Are there savants around?
Asked by
ralfe (
107
)
July 29th, 2009
Are there prodigious savants here? If so, I’d love to hear about your savantism.
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19 Answers
I know some folks that would qualify as idiot savants, although I find the term ‘idiot’ in this context offensive. But then, you probably are referring to ‘normal folks’ which is a whole nuther animal.
We have a number of people who I consider to be savants around here. Some really know politics, others neuro-science, and still others know a lot about relationships. Some are savants in unfortunate areas—such as cancer or mental illness. I think that if you stick around, you’ll figure out who they are, and learn more about their “savantism,” whatever you mean by that.
I would name names, but I would surely leave some people out, and hurt others’ feelings if they don’t make my list, so I won’t name names. Or maybe I sort of will. Everyone in my fluther is a savant in one way or another, in my mind. However, there are other people that I consider to be savants who are not in my fluther. Anyway, my fluther is a guide and gives some insight into my thinking about who is a wise person or who knows a lot.
I’d like to think I’m one…but I’m still trying to figure out what in….can you just be a savant of life in general? sounds a bit wishy washy though…hmmm
Thanks to those who replied. In my description I was actually referring to “prodigious savants”, not “savant” in the general sense.
A brief description of prodigious savants from wikipedia :
“Prodigious savants are those individuals whose abilities would be considered phenomenal or genius even in a person without any limitations or special diagnosis of impairment. The most common trait of these prodigious savants is their seemingly limitless mnemonic skills, with many having eidetic or photographic memories.”
This is rather unimportant, but I’m the opposite of an “idiot savant.” I’m natural to so many things that it becomes a hindrance to my learning of any one skill. It sounds like “well-rounded,” but its actually quite extreme.
My brother, on the other hand, has trouble with almost everything, except theoretical mathematics. He was diagnosed with ADD in one school and moved to the gifted program in the next.
@ralfe oh :-( [skulks off dissappointed]
@Pol_is_aware I am not talking about idiot savants. I am talking about prodigious savants.
It is a common misconception that there needs to be severe neurological pathology to qualify the diagnosis of savant syndrome. There happens to be a high co-morbidity between savant syndrome and structural pathology, but the there is no dependance on the structural pathology. There are numerous cases of highly functioning savants.
Perhaps this was an inappropriate question for this site, but I have met some truly amazing people with seemingly superhuman capabilities. I was overly curious as to whether there might be some such people lurking on this site.
@lynneblundell Labels are not everything :) Perhaps there is a bit of magic in all of us?
I see. I wouldn’t expect extremely exceptional people to be found on public, internet-community sites, but I’d love to be proven wrong.
I’m back…anything happened in savant-land??
Yes, I was just invisioning the future, through sheer knowledge.
cool!!! what does it look like?? I jump into your vision please?
ABoyNamedBoobs is. You give him a date, and he can tell you right away what day of the week that day fell on.
@Val123 Ahem… you can, too.
The basic steps for a date in the years 2000–2099 are as follows:
Example date July 13th, 2004
Take the last 2 digits of the year and add a quarter onto itself. (04 + 1 = 5)
Get the corresponding code for the month. (January = 6, February = 2, March = 2, etc. See month codes for details). July = 5
Take the day. (=13)
Add the numbers together (5 + 5 + 13 = 23)
Take away 7 (or multiples of 7) until a number from 1–7 is left. (23 – 21 =2)
This number corresponds to the day of the week. (1 = Monday, 2 = Tuesday, etc.) In this case 2 = Tuesday
Got it?
@NewZen LOL! Yes, I got it! And it was quite interesting! Thank you (I love the magic of math.) BUT I could NOT do the calculations in my head in a split second, and ABoyNamedBoobs gave me answers immediately. Plus the dates I asked him about were from previous centuries. Got a math one for that?!
@Val123 Confession: I copied and pasted that, and got dizzy just trying to follow it.
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