Savant syndrome

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I have savant syndrome.I have hypercalculia and a edetic memory.Are there any other savants out there and what specific skill do you have?

Don't know if I qualify or not. I'm something of a MacGyver when it comes to solving practical problems, but not so impressive as the real MacGuyver. I also have some fairly good skills with electronics and computers (mostly involving music and video), and I've successfully created a music recording studio or two and used them to make some fairly impressive music recordings. Probably the most remarkable features are that I've done it all at very low cost, and pretty much the only help I've had from others has been from my reading about it and using freeware programs that other people have created.

Me and Selma love MacGuyver with a cigarette.

Well,when I was younger, school mates would come to me and ask me about tests teachers were giving, I could tell them what I likely got, the questions asked, and I COULD tell them the answers, if pressed. I DID have an eidetic memory. To a degree, on some things I still do. And I did a lot. I used to be able to tell a person the book and page I last saw something on a particular topic. I am a bit of a MacGyver MYSELF. I got interested in Electronics when I was VERY young, and around 1979 moved into computers, and that has been my job since.

But MAN is my memory ECLECTIC! Sometimes I wonder how I even know some things, I look them up, and find I am right.

I don't have hypercalculia though. At least I am better than MOST. My father had hypercalculia though. I knew he was good, but I didn't know how good until a talk we had a week before he died. He went to IBM, looking for a job. The guy interviewing him did NOT have hypercalculia! Anyway,the interviewer kept having a problem with numbers,and was trying to figure them out, and my father just told him the answers. And my father got the job. He was with them quite a while and started his own computer business. When I talked to him about it, he said he could do things like even quickly multiply 5 digit numbers.

I wish I could say I learned computers at a low cost. 8( I started in the 1970s. I studied free stuff(Learned as much as I could without running anything. 8(), but couldn't afford the cosmac elf(DON'T ask! By todays standards it barely seems like a toy even!). Eventually, I got my father to get me an Apple II+. I pirated, and learned a few things, but then ended up getting Borland, and even microsoft stuff. a C compiler could cost like $500! In the 1990s, I got a copy of linux, but it wasn't as good as I wanted. MAN was I happy when it was improved! It was FREE, and it came with the "Gnu C Compiler"! TODAY, they changed the name of that package, BTW! It is something like "Gnu Compiler Collection"!


Aw what the heck, you want to see that funny system? http://www.cosmacelf.com/

WOW! This system paused to "verify I was human", before postingthat post! WOW!

I have hyperlexia and dyscalculia and as a kid people said I was going to grow up into a famous artist one day. But it feels like the only thing I'm good at is drawing cartoons and I don't think I really don't even that well anymore, because critics have ripped apart webcomics and animation where the art looked good to me even if it wasn't 1990s Disney quality, and I still draw everything free-hand without a computer.

And I guess soon people won't need humans, or human-like beings in my case, anymore because all art will be done by AI, if you can it art.

I've never been tested for any of those things but others have told me I have some of those qualities. When I was a teenager in Business School ~23 years ago a young woman from Hong Kong called me a "Boffin." I had to look it up to see what it meant and then the next day told her nah I don't think so.. and I remember clear as day she just looked at me with this super serious look and said "You are."

Fast forward a decade or so and I used the problem solving techniques I leaned in business school to figure out the cause of and treatment for my own ASD and comorbid symptoms and have been doing it for the last ~11 years or so, as I've been sharing on the forums. Medical studies published since have proven all of my claims and then some - especially the most recent one I read that was published in 2022. These threads are all on WP to read.

I certainly do have ASD detriments that creep up and cause me problems in work and life now and then :/ But, my problem solving skills are off the charts compared to average peoples' and I've done some work doing complex problem solving in multiple industries and was recently told by the tech company CEO I worked for during Covidtimes that I'd make a LOT of money doing business consulting. Even back in business school I'd know the solution in my head before others even realized what the problem was. Same for solving business problems over the phone. So, I have some overdue things to clear off my slate and some opportunities to meet with consultants and business school instructors whenever I want to discuss an opportunity to work with them, dip my toes in the industry their style, learn some things and perhaps pursue it solo. It might just be a way for me to make money fast enough to pursue my passions instead of working as I've been doing for hourly pay or on a contract to contract basis.. since deals can be struck to be paid for the value of the solution to a problem vs. billable hours.

Do I qualify as having those qualities? Dunno. Just like I have no idea what my IQ is. It's not important to me to pursue testing or evaluation. Can I DO things to that level? I believe I can and do and can deliver to clients faster/better than others. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Either I can do the things I claim and get paid, or I can't. Whether someone with credentials wants to put a label on me for it or not is irrelevant to me, my life, my work, my income, my goals and so on.

No, not that I know of for me.

I heard 10 % of autists have something though..

I once met a woman who at first seemed crazy, but she was just oversharing and autistic. I spoke to her for a while. She said she used to have an eidetic memory but lost it after a period of family abuse.
I wouldn't be surprised if many of us can be much more than we are if given the right environment.

I think one of the issues with savant syndrome is that it's relatively poorly defined. There's always memory skills and always some form of neurological abnormality that leads to special skills, but the rest is a bit poorly defined.

Personally, I likely have it. I've definitely got extraordinary memory, it's unclear whether I always had it or if it was the result of head injuries to the left side of my brain when I was young.

The skills are a bit less defined, I"m a wiz at taking large amounts of chaos and information and creating order out of it. That's not one of the generally recognized savant skills, but it is on the list of skills that some experts think should be included.

As a kid I taught myself to play bass by listening to records and picking the bass lines out by ear.

At the time I had no idea that this was anything special. I thought everyone could do it.

This is not that remarkable, many people do this.