alba wrote:
The amazing feats of calculation performed by autistic savants can be repeatedly validated. Not understanding how they do it is hardly grounds to invalidate the fact of a successful performance. Such genetically evolved skills have probably been around for some time. Maybe tens of thousands of years. Could you prove otherwise? And what if the savants also have epileptic seizures? Would you say those seizures nullify their savant talents and capabilities?
What is the percentage of our brains we don't use? Around 90%?
Really? If you compare the most advanced and highest savants' performance with the simple calculation the brain must do to recognize a chair, to calculate the way to the chair and coordinate the muscles to sit down they are not that impressive. The savants are "only" in the position to use this amazing powers of the brain for maths.
It does not make a lot of sense evolutionary to develop a big brain, which costs the body enormous amount of energy and makes the reproduction of our species more difficult (almost any mammal can give much easier birth than human) and not to use this capacity. Even: When the brain mass gets less (e.g. during ageing) there are significant effects - dementia.
alba wrote:
Having a closed mind is hardly a mark of intelligence and only fools would view it as such. Preferring to be limited because it doesn't fit into your logic boxes isn't useful to a rapidly evolving technological society. Logic is not a god to be worshipped. It is a tool to assist us with evolution, survival and technological progress. And logic isn't the only tool in the toolbox.
It is only tool we can really use - the consequent rule of a rigid logic brought within the last 400 years more progress than we had in the 100'000 years before - and the speed of progress is still accelerating.
alba wrote:
Why be so stubbornly against the idea of extra-sensory perceptions?
Plain logic: Either it is perception, than it must be sensual or it not a perception, than it can't be sensual.