re; synethesia

Interesting. My maternal grandmother could pick a handful of 4-leaf clovers in seconds where I'd spend minutes just finding a single one because they all looked the same to me. She didn't say how she did it but I saw it done so can't contest it. This was almost 50 years ago and I haven't thought about it in about that long. Now that my curiosity is piqued I'll have to google it.

"289 is a very ugly number."

"Pi is one of the most beautiful numbers in all the world."

Nowadays even most of the ID supporters I communicate with are shaking their heads (figuratively) over UD's decline.

I myself left UD some days ago (but not due to Dave Scot, or Bill Dembski - rather, due to the behavior of a particular "member" there, which seemed indicative of the site, or at least a lack of concern [if not awareness]).

Daniel T. says that he isn't doing the math, or performing some short-cut/math trick, to arrive at his answers (specifically when doing square roots). Instead he sees two, or more, numbers as shapes and in his mind's eye they merge into a new shape which is the answer"¦ I've got the jist of it, correct?

Hi Rob,

I don't know how Tammet does square roots, but the Ramachandran article says this about how he does multiplication:

The team now plans to investigate the multiplication skills of Tammet, who says he visualizes the shapes of the numbers to be multiplied and then reads off the product from a third shape that appears in the space between them.

Rob again:

The reason I thought Douglas made a good point about studying pi prior to reciting the sequence from memory was: Wouldn't he just have to divide 22['s shape] by 7['s] to arrive at his answer, without prior study/knowledge of the answer/sequence?

No, because 22/7 is only a convenient approximation to the true value of pi. Tammet was reciting the actual digits of pi itself, not the approximation.

Here's the difference:
3.1428571428571… = 22/7
3.1415926535897… = pi
——————————-
0.0012644892673… = 22/7 - pi

As you can see, the approximation is only off by a little more than a tenth of one percent, which is good enough for most everyday purposes.

I realize when it comes to neuro, or any scientific discipline, I'm talking about issues WAY over my head.. but never-the-less.

I hope you won't be shy about commenting at TT. Everyone learns new stuff here, with this thread being an excellent example.

UcD has had some good [critics] but the resident blog nazi doesn't give 'em any room. NO POST FOR YOU!

Yes, Herr Scot seems not to realize how much more interesting a blog is when there's some give-and-take between proponents and critics. That, or he's simply afraid of having his own shallow understanding exposed, and his fragile ego punctured, by informed criticism.

I disagree (often) with ID supporters on this blog, as you know already if you've been lurking here for a while, but I will say this: folks here are not afraid of dissent, and they understand that you can't be a credible advocate for a position unless you're willing to expose your views to criticism. That makes TT a much more interesting place than Uncommon Descent.

The Coulture worship and GW crapola doesn't help either.

Bill Dembski doesn't seem to realize how much credibility UD has lost since DaveScot has been in charge. Either that, or he doesn't care anymore. Nowadays even most of the ID supporters I communicate with are shaking their heads (figuratively) over UD's decline.

Daniel T. says that he isn't doing the math, or performing some short-cut/math trick, to arrive at his answers (specifically when doing square roots). Instead he sees two, or more, numbers as shapes and in his mind's eye they merge into a new shape which is the answer… I've got the jist of it, correct?

The reason I thought Douglas made a good point about studying pi prior to reciting the sequence from memory was: Wouldn't he just have to divide 22['s shape] by 7['s] to arrive at his answer, without prior study/knowledge of the answer/sequence?

I realize when it comes to neuro, or any scientific discipline, I'm talking about issues WAY over my head.. but never-the-less.

PS,
This blog is GREAT I've been lurking for quite awhile (over a year) and the critics are as good as anywhere on the web, with the exception of maybe ISCID. Knowledgeable and civil… my goodness, [i]civil.[/i] Whodathunkit.

UcD has had some good ones but the resident blog nazi doesn't give 'em any room. NO POST FOR YOU! The Coulture worship and GW crapola doesn't help either.

Anyway… nice place you've got here and thanks for indulging this layman.

Regards,
Rob

Ramachandran, for instance, is very aware of the issue you raise, and has developed several tests which distinguish true synesthesia from a prodigious memory.

In Richard Cytowic's book The Man Who Tasted Shapes he documents several standard tests he has used. In one instance the dramatic alteration of blood flow to the processing regions during a synesthetic percept presented the strange result that the subject should have been rendered unconscious!

…which he was not, of course. Actually, many synesthetes see numbers (and sometimes letters or words) in color. Which could help explain how Tammet extends these to 'landscapes' as a way of memory-encoding them. Most functioning synesthetes have exceptional memorization skills. So a test for prodigious memory wouldn't establish anything about whether or not Tammet has 'real' synesthesia.

I was short on rote requirements my senior year in high school (having too much fun not studying), and put 'em off to the very last minute. So I memorized the entirety of Beowulf one night. Performed 50-minute segments the next day in both English Lit and drama (could have done the whole tale, but it would have taken longer than I had), aced the courses. It was a fair translation from Old English unreadable gibberish to something semi-understandable of course, maintaining metrics.

Poetry's easy because of its metrics, and so long as the specific form and the themes follow, encoding 'triggers' isn't hard. I can see how a sequence of colored numbers could suggest certain scenes - which are easy to recall from the right-brain - and which then can be 'read' for the specific sequences encoded into them.

Promptly forgot Beowulf because it was taking up room - data-dumps conserve long-term memory for more important things. Because synesthetes don't have the compartmentalized, automatic skills 'normal' people have per their interaction with the world by the time they can remember anything at all, we have to master what we do have and make it work for us.

I've always viewed it as using a tool, finding ways to make it do what you tell it to do. Probably why I was so resistant to "User Friendly" when the Macs took over from straight numbers-programming in publishing. The whole idea of a tool talking back to a user just infuriated me!

Got over it eventually… §;o)

When Daniel Tammet set the European record for pi memorization last year, absorbing 22,514 digits in just over 5 hours, he attributed the feat to his ability to see numbers as complex, three-dimensional "landscapes," complete with color, texture, and sometimes even sound.

To see whether this form of synesthesia is at the heart of Tammet's talent, neuro-scientist Vilayanur Ramachandran and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, gave the 26-year-old savant from Kent, U.K., a series of tests. He had 3 minutes to memorize 100 digits and their locations in a 10-by-10 array. When the digits were all the same size, Tammet recalled 68 correctly, and he remembered all 68 when tested again 3 days later. But when the test was given again with digits of different sizes to disrupt Tammet's synesthetic imagery, his performance plummeted to 16 correct, and zero 3 days later, according to a poster presented 10 April by Ramachandran's student Shai Azoulai at a meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in New York City.

The team now plans to investigate the multiplication skills of Tammet, who says he visualizes the shapes of the numbers to be multiplied and then reads off the product from a third shape that appears in the space between them. The researchers want him to produce a set of number shapes, in clay or on a computer, so that they can uncover principles governing his number representation.

"It's an extremely interesting idea" that such vast memory capability can be supported by synesthesia, says Lynn Robertson, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Little is known about memory tricks used by other savants because they tend to express little insight into their talents, says Ramachandran.

My only gripe is that such "renowned" and educated and respected scientists and professional could make such an obvious and silly goof, not notice it, and not have anyone else seemingly notice it, and have those scientists confidently proclaim things they have no right to proclaim.

Hi Douglas,

I don't think you're giving them enough credit. Ramachandran, for instance, is very aware of the issue you raise, and has developed several tests which distinguish true synesthesia from a prodigious memory.

One of them is a "pop-out" test, similar in concept to those colored-dot tests we've all taken at the optometrist which are used to diagnose color blindness. You can't use your memory to succeed at Ramachandran's test — you have to be a true number-color synesthete.

I'll see if I can dig up some online references for these tests.