How do you tell if someone is a savant?

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Equiis ~It will be a great debate, but not here. I get the feeling it would be hijacking a thread, and this is a thread with interest of its own and needs to be allowed to develop.

Maybe you would like to start the physics-over-rationalization? theme as a thread?

Btw, those dots weren't galaxy representations.

They're just what happens when you roll a number line up around an archimedean spiral.

Equiis- That was an invitation to a constructive debate . Please place what you thought I meant within that context and reevaluate .

I have a savant friend, so all basing my knowledge off experience:
A savant is a person with any exceptional ability in usually one or two (most often related) fields. Such as art or music or whatnot. My friend is a savant in art.
Now I have talent and he has savant ability. And I am greatly above him in social skills, but he is greatly above me in artistic skills. Of course like all artists we have both learned to see what is in front of us and be able to apply that into our art. We have both also been able to draw from our memory, although he is better at that since he has been doing art longer. But things he can do that I have not seen anyone else do is be able to emulate other people's art styles, draw absolutely anything he imagine without any sort of reference (including humans which is one of the most difficult subjects I believe in art). Another thing is he has a good memory. Like his favorite show is Family Guy, and he constantly recites dialogue using the same tones and voices as the actual lines of the characters in order to amuse me. He fails, but I still laugh . Another example is we watched a movie in class, and afterwards he was able to repeat a long monologue verbatim made by one of the characters. I think it's important to know that he only has to watch these things once in order to remember them.
But then for some reason he is terrible at remembering other things like deadlines. Then again, I am too.
So I could guess that what differentiates them from being only talented is that there is some disorder or deficiency they have that "balances" them out. So they're not entirely superhuman, but then still exceptional.

ie Michelangelo, daVinci, Isaac Newton, etc

Savants are people with rewired brains. There's usually some sort of brain damage, and neuroplasticity takes over with the result being an exceptional skill at times. About 10% of hfa/aspergers have some sort of savant skill.

I'm a savant of sorts for certain types of games. I play merit megatouch games in the bar. Photohunt, photopop, and taiplay mostly. I'm a top scorer in the DFW area for Photohunt, though have seem much higher scores online. I only get 400k+. Photopop I've gotten to level 237 on the erotica version, with a score of like 11million and some change. Never seen anything remotely close to that. Taiplay I'm probably best in the state at 358,960. I've seen just one person on youtube that has scored higher.

I can definitely focus much more intensely than most anyone else I've met at things that interest me. Just the way I'm wired.

Here's me playing Tai-Play last year. When I watch the video, it really doesn't seem like much, but it's a bit different when you're in front of the screen.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JBsPyXf0Rs[/youtube]

Daniel Tammet is not a prodigious or autistic savant. He is an AQUIRED savant, he aqured his savant-like abilities though brain injury. Yes I know what wiki says *rolls eyes*, but see what he says for himself about it. It's the most common way for non-autistic people to become savants.

And just wondering when you guys talk about savants, do you mean Autstic-Savants or Prodigious Savants (savant syndrome)? Cause both are exceedingly rare.

I am definitely confused! I have grown up being taught one thing about savants which has been reinforced by everything I've seen/read/heard since, and now I come here, and apparently that 25 years of information was all wrong and EVERYONE and ANYONE who excels at anything is a savant...or erm...mild savant *cough*.

Seems like a bit of a reach, or really it sounds to me like a bunch of people want to be savants (it is kinda cool) and are stretching the truth and the reality of the definition/s to make it so they can be. But really, they're just very talented and learned at what ever it is they're doing. Savants aren't talented or learned or practiced, they just are. I read an article once that stated what makes a savant is "the absence of reason" as in, they shouldn't logically be able to know or do what they do....but they can. It is beyond understanding and no logical connection can be made between life experience and their abilities, it just is. There is no reason why or how, it just is, and that's what makes a savant a savant. (?????)

The fact that I live with my bro who is what most people would consider to be a typical old skool "idiot savant" type doesn't help the rigidity of my thinking in this area. It's not like any thing else, it's like a miracle, and that's not going overboard. It really is. I'm going to ask a few people who are more in the know about it to find out more.