
Kim Peek - pmoriarty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek
======
McKayDavis
I recall seeing Kim Peek many times in the old downtown Salt Lake City library
in the late 80s. I always saw him camped out at some table near the reference
section under the escalators on the main floor. He would usually have a stack
of phone books (The White Pages) from around the country and spend hours
methodically scanning and memorizing every page.

~~~
rurban
It also helped that the new Salt Lake City Library is so beautiful to work in.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Lake_City_Public_Library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Lake_City_Public_Library)
On of the world finest libraries imho.

------
riffraff
I recall seeing him for the first time in a documentary about Daniel
Tammet[0].

Seeing him read books by basically just scanning two pages at once was
astonishing. If I recall correctly, his father mentioned he had recently
started to understand and tell jokes, which I found interesting, and somehow
moving.

And on a side note, after seeing "the original", Dustin Hoffman's
interpretation in Rain Main felt way more precise than I would have ever
thought.

[0] "Brainman", I believe [https://guidedoc.tv/documentary/brainman-
documentary-film/](https://guidedoc.tv/documentary/brainman-documentary-film/)

~~~
mlguide
It is worth noting that Tammet is widely believed to use regular mnemonic
techniques:

[https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/ask-a-memory-
champion/28565/...](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/ask-a-memory-
champion/28565/33)

"I’m a bit surprised by Helix’s idea that answering this question might get me
into trouble, because it’s not something that’s debated among the people who
go to competitions. It’s well known that he uses memory techniques like a
‘regular person’ - he was a regular at the world championships for years,
slightly before my time (though we did meet in 2000), and always talking about
the specific techniques he used. It’s not really that much of a secret…"

There also is a Letterman interview where he behaved rather normal, to the
point that Letterman asked him if he was actually autistic (Letterman clearly
did not believe it).

~~~
narrator
I know a guy who competes and does well in memory sports. I'd say he's above
average intelligence for sure, maybe in the top 5%, but not some sort of
extreme freak of nature. He's spent thousands of hours drilling memory
techniques though. "Moonwalking with Einstein" is a good book about memory
sports and has an intro to some of the basic techniques. From what I've seen,
it's really about deepening a set of specialized ruts in the road in the brain
around remembering numbers and other things that memory sports athletes
compete on. It's essentially building custom designed specialized neural
networks in the brain through thousands of hours of drilling.

One thing I told my nephew is that he can spend thousands of hours playing
video games and then have his head full of video game trivia or he can spend
thousands of hours learning to program or learning memory sports techniques
and have almost as much fun, but instead wind up with something that he can
actually use later in his life that doesn't involve working for a video game
company.

~~~
majos
> One thing I told my nephew is that he can spend thousands of hours playing
> video games and then have his head full of video game trivia or he can spend
> thousands of hours learning to program or learning memory sports techniques
> and have almost as much fun, but instead wind up with something that he can
> actually use later in his life that doesn't involve working for a video game
> company.

I don't think there are so many people who find that learning to program or
learning memory sports techniques is the same kind of fun as playing video
games.

------
jonbaer
This was pretty remarkable to watch,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLpCfHH1OVU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLpCfHH1OVU)

The fact that he lacked conceptual encoding really says something.

~~~
x220
What do you mean by conceptual encoding?

~~~
jonbaer
It's explained @ ~around the 35' minute mark, but basically he did not
understand or grasp metaphors,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor)
\- like a machine he would interpret everything literally, excellent case
study for some of the obstacles facing AGI in my opinion.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Peek read by scanning the left page with his left eye, then the right page
with his right eye. According to an article in The Times newspaper, he could
accurately recall the contents of at least 12,000 books.[6]

These are pretty extraordinary claims and I'm curious to know whether they
were ever tested in controlled conditions.

For example, how does one verify the recollection of the contents of "at
least" 12,000 books? Was there an experiment performed, where he was asked
questions about a sufficiently large, randomly chosen, sample of those 12,000
books?

I understand that Tim Peek made a living out of his mnemonic abilities and I
think, in that context, skepticism is justified.

~~~
ggm
I grew up in a house of books and have lived with a bookseller for most of my
life. Having therefore owned and lived with 10,000 to 15,000 books,
periodicals and related ephemera (catalogues, concordance &c) I can assure you
I cannot recall even fractional amounts of most of these although I can recall
significant amounts of many and quite inaccurately quote some small amount. So
I too think the question demands testing: it's the kind of thing people say
but actually don't mean. "What is written on page 150 of the third book on the
tenth shelf" is quite different to what comes after 'it was the best of times
it was the worst of times' and many Shakespearean fans could quite easily
quote significant amounts of most plays, Wagnerians could sing the ring cycle,
my mum who certainly didn't have eidetic memory could whistle a lot of Mozart
or Bach: getting from pedestrian memory to this specific recall Peek is said
to have had is pretty strange, and I think should be verified. Day of the year
or train timetables are tricks. Flow text with meaning? That's hard.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
I know that calculating what day it was on a given date is a common mnemonic
trick, e.g. see [1]. It's not easy to do but a person well-trained in mental
arithmetic and memorisation should be able to pull it off.

I didn't know about recalling trains timetables and I can't find any pointers
online. Can you point to a source explaining how it's done? I always like to
impress at parties :)

Btw, the fact that Peek demonstrated common mnemonic skills that don't require
unique abilities to perform casts further doubt on the fact that he had such
unique abilities.

_____________

[1] [https://artofmemory.com/blog/how-to-calculate-the-day-of-
the...](https://artofmemory.com/blog/how-to-calculate-the-day-of-the-
week-4203.html)

------
jorgenveisdal
Related, on calendar calculations: [https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/how-
to-perform-calendar-...](https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/how-to-perform-
calendar-calculations-5617f35d3070)

------
umvi
Is he actually comprehending what he is reading or just indexing it? I doubt
he could comprehend an entire physics book in 1 hour, so I'm guessing this is
purely memorization, not comprehension.

~~~
miohtama
"Indexing" \- see this comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21239389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21239389)

------
r34
Another guy with savantism, who impresses me a lot:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_(Scrabble_playe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Richards_\(Scrabble_player\))

------
l5870uoo9y
> In psychological testing, Peek scored low average (87) on general IQ tests.

I would have presumed that would have been much higher.

~~~
corpuscallosum
IQ tests in my experience are better for logic, maths and abstract thinking,
eg trying to spot the pattern in a series. Other tests which can be used to
measure brain abilities, could be the brick test, where you are presented with
a brick and have to list all the ways a brick could be used. This is somewhat
dependant on life experience of course and its hard to know what someone has
seen and thus experienced. Another example of brain function is identifying
auditory tones and patterns, some people are better at picking up notes in a
section of played music than others. School in some ways and interests is an
intelligence test in itself by virtue of the subjects a child wants to study
and is good at. So IQ tests are somewhat limited in determining brain function
and abilities.

~~~
partyboat1586
I've always been good at the alternative uses test. I'm better with possible
than probable. Is there some kind of standardised test I could take for it?

------
wubblebubble
also recently featuring kim [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcPzTr-
BbAA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcPzTr-BbAA)

------
Carpetsmoker
As far as I know, Kim Peek has never made any scientific discoveries, or had
any wisdom to tell the world, in spite of being able to remember ~12k books.

It's a good reminder that knowledge does not equal intelligence or wisdom.

~~~
dahart
This is a natural reaction and it’s common for people to remark on his high
memory yet low cognition, but nonetheless this comment somewhat bothers me.
This is my issue, not yours, and I may be misinterpreting, but here’s my
thinking...

Why is scientific discoveries even something he’s compared against? What does
that have to do with the post? Do all people with excessive talents of some
kind have to make scientific discoveries to prove it?

How would you even presume to have any idea whether Kim had wisdom to share?
Wisdom is very different from scientific discoveries, and why would anyone
know that except himself or his family? How hard did you try to find whether
he had wisdom to share? What if he had lots of wisdom that the rest of us
couldn’t understand? Are you suggesting that someone doesn’t have wisdom
unless they publish it?

Let me ask this way: do you consider yourself smart & wise? What scientific
discoveries have you made, what wisdom have you told the world?

We should not draw broad conclusions about the way knowledge and intelligence
work based on one person who’s in an extremely abnormal situation. In most
normal people, knowledge and intelligence and wisdom are closely related, it
takes knowledge (experience) to gain wisdom, it takes intelligence to
formulate wisdom, and it takes wisdom to seek the kind of knowledge that can
lead to intelligence. For most people, having a lot of knowledge would
precipitate some wisdom automatically. Normal people spot patterns. You can’t
normally have a lot of one without the others. Kim Peek is a stark outlier
compared to how normal brains work.

Your comment also hints at a cultural narrative that is common but not true,
where people tend to see someone with extraordinary talents and “remind”
everyone that it also means there must be some extraordinary deficiencies
there too, because balance. There are some people that have extreme memory and
are still smarter and more accomplished than the average person. Marilu Henner
is a good example of that.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner)

~~~
kiba
_Your comment also hints at a cultural narrative that is common but not true,
where people tend to see someone with extraordinary talents and “remind”
everyone that it also means there must be some extraordinary deficiencies
there too, because balance._

It's not about balance. It's about what you can do with it or did with it.

------
umvi
This guy is said to have memorized decades worth of newspaper articles, phone
books, and other potentially PII. How does that jive with GDPR and Right to Be
Forgotten? If people just start using him to do background checks, wouldn't
that be a violation of RTBF?

------
ianai
I’m deeply offended by the commenters questioning the authenticity of this
guy’s bio. The poor man lived and died essentially an outcast and alone.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
Why is it offensive to ask if specific and extraordinary claims have ever been
verified in controlled conditions? I also don't see how this has any relation
on Kim living as a lonely outcast.

~~~
_0ffh
Because offended is the new black.

