DentyDao Posted January 31, 2007 (edited) http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Health/story?id=830166&page=1 Edited January 31, 2007 by seandenty Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MASTERforge Posted January 31, 2007 I saw this guy on TV he was absolutely amazing. I don't know if its a gift or a disability. He can do amazing things with his mind but incapable of normal behaviour. He is truely a SuperTard Actually the way he does math is quite similar to memorary techniques. Except he experiences his way more vidid and complex. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DentyDao Posted January 31, 2007 I saw this guy on TV he was absolutely amazing. My favorite part of the show is when he flys to New York to meet the guy who inspired the movie Rainman. It was the most amazing thing I've seen in a while. A meeting of the mega minds. At the end of the segment, Rainman gives him a hug and says, "Someday you'll be as great as me." It was so freaking funny and amazing at the same time. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ian Posted February 1, 2007 The really freaky thing is that the researcher mentioned in the article: "Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor at Cambridge University's Autism Research Center." is the brother of Sacha Baron-Cohen, i.e. Borat. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taomeow Posted February 1, 2007 (edited) I started seeing pi as a landscape (to use a very inadequate word for the experience) after a period of intense qigong and Chinese astrology pracitces. Since I'm not autistic, I plan to put these things into words someday, but it is a monumentally difficult task to find words for experiences that defy left-brain step-by-step linear arrangements. I can draw some of the experience though... but I'm still looking for a way to draw it just so that it is "obvious" to a "normal" eye. (When I try, I feel a profound need to have a hundred arms and hands like the goddess Kali in order to simultaneously draw some things I SEE simultaneously, not "one after the other...") Parts of our consciousness have to be separated from other parts (e.g., sight from sound) in order for our whole system to be able to decide, once and for all, on a certain limited way to perceive reality (e.g., to be able to "taste" an apple instead of "hearing" it). This enables us to "function" properly as members of a certain specific species. Neither "taste" nor "sound" of an apple are absolutes, a bat "hears" it but can't "taste" it, a dog can "smell" it but not "color-code" it, and so on. What allows for such selective perceptions is "neural gates" and genetic "silencers" on certain potentially possible but "counterproductive" perceptions. In autism, these gates are damaged (by traumatic fetal development, traumatic birth, vaccinations in infancy -- or, very rarely, something else), things that were supposed to be well-defined and separated by "gates" and "silencers" never separate properly and keep interfering with each other. Selecting "what" to perceive and "how" to perceive becomes difficult or impossible. They are aware of more (sometimes infinitely more) going on inside themselves than it is possible to integrate -- all at once. They feel things too strongly (that's why a loud sound is a torturous pain to many of them), out of sync with each other (e.g., the sound the left ear perceives comes first, and the input from the right one is delayed, so human speech can get garbled by interference and turn into meaningless and maddening noise... In some autistics, the thing that will make them able to communicate is as simple as to whisper quietly in ONE ear so there's no interference from the other.) To an outside observer (most of the time a dumb one), they appear "dumb," while the real problem is, they are too indiscriminately and chaotically brilliant -- blinded by the light, too much light shining on everything too strongly and with too few rest-giving shadows. It's a rather horrible way to be, in fact, this inborn enlightenment... There's another autistic who managed to "build the bridge," I read her book quite a while ago. She actually became a multimillionaire designing industrial agricultural equipment that was found to be the best in the world -- in her book she explains in detail how she came up with her designs because she "understands the cows" and can feel "exactly the way the cow feels." The book was called "Thinking In Pictures" I seem to recall. A very elucidating "insider's" view into the world of an autistic. Edited February 3, 2007 by Taomeow Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MASTERforge Posted February 1, 2007 Hi, Yeah it was really cool when he met rainman. I think the highest thoughts are based in feelings and imagery. A picture paints a thousand words. I feel like I have real difficulty expressing myself properly to other people sometimes, because I process information primarily visually(NLP VAK system). I have been playing around with memory techniques and have constructed a memory palace not to dissimilar to Hannibals one in silence of the lambs except mine is a lot more friendly. I can store information quite easily and recall it with little difficulty. Currently I am committing to memory the contents page of a book on cold reading. Its easy to store the topics of the contents page but the problem is actually being able to use the topics at will. For example the topic of rapport, I can remember where it is on the contents page no probs but actually remembering the content of the chapter is near impossible without much more commitment. I could remember the content but actually using the techniqes on rapport proves much harder. The memory palace is quite fun as you expand and explore it. Earlier toady I created the image of a carribean beach and put myself in it. I stayed there for a while and felt much better as I had been feeling ill. I plan to add things like speed mathmatic techniques in the palace and quite a few other things. Sorry to go off on a tangent but I thought it might be worth mentioning that you can expand your own mental powers considerably with useful techniques. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Uncle Fester Posted February 2, 2007 (edited) . Edited September 28, 2021 by darebak Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taomeow Posted February 2, 2007 (edited) I saw a documentary about her in a film festival. She designs super-efficient slaughterhouses. It showed her walking through the slaughterhouses making improvements from the cows perspective, based on tricking them into cooperating in their own slaughter. It was kinda creepy really. Yes, her ideas came from watching non-cooperating cows suffer a lot more before they die, and feeling what they felt. Since it was not in her power to eliminate factory farming, she did the thing that WAS in her power -- helped eliminate the additional and excessive suffering of the doomed animals. She couldn't kill the industry, but to kill the overkill, which is what occurred to her, didn't occur to "normal" people who designed the equipment that was in place before her modifications. She also designed equipment for herself to alleviate her own suffering (she was in pain most of the time for most of her life, and on all known painkillers and antidepressants, which didn't do much), a "squeeze tube" to apply even, gentle but firm pressure to the whole body. She made it for other autistic people too, and for some, it was the first and only thing that ever helped. Now something that didn't occur to her but it did to me -- I think this "squeeze tube" of hers is designed to emulate the natural sensations of natural birth, which is a kind of necessary normal developmental stimulation -- not "too much," not "too little" -- "just enough" to serve, as mother nature intended it to, as the first and most imporant pattern of signals for the whole system to switch gears smoothly from prenatal to postnatal existence. Many autistic people (and many less severely affected ones) miss out on this "just enough" pattern in modern birth, and a lot of signals get scrambled for life. Edited February 2, 2007 by Taomeow Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ian Posted February 2, 2007 Temple Grandin, she's called. Book called Animals in Translation. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taomeow Posted February 3, 2007 Temple Grandin, she's called. Book called Animals in Translation. Thank you, Ian. Yes, that's the name of the author, but the book I had in mind is "Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism." She must have written another one since (or before) that one. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites