Do you get jealous of savant aspies?

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Alright, this would apply to most of us with an ASD who have average intelligence with none of these wondrous savant or stroke of genius like traits that from what it seems soooo many people with Asperger's or another type of HFA seem to have.

I've always been of average intellience with really no special abilities of any kind at all sadly. I have no "stand out ability" - I don't have this strong visual memory that so many people with Asperger's are supposed to have (so they say) or advanced understanding of literature or any type of technical ability. I'm just completely unremarkable in my learning style and always have been.

This almost makes me feel cheated a bit, it would be nice to have some amazing mental skill or talent to compensate for having this rotten disorder but unfortunately that's not the case.

I've always felt a bit jealous truth be told. Everyone I've ever met with Asperger's in the real world was gifted some how intellectually.

Do you ever get jealous?

I wish I were a music savant, but not really jealous.

I have always been jealous of normal people, not understanding being an idiot savant made me hate how my mind worked.
Of course I now realize that if I had been average in my abilities it would not have helped.
At the time I believed if I could just be less smart then I would be understood and have friends. I was 8 when I memorized the Encyclopeadia Americana. Getting beat for knowing things made me very jealous of those who could ignore all the input.

Not the thread topic, but I felt opposite day was today.
Jealousy works both ways, or, the grass is always greener.

Jealousy does work both ways. But when you the type of intelligence that you describe you do have an advantage over most people regardless of how hopelessyly awkward you may feel you are socially. Honestly, I feel like I have nothing going for me *sigh*.

Being able to memorise vast amounts of information isn't all that useful if you don't know what to do with that information, or you don't have the social skills to convince people to give you a job based on your abilities.

I think the jealousy is mostly because the world really thinks that you are better if you have some special skill or if you're gifted, and you've been told it so often that you can't help but believe it. What you really want is to be treated as an equal; but people keep putting gifted/talented/savant people above you for no good reason, so naturally that makes you angry. Makes me angry too.

Okay, so I'm gifted, though only moderately... The thing is, I'm really not superior to people who aren't gifted. I didn't do anything to get good at learning; I was just born like this.

I get really mad when people look down on those who aren't gifted, or those with intellectual disabilities, or when they assume I'm better than other people because of my grades or my memory or whatever. It's like they're saying, "Go ahead, trample other human beings underfoot! You're obviously superior!" No. Absolutely no. I can't and I won't.

From my perspective, we are all just people. I've met some people who weren't very bright but still had the same curiosity and joy in learning that I do, and let me tell you--they are much more fun to spend time with than some stuck-up MENSA member who thinks they know everything and doesn't even try to learn anything new.

Plus, human beings themselves are amazing just for being humans. Just being human, you're a lot more interesting and complex than anything else on the planet. Compared to that, the differences between individual humans are actually pretty small.

Society plays into it a lot too. Some skills they value; others they don't. Intelligence (whatever the heck that is; psychologists are still arguing about it) is valued very highly. But who says intelligence is more important than, say, musical ability or video gaming skill or the ability to do a ten-hour shift as a cashier without going bonkers? Yeah. It's really arbitrary. I say we forget all those stupid standards and say, "Yeah, I'm pretty cool--and so is everybody else." Discard the ideas about what you're supposed to think of as being relevant or valuable, and you start to realize just how amazing the world and its people are.

Sure, I wouldn't mind having an amazing savant ability (but I would absolutely not wish to be an idiot savant, not for anything!), especially one that could make me quick and easy money.

Foreverlost, I don't have anything going for me either. I' have no awesome skills. I'm not "wow! level" at anything

Realisticly.

I like physics, but the relationship between the rate of electromagnetic propagation through gravity is only now beginning to be studied. My daughter is a senior in college and her biology class was discussing the recent publishing of studies showing the discovery of switching genes. She confused them a bit as I had explained both the switches and the timers to her when she was a freshman and she mentioned stuff not in the report, getting her odd looks because of facts that had not been published. When she was in junior high school we discussed what I called Yin Yang physics, I had to make up that name as quantum entanglement had not yet been published either. She tracked some items she remembered being discussed and says I run about six years ahead of published data on patterns in physics. A coherent particle beam based on quantum entanglement should be published within the next three years, I am not the only one to see patterns, I am just quicker than those with access to equipment for follow up.

This gives me no advantage and is a detriment to conversation and companionship. I am reduced to speaking with geeks like myself, and most of us do not like each other.
I could drink with coworkers at the end of the day, but would rant about NASA or voyager one signals being time altered by leaving the dense gravity around the sun. I did not socialize very long.

That was my grass is greener comment. Autistic is autistic, no advantage in how the misunderstandings happen, they are still ouch.

An example of a different sort.
Jonny is a thalidomide baby, extra fingers and toes, no left shinbone or foot, right arm fused to shoulder, no dummy but not winning math contests.
I am buff, second degree black belt in Iaido and she almost hated me she was so jealous. When I explained very candidly that I would trade my left leg right now for a normal brain she got angrier.
Wheelchair or no, she had friends. They would take her out, they would visit, they would have dinners with each other, they would gossip. I would trade a leg for that right now and it would be a good trade. I'm smart so that must be right.

Popeye was my hero, "I yam what I yam", truer words were never spoken.

I am working on acceptance, and acceptance does not include jealousy. I am 60 and may learn before I get old.
Or not, a guy I worked with got a job putting electronics packages together for upper atomosphere sampling rocket research.
I cannot help being jealous, he is busy all the time having fun now. We don't talk much anymore.

Seeing patterns in everything and forgetting nothing in not intelligent, it just is. Something reminds me of an event 48 years ago. The same now as it was ten minutes after it happened. Only those without this experience can consider being savant not a bad thing, seriously, do not be jealous of extra ways to experience pain.

Be jealous of those who can slough off insult and disappointment like it did not happen, they are happier than we.

People have called me smart my entire life. Savant? Don't know about that, but I can hold my own with academic & geeky things.

For me, the downside has been that it's always felt like I've had this tremendous pressure of others' expectations for me to do, be, or achieve something great. I've gotten the "but you're so smart.." line so many times in my life and it's *been incredibly frustrating to feel like I don't measure up to their expectations of my success.

*past tense. I'm not nearly as stressed about any of this, or anything, as I used to be.

But still, it's not necessarily better being "smart," just different with a different set of problems & stresses.

The grass is always greener...

Anyone else thinking of "Flowers for Algernon," right now? Sometimes I really wonder if ignorance would be bliss.

Meh, whatever, it is what it is for each of us & all we can do is what we can do. Kinda silly to waste time and energy thinking about things like this vs. being productive towards a goal (and maybe eventually achieving a greater level of success for it) or doing something that makes us happy.

I'm an Aspie with average intelligence, but I don't get jealous of Aspies that are cleverer than me. I just get jealous of NTs for having normal social abilities.

I don't get jealous, because I don't care.

I get jealous when people find that perfect niche career-wise. Something that calls to them, they enjoy, and rewards them financially too. I never found one direction I could just throw myself into.

I can't say I've ever really been jealous of anyone, and personally I'm more than intelligent enough to pass exams at the highest levels possible in my year, called 'credit', without even bothering to revise. IQ test I did a few days ago said 125 IQ although it was more maths than English or science or something that I'm better at than math. Lots of counting the number of letters and that kind of thing. Noticable lack of pattern recognition, which is a shame since that's a pretty good skill of mine.

My personal attitude towards this is that ignorance does nothing but cause harm. It may be bliss to be deluded for the individual but it so often harms others as we see in fundamentalist/extremist... anything really.

Edit: Pretty much all of this too.

Last edited by Urist on 11 Mar 2013, 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes. And I would specifically LOVE to know how to (successfully) count cards in the casinos XD

You know what I got out of that book? Charlie's suffering, and his desire to be normal, was never due to his disability. It was always because of how others treated him. His family sent him away. His co-workers used his disability to turn him into the butt of their jokes. Doctors patronized him and used him as a guinea pig. Later on, people kept him at a distance because of his intelligence. Charlie himself never did anything wrong--he's the sort of guy people really should like; hard-working, friendly, curious. Even when he becomes brilliant and gets moody and frustrated, he just kind of isolates himself. The conclusion I drew was that if Charlie had simply been seen as an equal by the people around him, he would never have had any problem with his disability.

lol my twin brother does this (sort of). He doesn't have to keep an accurate count to use the strategy he uses, but he used to keep a rough count fairly well. There's no point in an accurate count here anymore since autoshufflers are used every hand to reset the odds in the house' favour. He's been playing blackjack for the better part of 10 years now & over this passed Fall won more money at the tables than he made at his full time job. I asked him for his most recent strategy, and he provided it, then I read a book about blackjack strategy and card counting.. eventually I plan to give it a go and see if I can replicate his success. I think I'll be able to because it's just math & being consistent in the application of it. He wins about 80-85% of the times he plays & is Net up significantly for it. Aaaah, all in due time when I have the budget for it...