<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+May 11 2008, 06:12 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 11 2008, 06:12 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->In US new tests were developed, and soon some of them were used as support for eugenics programs while it lasted. Since then the tests have been improved because they tried to tease out the blatant cultural bias evident in earlier tests and deemphasize acquired knowledge.[right][snapback]81538[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I didn't know this. But it's oh-so predictable. Why is it that everything they touch turns to grime/crime?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I am talking about autistic savants (a small proportion of the overall autistic population) who have extraordinary memory abilities but in real life are classified as "mentally retarded" and often cannot function on their own, some of these people have very good musical abilities or talent with calenders (for example if you ask them what day of the week June 9 1979 was, they can answer).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The played a multi-episode documentary about Savants here. Very interesting. One of the Savants shown was an African-American who could produce in a largescale drawing a replica of the panoramic view of a city he'd been shown from helicopter, accurate to the minutest details (in terms of number of windows of a tiny house in a side-alley, and angles of the shapes of buildings). Another one knew to play on piano all the songs his mother had had on records and which he'd heard when he was very young, even though he had no training in music or the piano. Another one was a mathematical genius who became very frightened of numbers when he was a wee thing. But one day the numbers worked themselves out in his head with the help of music and since then he's been composing (mainly jazz) music: mathematically perfect compositions as he says. He also made some suggestions for correcting Beethoven's (or was it Mozart's) works to make them mathematically perfect.
The documentary proposed that maybe the difference between them and us was that they perceived things more objectively and less subjectively than we did. That is, that we overlooked certain things in order to summarise what we saw and make out of it what appeared important to us, whereas they took the whole thing in exactly as it was. Their method of problem solving has the advantage of not losing sight of a single element of the problem: elements that we may have ignored under the assumption that it was insignificant. On the other hand, it may be that the common situation has the advantage that we are able to extract more general patterns (of possible significance). Imagine combining the two in a police investigation.
Bharatavarsha, I don't know if you would find it interesting, since you obviously already know so much about this, but in case you missed this documentary I think it may really be named after "Savants". I certainly thought it was interesting.
And there was a bit in the program on an Australian Savant who was a lecturer or perhaps a professor at a university. He proposed that by shocking some part of the brain, we could temporarily turn that part off and start perceiving the world more like Savants do. They conducted some tests along this line on the program. Quite an out-there idea.
As pleasant as shock therapy sounds and all, at this stage, I'm not yet that desperate to become more intelligent than whatever I am, so I think I might pass on it...
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I am talking about autistic savants (a small proportion of the overall autistic population) who have extraordinary memory abilities but in real life are classified as "mentally retarded" and often cannot function on their own, some of these people have very good musical abilities or talent with calenders (for example if you ask them what day of the week June 9 1979 was, they can answer).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The played a multi-episode documentary about Savants here. Very interesting. One of the Savants shown was an African-American who could produce in a largescale drawing a replica of the panoramic view of a city he'd been shown from helicopter, accurate to the minutest details (in terms of number of windows of a tiny house in a side-alley, and angles of the shapes of buildings). Another one knew to play on piano all the songs his mother had had on records and which he'd heard when he was very young, even though he had no training in music or the piano. Another one was a mathematical genius who became very frightened of numbers when he was a wee thing. But one day the numbers worked themselves out in his head with the help of music and since then he's been composing (mainly jazz) music: mathematically perfect compositions as he says. He also made some suggestions for correcting Beethoven's (or was it Mozart's) works to make them mathematically perfect.
The documentary proposed that maybe the difference between them and us was that they perceived things more objectively and less subjectively than we did. That is, that we overlooked certain things in order to summarise what we saw and make out of it what appeared important to us, whereas they took the whole thing in exactly as it was. Their method of problem solving has the advantage of not losing sight of a single element of the problem: elements that we may have ignored under the assumption that it was insignificant. On the other hand, it may be that the common situation has the advantage that we are able to extract more general patterns (of possible significance). Imagine combining the two in a police investigation.
Bharatavarsha, I don't know if you would find it interesting, since you obviously already know so much about this, but in case you missed this documentary I think it may really be named after "Savants". I certainly thought it was interesting.
And there was a bit in the program on an Australian Savant who was a lecturer or perhaps a professor at a university. He proposed that by shocking some part of the brain, we could temporarily turn that part off and start perceiving the world more like Savants do. They conducted some tests along this line on the program. Quite an out-there idea.
As pleasant as shock therapy sounds and all, at this stage, I'm not yet that desperate to become more intelligent than whatever I am, so I think I might pass on it...