Daniel Tammet (1979-) - One of Only a few Autistic Savants with the Ability To Describe His Personal Experiences

[DonRocks]

1 hour ago, JimCo said:

Exactly. Because even if you get it right, you’ve potentially stressed out your guest unnecessarily. 

As soon I saw nothing being written down, my mind immediately went to, “Oh shit, here we go...”

It's funny how one thing leads to another.

Because of Jim's post, I'm watching "Rain Man" for the second time in my life.

(By the way, this film is a whole lot deeper than I thought it was.)

All because I was thinking about Daniel Tammet, and there's one thing I don't understand:

In his Wikipedia entry, it says that Tammet:

---

In his mind, Tammet says, each positive integer up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, colour, texture and feel. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi, though not an integer, as beautiful. The number 6 apparently has no distinct image yet what he describes as an almost small nothingness, opposite to the number 9 which he calls large, towering, and quite intimidating. He also describes the number 117 as "a handsome number. It's tall, it's a lanky number, a little bit wobbly".^[9][32] In his memoir, he describes experiencing a synaesthetic and emotional response for numbers and words.^[9]

---

What I don't understand ... is it the actual, mathematical quantity that Tagget finds ugly/beautiful, or is it the look of the Arabic Numerals that he finds visually repulsive/attracitve? My guess is that it's the Arabic Numeral representations - I can see the numbers "117" and "333" as being "beautiful," and the number "289" as being "ugly," but only in their Arabic notation; not as a string of bits. I distinctly remember Tagget telling David Letterman that he looked like a "117" - Letterman is tall and lean, and this would be intuitive. 

I'm pretty sure 117 is a prime number, and mathematically speaking, I can't imagine what's so beautiful about that as opposed to, say, 113 (which I'm guessing is also prime) - it must be the Arabic representations, right?

Does what I'm saying make sense?

More than anything else, Tammet comes across to me as a genuinely nice person - I've seen him on numerous occasions, and have paid close attention to what he does, says, and how he acts - he is just an all-around good human being, and that's what impresses me about him the most.

[porcupine]

What you're saying makes sense, but the answer is not simple. Read about the different forms of synaesthesia.

[DonRocks]

13 hours ago, porcupine said:

What you're saying makes sense, but the answer is not simple. Read about the different forms of synaesthesia.

Oh, I'm well-aware about synaesthesia - he may see colors, and he may even hear things.Tammet is so unique in that he can describe what he "sees," so I suspect the information in Wikipedia is merely incomplete, rather than indescribable (by him). Tammet would go on my short list of "Living People You'd Like To Have Dinner With" (assuming he wouldn't mind discussing the subject, which I'm sure grows weary).