Some day you'll be as great as I am

That sentence leaves me wilth wonder. Kim Peek, a savant, said that to Daniel Tammet, another savant. Now, this is quite interesting: Kim Peek was at another level. He couldn't explain what was happening inside his mind. We know he wasn't autistic (in contrast with Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant), but his mind was arranged diferently... he didn't have a corpus callosum, a part of the brain that connects the two hemispheres. So he remembered almost everything he read. But his extraordinary memory costed him some social skills and some motor abilities.

On the other hand, Daniel Tammet is an individual that can explain what is happening inside his head. His extraordinary memory is due to synesthesia and his autistic perception. He is a polyglot and mathematician. But, his memory is short to what Kim Peek was capable of.

For me, "some day you'll be as great as I am" is a powerful phrase. Sometimes I wonder if we all have savant-like abilities. Mnemonics give me a glimpse of what savants are capable of, but I'm greately restrained in speed. Maybe I can memorize a whole phone book, but, what is the intelectual gain from it? It would take me a long time. Maybe Kim Peek, if he was alive, would memorize a whole phone book by just reading it once. That's amazing!

Well, I'll stick to what Kim Peek said: we all are unique.