Autistic Savants

One of the threads that Peter Watts wove into his picture of Vampire Domestication was the connection with the human brain’s facility of pattern matching and the apparent ability of savants to "calculate" difficult mathematical problems instantly. I put quotes around the word calculate, because a savant isn’t really "calculating" at all – the answer is just apparent to them.

By coincidence, I was reading today in the Guardian about the documentary that has been made about Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant. That triggered a memory, and sure enough, I had read an article on Tammet in the Guardian a few months back. Tammet is unusual in that he can describe how he does these feats of mathematical wizardry to ordinary mortals like us. The article is well worth reading and gives a brief glimpse into another way of experiencing the world.