Daniel Tammet has high-functioning autistic savant syndrome, he perceived the world in a different way that normal people do: he is ultra sensitive with words and numbers. He showed how he perceived the world, and wished that we can have the curiosity to open new eyes.
Book Born on a Blue Day
Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind is a personal and scientific exploration of how the brain works and the differences and similarities between savant and non-savant minds.
Tammet reminds me of the Grand Design by Stephen Hawking: A few years ago the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls. The measure's sponsor explained the measure in part by saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?
The goldfish view is not the same as our own, but goldfish could still formulate scientific laws governing the motion of the objects they observe outside their bowl. For example, due to the distortion, a freely moving object would be observed by the goldfish to move along a curved path. Nevertheless, the goldfish could formulate laws from their distorted frame of reference that would always hold true. Their laws would be more complicated than the laws in our frame, but simplicity is a matter of taste.
how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?
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