
Inside the Savant Mind: Tips for Thinking from an Extraordinary Thinker - makimaki
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=savants-cognition-thinking&print=true
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byrneseyeview
_The bell curve distribution for IQ scores tells us that two thirds of the
world’s population have an IQ somewhere between 85 and 115. This means that
some four and a half billion people around the globe share just 31 numerical
values (“He’s a 94,” “You’re a 110,” ”I’m a 103”), equivalent to 150 million
people worldwide sharing the same IQ score. This sounds a lot to me like
astrology, which lumps everyone into one of twelve signs of the zodiac._

Does he also object to numerical values for height?

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dhimes
The debate is whether or not intelligence is one-dimensional. Height is
clearly one-dimensional. Intelligence may not be.

~~~
axiom
Every multi-dimensional measure can be projected onto one dimension. The
question is whether it still retains useful discriminating power at that
point.

The whole argument in favor of a g factor in intelligence is that when you
measure different kinds of intelligence (verbal, analytical etc.) the numbers
you get seem to be a function of a single dominant factor. (That's the
argument, I'm not saying whether or not I agree with it.)

~~~
dhimes
Agreed. It is noteworthy that we have an analogous situation here on HN. Karma
is really a one-dimensional projection of a two-dimensional (at least)
characteristic. People upmod because they agree, or because they think the
post is interesting. This blends two quite different characteristics into one
number. We could still argue that the value of a person's karma has a rough
correlation with total value or contribution to the community, albeit two
people may have the same karma values but have arrived at them through
different means (say, one being agreeable, and the other being interesting).

~~~
axiom
That's a cool idea! do you think a news site with two types of upvotes would
work?

A user could sort their view of the front page based on either props (agree
votes) or recommendations (interest votes) or some weighted combination. Maybe
too complicated?

~~~
jmah
That's what Slashdot has had for comments for as long as I remember (+funny,
insightful, etc.). You can tweak your settings for how those traits are
projected to a one-dimensional number (e.g. making "funny" more or less
valuable).

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jmah
See also "Debunking Daniel Tammet"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=412355>

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jwesley
The whole concept of learning to be a savant by reading some interview is
ridiculous. You would have better results with Tim Ferriss' Brain Quicken
product.

Some interesting bits though. I hate how knowledge gets degraded into self
help pseudo-science to sell books.

