4 ms·

It's not all lies. You can watch videos of Kim Peek who can memorise whole books and can answer questions from them but doesn't talk or act like normal people,

It's not all lies. You can watch videos of Kim Peek who can memorise whole books and can answer questions from them but doesn't talk or act like normal people, Daniel Tammet who visualizes numbers, another guy who can sculpt and in a video he made a great looking horse with his bare hands in few minutes while the interviewer was talking but he is also not normal. There was another guy, don't remember if he was a savant but in a video they flew him over a city and he drew all buildings with there windows etc on a large sheet of paper. Just saying that not all of these people are fake.

paulpauper 3y ago
Kim Peek is an outlier. Most of these 'savants' seem like disabled people who have a lot of free time to work on something obsessively, not that they possess special mental abilities.
gwern 3y ago
But we're not discussing ordinary savants like Peek. Such savants often hone their skills over decades, sometimes inventing their own algorithms or tricks and memorizing vast reams of data. Those are amazing, but not sudden. To analogize: Arnold Schwarzenegger was an amazing bodybuilder, but you can understand how he was possible; but it would be even more amazing if a couple people out there woke up one day and literally overnight they had turned into Arnold, and you would very much like to know how that was possible.
- potamic 3y ago
  I saw a demonstration of this in this very old documentary once. Not sure what the latest research says but it doesn't seem this kind of situation is entirely impossible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAfmyMZe5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAfmyMZe5g
yetanother12345 3y ago
> they flew him over a city and he drew all buildings with there windows etc on a large sheet of paper Steephen Wiltshire, Autistic Savant and Artist [0,1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire [1] https://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/gallery/originals https://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/gallery/originals

paulpauper 3y ago

Kim Peek is an outlier. Most of these 'savants' seem like disabled people who have a lot of free time to work on something obsessively, not that they possess special mental abilities.

gwern 3y ago

But we're not discussing ordinary savants like Peek. Such savants often hone their skills over decades, sometimes inventing their own algorithms or tricks and memorizing vast reams of data. Those are amazing, but not sudden. To analogize: Arnold Schwarzenegger was an amazing bodybuilder, but you can understand how he was possible; but it would be even more amazing if a couple people out there woke up one day and literally overnight they had turned into Arnold, and you would very much like to know how that was possible.

potamic 3y ago
I saw a demonstration of this in this very old documentary once. Not sure what the latest research says but it doesn't seem this kind of situation is entirely impossible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAfmyMZe5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAfmyMZe5g

yetanother12345 3y ago

> they flew him over a city and he drew all buildings with there windows etc on a large sheet of paper Steephen Wiltshire, Autistic Savant and Artist [0,1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire [1] https://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/gallery/originals https://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/gallery/originals