We often here of savants. In the news, in the movies, and in books.

Their skills seem so far off, so fantastical, that it doesn’t even cross our minds that perhaps we or at least our children’s children can develop similar skills.

This article below makes an interesting point. Centuries ago, the act of reading silently was thought to be a great and immense feat. A near impossible capability. But now it is common place and it is a given that people can read silently.

So perhaps, in a hundred years or so, the tremendous skills savants have will no longer be restricted. Can human ability really improve itself to such high levels?

Savantism And Your Mind’s Singularity

In a fascinating interview available in Scientific America on Savantism (which I found as a newsletter subscriber from KurzweilAI, we are introduced to the mind of the savant.

Daniel Tammet, an author, linguist and a savant, offers explanations on how he thinks. Tammet, for instance, set the European record for reciting the first 22,514 decimal points of Pi.

The key appears to be that savants think on a different dimension, turning numbers into shapes and colors, for instance.

Here’s what Tammet says:

In my mind, numbers and words are far more than squiggles of ink on a page. They have form, color, texture and so on. They come alive to me, which is why as a young child I thought of them as my “friends.” I think this is why my memory is very deep, because the information is not static. I say in my book that I do not crunch numbers (like a computer). Rather, I dance with them.

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