Poll of the Day > This guy kinda seems like a fraud to me

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So in short a guy gets robbed, beat up, and wakes up and is now a savant. He claims he started seeing weird patterns and shapes and shit, which, as a non mathematically inclined person, he didn't know those were explainable by math, so then after drawing tons of these images, he claims he met a physicist by chance and he encouraged him to seek formal math classes, and he did.

random video about him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX6ONPQGBfo&t=625s

Okay, my issue isn't that he claims he got beat up and woke up as a savant and started drawing these images. That seems plausible, to me, but I dont know how the human brain works.

what gets me is that he is a savant, yet ALL he seems to have done with this power is draw images and sell them

https://jason-padgett.pixels.com/

Where's his major scientific/mathematic breakthrough? It seems like his talents are either not there(in the sense he may be an artist but not a savant), or if he is an actual savant, his talents seem wasted like Gordon Ramsey handing out shrimp in a costco as a sample

Idk, what do you guys think?

here is a TED talk he gives...his story seems kinda weird, like he mentioned after the attack he pretty much stayed indoors for 3 years and went out one day because he needed food. Maybe somebody was brining him food the entire time, or used a delivery service. But it seems like he somehow had enough food for 3 years, then ran out, had to go to the store...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDU7lEmiiD8

this just seems weird, like a made up story to be honest. the way he tells it doesnt seem very convincing.

However if he is real and what I claim is bullshit, so be it, I will take back my words. Just seems a little fishy a savant is making and selling images but not really contributing to science/mathematics as a whole in any real way.

I think knowledge and ambition are 2 different things

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a lot of math isnt even real

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IMAGINARY numbers

con artist that wanted to sell art

next

not an expert but I agree he doesn't seem like a savant. afaik a savant is someone who has devoted extraordinary amounts of their neural resources to a single narrow skill. this makes then impossibly good at that one skill, but completely lacking in just about every other way. this is (I guess) not something you'd acquire through brain damage, it's related to mental development. you don't just hit your head and gain a magical skill.

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argonautweakend posted...

here is a TED talk he gives...his story seems kinda weird, like he mentioned after the attack he pretty much stayed indoors for 3 years and went out one day because he needed food. Maybe somebody was brining him food the entire time, or used a delivery service. But it seems like he somehow had enough food for 3 years, then ran out, had to go to the store...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDU7lEmiiD8

this just seems weird, like a made up story to be honest. the way he tells it doesnt seem very convincing.

However if he is real and what I claim is bullshit, so be it, I will take back my words. Just seems a little fishy a savant is making and selling images but not really contributing to science/mathematics as a whole in any real way.

I'm sorry, but who says he has to contribute to science or mathematics at all? What I get from your post, and the OP's post, is that he should be required to participate in these subjects against his will. Sounds like the same situation John Galt was put in in Atlas Shrugged, and he just said "Fuck you, I control my mind and no one else."

So I will say to you "A man's mind is his own to do with as he chooses and nothing you can do will change that"