autistic guy draws near perfect panorama of Rome

[TransformX]

That kind of generalization is plain stupid. A moron is, by formal definition, an adult with a mental age of between about eight and twelve. If you consider "moronic traits" to include anyone who occasionally acts like a child, well and good. I don't consider this to be the case and is rather insulting. This guy is very obviously not a moron. I think it is also plain stupid for anyone here to try and categorise his disabilities from a clip of a few minutes designed to display his extraordinary ability. I saw nothing in the film to make me consider he is an idiot savant. In any case, the term is almost meaningless as "idiot" is not a medical term that can be defined, unlike "moron". It is a popular word meaning someone of very low intelligence. Autism is not necessarily linked with low intelligence; more often than not, autistic persons are of high intelligence but who have lost the means, to some extent, to interact with their environment.

As for your analogies, well ....

Moron wasn't used as a medical term. People refer to GWB as one.
As for the rest, who are you to judge? What 'traits' do you have?
By the way, you might be needing a hearing aid. The clip starts by claiming he's a "star among savants".

http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/

As a child, Stephen was mute and did not relate to other human beings. Aged three, he was diagnosed as autistic. He had no language, uncontrolled tantrums and lived entirely in his own world.

At the age of five, Stephen was sent to Queensmill School in London, a school for children with special needs, where it was noticed that the only pastime he enjoyed was drawing. It soon became apparent he communicated with the world through the language of drawing; first animals, then London buses, and finally buildings. These drawings show a masterful perspective, a whimsical line and reveal a natural innate artistry.

Aged eight, Stephen started drawing cityscapes after the effects of an earthquake (all imaginary) as a result of being shown photographs of earthquakes in a book at school. He also became obsessed with cars and illustrations of cars at this time (his knowledge of them is encyclopaedic) and he drew most of the major London landmarks.

In 1987, the BBC QED programme, 'The Foolish Wise Ones', featured Stephen's astounding talent. The programme was devoted to three autistic savants: musical, mathematical and artistic. Stephen was introduced by Sir Hugh Casson (past president of the Royal Academy), who described him as "the best child artist in Britain". Stephen's work has since been the subject of numerous television programmes around the world, and the writer and psychologist, Oliver Sacks, has devoted an essay to Stephen in his book An Anthropologist On Mars (Picador 1995). Stephen is the only artistic autistic savant in the world whose work has been recorded and published since his childhood. His third book - Floating Cities (Michael Joseph, 1991) - was number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list.

[Brian Ellis]

Gurm used the term "idiot savant" in his denigration of these "marginally people". I suppose you agree with him, as you attack me for reprimanding him for his insensitivity?

[TransformX]

What I claim, over and over again is that like a GPU vs. a CPU, his brain is tuned radically different than ours. So yes, he has this gift, but the price is immensly higher than whatever this gift is worth. Someone amazing is someone so gifted without being so severely F*cked up. Stephen Hawking has an amazing brain, but his body is a whole different opera. I see a difference between an amazing person and an amazing ability or a gift. If you can bend your arm three ways because it's broken, there's little to be amazed about..

[Sasq]

* David Helfgott, 1947-, Australian pianist, subject of the film Shine
Wasn't even that good a pianist.

Have you ever seen him play, have you ever seen him play flight of the bumble bee flawlessly twice in a row, and start in on the third before they actually had to stop him because of all the applause.

Your points are way off mark

[TransformX]

Have you ever seen him play, have you ever seen him play flight of the bumble bee flawlessly twice in a row, and start in on the third before they actually had to stop him because of all the applause.

Your points are way off mark

Nope, but I've read numerous reviews about his abilities to play Rachmaninoff, which could be summed from wikipedia:

However, some of his recordings, especially that of Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto, have been criticized as "pallid, erratic and incoherent."

edit: Obviously not in the same category as Vladimir Horowitz, Vladimir Ashkenazy or Sergei Rachmaninoff himself.
some examples can be found here - http://gregsandow.com/rach3.htm

[Gurm]

Watching him, I'd actually say he's a rather high-functioning autistic. Certainly not low-functioning.

What we would settle for and what we are left with are often very different things. The fact that there have been people like this all throughout history doesn't make the fact that they exist with the abilities they do any less amazing.

Marginally "people"? As a parent of a child with disabilities and as a Special Olympics coach of several autistic children, I'd say that's a rather misinformed and judgmental statement.

I didn't mean any offense, JW. I'm sure you know that. Most idiot savants are nowhere near a level where they can interact with the rest of society, or even with their families.

I'm not talking about autistic kids who can be interacted with. True idiot savants couldn't participate in the special olympics, because they couldn't be made to understand that there WAS a special olympics, or that there WAS such a thing as running or swimming or anything.

[Gurm]

Is everyone so completely locked into the feel-good "everyone is special" rhetoric that they can't grasp the obvious? If you can draw cityscapes, but you can't clean yourself... that's only marginally a "gift". Is there a "person" in there, locked away, where nobody can find it? I don't know. You don't know. NOBODY knows. To say that there MUST be, because they have human bodies and can draw amazing pictures, is optimistic at best!

I draw a HUGE distinction between this sort of person, whose brain is fundamentally and horribly askew... and the mildly retarded or learning disabled. There are things that can go terribly wrong with the development of the brain. Some autistics just need to have the world... "interpreted" for them in ways they can understand. Others can NEVER communicate, can NEVER understand the world, can NEVER be understood.

Is it insensitive for me to say that those folks are only marginally "people"? Perhaps you misunderstand. I consider someone far progressed in alzheimers to no longer be a "person", either. I consider people in a persistent vegetative state, with higher brain functions gone, to not really be a "person". Are they human? Certainly. Do they have rights? Unquestionably. Are they "people", in the sense that you or I are? No.

My brother-in-law is mentally handicapped. And yet he's a person, a GOOD person, worth knowing even though knowing and being with him can be difficult. He can't draw pretty pictures, but he has basic human reasoning and understanding. From the description of this guy in the video, he does not. Maybe he does, maybe the write-up exaggerated. That would be GREAT. But throughout history there have been people capable of amazing feats which most of us cannot even begin to fathom... but who can't feed themselves or walk from where they are to the toilet without forgetting where they are going and soiling themselves.

Perhaps I'm on the pessimistic end of the scale. Or maybe you're being blindly optimistic. We won't know until our knowledge of the brain progresses far beyond where we are now. Until then, we as a society try to care for these "people" as best we can, knowing that beyond their "amazing gift" there is nothing else there that we can understand or interact with.

[Gurm]

This guy is not an idiot savant, he understands what is going on around him and can hold conversations. Unlike some autistic persons, he does not appear to be withdrawn into himself.

That's not what the writeup said. If so, that's awesome!

Even those that are can be very loving people with individual personalities. Each person in this world, even the great Gurm, has his cerebral pluses and minuses. Those that take advantage of their pluses are great. The following individuals all had/have autistic traits: are they all "marginally people"?

There's a difference between "autistic traits" and ... y'know what? You're purposely not getting it. Nevermind.

[Gurm]

Ahh, the further information indicates that as an adult he managed to learn to talk to people. Excellent! That's great, puts him in a rare class indeed. Still ... not sure that I'd call his abilities a "gift", considering what it cost.

[Brian Ellis]

Maybe autism is the norm and it's those who can communicate who are abnormal. Certainly, communication has caused a great deal of harm in this world. Think of the Nuremburg rally where Hitler hypnotised the people into supporting his evil ways. Think of 9/11 which would not have been possible without communications and think of the evil that is happening in Iraq today. Perhaps its the so-called modern intelligent man who is the deviant. If we deny this as being impossible, then this is arrogance.

[TransformX]

Maybe autism is the norm and it's those who can communicate who are abnormal. Certainly, communication has caused a great deal of harm in this world. Think of the Nuremburg rally where Hitler hypnotised the people into supporting his evil ways. Think of 9/11 which would not have been possible without communications and think of the evil that is happening in Iraq today. Perhaps its the so-called modern intelligent man who is the deviant. If we deny this as being impossible, then this is arrogance.

Maybe Global Warming is good? Maybe defecating yourself instead of using the toilet is good? Maybe starving because you can't grasp such simple concepts as "where does food come from" is nice? How about murder, rape, abuse etc, because without communication or empathy, you don't know or care how the other feels about things.

edit: Fact is, animals communicate, hunt together etc. If it's good for them, it sure is good for me.

[Gurm]

I find it amusing that, devoid of any other non-touchy-feely argument to fall back on, you're forced to stoop to "well maybe WE'RE the ones that are the aberration".

PLEASE.

Sometimes, someone is born BROKEN. Often we can help, maybe even fix, what is wrong. Other times we can't fix it, or help it much, but we can live with it because it's not that bad a break. But other times, they're broken so badly that nothing can be done.

To deny that is just hopeful nonsense.

------------------

There was a recent article (two weeks ago) in the Boston Globe Magazine from a woman who was the parent of a retarded child. She put forth the (somewhat common nowadays) argument that it's a BLESSING to have such a child. The context, of course, was that there are new tests that will let you determine if you're going to have a brain-damaged, retarded, or profoundly autistic child... and presumably then choose whether to abort or not. Her argument, like that of many others, is that it's WRONG to abort a child just because it will be born terribly retarded or autistic. Many people wrote in to support her argument. Many said things like "I grew up with a mentally challenged sister and it made me the person I am today!" Almost nobody dissented from her point of view, except...

One woman wrote in and said:

I have a 17-year-old with severe autism and retardation. If there had been a test that showed problems with the fetus when I was pregnant, I would have aborted it in a heartbeat. Frankly, I have not found any profound wisdom or strength in having a disabled child. I have found exhaustion, anger, frustration, fear, and desperation. She screams, she bites to the point of bleeding, she eats her feces – it’s a living hell.
Senator seems to think that giving birth to a child that is known to have problems is a noble, humble act. But severely disabled children drain not only families but also society of money, time, and energy. These children who need constant care (possibly their entire lives) often will never be a useful part of society; in the home setting, they take more time and attention away from the other children. We love our daughter and have found a wonderful home for her. I get down on my knees and thank whatever higher power there is that there are wonderful people who will take care of my child, since I guess she isn’t lucky to have me.

E. Eastteam
Auburn, California

I'm not suggesting that all mentally handicapped children/people fall into this category (in fact most don't!), but clearly some do.

[az]

I could have written what she has.