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The Boy With The Incredible Brain

Olowkow

Philosopher
Olowkow
Joined
Oct 29, 2007
Messages
8,230
Daniel Tammet is a savant, autistic(?), and evidences synesthesia, the condition is apparently the result of an epileptic seizure. There was a thread 3 years ago, but the first time I have seen the videos. It is a 5 part series:

"The Boy With The Incredible Brain".

He recites pi to 22,000 places, calculates amazingly accurate division to 100 decimal places. Kind of scary in a way, but very interesting.

 
Nice, but what has it to do with skepticism or the paranormal?

(No offense intended! :))
 
If anyone watches all 5 segments, including his learning to speak and comprehend Icelandic in 7 days, and demonstrating this on national TV impressing native speakers, I would like to hear their opinion on whether we all have a "little Rain Man" in us.

I am skeptical of this, but I don't know what to base my skepticism on.
 
Well, losing the ability to filter information would probably result in improved learning, but of course also in many difficulties.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Well, losing the ability to filter information would probably result in improved learning, but of course also in many difficulties.
Click to expand...

That's one of the current theories. It's actually the one I subscribe to. A big part of our braint functions has to do to filtering informations and giving us complex feedbacks. If you lose those functions, you could elaborate an amazing load of informations.

For example, in a small town near the city I live in there's a man who suffered some kind of trauma when he was a boy. Now he's fifty, and he know:
- all the license plates of all the people in the town, including the ones of the cars they previously owned
- the day of the week of date (month/day/year) from his year of birth forth birth forth (not calculating them, he just looked at the calendars)
- all the rivers, lakes and mountains in Italy, including their topografic relations
- all numbers and names on the phone book of his town (!!!)

Unfortunately, he doesn't notice when he's cold, hot, hungry or sometimes even soar. It's a litlle sad, of course, but fascinating.
 
Mahaha said:
...For example, in a small town near the city I live in there's a man who suffered some kind of trauma when he was a boy. Now he's fifty, and he know:
- all the license plates of all the people in the town, including the ones of the cars they previously owned
- the day of the week of date (month/day/year) from his year of birth forth birth forth (not calculating them, he just looked at the calendars)
- all the rivers, lakes and mountains in Italy, including their topografic relations
- all numbers and names on the phone book of his town (!!!)

Unfortunately, he doesn't notice when he's cold, hot, hungry or sometimes even soar. It's a litlle sad, of course, but fascinating.
Click to expand...

This guy doesn't seem to have the negative aspects of being a savant, that's why he is so impressive. The videos even show his meeting with Kim Peek, the real Rain Man....who, sadly, died last year.
 
Kim Peek had a very rare case of having his hemispheres almost entirely disconnected.
 
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