The Boy With The Incredible Brain -- Critiqued

[infopractical]

Lately I've been encouraged to make more of my posts unlocked. I only do that under certain circumstances, but I feel this is an important occasion because I believe I have spotted a hoax and that I am unusually qualified to unmask it.

Comments

[yechezkiel]

IIRC, there's evidence to show that many people with synaesthesia "force" associations, that natural synaesthesia is more chaotic than how they tend to describe it from mental habit.

[infopractical]

I buy that.

Here's where Daniel's story really bothers me. He is suggesting that he's not actually calculating the way we understand calculation. He's suggesting that the shapes are doing the computations.

If he said, "I'm a great human calculator, woo hoo, and I have this synaesthesia going on in my brain that makes me see shapes and color when I do it, then I'd have no problem with his story.

But then researchers probably wouldn't tout him as a "linchpin" to further research were that the case.

[faustin]

Why don't you make the case that calculation cannot possibly be done any other way than through the more commonsense understanding of numbers as integers. That's the tight, rigorous argument that apparently needs to be made. It's sad enough that nobody has done this --- I'd expect it to have been done. I can almost do it myself, except I know fuck-all of math. I recall seeing this clearly when, years ago post-Rain Man, people were claiming that autistics did calculations without calculating... say 1996.

This would be a solid piece of work on the intersection of metaphysics, cognition and math, and it would nip this BS in the bud. If I can see how it can be done, you clearly are someone who should just do it.

[infopractical]

For me, not getting involved is a matter of priority. I have too much going in my life as it is.

Why don't you make the case that calculation cannot possibly be done any other way than through the more commonsense understanding of numbers as integers.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. I can certainly see physical analogies being conjured for performing computation. The integers have various algebraic and geometric properties. So it's not that I believe computation can't happen the way Daniel describes it. It's that I don't believe that's how he's doing it.

It was the highly convenient problem choice that convinced me of as much.

I also find it offensive that researchers tout him as some kind of "Rosetta Stone", as if this "shape computation" is something that's going to be taught in elementary schools a few years down the road. If that's what my tax dollars are going to fund at the Salk Institute, I want my money back.

[faustin]

For synasthesia to work for computation, you'd have to strip the arithmetic properties away from what is, simply, arithmetic

[infopractical]

I'm not sure he's claiming not to perform computations in getting his answers. I think he's just claiming an alternate mechanism, something like an abacus in his brain, where the numbers takes on colors, shapes, and textures.

All that I'm fine with. I use geometries of integers -- not nearly so explicitly -- but I even (re)teach arithmetic to my students that way.

Where I'm not fine is where he claims that he's not consciously controlling the abacus -- that the numbers just dance around in his head and spawn new numbers between them.

Perhaps that's what you're trying to say, but I feel like this is the right way to boil the issue down to something thick and tasty. There must be an abacus.

[yechezkiel]

I can understand how a person with an autism-spectrum disorder would see the synaesthesia as the calculator, though. I think it's a symptom of his mental illness, not a real descriptor.

[infopractical]

I'm fine with a synaesthetic calculator. But that's not exactly what he's describing (or that "researchers" are so excited about). He claims he doesn't push the buttons to the calculator and that he doesn't even know the mechanism by which it works. That's where I call bullshit.

He teaches math. But he doesn't know how his own arithmetic works?

It's just too convenient, particularly for the researchers who want to call his "synaesthetic calculator" some kind of "Rosetta Stone" for human evolution in computation or math ability.

[yechezkiel]

I agree.