A Savant Explains His Abilities 930
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."
Savantism (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:4, Interesting)
My little sister is autistic, and I think at least a third of her brain is wired for solving jigsaw puzzles. Try working that into a resume.
Pfh, languages (Score:3, Interesting)
...other people have been able to describe this (Score:5, Interesting)
The program seemed to conclude that we all, to an extent, are synesthetic. Quite a large number of people assosciate colours with days of the week, and we all use words like a "soft/sharp sound", a "bite" to a tase, and so on. Although these words are ones of touch, we use them in other contexts. Cross-referencing the senses in a similar war to more advanced synesthesia.
Crypto (Score:5, Interesting)
Does not Compute! (Score:5, Interesting)
"When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."
I don't understand. There is nothing intrinsic in the number 2 and the number 5 that will tell you what they will equal when they are multiplied.
The way we arrive at the solution is extrinsic, namely in the form of the operator (multiplication in this instance).
But if it's extrinsic, I don't understand what the author of the article means by "instinct" and "shapes" and that sort of thing. As far as I can understand, the only explanation would be the ability to compute those operations at much higher speed, then any "non-savant."
If that's the case, then, theoretically, would there not be a limit associated with the physical properties of the nervous system that would cap out at a certain number of such operations per unit time? So theoretically might we not be able to test such a thing by running him through a long list of operations? That'll let us know if he's really just making those calculations really, really fast, or if he really is viewing the mathematics in such a fundamentally different way (something I find rather unsettling).
Then again, how would we design such a test? I fear that the number of operations we can demand his brain to perform per unit time will be limited by his powers of cognition (i.e. by the time he reads/hears all the stuff he needs to hear, we'll already be beyond that critical operating time interval).
Eh, I think I come off as somewhat difficult to understand. Oh well, I wanted to make sure my question appeared in the main thread of discussion (rather than being posted after most people have moved on).
The brain of a savant (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it possible that knowing how to drive a car, wire a plug, tell right from left, and other banal things that we do require a ton of processing power? Since he cannot do these things, all that processing power goes to processing numbers and memorising words.
It we would be cool if on a math test we cold forget our ability to drive cars and concentrate on processing numbers.
Re:Pfh, languages (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe I've watched too much sci-fi, but I would reckon the goverment could find some use for her.
Re:Does not Compute! (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct. I think he has shapes for each of the numbers he's multiplying and he has learnt the shape that they turn into when you multiply them. Because the visual powers of the human mind are quite powerful he's able to do that fast.
It's kinda like using your computer's graphics card to do matrix multiplication. If you feed the info in the right format you can get the answer out faster than using the main processor, because the graphics processor actually has more computing power; but it's not as general purpose.
Funes, The Memorious (Score:4, Interesting)
Daniel's life story is not the same as Ireneo Funes' fictional life, but in a way they both lead to the same question - what does it mean to think?
Without effort, he had learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.
In March 2001, there was an article in Science, "The Art of Forgetting" which touched on these issues, and more current research begins to detail the chemical methods of action for the brain's 'forgetting system'. Indeed, life would not be possible if we remembered everything. Human cognition seems to be defendant on removing details, as much of what we do is through abstracting away the differences... this allows us to generalize. Of course, over-generalization is a failure-point for human cognition as well, as we all know.
All of this will be very useful to AI research, especially if we are trying to model computer minds after the ones nature evolved.
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Savantism (Score:3, Interesting)
memorizing Pi like memorizing a song? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pfh, languages (Score:2, Interesting)
Overall, TFA looked like a really bad writing by some sensationalist author who ought to look for other careers.
homosexuality (Score:0, Interesting)
from the article:
"Because I can't drive, Neil offered to pick me up at my parents' house, and drive me back to his house in Kent. He was silent all the way back. I thought, 'Oh dear, this isn't going well'. Just before we got to his house, he stopped the car. He reached over and pulled out a bouquet of flowers. I only found out later that he was quiet because he likes to concentrate when he's driving."
Geek Syndrome, Silicon Valley & Ausism (Score:3, Interesting)
The "shyness about making eye contact" is a symptom of austim and is used as a dianostic criterion.
Did anyone else read this bit and double take? (Score:4, Interesting)
and say "Wha
A gay, churchgoing autistic savant in fact. That's a tough call for someone trying not to stand out.
Re:...other people have been able to describe this (Score:3, Interesting)
You jogged my memory with the colors for the days of the week thing. It's something I hadn't thought about forever but when I was a kid, I saw the days of a week as colors and shapes and you're post brought this back to me. I'm sitting here recalling the days and their associations as I type.
Saturday was a green rectangle with a fringe.
Sunday was a half moon with a yellow gradient.
Tuesday is vaguely brown but I can't see the shape.
Anyway, I can't remember them all, but they're coming back to me. You've made my evening!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Savantism (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes he'll get obsessed with a particular person -- when its me for instance, he will send me several emails *per minute* until whatever it is about him passes.
Id hate to think of where he would be without the memory though, its clear he doesn't really understand the interactions between people, or emotions. He sent me a picture of himself with some of the budweiser girls (he met them at a promo thing), and he's got this mean scowl on his face in the picture. He was horribly excited about the whole thing and he waited days and days for the photo, but simply doesn't *know* to smile. He can *remember* the thousands of little things that his family has told him over the years, and usually remembers a short phrase that tells him what to do, "My grandfather said when somebody gets real mad the best thing to do is let them cool off for a bit and then go talk to them." And he does that thing.
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Try it. It isn't all that uncommon for autistics to be articulate with the written word yet be unable to speak or handle face-to-face communication.
I envy him (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pfh, languages (Score:4, Interesting)
And can you keep horses and cows in the same building?
What about llamas?
Re:The examples were almost Finnish (Score:2, Interesting)
I must admit I am not awfully impressed by this guy's invented language without seeing more of it. Interesting, though, that he is stated as knowing Lithuanian and not Finnish -- Lithuanian is after all very different from Finnish, and he cannot have got those words from there.. he must know Finnish at least subconsciously, or then they screwed up with the languages in the article.
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel your pain. I have a son who is autistic and though he isn't yet a teenager, he is at about the same level as your sister. He may never get any better. Treatment can cost $30,000 a year and may or may not work. If it does work, the end result will be that he is trained like a dog, to respond on command. Some people I know who have kids like mine are working two jobs each...both husband and wife...so that their child will be taken care of when they can't any longer.
Evidently, this is epidemic now with three in a hundred kids being autistic. Currently, insurance covers almost nothing, but something will have to be done at some point to manage the sheer numbers.
I have three other children that may or may not help out. It isn't fair to them to have to shoulder the responsiblity, but then again, we are family. If it were my brother, I would help out if he is resonable. Sometimes they can be violent which can prevent that.
I wish you luck.
Re:What is mathematical genius (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll throw my chips in with the above poster and agree that this is a great idea, many autistics light up when they have access to non-verbal communication, and for some strange reason computers have that glow about them that is attractive and addictive. I really think there needs to be some sort of standardized computer based learning system for autistics in this country, the (rather minor) set of programs instructors are able to collect together and get going now and then prove so beneficial, I can only imagine what further talents could lead to.
For possible career motivations, try product design, heck some form of engineering could be really good for her. Try to find a way to convince her that EE is basically just one big jigsaw puzzle! If she can apply a third of her brains to simplifying a circuit, Intel would want her in a second, they'd make any accommodations she needs!
Lame Article summary (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shanks
I am a teacher and have had nearly a dozen autistic students (none of whom were savants). There is a huge increase in Silicon Valley, and it is a fascinating, frustrating, and a lot of work for most of the support staff.
For anyone interested, I'd also recommend the book "Thinking in Pictures" by Temple Grandin (an autistic woman who has redesigned livestock handling machinery). She is quite eloquent and probably the most famous autistic person (she has also been interviewed by Terry Gross, which I suppose is online).
Re:Parent is right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it's not generally called "mathematics" once you get past arithmatic, until you get to the sign on the college department's door.
Which means that a majority of us don't think "complex equations" when we think "mathematics." Which means that the word is getting itself re-defined, just like "hacker" or "gay."
Re:What is mathematical genius (Score:5, Interesting)
And if we are on the topic of raw computing ability - and we decide that computing ability _is_ interesting - could we *please* have them try computations in a more general number field? Could we *please* have them solve problems that we can't yet solve efficiently by any known algorithm? (And, could someone also study how fast this guy computes factorisations as a funtion of the input size? Fr instance, could we find out how fast his brain's process works - O(n) ? O(log(n))? This question could at least be answered experimentally.
(Temporarily) turning people into savants (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
As remarkable as the cat-drawing lesson was, it was just a hint of Snyder's work and its implications for the study of cognition. He has used TMS dozens of times on university students, measuring its effect on their ability to draw, to proofread and to perform difficult mathematical functions like identifying prime numbers by sight. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. That Snyder was able to induce these remarkable feats in a controlled, repeatable experiment is more than just a great party trick; it's a breakthrough that may lead to a revolution in the way we understand the limits of our own intelligence -- and the functioning of the human brain in general.
Snyder's work began with a curiosity about autism. Though there is little consensus about what causes this baffling -- and increasingly common -- disorder, it seems safe to say that autistic people share certain qualities: they tend to be rigid, mechanical and emotionally dissociated. They manifest what autism's great ''discoverer,'' Leo Kanner, called ''an anxiously obsessive desire for the preservation of sameness.'' And they tend to interpret information in a hyperliteral way, using ''a kind of language which does not seem intended to serve interpersonal communication.''
In a 1999 paper called ''Is Integer Arithmetic Fundamental to Mental Processing? The Mind's Secret Arithmetic,'' Snyder and D. John Mitchell considered the example of an autistic infant, whose mind ''is not concept driven. . . . In our view such a mind can tap into lower level details not readily available to introspection by normal individuals.'' These children, they wrote, seem ''to be aware of information in some raw or interim state prior to it being formed into the 'ultimate picture.''' Most astonishing, they went on, ''the mental machinery for performing lightning fast integer arithmetic calculations could be within us all.''
And so Snyder turned to TMS, in an attempt, as he says, ''to enhance the brain by shutting off certain parts of it.''
Re:Pfh, languages (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly the sort of thing where I'd imagine that synthetic languages would trip up. Personally, I'd say that evolution, interaction with various dialects and corruption is invaluable to the usefulness of a language. How does Esperanto deal with this?
(n.b. not attempting to flame: I'm genuinely interested)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can also write much better than I can talk, which supports my mother's Aspberger's theory I guess. I can still speak well, but writing well is much, much easier and requires less mental effort. There are these four arrow keys I use to order thoughts when writing, but when speaking you have to order your thoughts before they come out, and mine are usually in the wrong order. And if I write something stupid, I can (and sometimes do) delete it before anyone sees it. Good thing we don't use typewriters anymore.
Re:memorizing Pi like memorizing a song? (Score:2, Interesting)
You can get an epilepsy of the temporal lobe that causes you to 'hear' songs over and over in your head, even songs that you haven't heard since you were a baby (before traditional memory starts).
Check out Dr. Oliver Sacks _The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat_
a really interesting field (Score:5, Interesting)
When you get down to it, though, we do most of our "thinking" in sounds or visuals. Everything else is translation. For instance, LANGUAGE is incredibly complex, but we can do it with ease since our brain has such an amazing "processing chip" for sorting sounds. Reading is simply converting things to sounds (or visuals - when you "remember" a quote you will normally either remember it by sound or by a visual memory of the words.)
Even math is, at it's root, visual for all of us. Take 2 + 2 = 4. There is cold memorization of the result, but if you were learning math for the first time, you would break it down to:
|| + || = ||||
ie. a visual representation, or counting fingers etc. The reason many people have so much trouble with math is they end up doing too much cold memorization - the brain remembers associatively, so this doesn't work well (but it explains why mneumonic devices DO work well). Unfortunately, that's how they teach it.
I tend to believe that we have an amazing ability to remember sound and sight (makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint) but we're NOT hard drives and "cold memorization" just doesn't work. By knocking out some part of the brain, the brain is forced to take in math through the visual/sound process, inventing a network of logic that handles all the work in the subconscious.
mathematical genius (Score:1, Interesting)
Savants and jobs (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure it'd be welcome to many.
How do other savants get along with one another?
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Interesting)
You should know then that Aspbergers is quite common in this industry. Maybe you just don't know how to recognize it, but all the stereotypes of geeks being socially inept have Aspbergers at their root. That's not to say that all geeks are high-functioning autistics. But, it is easier to mask in environments where their logical/reasoning/technical skills are valued over skills at socialization. Maybe you just need to look closer at the people around you.
From your description of her as, "busy being a teenage girl" it sounds like she is in the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, because the people in the middle to lower range are barely able to even BE a teenager in a way that society recognizes and avoiding the stigma of geekiness just isn't even a comprehenisble concept to them.
It is easy to say from the other side of the internet, but one of the best things anyone can do for her is to get her as much positive exposure to a wide range of "autistic-excelling" skills so that pattern-matching ability which makes her good at jigsaw puzzles will get the chance to focus on a more (financially) rewarding area. You never know what oddball skill might "click" with her, whatever it is, chances are it won't be what society considers a traditional job so you have to keep open to as broad a range as possible.
FWIW, I am speaking from experience here, one of my closest relatives has asperbergers. Early on he focused on computers and did the rounds as sysadmin/programmer and he was somewhat better than average at it. But what he found is that he is really good at talking about and explaining the processes and logic behind all that stuff - he's got really low communication skills otherwise, zero socialization ability, zero non-verbal communication ability, hardly any empathy, etc. But if you ask him about the way a complex system works he can explain it and he can explain it in a way that regular "non-savant" type people can follow.
He's been able to leverage that ability to "talk about work" into a very high paying career, serving as "resident guru" for companies doing software development. He doesn't do any real work, he just helps the regular developers understand how best to do their work. At first glance, it's not your typcial aspergbers-friendly kind of job because of all the people-interaction. But from his perspective it is a perfect match because it is all technical discourse about stuff he is really focused on with very little non-verbal/emotional content.
It's probably something like talking about jigsaw puzzles with your sister, she could probably talk about them all day and go into the most exruciating detail about them. Just nobody really wants to know about jigsaw puzzles, but knowing how complex hardware and software systems work is a very valuable skill in today's market.
Re:Does not Compute! (Score:3, Interesting)
We must believe him when he says how he views the world, even if we cannot figure it out. He sees relationships between things in the world that we cannot relate because our model does not allow it.
Re:Crypto (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Does not Compute! (Score:2, Interesting)
To him, pi isn't an abstract set of digits; it's a visual story, a film projected in front of his eyes. He learnt the number forwards and backwards and, last year, spent five hours recalling it
How does one memorize Pi backwards? And if he is arbitrarily starting at a very very precise value with tens of thousands of digits, how has he arrived at it? What "color, texture, or sound" does it make?
This truly borders on the metaphysical. Almost a peek into the nature of reality. The sort of questions one asks about how alien intelligence or an alternate consiousness views the universe. Or maybe i'm getting to philosphical about it
Unsettling indeed!
Re:homosexuality (Score:3, Interesting)
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14
etc...
I couldn't stop. I would spend hours doing this because it was fun and comforting. I also get very bothered when objects on my desk or in my bedroom get moved out of the order I placed them in. I need patterns. I also will not cross a a crosswalk unless the sign says "Walk" even if there is no car coming or everyone else is crossing anyway. I feel like I am part of a machine and I must obey all rules. I also have a very hard time knowing how to react to other people. I actually have to think about what reaction to project in most situations. But these are just personality quirks though as I know I'm not autistic or obessive compulsive and I'm definitely not a savant. But I definitely feel for the guy and people like him.
Re:Savantism (Score:4, Interesting)
So I guess each of us has this 'automatic' process of thought which we arent aware of, and if we dont then we must use some complex large internal flow chart to work things out.
Its a bit like each person has their own OS in their heads, but with only so many built in 'tools' and 'apps'. If we dont have it, we must 'create' a shell script for it which is why its slow and not automatic.
What we need to do is work out how to 'recompile' our slow shell script flow charts in our minds into the automatic background util that runs at compile exe speeds and gives results in 1 second with out even knowing how it works, kinda of like running photoshop or whatever.
Our brains are like a newly found uber OS, that we just dont have the manual to or even know how to interface with it well. We must do more hardcore analytical brain process understanding, deconstructing thought patterns just like disassembling op codes.
Re:homosexuality (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:3, Interesting)
He's another story himself. He's a mentally ill mainframe programmer. He may be crazy, depressed, alcoholic, and miserable, but I have to admit he did pick an excellent career for himself back in the seventies, especially for someone who might otherwise find it difficult to hold down a job. He's practically unfireable- and very few programmers in India spend their time learning crap like RAMIS. On the flip side he has to deal with EBCDIC [wikipedia.org] which would drive anybody to drink.
Re:homosexuality (Score:4, Interesting)
For instance, yes, theoretically, Hitler could have confessed his sins, been given absolution, and gone to heaven. But not bloody likely, of course any actual "documentation" of the last hours must be suspect in its truth. If a gay person keeps on keeping doing gayness and doesn't ever feel remorse or confess his sins, then yeah, that's hell-bound. If he does, it's not hellbound, likely.
What Christians need to realize is that the Old Testiment and the Jewish laws were pretty much done away with by Christ. There is a new set of laws. Do what he said, and that's fine. He never mentioned gays in the new testement. I don't know what the rules are. Old Testement God was a hard-core bad-ass who killed people. New Testement God is not. Yes, Jesus talks about hell. Yes, I believe there is hell (that Stalin and St Francis would meet the same fate is not something I wish to believe. It makes no sense).
Now, does the fact that Christ did away with it mean that sin isn't there anymore? No, there is sin. But a lot of the shit in the old testiment is just bullshit. Like Kosher. No one is going to go to hell for eating pork. Kosher makes sense in the days before refridgeration and stuff, but now it does not. Et cetera.
Do I think gayness is wrong? Yes, absolutly. But my best friend is gay. Do I believe God created the universe and everything in it? Yes. But Genisis is more of a poem on creation. I believe it may have been divinly inspired (I am a poet and English major and I do believe in muses and things because whether it's a literal thing or not, the principle is sound), but it is not literal truth. Even the notes in the new bible I bought last year (my old family bibles are like, 200 years old and I don't like to handle them) say not to take Genisis seriously (Catholic bible).
The point is that God loves us, Christ died for us, and because of that all sins are forgiven. But as it also is said, "God helps those who help themselves" -- ie, one must ask to be forgiven. It's like how showing remorse effects sentencing phases in trials. In fact, it's exactly the same. Last time I went to confession was a month ago in St Peter's in Rome. In the part of the Priest's schpele were he tells you your penence, part of it is "for your own peace of mind" -- people have a need to confess otherwise guilt builds up. This is a kind of hell. So, whether one believes in an afterlife or not, yes, telling the priest what you've done does help your own peace of mind and makes you feel better. Guilt weighs heavily.
It's lent. I ate meat on Friday. I'm Catholic. I should be going to hell like a fag according to ultra-radical militant puritan fucks in this country who take shit way too seriously. Boo Fucking Hoo. I can go to confession and get away with it. But it's not like the methodist-affiliated college I go to is going to serve fish on friday for 6 weeks to make me feel better.
Re:Pfh, languages (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:homosexuality (Score:5, Interesting)
Well there's your problem. You need to get the KJV and a good set of translation notes. The NIV and other "modern" bibles are the word of Bob the fallablle translator, not the word of God. I'll never understand why you people waste your time on those things. It's like trying to understand Shakespeare by reading only the Cliff's Notes.
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
That's both more accurate to Paul's original text and more beautiful to read. If Paul had intended to say "homosexual", he would have used the well-known word "paiderasste." Instead, he uses, "malakoi" and "arsenokoitai," neither of which have ever had clear homosexual connotation. Do a Google search [google.com] on the Greek words if you want to learn more. It's fascinating.
Jerry Newport, Donna Williams, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of this then: (Score:5, Interesting)
When you use the framebuffer memory to do ordinary calculations, seemingly random crap will appear on the screen when the program is run, and the answer will technically appear as an image as well.
If we think of our brains as highly sophisticated computers, it makes sense that somewhere inside exists the "circuitry" to do complex calulations like a computer in the blink of an eye, however, we somehow can't accesse these mechanisms, as hypothesized somewhere in the article. Perhaps (I'm just taking a random stab here) something happened to these people where some of the "wiring" of their brains got messed up so that they can actually use different parts of their brain. These "images" might not have anything "intrinsic", but might just be the effect of something else, like the example above.
On nuclear families. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, that's quite a leap. Let me start off by saying that my goal is only to analyze this a bit and not attack you.
First, the nuclear family is a relatively modern concept in the grand scheme of Humanity's history. Second, how is a nuclear family more stable, than say, the larger extended family of your village, which is a more traditional family structure? Third, if the nuclear family is so "stable" why is it that we have a 60% divorce rate, lots of domestic violence, and other seriously family issues in this country? I can honestly say that I have yet to encounter a "stable" nuclear family. Fourth (I am going to make a leap of my own and delve into what I think you're implying), if nuclear families are so effective at raising quality individuals, why are advocates of nuclear families always complaining about social decay in a country where nuclear families are ubiquitous?
I cannot comprehend how so many people can advocate this family structure so adamantly. Where is the evidence?
Re:homosexuality (Score:2, Interesting)
But the general and special relativity theories combine with the laws of motion, into a way which i would say proves predestination if one thinks about it right. If energy and matter are interchangebale, and all of it's linked together, and everything moves in predictable fashion, and their is only so much matter/enegery in the universe, than from the moment of creation (big bang), every particle and wave has been moving on a course which can be charted. Theoretically, we could know everyhing which will ever happen and has ever happened if we could track everything bit in the universe. Free will would then just be an illusion. Just like billiard balls, everything's movement effects the particles it touches next. that includes the chemicals in our brains every bit as much as the asteroids in space. But that's not fun to think about, not that we really have a choice
Re:homosexuality (Score:3, Interesting)
Met any gay parents lately? My best friend and his partner have two children with four parents. Two Moms and two Dads and are their children growing up just fine. Our society is developing new ways of parenting and allowing people express their sexuality as they biologically feel. All the while creating new definitions of families that are arguably stronger than the nuclear family.
It's only in the last 30-40 years since Stonewall and the human rights movement that gay, lesbian and bisexual have had an opportunity to participate in society as who they are. Perhaps you'd like GBLT to go back in the closet and have sex with multiple partners in secrecy? The "prime disease vector" you speak of still exists, gay parents or not. Although I question your data on HIV infection rates in populations. There are an awful lot of people who have sex with multiple partners who are heterosexual. By shear volume of heterosexuals alone. Adjusted per-capita you might perhaps a point but I suspect it's a lot slimmer than you'd imagine.
So you're right, it is a disruption but it's also progress. Your assertion that homosexuality is an intrinsic sin due to the risks that population faces due to AIDS seems like hubris to me. Arguably the lack of recognition of homosexuality and same sex partnership has lead to lifestyles that include multiple partners of the same sex. The data on men who have sex with men (including men who identify as homosexual) shows a large quotient identify as heterosexual and are even married to a partner of the opposite sex or "MSMs" (men who have sex with men). This is because society does not recognize how they biologically feel as acceptable. So they are forced into hiding. This is known factor and has been for quite some time in the epidemiology of HIV. The creation of the "prime disease vector" you speak of is a societal construct of the supposed moral majority such as yourself. And it is not limited to homosexual people as HIV is outstandingly non-discriminatory.
So really I do believe your lack of acceptance of GBLT people is a sin of your own that falls under the first category you outline "doing harm to[wards] others". But really I question your whole belief system as, best to my knowledge, God does not hate. I hope you find it in your righteous heart to love GBLT people for who they are so we can all come together and make this world a better place. Because I am a gay man and that is never going to change. I believe it was the super deity in question who said "I am who I am".
Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not unusual for people with Aspergers to have trouble recognizing the "correctness" of behaviour, facial expressions, etc. Sure, it's not universal, either, but it's definitely not a rarity.
Do I care? No. But, then, I'm not built to care about things like that. This isn't an "I can't help it", because that implies it's wrong to be anything other than a highly socially-aware, socially-structured individual.
I am Autistic. I don't see it as anything to be pitied, or even delighted in. It's just a word that describes how some aspect of the chemistry in my brain differs from the "norm". It is a description, not a definition.
Idiot Savant is the same thing. It is just a description, no different from "hot", "yellow" or "crispy". Someone might get angry with the words, finding them offensive. That's not my problem. How you choose to understand words is entirely up to you.
True, I could be better understood, if I spoke in a language closer to your own. But if I want to be understood by fellow autists, I go join the autistic channel on an IRC network specially set up for such folk. Here, I expect to be understood by geeks, who know how to dereference the pointers of obscure and arcane language.
Well, they must. When karma was still counted in points on Slashdot, my score was in the thousands. Someone out there must have understood me.
Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:3, Interesting)
I have an autistic cousin and uncle through marriage, and it should be noted that both have severe forms of autism. My uncle-in-law can make some affirmative and negative sounds but is completely nonverbal, and my cousin-in-law makes no communicative noises, except for the occasional shriek in anger or confusion. Both of them are completely dysfunctional and must live in skilled care group homes.
When strangers come in contact with my relatives, they always ask about the situation, and they hear autism as an explanation. When somebody meets you (or some other highly functional autistic person), they probably never even suspect that you have autism.
Extremes are always remembered more clearly. Most people, when they think of autism, remember meeting somebody like my uncle. This is merely the nature of a malady that exists on such a wide spectrum.
Life is too short to be obsessed with victimhood. Everybody who belongs to a larger group is sick of being spoken of in stereotypes.
Re:Intuitive... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Jobs and games (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, chess is a problem in combinatorial logic, over multiple-step sequences. It relies on the ability to analyze massive amounts of future data, based only on past experience and present status. A good chess-player would likely do well in meteorology or the stock market. I imagine it is also useful to tacticians. The advisors who set up the formulae for risk assessment in insurance are likely fans of chess, too.
Bridge, poker and other card games are statistical, rather than logical. Statisticians are employed by very similar organizations to those above, because they tend to be rather good at picking out patterns from apparent chaos, too. The chief difference is that chess is a "full information game" - that is, it is possible to determine at any given time if a play is going to be a winning play or not. It is hard, but it is possible. You can't do that, when there's a random element. All you can do is say the odds and maximize the probabilities. Card players will likely be good racing drivers, for that reason, as racing is all about maximizing the probability of winning, in a very random and fluctuating environment.
Scrabble, jigsaw puzzles, "memory" and jackstraws are all games about patterns, structure and sequence. They are all about identifying what goes with what and how things are connected. I imagine the celebrated scientist/TV host James Burke is good at one or all of these. The key is in recognizing what sequences are better than others. Anyone involved in scheduling, code-breaking, language translation and organizing of any kind is certain to be excellent at this class of puzzle.
Synesthesia (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, then your wife beats on you with "you're not listening to me!" and "don't you have anything to say?!?", and you already know that "no, because I've already exhausted the likely conversation paths in my head already, and none of them are worth pursuing. Should we explore those?" will not fly, because people don't like hearing about it when you've pretty much predicted what their conversation processes are... "you...arrogant...ASS! How can you think you know what I might be thinking?" are what comes out after you tell them that, and you realize that you can never tell her that, "well, you had about a 99.97% probability of responding just like that. See? You're attempts to poke that chef's knife between my ribs are proving it right now..."
If you're really handy, you use it to your advantage, and tee some of the guttoral swearing bits to your mouth from those conversation threads, so that people just think you have Tourette's Syndrome, and leave a lot of room next to you on the bus or train...
(Yes, the last is not original. But it's still funny.)
I think there probably is something about the subconscious processing that goes on in "normal" brains that just filters out so much information because the brain is so involved with figuring out the difference between "he likes me" and "he LIKES ME!", or, "why is he crossing his arms? he always does that when he's mad about something... " to "He's bluffing. I know that my 6-2 will beat whatever crap he's got in his hand! 'ALL IN!'".
He said as much, and just about everything seems to indicate that autistics lack, to differing extents, the processing in their brains to make all those conscious and subconsious social cues workable.
In some, their brains simply get swamped with all the stimulation. Just about everyone has an overstimulation point. If you cross it far enough, you can be reduced to a fetal-position, babbling idiot. An autistic can be turned into this simply by the phone ringing.
With autistics, they seem to lack only bits and pieces of the social processing, and the rest of their brain over-compensates.
My wife has PTSD. Her brain dedicates a LOT of processing on her stimuli that might lead to some of the traumatic things (she worked at the morgue on Guam for the KAL 747 crash there) that have happened to/around her.
It could always be worse, though. Yes, it's "in her head", but it's WAYYYYY beyond "just think 'happy' thoughts!". But at least I don't have to deal with waking up suddenly with a knife at my throat because she's reliving a combat incident.
Qabbala (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't forget the language genius. This guy seems a lot like somenone who might have been one of the inventors of Qabbala and influenced Judaic mysticism. There is no reason to expect that people of his kind weren't around back then.
Re:Does not Compute! (Score:2, Interesting)
Think of it this way: When you look at an image, you can immediately identify specific parts of that image and declare it almost immediately "THATS A CAR"
For him, multiplying numbers is just as simple, and immediately recognizable. He doesn't have a superbrain that multiplies the numbers faster than anyone else, he simply takes a completely different approach to solving the problem.
We recognise things based on many of our senses- we recognise the tartness of blackberries, the prick of a thorn, the smell of black pepper that puts us on the verge of a sneeze. We recognise colors, and our minds can think so abstractly that we can merely look at an image and determine that the woman in the photo has soft skin.
So this particular autistic fellow isn't simply replacing the number 5 with Red and 2 with Yellow, and combined they make Orange (7). Instead, numbers are something different, the sum of their parts to create a complete image in his mind. They make sense to him, but to you it would be like looking at an abstract painting trying to determin e what it means.
Interestingly many Autistic people have difficulties with the simplist task. Recognizing someones facial expression is nearly INSTANTANEOUS to me and you, just like this Autistic person can multiply numbers very quickly.
However, he might not be able to look at a person and describe their facial expression or the emotion behind that expression. In fact, he can't even tell right from left, an impossible task for him that you can usually figure out in less than a second.
Re:Think of this then: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:3, Interesting)
People on the Autism spectrum tend to have an extremely large, florid vocabulary. Sometimes, the most difficult part of writing is dumbing it down by using simpler synonyms. If I want to make my writing understood to a general audience (i.e. not Slashdot), I usually have to spend 2 or 3 times longer "debugging" my writing than I actually spend writing it. (I'm deliberately not right now, because A. this is Slashdot, and B. I'm providing an example.)
Re:He has reinvented Estonian! (Score:2, Interesting)
Mänty, äiti, aurinko, päivä
So he's actually making a mixture between two...
maybe more.
Re:Resume Puzzle (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, I also seem especially skilled at turning logical statements about complex systems into very simply-stated rules that convey highly accurate information about the entirity of the complex system I'm describing. So when I'm arguing a point I've already thought out well, I have a tendancy to be a bit too short and to the point, and wind up having to elaborate a lot in order for people to completely grok what was meant by the short (though perfectly accurate and proper English) sentence I previously said. Or sometimes I end up assuming that the reader will need such elaboration, and thus give it all to them ahead of time before delivering my point. Neitehr seems to be a very pleasant form of communication to most people I talk to.
How exactly does one go about finding out if they have something like this? TFA and these comments have gotten me thinking a lot - I seem to share a lot in common with the person in TFA and some people who have spoken here, and I'm very interested to find out if I meet the definition of some of these terms. Not sure what use it would be to me to have such a diagnosis, or perhaps it could even be a bad thing (negative stereotypes and all)... but I'm still quite curious just to know.
Re:doesn't hold the world record (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot story should probably say holds "a record" not "the record", which in typical Slashdot context would either imply world record or USA record
Re:homosexuality (Score:2, Interesting)
Imagine my surprise when after getting an electrical engr degree...I couldn't get a decent job
I appears you are saying that you lost your faith in God because you couldn't get a job.
Consider: if you had gotten a job you might still believe in God, which you now think is wrong. So the question is, which is more important? The job or knowing the truth?
Where is God?
Even people with fulltime jobs still ask this question.
Re:homosexuality (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, there are plenty of teenagers who attempt suicide because they're forced into this silly pretence of normal/mediocricy.
So yeah, the kid's probably going to have a tough time, but guess what, the same thing happened when house-husbands started appearing. The same thing happened before divorce was the norm. Unfortunately, societal change means some people will get burned. Sorry, it's rather unavoidable.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It makes one wonder.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I can tell you right now.
I sent an email to my mother asking if my sister is checking her mail, since I hadn't gotten an answer.
According to my mother, she is delighted to get E-mail and checks it all the time. Only problem is: don't expect a reply.