferred one], and plain ignorance). I will not say that there are not a large number of sexually over active individuals and I will not condone actions which are well known to be stupid and dangerous, but just because a large portion of a population engages in a dangerous activity is no reason to attack this population en masse. There are no laws preventing smokers from adopting children or raising children they alreayd have, but there are similar rules against gays. While it is known that being around smoke and smoking is dangerous to your health and to the child's health, being around gays is not dangerous to the child or to the homosexual.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
A relative of mine is such a savant. If he ever hears a phone number once in his life, he'll never forget it. Same with anything, license plates, credit card numbers, winning lottery numbers, etc. etc. whatever.
It's sort of impressive, but it's also a horrible condition. I'd rather lack that ability and at least be more able to function normally in the world. He's still a great person but obviously life is much more difficult for him.
Nowhere have I been able to find a citation or clear reference to the paper that Snyder presumably was (going to?) publish about this TMS-creativity connection. The closest I find is his own page. This page is somewhat telling in my mind of the level of "seriousness" of this research. One would think from the "Autistic genius? Nature, 1 April 2004, by Allan Snyder" pseudo-citation that Mr. Snyder had an article published in Nature, but closer examination shows it to be a book review (follow the link to the pdf on the page above and see for yourself).
/ apr/01_snyder.shtml.
On the other hand it appears that he at least exists, and that his story is not fabricated from whole cloth: http://www.usyd.edu/news/newsevents/articles/2004
Finally, in reference to the Guardian article, I find the parroting of autistic savant folklore such as the tale of the savant able to play Tchaik 1 without having taken a piano lesson (or touched a piano depending on the retelling) extremely galling. Playing a piano concerto depends on technique, muscle memory, and many other things besides pure mental contortion. To think that someone who has never played scales would be able to wrap their untrained fingers around a concerto of non-negligible complexity is positively ridiculous in my mind. I suspect that the story arose as a vast but innocent exaggeration initially and has taken up a life of its own through repeated retellings by reporters too lazy to check the source material of their stories.
In all fairness, don't you think the same could be said for many (perhaps even the majority) of mental illnesses?
I'd say it's natural to be depressed every so often, but we still have such a thing as "clinical depression". I'd wager that lots of people falsely decide they need treatment/medication for their depression too, when they don't really have a mental problem.
Even defining an "alcoholic" seems to be rather difficult. I remember reading the list of "signs" back in school, and the running joke was that "Hey, we're almost ALL alcoholics and we didn't even know it!"
It seems to me, Aspergers is just a definition of extremely mild autism -- and the diagnostic criteria have to be broad, because it's nearly impossible to draw an absolute "line" as when this transcends "slightly geeky" and crosses over into the territory of an actual disease/illness.
Truth is, these things only become "problems" for an individual when they interfere with their daily lives to the point where they're unable to overcome them on their own.
So yeah - if you're simply not making an effort to overcome some problem you're having, then you're correct. It's time to stop with the excuses and time to take a little responsibility to change.
But I can certainly see value in parents being made aware that something like Asperger's exists. I'm pretty sure I have a touch of it myself, actually, but nobody ever brought it up as I was growing up. I struggled quite a bit with social skills and to some extent, with physical clumsiness. To this day, I have a habit of rocking back and forth in my chair while thinking, reading, or trying to work on a project, and I have a tendency to twiddle pens or pencils and so forth. I also tend to "hyper-focus" on specific problems or items of interest. I put up with a lot of teasing in school, until I got much of the way through high-school, and started making a real conscious effort to "fit in" and to succeed in being more "social" with other people.
To this day, I naturally want to avoid eye-contact with people when I talk to them, and I have to pretty much force myself not to do that (reminding myself each time about it).
I suspect that what I've really done over the years is teach myself how to cope with and work-around my own problems. That's fine, but I might have gotten to this point a lot more quickly if someone helped me along a little bit when I was a kid. About the only "advice" I got was that I was "shy".
The problem with technical definitions is that it requires someone who is technically competent to apply them. The US has only recognized Aspergers at all only very recently. (It was identified in the 1940s, I believe, but not diagnosed outside of "Old Europe" as a certain politician kindly refers to that part of the world until the 1980s.)
The most practical method of diagnosis is to hang out with autistic people. If you find you think in ways that they can relate to (and vice versa) then you have a working diagnosis. In other words, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you must consider the possibility that it really is a duck.
Best place to find autistic people is over on Starlink. The Asperger channel is only for people who have been diagnosed, not just self-diagnosed, but there are plenty of other resources there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The point of this story is that modern medicine may develop a basis for understanding savantism and then maybe autism. The real goal with this guy is to get him to write a diary, so shrinks can pick his brain. This guy may be the greatest discovery made by psychology ever. And it seems to have been completely missed by everyone here on /.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
This is what I would call a load of crap.
I mean, I realize it feels good to be able to explain away social ineptitude with some magical neurological hand-waving (oh, I'm sorry I'm a dick, it's just that I have Aspergers -- most geeks have it to some degree), but when it comes straight down to it, it just ain't so.
I have worked with autistic kids before; my first girlfriend and my college roommate both specialized in autism and working with such people was/is their profession. It seems to me that some of the self-described autistic people on Slashdot are so high-functioning that describing their state as autism essentially takes the meaning from the word.
The truth is, people have different skills and talents. My brother is exceptionally good at video games, for example, while I lack the attention span and motor skills to effectively play them. I'm better with people than he is. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, because we are not all alike. Serial insensitivity to other people's emotional state and a predilection for consistancy are symptoms of autism, but possession of symptoms is not sufficient for diagnosis.
While I have met at least one person that is actually a bona-fide sufferer of Asperger's -- ie, he was diagnosed as such by someone other than himself or a well-meaning school counselor or "psychologist" who said something like, "Well, you might have a mild-form of Asperger's..." when trying to explain to a confused kid with no social skills and an unsual love of math why he doesn't fit in -- the truth is, the impression I have of most "Asperger's" sufferers is that they're mostly just normal geeks that would rather believe that there is something chemical that prevents them from engaging socially rather than just plain not being good at it.
I mean, when someone isn't good at Math, we don't start saying, "Well, maybe you have a mild form of mental retardation." After all, retards aren't usually good at math! Heck, maybe it's true! Why don't we say this? Because we understand that some people just aren't as good at math as others. This is true of all skills.
I hate to say this, but all this "I have a mild form of Asperger's" or "geek behaviour is a manifestation of Asperger's syndrome" is what I would call, plainly, a load of crap. Pop-psychology at its worst.
So why do we accept it? Why do people keep up this charade? Because we want to believe that there's some more exotic reason for our shortcomings than them being just that -- shortcomings.
Believe it or not, for 99% of us, social ability is something that is well within our reach. All we need to do is work hard at being better at it, practice, and want to get better. It annoys us that frat-boy John that we've always resented and that we privately think beneath us can so easily master a skill that seems beyond us; fearing failure, we find a thousand reasons we shouldn't even try to play his game. But were we to actual set our minds to it, we could overcome these barriers, because despite our fantasies of neurophysiological differences that neatly explain our lack of social skills, we are able to learn these things. We just never bother trying.
It would simply be too embarassing to fail at something that people we discount as morons do everyday with ease. It's painful.
Painful, but possible.
That's the difference, you see. People who are actually suffering from Asperger's are blind, in a way. They can honestly not perceive things like sarcasm, emotional stress, etc. There is a part of the world they cannot perceive. This is not the same as the geek who is frustrated by his dating difficulties. This is a real, bona-fide disability, which is relatively rare and quite difficult to overcome.
I don't have a lot of respect for all the people out there who write off their "inability to be socially adept" as a mild form of Aspergers. I've worked in IT most of my life; most of my friends have been geeks. And while 99% of them are hopeless socially, autistic they most definitely are not.
Just like people who suck at math aren't retarded.
One thing that has to be remembered is perspective. Most non-autistic people I know seem, no matter how bad they are at doing anything else, to be savants in such obscure skills as recognizing people entirely by their faces. They also often have splinter skills in areas such as multitasking, keeping track of large amounts of social information, relating to whole objects in their environment, and many more. At least some of these things seem to hold true even if they can't do simple things like finding their way around a new location without getting lost, even if they're otherwise considered intellectually disabled.
When I was diagnosed with autism, the doctor apparently speculated about whether or not I was a savant. I don't believe myself to be one, but I think he must have been noticing what appeared to him to be a strange combination of extreme abilities and extreme difficulties. Having to live with myself every day, I can't consider myself that exotic.
I write a lot. I sing with perfect pitch. And I don't get lost, having detailed maps in my head of pretty much anywhere I've been since I was three. I have a strong suspicion that if all of my other abilities were average, nobody would be making a big fuss over this kind of thing.
I also can't speak, not with communication in mind. I have to work to understand sensory input as more than a chaotic and undifferentiated mess of colors, shapes, tones, pitches, textures, scents, and tastes, that also tend to blend into each other. I have enough trouble coordinating perception, thought, and action that, despite a good deal of teaching, I can't do a lot of things that other people consider basic -- food, water, hygiene, and so forth. I need someone either doing those for me or walking me through every step, or else I either get everything out of order or don't do it at all. Someone is paid to do exactly that.
I have trouble deliberately moving around my house unless it's in a specific path, and have to use a number of outside cues to move where I want to move at any given time or else I just get stuck. While I can find any object based on my memorization of its location, if someone moves it a few inches I might as well be blind as far as my ability to recognize it. I can't cross a street safely. I can't pay attention to more than one thing at once, and that can go as basic as color or pattern or shape, not all three at once. No matter how many rules and ideas I learn when I'm not doing things, I won't be able to remember most of them while I'm trying to keep up with moving and perceiving so in practice act like I don't know them. I have a lot of difficulty with things other people consider everyday life. You get the general picture.
I've become aware of how weird this seems to people who aren't autistic. They seem to think that you can either do lots of things or not do any things. But it still seems weird to me that most of them can do such a useless thing as recognize faces despite the fact that they get lost so easily compared to me. The fact that I can do the things I do and can't do the things I can't do doesn't confuse me at all. The fact that people with much less intensely focused minds than mine can do such specific tasks as recognizing faces, does confuse me.
While savants have talents even more extreme than mine, I often wonder what the reason is for the specific category. To me, what looks to others like a very uneven mix of skills is totally normal and even given that I understand the way my mind works and grew up in it. I can do direction and layout without thinking. Other people can multiply large numbers without thinking (which I can't do). The fact that they can do large numbers is only marginally odder to me than the fact that most people can do small numbers.
I've speculated that the idea of the autistic savant or idiot savant came about when someone looking in from the outside decided that it was really weird that his assumptions didn't fit. Here was som
"the truth is, the impression I have of most "Asperger's" sufferers is that they're mostly just normal geeks that would rather believe that there is something chemical that prevents them from engaging socially rather than just plain not being good at it. "
You're trying to draw a dichotomy where nothing exists. It's all chemical (unless you're a dualist).
Whether you're a moron, a pedophile, an asperger, a socially inept geek, or a low functioning autistic, there's a neurological explanation somewhere, whether genetic, environmental or a combination of both.
You seem fixated by these black and white labels; this person has that disease, but that person is ok, they're just inept.
???
The truth is that there's a broad landscape of ability and disability. For purposes of mental health treatment, it helps to draw circles around certain peaks and call them disorders, but in reality it's all shades of gray on a huge multidimensional surface.
It's extremely likely that some subset of the genes that cause autism/aspergers are active in the socially inept. Why do you take such offense at this? Does it make you feel better to tell these people "no, you're just inept, you don't get to claim that it's because of the way your brain is wired."