Savants

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Yesterday I spent an hour or so watching a vid about autistic savants. One of them is the RAINMAN guy, and others had similar gifts with the awful social skills autistics are noted for. One man, for example, masters new languages in a week. My great-grandfathers brother, Ed, spent a summer in the Middle East and returned fluent in several languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Sanskrit, etc.) John, my great-grandfather, was fluent in all the modern languages.

It all made me imagine a plot bunny where a mere mortal has brain damage and acquires a super power such as savants possess. The thinking is, savants are made when the brain is injured, and areas of the brain that don't normally interact start working together. I 'feel-see' behavior patterns, to me its like holding and seeing a 3 dimensional object. So I excel at diagnoses, takes about 15 minutes for you to form a shape in my mind. Yes, I have brain damage from long ago.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm that way with basic math.

If someone tells me the dimensions of a box I can tell them how many would fit on a 40' over seas container in less than a minute. I've never been wrong and used to win bets all the time from the guys loading it.

Then they said there was a computer program for it that the guy in the office made and they wanted to see if I got the answer it did.

We did three different sizes and each time I came out with less boxes than the computer by two. So they were busting my balls, especially the guy who designed it.

So I said okay, $100 says I'm right and the geek took me up on it.

I was right on all three loads. The guy paid up and said, "I can't figure it out."

I asked him, have you ever been in one of these?

he answered no of course he was just plugging in interior dimensions. So I took him in one and showed him there is always a small metal ledge in each upper corner of the nose of the container. That costs two boxes, one on each end.

Too dependent on his computer to actually come down and see what the damn thing looks like.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I'm that way with basic math.

If someone tells me the dimensions of a box I can tell them how many would fit on a 40' over seas container in less than a minute. I've never been wrong and used to win bets all the time from the guys loading it.

Then they said there was a computer program for it that the guy in the office made and they wanted to see if I got the answer it did.

We did three different sizes and each time I came out with less boxes than the computer by two. So they were busting my balls, especially the guy who designed it.

So I said okay, $100 says I'm right and the geek took me up on it.

I was right on all three loads. The guy paid up and said, "I can't figure it out."

I asked him, have you ever been in one of these?

he answered no of course he was just plugging in interior dimensions. So I took him in one and showed him there is always a small metal ledge in each upper corner of the nose of the container. That costs two boxes, one on each end.

Too dependent on his computer to actually come down and see what the damn thing looks like.

I agree. I suspect all of us have gifts we blow-off but if we embraced them all would profit.

 

[Serafina1210]

It all made me imagine a plot bunny where a mere mortal has brain damage and acquires a super power such as savants possess. The thinking is, savants are made when the brain is injured, and areas of the brain that don't normally interact start working together. I 'feel-see' behavior patterns, to me its like holding and seeing a 3 dimensional object. So I excel at diagnoses, takes about 15 minutes for you to form a shape in my mind. Yes, I have brain damage from long ago.

I keep thinking about a story in which a sweet innocent young thing suffers damage to her frontal cortex and loses all impulse control. Trouble is, I haven't figured out where it goes beyond her, you know, getting laid a lot. Maybe if I thought of it as a super power . . .