# Savants and cubing



## Saintlavin (Dec 25, 2009)

i remembered watching a documentary on Savants and their amazing ability to memorize and calculate at amazing propotions.

i was wondering, if we can combined a savant with cubing, with him/her learning all the method for solving 3x3x3 every single one algorithms and using the calculation ability to determine which one to use at a given time, would we reach a sub 4 time for the 3x3x3? it might be possible


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## 4Chan (Dec 25, 2009)

You aren't the first to think so.

That's very improbable.
However, 1LLL is a close alternative, and it IS possible.


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## LNZ (Dec 25, 2009)

Savants came into the news with the death of the person who's life was immortalised in the move Rainman. As for remembering algorithms and methods, these people would be awesome.

But solving a cube also depends on how fast the brain can do real time pattern matching and the agility of your hands. And the synching of your hands,eyes and brain. 

The Rainman savant was hopeless at ball sports. Not a good sign.

Here, savants may not have any advantage here. To test this ablity, you'd have the savant sit a Ravens progessive and advanced matrices test (like I did in the early 1990's with score 7/36 or 2/10, no advanced test result!) and do a test involving moving ball sports.

If a savant could pass a Raven's and a moving ball sport test well, I can easily see 4 seconds for a 3x3x3.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

Oh no, not that again...


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## LewisJ (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> That bull**** again?



This.

Let's be optimistic and say that this person could solve in 30 moves every time, say they know all kinds of advanced F2L, xcrossing, and 1LLL, or maybe some incredible blockbuilding and 1LLL or something like that. They would still need 7.5 TPS to pull off 4 second solves. Looking at some of Lucas Garron's reconstructions of very fast solves, we see that only the very best have 6.xx TPS counts, and, while I didn't check every single one, the highest TPS I saw was 6.85TPS on Yu Nakajima's 6.57 second solve, and for official times, 6.07TPS on Erik's 7.08 solve. 

Now let's say this savant is a really good turner and averages 6 TPS. They would still need 24 move solutions to get 4 second times - first place in 3x3 FMC is 22, 2nd is 26. This simply isn't going to happen.


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## qqwref (Dec 25, 2009)

LNZ said:


> The Rainman savant was hopeless at ball sports. Not a good sign.


Funny story: I used to be hopeless at ball sports (literally... if you tossed a ball at me I couldn't catch it). Then I took up juggling for a while. This is definitely a field where natural ability plays a large role, but it's not like practice won't help, and I don't expect a savant (who may very well have no friends to play ball sports *with*) to get a lot of practice in this.

Anyway, savant-like abilities are typically limited to either very good memory or very specific things, such as calculating large primes, knowing weekdays of any day ever, being able to count hundreds of objects at a glance, etc... And note that these abilities are not always found in people with otherwise below-normal intelligence. I guess it would be very useful for someone with an extraordinary memory to take up cubing, as they could do xcross + optimal multislot + ZB or whatever, but the problem is always TPS and fingertrickiness. Someone who can average 35-40 moves in speedsolving (and this IS possible) would still need a consistent 4+ TPS to get sub-10 seconds. I agree that the best times will be had by people who use an ordinary solution with extraordinary speed, rather than an extraordinary solution with ordinary speed.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

qqwref said:


> calculating large primes


Haven't heard that before, can you tell more?



qqwref said:


> knowing weekdays of any day ever


Not "knowing". Calculating. With easy methods. And non-"Savants" are better at it.



qqwref said:


> being able to count hundreds of objects at a glance


Anywhere I can find this besides a Hollywood movie?


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## deadalnix (Dec 25, 2009)

Stefan, look at Rüdiger Gamm or Alexi lemaire can do. That's pretty incredible, and this is much more than caculation day of week.

But anyway, 4s is just ********.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

deadalnix said:


> Stefan, look at Rüdiger Gamm or Alexi lemaire can do. That's pretty incredible, and this is much more than caculation day of week.


Yeah, I know them. And they're just using methods and practice to become better. Do you realize you're just like the people who say _"OMG he just solved a Rubik's Cube WOW that's unbelievable!11!~!OMFG"_?

Btw, what do they have to do with this thread? I don't think they're regarded as "savants".


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## LewisJ (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> Haven't heard that before, can you tell more?
> 
> Not "knowing". Calculating. With easy methods. And non-"Savants" are better at it.



First, Daniel Tammet claims to "sense" whether a number is prime or not...and even if he can't sense it, he could probably use his ridiculous visual calculation abilities to figure out whether it is or not.

Second, add on telling people what was in the newspaper on that day and it's a bit more impressive.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

LewisJ said:


> he could probably use his ridiculous visual calculation abilities to figure out whether it is or not.


Please don't make up myths, there are enough already.



LewisJ said:


> Second, add on telling people what was in the newspaper on that day and it's a bit more impressive.


A bit, yes. And only if it was really tested and checked.


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## Carson (Dec 25, 2009)

Savants typically suffer from Autism. One of the primary indicators of autism is extreme social awkwardness and withdrawal from social situations... and if you have ever been to a cubing competition, they tend to be pretty social.

Savants typically are unaware of "calculating" things. I recall watching a 20/20 interview with the guy that inspired Rainman. There was discussion of his ability to identify the day of the week of any date. His mind certainly was using some type of calculation, however he was unaware of this fact. To him, it was if he just KNEW the answer.

Another symptom of Autism is the inability to "filter out" sensory input. Where as most people can sit in a room with a radio playing soft music, traffic passing by on the street outside, the heat/air kicking on/off occasionally, the upstairs neighbors walking around occasionally, and many other "minor" things occuring, and still concentrate on what they are doing (like cubing)... someone with Autism is going to actively hear all of these things and will be unable to focus their attention away from them. This isn't just limited to hearing... every movement, sound, smell, etc etc etc is "unignorable" to someone with autism.

^^This is of course most prevalent in extreme cases, but typically those individuals identified as having savant tendencies fall into the category of extreme cases.


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## rubixfreak (Dec 25, 2009)

I watched a really interesting BBC movie about Savants. THey said that they believe there's something wrong in their left brain halve. Where normal people have a kind of spam filter in it, in Savant's brain it is somehow damaged and not working properly so like Carson said above they cannot focus on one thing. Moreover they are sentenced to remember every uninteresting and unneccacery facts of their life. for example things like what did you watched on TV on 12.4.1999 ?


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

Let me give you an example of how much you should trust the media about this. Here are four appearances of Ruediger Gamm in four different shows:

What is 62/109?
What is 63/109?
What is 237/109?
What is 982/109?

See the pattern? They all asked him to divide by 109. Why? Probably cause he asked them to ask for that. Cause this way he only ever had to memorize one cycle of 108 digits that he can use again and again and again to impress the fools. Just in case you really don't get it, let me try to visualize it:

62/109 = 0.*568807339449541284403669724770642201834862385321100917431192660550458715596330275229357798165137614678899082*(5688073394...)
63/109 = 0.*577981651376146788990825688073394495412844036697247706422018348623853211009174311926605504587155963302752293*(5779816513...)
237/109 = 2.*174311926605504587155963302752293577981651376146788990825688073394495412844036697247706422018348623853211009*(1743119266...)
982/109 = 9.*009174311926605504587155963302752293577981651376146788990825688073394495412844036697247706422018348623853211*(0091743119...)

He just learned a single cycle of 108 digits and then every time these shows asked him to divide a number by 109, he just determined the number before the dot and where to start in the cycle, and then recited the cycle. *This is no more impressive than a child singing Jingle Bells!* But of course he closes his eyes, gestures with hands and face and makes it look like he's crazily computing difficult stuff. When in reality he makes a simple calculation and then just recites. But the media (and audience!) loves it and doesn't care how it really works. They just want to show something that the average naive uneducated person will find amazing. They don't even bother to check whether he's correct! In case of the above 237/109, he actually did make a mistake! He started with "2.17432660550" which is missing "119" and they just don't care! They showed it anyway pretending he's correct because they know full well that the average idiot viewer won't check!

And look at the Wikipedia page about Kim Peek. There *is* a section titled "Scientific investigation" but what is it? A test of his capabilities? No, just scanning his head to look for biological anomalities. What the F? Since when do you study *how* something might work before verifying *that* it works?

Some general rules:
- Much of what is presented/perceived as "calculation" is really just recitation and simple tricks.
- There are very powerful techniques for memorization/recitation. And training goes a long way.
- As far as I'm aware, the top memorizers, mental calculators and speed readers are all normal healthy people using techniques and training. Not "savants" with unexplainable magic powers.
- Always compare these things to cubing, and realize you look at their stuff like non-cubers look at cubing.
- Don't f-ing believe the media about this! They'd rather tell you that someone has strange unexplainable capabilities than admit that it's just simple techniques everybody can learn.
- If you want to speculate about great memorizers and their cubing potential, check out the f-ing memory competitions and their records.

Finally, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRz-yIpW3Qw
That's Kim Peek reciting US states/capitols and when they joined the union. So what? Little children can do that! He's a grown man! Like I wrote before, if Kim Peek had decided to learn to solve a Rubik's cube and then solved it in 3 minutes, media and people would go all _"OOh look Rainman can solve a Rubik's cube UNBELIEVABLE!!!"_. And they'd probably claim he can't explain it but "senses" what moves to make.

*Wake up!*


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## Me (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> LewisJ said:
> 
> 
> > he could probably use his ridiculous visual calculation abilities to figure out whether it is or not.
> ...



Tammet's abilities are synesthetic, he associates colors and feelings with numbers. Sure there are those who claim to be savants, I agree with your example of Peek reciting US states/capitals order. However I still believe there are savants who posses some true ability.



StefanPochmann said:


> Since when do you study *how* something might work before verifying *that* it works?


Is there anything that would convince you that it works?

However in relation to the topic at hand, I agree with the reasons above that savants would not be good at cubing.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

Me said:


> Tammet's abilities are synesthetic


*And I don't care.* As long as normal people using normal techniques and normal training get better results, I don't understand why people are glorifying the "savants".



Me said:


> Is there anything that would convince you that it works?


Proper tests of properly described stuff. All we ever get are stupid sensational unverified vague anecdotes and shows.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

Btw, my _"verify that it works"_ was a bit short. I also mean that they should properly describe "it" first. Then verify it, then try to understand it. But in most cases even this first step is skipped. All we get is little uncomparable meaningless demonstrations. But it doesn't have to be like that!

Kim Peek did do the human calculator thing, right? That is not at all something special. Many people do it, it is included in mental calculation competitions, and there are record lists for it. We've been shown Kim Peek doing it, but I've never seen it done properly, like they do it in competitions. Why? Probably cause that would allow comparison and then people would realize that he sucked compared to the normal healthy people who are better at it. And don't give me that **** about him being autistic and not feeling comfortable being tested. He let them test his brain with an MRI and stuff like that. And he did it in shows on TV and real life. *The tests he didn't do are just the tests that would expose him as being nothing special.*


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## Kyle Barry (Dec 25, 2009)

I agree with Stefan in that these abilities, for the most part, can be matched by non-"Savants." With very little practice, I can calculate the day of the week, just like Kim Peek, in 6-7 seconds, using a rather simple algorithm. People who are not savants can do this in about 1 second. Whether Kim Peek memorized the calendar, or has a method, he absolutely calculates it or draws it from memory, he doesn't intrinsically know the answer, of course. Specifically, I'm not positive of this, but I believe there are irregularities in the calendar that would throw him off if he didn't know the changes. I just looked at year 800, and with my algorithm, I would get those dates wrong, so it doesn't make sense, especially with a human invention, to just "know" what day it is.


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## qqwref (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> qqwref said:
> 
> 
> > calculating large primes
> ...


I read in a reputable book somewhere about two savant twins who would tell each other large (six-digit or so) numbers back and forth, and the neuroscientist who was observing them later figured out that those numbers were all prime and gave them some larger numbers, which they agreed were prime (although it took a bit longer.



StefanPochmann said:


> qqwref said:
> 
> 
> > knowing weekdays of any day ever
> ...


No, not with those methods. I think the idea was something along the lines of knowing the day of every date in sequence and "flipping through" those days like a book. The reason I say it was like this was because there are savants who know the weekday of only the dates they have personally witnessed, suggesting that they are not calculating but rather remembering what weekday it was. If someone can essentially visualize time as a long calendar it is not hard to see how this would be possible. Anyway, the point is that savants who have this ability do it by knowing (or, for some, remembering) the weekday, whereas normal people would find out a weekday using a calculation method. A savant with this ability would unconsciously know what weekday a certain date was in exactly the same sense as someone with perfect pitch would be able to immediately sing a B-flat two octaves above middle C, without consciously "calculating" what note that would be.



StefanPochmann said:


> qqwref said:
> 
> 
> > being able to count hundreds of objects at a glance
> ...


I saw an article about someone who unconsciously counted things and would end up just "knowing" that there were, say, 83 books in a bookshelf. This person wasn't a savant but it seems likely that there would be savants with this ability. It may also be related to memory - if someone could take a 'snapshot' of a bookshelf or whatever, they could count objects from their (stable) snapshot easily without actually looking at the things again.


PS, Stefan... don't confuse savants who have some kind of intuitive feel for doing a computation with people who have consciously trained and practiced to do it. The latter show that the human brain has the ability to do these things, but just because they have deliberately put in effort does not mean the former people also did. I would suggest that savants have not deliberately tried to hoax people by pretending an easy skill, but rather that the feats they find themselves naturally being able to do are also things that can be learned through practice. Just because it is possible to pretend to be a savant does not mean all savants are pretending.

PPS: Remember that the impressive thing is that the abilities are ingrained in someone who does not seem to normally have high mental ability. I don't care if other people can do it better with years of practice; it's still impressive to me that someone can do it without formal training. 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. It doesn't matter to me that people who know hundreds of algorithms and dozens of methods and who have practiced for years can consistently do linear FMC better than that.

Besides, many of the competition settings are designed for normal people and not savants (clearly, because normal people are competing in them). For instance the memorizing numbers competition. There may be people who can look at a field of 80 numbers for a few seconds and then write them all out later, but if the competition setting is not amenable to that then they cannot get the record. Take Solomon Shereshevsky: he could memorize huge matrices of numbers in relatively little time, and then remember them *years* later. This is an extraordinary feat but it is clearly not applicable to memory competitions. He could also memorize poems in a language he did not know, but of course they do not do this in memory competitions either because it is impossible to come up with a language everyone is guaranteed to not know, so they use a known language (such as English), but then everyone involved has the advantage of knowing the language. So I think some savants' skills are not set up to work in a competition setting, simply because competition settings are designed to _give the advantage to people who have acquired the skill through practice and study_.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

qqwref said:


> I read in a reputable book somewhere about two savant twins who would tell each other large (six-digit or so) numbers back and forth, and the neuroscientist who was observing them later figured out that those numbers were all prime and gave them some larger numbers, which they agreed were prime (although it took a bit longer.


I assume it's this? (hopefully that link works, let me know if not)
http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=c4p16721h27264t1&size=largest
Yeah, seems really reputable.



qqwref said:


> A savant with this ability would unconsciously know what weekday a certain date was


That's what they claim, yes. And like I said before, as long as they're not outperforming the normal people, I don't care.



qqwref said:


> an article about someone who unconsciously counted things and would end up just "knowing" that there were, say, 83 books in a bookshelf.


Great, more anecdotes...



qqwref said:


> PS, Stefan... don't confuse savants who have some kind of intuitive feel for doing a computation with people who have consciously trained and practiced to do it.


How did you get the impression I might be confusing that?



qqwref said:


> The latter show that the human brain has the ability to do these things, but just because they have deliberately put in effort does not mean the former people also did.


It also doesn't mean that they didn't.


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## shelley (Dec 25, 2009)

Kyle Barry said:


> Specifically, I'm not positive of this, but I believe there are irregularities in the calendar that would throw him off if he didn't know the changes. I just looked at year 800, and with my algorithm, I would get those dates wrong, so it doesn't make sense, especially with a human invention, to just "know" what day it is.



I learned how to calculate day of the week, and in the process I learned way too much about calendars. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decided to switch from the Julian calendar to the calendar we use today (the Gregorian calendar adds leap days to century years only if they are divisible by 400. Julian calendar just had leap years every 4 years and was about 10 days off from the solar cycle at that time).

Italy and other Catholic countries (mostly in southern Europe) adopted the Gregorian calendar around that time. The Protestant countries were slower to catch on. In the 1700s Sweden tried dropping all of their leap days for 40 years instead of dropping 10 days all at once (apparently ignoring the fact that this would put them out of sync with both the Julian and Gregorian calendars for 40 years). The system was poorly administered (partly due to the Great Northern War breaking out at the time) and the leap days that should have been dropped in 1704 and 1708 weren't. King Charles of Sweden decided to revert to the Julian calendar by adding an extra leap day to February in 1712, resulting in a February 30, 1712 (but only in Sweden).

Most of the Protestant European countries switched over in the mid 1700s. England made the switch in September of 1752, which is why when you type

```
cal 9 1752
```
 in the terminal of a UNIX system you see a rather funny looking calendar.

tl;dr: When you looked at the year 800 it was on the Julian calendar, not the calendar we use now, which is why your algorithm doesn't work. Also, there was a February 30 in Sweden. Funny story.


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## bwatkins (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann it seems you just enjoy arguing. It makes me sick when i see you tear apart what people have to say like this. It's wonderful you have an opinion, but you speak as if your the final word, final authority, on the subject...in fact on many, you do it a lot and it's just appalling. You have a horribly negative vibe to yourself on the forums, it definitely takes away the joy of reading the forums...go ahead and tear my post apart, more fresh meat, have the final word, we all know you love to.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

qqwref said:


> I don't care if other people can do it better with years of practice


What the ... ? It's the unemployed autistics fed by their parents who have all the time in the world to practice!



qqwref said:


> 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.



qqwref said:


> There may be people who can look at a field of 80 numbers for a few seconds and then write them all out later


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

Plus that example is perfectly suitable for proper testing. I don't insist that "savants" do exactly stuff that others do. Others can adapt to what the "savants" showcase. And btw, Daniel Tammet, together with Kim Peek and Stephen Wiltshire probably the greatest media darling among the "savants", *did* participate in memory competitions and *did* do a Pi recitation record attempt like normal people. He just wasn't nearly as good as them.


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## shelley (Dec 25, 2009)

bwatkins said:


> StefanPochmann it seems you just enjoy arguing. It makes me sick when i see you tear apart what people have to say like this. It's wonderful you have an opinion, but you speak as if your the final word, final authority, on the subject...in fact on many, you do it a lot and it's just appalling. You have a horribly negative vibe to yourself on the forums, it definitely takes away the joy of reading the forums...go ahead and tear my post apart, more fresh meat, have the final word, we all know you love to.



There's a difference between being negative and being skeptical. There's something to be said about not taking everything you hear at face value.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

bwatkins said:


> It makes me sick when i see you tear apart what people have to say like this.


Good. Apparently you're among the people who most need a wake-up call.



bwatkins said:


> It's wonderful you have an *opinion*


Look again and you'll see that *I'm* the one presenting actual evidence and thinking rather than poor hearsay. Check the videos I showed you. Check what they say. Check that he only repeated the same digit cycle again and again. That's not opinions. That's facts you can verify yourself.

About me enjoying this: I'd actually much rather see people think for themselves already. What I don't like are naive stupidity and spreading myths and glorifying the wrong people, that's what motivates me to try to make people think.


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## bwatkins (Dec 25, 2009)

shelley said:


> bwatkins said:
> 
> 
> > StefanPochmann it seems you just enjoy arguing. It makes me sick when i see you tear apart what people have to say like this. It's wonderful you have an opinion, but you speak as if your the final word, final authority, on the subject...in fact on many, you do it a lot and it's just appalling. You have a horribly negative vibe to yourself on the forums, it definitely takes away the joy of reading the forums...go ahead and tear my post apart, more fresh meat, have the final word, we all know you love to.
> ...



i would 100% agree but i dont read the forums very frequently but most the posts of S.P. seem to be constant questioning and just have a bad vibe. It could be that i dont completly understand who S.P. is but it just seems negative and more than anything the sarcasm and verbiage used gives the posts a negative tone.


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## bwatkins (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> bwatkins said:
> 
> 
> > It makes me sick when i see you tear apart what people have to say like this.
> ...



your right, YOU, are the one presenting evidence. Is that because YOU have to be correct, YOU have to be the one who's more educated on the subject? I'm sure if ANYONE took the time and effort to go research the subject, THEY TOO could find evidence that that proves YOU wrong. 

That's the beauty of these conversations, anyone can have the final word with a proper set of research. With the correct "evidence" or resources any subjects can lean to either side. 

And no i dont need a wake up call i just don't find the need to point out all the "flaws" in what other people say...


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

bwatkins said:


> your right, YOU, are the one presenting evidence. Is that because YOU have to be correct, YOU have to be the one who's more educated on the subject?


I don't know why others don't do it (though I'm *not* the only one), you have to ask *them*. Or yourself, as you aren't helping, either.

And I would *love* to be proven wrong about this subject. Please do!


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## bwatkins (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> bwatkins said:
> 
> 
> > your right, YOU, are the one presenting evidence. Is that because YOU have to be correct, YOU have to be the one who's more educated on the subject?
> ...



Your right I'm not helping and i dont want to further contaminate the thread with off topic discussion, i was just frustruated as i sat down for a break form some c++ ballistics programming to read some interesting material and found a large amount of bickering (probably not the correct word choice).

I don't have any further knowledge of THIS particular subject, so unfortuanetly im not able to prove you wrong, in fact you could be CORRECT however a lighter less sarcastic attitude would be appreciated im sure. 

I believe that the reason others dont take the time to find evidence or resources as you do is that they are reading the threads to to read, to have exposure to new ideas, they aren't necessarily concerned with what it 100% correct, just the exposure to thoughts they wouldn't have on their own...thats why i ended up here.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

bwatkins said:


> large amount of bickering (probably not the correct word choice).


Right, "information" or "education" would be more appropriate.


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## Olivér Perge (Dec 25, 2009)

bwatkins said:


> however a lighter less sarcastic attitude would be appreciated im sure.



Stefan doesn't want to hurt anyone, he is just stating facts about the subject in his own style.

If discussions like that don't improve the world in a good way, what does?


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## bwatkins (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> bwatkins said:
> 
> 
> > large amount of bickering (probably not the correct word choice).
> ...



Yes, it is information and education. However, the tone and sarcasm of the material gives it the "bickering" feel. Perhaps it starts with posts like this...



StefanPochmann said:


> That bull**** again?



And continue on from there.

As it is obvious the both of us will not be on the same page, we must agree to disagree. Have a good Christmas and Goodbye.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

bwatkins said:


> Perhaps it starts with posts like this...
> 
> 
> StefanPochmann said:
> ...


Alright, apologies for that one. Edited, made it friendlier. This kind of stuff just pisses me off so much...


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## LewisJ (Dec 25, 2009)

While you're right about the /109 guy being a rather easy to setup test, having watched the documentary on Daniel Tammet and done a fair amount of my own reading, there were obviously tests done that weren't setup or easy to do as you claimed. You're trying to push everything aside and call it all a huge facade when there is undeniably impressive evidence of his abilities. He doesn't have the world record as you say (a measly 6th place) but he memorized over 22,000 digits in two weeks. The world record with 67,890 said he took a year to learn the digits and the former world record holder with 42195 said he took ten years to learn them. And surely it was staged that in a week he learned Icelandic well enough to converse on TV!


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## ender9994 (Dec 25, 2009)

Just out of curiosity, whats every ones take on this? (its an excerpt from a documentary about Daniel {a mental calculator who *supposedly* has the images represented by colors/images without any calculation})

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m6s-ulE6LY&feature=related


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## Dene (Dec 25, 2009)

I have long since learnt that Mr. Pochmann is not a fan of anecdotal evidence. And as we both know (me and Mr. Pochmann), very little scientific studies have been done on savants. Therefore it is up to the individual to hold a position on the subject matter. Personally, I myself hold a position that is probably slightly more skeptical than qqwref's, but otherwise very similar. The way I see it, the fact that these people are clearly autistic, with mental retardation in some areas but some sort of intellectual extremism in other areas, it would be a bit silly to deny that something abnormal is going on here.


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## qqwref (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> I assume it's this? (hopefully that link works, let me know if not)
> http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=c4p16721h27264t1&size=largest
> Yeah, seems really reputable.


You're challenging a report on *mathematical* grounds? The paper there is completely ridiculous because all it proves is that the book did not contain *all* 10-digit primes, which is pretty obvious anyway. I'm pretty sure books that contain some 10-digit primes exist. Besides, even if Sacks made a mistake and the primes considered only went up to 6 digits, it's still impressive. I don't see how you don't think proving that a 6-digit number is prime (in your head, reasonably quickly) is trivial/unimpressive.



StefanPochmann said:


> Great, more anecdotes...


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. It's pretty obvious that I don't have the resources to physically show you scientific proof that a specific skill is (a) possible and (b) more impressive than anything a normal person could do with practice. 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"... where is the intelligent Stefan that used to exist?


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

LewisJ said:


> While you're right about the /109 guy being a rather easy to setup test, having watched the documentary on Daniel Tammet and done a fair amount of my own reading, there were obviously tests done that weren't setup or easy to do as you claimed.


I think you missed the point. The point was to give an easy to understand and verify example of the exaggerations, carelessness and lies in this area.



LewisJ said:


> he memorized over 22,000 digits in two weeks.


Maybe that's true, but it just means that he was more focused. I did find that claim here:
http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/news/2003-04/mar/15.shtml

This also says he can memorize 1000 digits in 40 minutes. Compare that to these results from competitions:
http://web.aanet.com.au/memorysports/discipline.php?id=num30
Best is 1264 digits in 30 minutes, that sounds considerably better than Daniel. And the methods are rather scalable, so I believe if those top people bothered, they could do just as well as him concerning Pi. That's speculative, I admit, but learning 22000 digits in two weeks really seems rather like a question of determination. The guy who took ten years certainly didn't spend the full ten years memorizing it, that was a flawed argument.



LewisJ said:


> And surely it was staged that in a week he learned Icelandic well enough to converse on TV!


I don't speak Icelandic and thus can't judge that performance. Who did? Can you? Also note that he did speak several languages already and that he devised two new languages himself. How similar are they to Icelandic? Do you know? And do you know how much he knew about Icelandic before? So... someone with quite a lot of experience with languages and fully determined and equipped to learn another one, then tested by a well-meaning TV show... yeah it sounds cool but I'm not really surprised.


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## qqwref (Dec 25, 2009)

StefanPochmann said:


> qqwref said:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> ...


It's an analogy, you retard. :fp


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

qqwref said:


> 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.


The point is not that *you* or the others here can't provide proper evidence or at least documentation. I don't blame you at all. The point is that the people who claim to have extraordinary abilities or the people who study them could easily provide proper documentation but don't. Which in turn is why it's then hard for *you* to find and show any here. They don't even care to provide enough information to meaningfully judge the abilities. Example from Kim Peek's wikipedia page:

_"could read two pages at a time with a rate of about 8-10 seconds per page. It is believed he could recall the content of at least 12,000 books from memory"_

What does "read" or "recall" mean here? Like that, these claims are worthless. People *do* make these claims and they're supposed to impress, but then why don't they provide enough information to actually assess the skill? And *why* was he _"believed to recall blablabla"_? Why oh why don't they tell us?

And if someone comes here and says he averages 7 seconds for the 3x3x3, do you go like "Awesome!" (without being sarcastic) or do you ask them to do it in a WCA competition? Hmm?


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## Kyle Barry (Dec 25, 2009)

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.


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## Stefan (Dec 25, 2009)

qqwref said:


> StefanPochmann said:
> 
> 
> > qqwref said:
> ...


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...


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## MW1990 (Dec 26, 2009)

... 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.


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## Bryan (Dec 27, 2009)

qqwref said:


> 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


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