14 ms·

A few years before he died, I heard Kim Peek speak at an event. He was a savant who retained 98% of everything he read. He would memorize phone books simply by

A few years before he died, I heard Kim Peek speak at an event. He was a savant who retained 98% of everything he read. He would memorize phone books simply by reading them once. When he read, his left eye would read the left page while his right eye would read the right page at the same time. He could tell anyone the sports scores listed in the newspaper on the day they were born. He was also severely socially impaired and couldn't carry on a conversation. His father described his condition as being due to having his left and right hemisphere fused together where as most people's are separate with communication channels between them.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
My problem with that sort of demonstration of amazing memory powers is that I have no way to check the sports scores on the day I was born as quickly as the person who says they're retrieving them from memory does so. Even if I could just google them (there might be some online sports results archive or something- it would still not mean much unless I could find an identical copy of the exact listing the mnemonist memorised- like, a archived copy of the same newspaper they read on my birthday. So, I don't know- is this really a thing that happens even under at least semi-rigorous testing? Or is it more like a parlour trick that's only good for entertainment value?
- andrepd 10y ago
  What do you mean? You can't check the sports result he recalls on the Internet? What do you mean it has to be the same newspaper he read? I'm confused.
- Omnius 10y ago
  The outcomes of historical, national, sporting events are not subjective. It would be easy to check and verify even if you couldn't do it that second you could still after the fact check and call out anyone pretending. With or without the exact identical text the "memorizer" used.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
    OK, so how can you ever verify with any degree of certainty where and when someone acquired a memory? If I can just look up those details somewhere else, at my convenience, then how can you ever be sure I didn't?
    - thereisnospork 10y ago
      By asking for details from a set of arbitrary, random dates, such as people's birthdays. A set of dates the questionee could have no way of knowing. In order for him to know the answer to trivia on multiple arbitrary dates off the cuff would require him to, you know, have memorized the trivia for all the dates -- which kind of proves the point.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
        Unfortunately, just having someone tell you something doesn't prove anything, unless you have a way to check that the fact is true- and for most of Kim Peek's life this was not the case. For instance- his article on wikipedia mentions that he "enjoyed approaching strangers and showing them his talent for calendar calculations by telling them on which day of the week they were born and what news items were on the front page of major newspapers". I assume he did that throughout his adult life, so when he was in his 30s an 40's, in the 1980's and 1990's, how would the person he approached this way check the news that Peek told them were on the front page of X newspaper? They couldn't very well google it on their iPhone back then. Besides, this is not very clear in his wikipedia entry, but it seems to me like he made a living out of his skills, so you know, it was at least partly entertainment (without trivialising, or in any way shape or form ignoring, the fact that the guy had obvious disabilities). So I'm saying, when a guy tells you he can recall for you a bunch of facts you dont' really remember yourself and you can't very easily verify, and by the way you're welcome to a donation, you can take what he says with a big pinch of salt.
        matt-snider 10y ago
        You don't seem to get it. These sorts of things are all examples of verifiable facts. Calendar calculations are trivial to verify with a computer, and news archives existed long before iPhones and ubiquitous internet access. You don't think given his fame, that his talents were rigorously tested and verified?
- erroneousfunk 10y ago
  Sports scores aren't different between papers, and the order, or the specific way it was printed in the paper, doesn't matter. There are many archives where you can easily look this information up. I was born August 9th, 1988. That's baseball season. On that day, it's a non-controversial fact that there was a double header between the Red Sox and the Brewers. The Sox lost the first game 2-3 and won the second, 5-1. Let's assume you look up the scores on your birthdate and just ask the guy "Okay, on this date, there was a one double header -- which teams, who was home, who was away, and what were the scores?" He should be able to tell you. Doesn't matter what paper he read it in.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
    The point is that not all newspapers are going to be publishing the exact same amount of information on any event, including sports scores. So, for example, if a person is saying they remember that the Red Sox lost 2-3 to the Brewers, and that they read that in The New York Times, you can check the NYT to see if they published that result on that day. I mean, if they say they remember reading that in the NYT, but it turns out that's not where they read it, then that calls the whole "super memory" thing into question, doesn't it?
    - tempestn 10y ago
      What difference does it make? If a person can recall from memory the scores for any major sporting event on any arbitrary day, who cares which source they originally memorized them from? Regardless it is easily verifiable, even pre-internet, and regardless it qualifies as super memory.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
        It matters because if the source is not what they say it was, then either they didn't memorise the fact from the source they say they did, in which case maybe they just looked the fact up very recently instead of on the day they say they did, or they don't remember where they read the fact in the first place which means they don't have such a good memory as you think they do. For example - if you tell me you were born on October 24, 1812, and I tell you that on that day the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took plase near Moscow, and that I read it in the papers on that day- how do you know that I really read it in the papers on that day? You don't. You only know that I know the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took place on that day and year. That's my claim: "I read in the papers, on 24 October, 1812, that the Battle of Maloyaroslavets was taking place near Moscow". Here's my evidence "I know that on 24 October, 1812, the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took place near Moscow". One does not follow from the other, so you really have no way to tell whether I really read the papers in 1812, or whether I'm just bamboozling you about my amazing memory powers. You're saying it doesn't matter, and I have amazing memory powers anyway, because I remember the Battle of Maloyaroslavets. Except, how do you know when the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took place? That's the other half of the claim- and it's easy to fake: I can fail to recall a fact a million times and get it right once, and people will still be amazed by my memory powers and tell each other I got great memory because I remembered it the once.
- c3534l 10y ago
  Kim Peek was an extremely well documented individual. That he retained seemingly inhuman amounts of information is not under dispute, even though such charlatans do exist.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
    The problem is that I'm well aware that charlatans do exist [1] but I've no idea why you say that his skils are not under dispute. Does this mean you know of some sort of test, some demonstration in controlled conditions etc? I'd like to see it, too, please. Edit: How was he well-documented? Where is that documentation? ___________________ [1] See (or rather, avoid seeing) here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3305206/Five-year-old-savant-LA-displays-signs-telepathic-learning-seven-languages-studied-scientists-mother-filmed-reciting-numbers-written-secret.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3305206/Five-year-ol... Five-year-old savant from LA who displays signs of being telepathic - and is already learning seven languages - is being studied by scientists after his mother filmed him 'reciting numbers written in secret' + Ramses Sanguino, aged five, was filmed seemingly displaying telepathy + He correctly recounted numbers that were written down 'out of eyesight' + Videos were posted online and attracted the attention of a neuroscientist + Ramses is now part of a cutting-edge telepathy study by Dr Diane Powell + His mother insists the footage of her autistic son's 'talents' is not trickery Not just a savant, but a telepath to boot. And there's a neuroscientist involved. Look, it's not my fault that a lot of that stuff about savants is a bunch of hooey. If that guy, the original Rain Man, was legit, and we know for a fact he was legit, I want to know why it is that we know it.
    - c3534l 10y ago
      Because you can put him in a room alone and ask him questions. Many, many people have interviewed and investigated him. He was also severely disabled mentally, he's not a normal guy who is really smart. He was a mentally retarded person who could not care for himself. There was a documentary in which he spoke to neurologist VS Ramachandran and they showed how he was unable to grasp the concept of a metaphor, taking idioms of speech literally. I don't think he was capable of magic tricks. This is also well beyond small areas of knowledge. The guy was a walking wikipedia. His FMRI also showed an extreme malformation of the brain. He was completely missing the corpus callosum and several other very important structures. https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/blogs/110175/2012/12/113137-110958.gif https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/blogs/11... It's pretty damned hard to fake an FMRI like that. Essentially Kim Peek was not filtering any information that got into his head. It was all equally important and it's questionable how much he really understood the things he memorized (which he did hours and hours and hours of each day).
- waltwalther 10y ago
  Reddit troll thread detected.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

My problem with that sort of demonstration of amazing memory powers is that I have no way to check the sports scores on the day I was born as quickly as the person who says they're retrieving them from memory does so. Even if I could just google them (there might be some online sports results archive or something- it would still not mean much unless I could find an identical copy of the exact listing the mnemonist memorised- like, a archived copy of the same newspaper they read on my birthday. So, I don't know- is this really a thing that happens even under at least semi-rigorous testing? Or is it more like a parlour trick that's only good for entertainment value?

andrepd 10y ago
What do you mean? You can't check the sports result he recalls on the Internet? What do you mean it has to be the same newspaper he read? I'm confused.
Omnius 10y ago
The outcomes of historical, national, sporting events are not subjective. It would be easy to check and verify even if you couldn't do it that second you could still after the fact check and call out anyone pretending. With or without the exact identical text the "memorizer" used.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  OK, so how can you ever verify with any degree of certainty where and when someone acquired a memory? If I can just look up those details somewhere else, at my convenience, then how can you ever be sure I didn't?
  - thereisnospork 10y ago
    By asking for details from a set of arbitrary, random dates, such as people's birthdays. A set of dates the questionee could have no way of knowing. In order for him to know the answer to trivia on multiple arbitrary dates off the cuff would require him to, you know, have memorized the trivia for all the dates -- which kind of proves the point.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
      Unfortunately, just having someone tell you something doesn't prove anything, unless you have a way to check that the fact is true- and for most of Kim Peek's life this was not the case. For instance- his article on wikipedia mentions that he "enjoyed approaching strangers and showing them his talent for calendar calculations by telling them on which day of the week they were born and what news items were on the front page of major newspapers". I assume he did that throughout his adult life, so when he was in his 30s an 40's, in the 1980's and 1990's, how would the person he approached this way check the news that Peek told them were on the front page of X newspaper? They couldn't very well google it on their iPhone back then. Besides, this is not very clear in his wikipedia entry, but it seems to me like he made a living out of his skills, so you know, it was at least partly entertainment (without trivialising, or in any way shape or form ignoring, the fact that the guy had obvious disabilities). So I'm saying, when a guy tells you he can recall for you a bunch of facts you dont' really remember yourself and you can't very easily verify, and by the way you're welcome to a donation, you can take what he says with a big pinch of salt.
      - matt-snider 10y ago
        You don't seem to get it. These sorts of things are all examples of verifiable facts. Calendar calculations are trivial to verify with a computer, and news archives existed long before iPhones and ubiquitous internet access. You don't think given his fame, that his talents were rigorously tested and verified?
erroneousfunk 10y ago
Sports scores aren't different between papers, and the order, or the specific way it was printed in the paper, doesn't matter. There are many archives where you can easily look this information up. I was born August 9th, 1988. That's baseball season. On that day, it's a non-controversial fact that there was a double header between the Red Sox and the Brewers. The Sox lost the first game 2-3 and won the second, 5-1. Let's assume you look up the scores on your birthdate and just ask the guy "Okay, on this date, there was a one double header -- which teams, who was home, who was away, and what were the scores?" He should be able to tell you. Doesn't matter what paper he read it in.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  The point is that not all newspapers are going to be publishing the exact same amount of information on any event, including sports scores. So, for example, if a person is saying they remember that the Red Sox lost 2-3 to the Brewers, and that they read that in The New York Times, you can check the NYT to see if they published that result on that day. I mean, if they say they remember reading that in the NYT, but it turns out that's not where they read it, then that calls the whole "super memory" thing into question, doesn't it?
  - tempestn 10y ago
    What difference does it make? If a person can recall from memory the scores for any major sporting event on any arbitrary day, who cares which source they originally memorized them from? Regardless it is easily verifiable, even pre-internet, and regardless it qualifies as super memory.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
      It matters because if the source is not what they say it was, then either they didn't memorise the fact from the source they say they did, in which case maybe they just looked the fact up very recently instead of on the day they say they did, or they don't remember where they read the fact in the first place which means they don't have such a good memory as you think they do. For example - if you tell me you were born on October 24, 1812, and I tell you that on that day the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took plase near Moscow, and that I read it in the papers on that day- how do you know that I really read it in the papers on that day? You don't. You only know that I know the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took place on that day and year. That's my claim: "I read in the papers, on 24 October, 1812, that the Battle of Maloyaroslavets was taking place near Moscow". Here's my evidence "I know that on 24 October, 1812, the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took place near Moscow". One does not follow from the other, so you really have no way to tell whether I really read the papers in 1812, or whether I'm just bamboozling you about my amazing memory powers. You're saying it doesn't matter, and I have amazing memory powers anyway, because I remember the Battle of Maloyaroslavets. Except, how do you know when the Battle of Maloyaroslavets took place? That's the other half of the claim- and it's easy to fake: I can fail to recall a fact a million times and get it right once, and people will still be amazed by my memory powers and tell each other I got great memory because I remembered it the once.
c3534l 10y ago
Kim Peek was an extremely well documented individual. That he retained seemingly inhuman amounts of information is not under dispute, even though such charlatans do exist.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  The problem is that I'm well aware that charlatans do exist [1] but I've no idea why you say that his skils are not under dispute. Does this mean you know of some sort of test, some demonstration in controlled conditions etc? I'd like to see it, too, please. Edit: How was he well-documented? Where is that documentation? ___________________ [1] See (or rather, avoid seeing) here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3305206/Five-year-old-savant-LA-displays-signs-telepathic-learning-seven-languages-studied-scientists-mother-filmed-reciting-numbers-written-secret.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3305206/Five-year-ol... Five-year-old savant from LA who displays signs of being telepathic - and is already learning seven languages - is being studied by scientists after his mother filmed him 'reciting numbers written in secret' + Ramses Sanguino, aged five, was filmed seemingly displaying telepathy + He correctly recounted numbers that were written down 'out of eyesight' + Videos were posted online and attracted the attention of a neuroscientist + Ramses is now part of a cutting-edge telepathy study by Dr Diane Powell + His mother insists the footage of her autistic son's 'talents' is not trickery Not just a savant, but a telepath to boot. And there's a neuroscientist involved. Look, it's not my fault that a lot of that stuff about savants is a bunch of hooey. If that guy, the original Rain Man, was legit, and we know for a fact he was legit, I want to know why it is that we know it.
  - c3534l 10y ago
    Because you can put him in a room alone and ask him questions. Many, many people have interviewed and investigated him. He was also severely disabled mentally, he's not a normal guy who is really smart. He was a mentally retarded person who could not care for himself. There was a documentary in which he spoke to neurologist VS Ramachandran and they showed how he was unable to grasp the concept of a metaphor, taking idioms of speech literally. I don't think he was capable of magic tricks. This is also well beyond small areas of knowledge. The guy was a walking wikipedia. His FMRI also showed an extreme malformation of the brain. He was completely missing the corpus callosum and several other very important structures. https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/blogs/110175/2012/12/113137-110958.gif https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/blogs/11... It's pretty damned hard to fake an FMRI like that. Essentially Kim Peek was not filtering any information that got into his head. It was all equally important and it's questionable how much he really understood the things he memorized (which he did hours and hours and hours of each day).
waltwalther 10y ago
Reddit troll thread detected.