Incredible brain

[wolram]

http://www.movieburst.org/watch/120/The-Boy-With-The-Incredible-Brain/1

Could we change/adapt to a different way of thinking?

[Chaos' lil bro Order]

http://www.movieburst.org/watch/120/The-Boy-With-The-Incredible-Brain/1

Could we change/adapt to a different way of thinking?

In my opinion its not a matter of adaptation or changing how we think, as a process that can be tinkered and refined. People like Daniel are born with special connection between the unconscious and conscious pathways in the brain, and this allows them to make such calculations.

Perhaps if neurologists could isolate said pathways and pioneer a technique to operate them into normal brained people, they could duplicate such results. But in my opinion, its not a software issue, its a hardware issue, and no matter how well you write Windows Vista, it will never run quickly on a 1Ghz chip, with a small Bus.

[Betwixtwists]

I agree with Chaos, a link between waking mind and unconscious looks to fit Daniel. Absolutely amazing person. What defines his way of thinking versus our own would be a neat question too. He said he's been doing calculation since he was four years old, perhaps his own childish mind games/obsessions allowed him to link between this world and his own?

[Betwixtwists]

Also, after hearing from friends who watched Operah...Ohpera? Opera... Oprah? Okay, anyway, they had seen a show where children as young as ten had amazing talent when it came to painting, or even younger children possessed the ability to point out any country on the globe. The latter was 1 and 1/2 I believe. I can believe that nature/nurture had something to do with this, but also in what combinations they were given. A child who's capacity for mathematics was beyond many others, and at the same time the parents were willing to give the child the tools to learn about mathematics as well.

As the parent of a newborn I've been shown many interesting facts, some, though, even debatable or fairly new to the world. One thing that has been heard of for awhile is that a child's brain grows most between birth and the age of 3, where all of their motor skills/ sight/ emotional/ communication skills are changed the most. It seemed cool that Daniel's calculations started at the age of four, a year after said skill had been "maxed" for "capacity". Theoretically, his advantage was a mixture of at least a few things and possibly more:

His capacity was increased during those years, allowing the Nurture factor to bring him up to his Natural capacity. Perhaps his imagination (the visualization of "sparks" and other things, as he said) was included to help the latter.

After the first three years these windows of learning close, or so I've been told. I imagine that this is an estimation and so again I think that his Nature is math, it was nurturing and a combination of other elements that allowed him to become who he became.

-My apologies for incorrect spelling and grammar.

[Lanka]

I agree with Betwixtwists in that much of a person's brain capacity is biological in nature. It is the whole nature v. nurture argument. Though a person can overcome adversity, their bringing up is important in their ability to learn and even their desire to learn. On the other hand, though intelligence can change slightly over time, out natural brain capacity has a large impact.

While most people can preform complex mathematical operations, like 93^6, and most people can learn other languages, what makes us different from Daniel is the amount of time both of these tasks require.

Again, our desire to "change/adapt to a different way of thinking" is a large role in it being possible at all. Some people simply don't want to learn. Thus, this change or adaption might have to happen mostlyon an individual basis.

[DrClapeyron]

Can he lower gas prices?

[Lanka]

Thanks for starting this post, Wolram! That video fascinated me and I think I'll write my psychology paper on this...synethstesia and/or giftedness/high IQ and/or high memory capabilities.

[Chaos' lil bro Order]

I agree with Betwixtwists in that much of a person's brain capacity is biological in nature. It is the whole nature v. nurture argument. Though a person can overcome adversity, their bringing up is important in their ability to learn and even their desire to learn. On the other hand, though intelligence can change slightly over time, out natural brain capacity has a large impact.

While most people can preform complex mathematical operations, like 93^6, and most people can learn other languages, what makes us different from Daniel is the amount of time both of these tasks require.

Again, our desire to "change/adapt to a different way of thinking" is a large role in it being possible at all. Some people simply don't want to learn. Thus, this change or adaption might have to happen mostlyon an individual basis.


I agree with you Lanka, Daniel can do it faster, that is his talent. I taught myself a year ago to do multiplications of 4x4 numbers, like 8493 x 3892 in my head. But it takes me up to 3 minutes to finish. I suppose if I really trained hard I could do it in 30 seconds, but definitely no faster. My intelligence is just average I would say and my memory is poor. Still, given a few days, I bet you I could memorize a series of digits 500 digits long using simple mnemonics techniques. Point being, Daniel could do this within seconds, and that is why I believe his unconscious does most of the work and his conscious pulls out the solution and reads it aloud to you or me.

I wish I had the link, but I recall a radio show with a neurologist who spoke about quantifying just how much faster our unconsciouses process data than our conscious mind. As I recall he threw out the number 50,000x times faster, which I'm not sure how that number was come to, but it seems rather reasonable to me. What do you think?

[Kirl]

I haven't watched it to the end, but I remember other research that found people with these gifts are using different areas of the brain. Facial recognition is a seperate brain function for example, wich we do with incredible speed and precision, without making an effort. They found that these people are using facial recognition areas (or other faster brain areas/functions) to do these amazing feats. They remapped their brain.

Ah never mind, I reached the bit about synesthesia just now...


Also there is this crazy scientist who says he can enable these abilities by disabling certain areas of the brain (by a series of very weak electro shocks).

The idea here is that over time we limmit ourselves by conforming to things such as language and running all of our thought processes through our intricate web of mental filters (to block out noise, to complete our vision, to anticipate whats going to happen etc etc).
All of this works together to create our own reality (one we can cope with) and to keep us focussed and 'sane'.


For more info read the extract from "Practical Parenting in a Fractally Demented Universe". :smile:

"We live in strange times."

"We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, " Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How’s Carol?" involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble. So give your kid a break, okay?'

...extract from Practical Parenting in a Fractally Demented Universe"

[OrbitalPower]

Geez, did they use the whole American Beauty soundtrack or something?

Anyway, Euler could do that. He actually could do it with things like square roots and so on as well. There was an argument between two people, and he the division of a number to 50 decimal places to determine who was correct. This kind of thing has been around for ages.

There are also methods you can teach yourself on how to do speed mathematics.

[Chaos' lil bro Order]

Geez, did they use the whole American Beauty soundtrack or something?

Anyway, Euler could do that. He actually could do it with things like square roots and so on as well. There was an argument between two people, and he the division of a number to 50 decimal places to determine who was correct. This kind of thing has been around for ages.

There are also methods you can teach yourself on how to do speed mathematics.

I am always looking for new tricks in life. Do you have a link to some methods?