This could be done with a few people eg: “The remarkable brain of a nightclub bouncer with the worlds highest IQ.”
The article talks of him like he’s a child. Bouncing around at all the attention. Thrilled to make new friends. Bordering on mockery. Hidden behind wonder, the call goes out: look at you, who are not one of us. A carnival ride for the writer, gather ‘round everyone!
Smart enough to do anything he wants, not smart enough to be normal.
“There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.“
I read a lot of the same things, but picked up an aspirational undertone instead of mockery. I definitely didn't see it presenting him like a child. But ymmv.
Is it "normal" for Americans to not only not be able to speak a foreign language, but to not even know what the word "polyglot" means, and look at one like you would look at an alien (one from outer space, I mean, not one from another country)?
I share the sentiment however the grain of truth here is that it does take a lot of effort to appear normal. The essence of being normal is trying to appear normal which is what most people are engaged in most of the time.
The hidden motivation behind this is fear of other people and the fear of evil which for most people has all but conquered their love of reality, truth, and so on.
If one does have other genuine interests and pursuits (for example foreign languages) then the task of appearing normal is harder. So the implication that he isn't smart enough to be normal is in this sense correct.
Which by the by suggests that motivation is the key to learning, not attention control, repetition, particular books, starting young or the other usual suspects and methods. These are downstream from motivation.
As someone who sometimes wonders if he has autistic traits, I found it refreshing that the article didn't try to be over-inclusive. Okay! The dude doesn't think "neurotypically"! Don't sugarcoat it.
I think they presented it honestly without being derisive.
I didnt get the same feeling. I saw it as another opportunity to show how much science and experts "dont understand". For instance, there is no way that any kind of C.A.T., M.R.I, E.K.G, E.E.G, LMNOP scan could show enough about it to duplicate it. Why even bother. Just try to understand how -if its important enough to you- he accomplished it. It looks like he can because he wanted to. He got fascinated by language and set himself to learn, "LEARN" as many as he could. So the attention isnt created by him. He was found out to be who he is and gained attention, possibly unwanted. So, I think that you may feel like mocking the event. I appreciate it as he doesn't seem to be a savant. Just an ordinary guy that set himself to be able to speak to whomsoever he came across. As a carpet cleaner, I bet it comes in handy.
My kids are natively bilingual, with their mother speaking to them in Spanish¹ and me in English from infancy. They're about to be 8 and are curious about other languages (my son wants to learn French, my daughter Japanese). It's interesting to see how they have fairly different personalities depending on their linguistic context. In English, my daughter is more extroverted, my son more introverted, the reverse is the case in Spanish. I don't think it's a matter of comfort in the languages—my son has had a strong attention to gradations of meaning between words in both languages. I’m looking forward to seeing how their linguistic skills develop as they get older. If it weren’t for Covid, they would have started French classes on weekends last year, but maybe we’ll get there in the next year or so. Otherwise, they may have to pick up French from visits with their Mexican/Belgian cousins.
⸻
1. My wife is a native speaker of Spanish. Her English is accentless² and she has above-average reading/speaking/writing skills in English. She also speaks French.³
2. Mostly. Schwas still trip her up from time to time.
3. Most of her family is at least trilingual, speaking English, Spanish and one other language. I think her cousin with the most languages has five: English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic. At his sister's wedding, he gave a toast in French with a flawless accent⁴ that blew me away. I often joke that I almost speak one language, but I haven't learned all the words in English yet. I'm semi-functional in Spanish, but my kids are quick to point out that my accent is “horrible” and with my hearing loss, it’s a challenge to participate in conversations. There are a few languages I can read with a dictionary, but I don’t know that I can claim any facility in them.⁵
4. I suspected that his accent was good, but I verified it with the francophones at his sister’s wedding (she married a quadrilingual Belgian).
5. One thing I’ve found is that in general, Americans tend to overestimate their linguistic abilities and non-Americans to underestimate their skills. It’s typical that someone who took a couple years of French in high school ten years ago and hasn’t used it since will claim that they speak French. A European who says that they speak “a little” Italian will be able to function just fine in a conversation with an Italian.
Languages need a lot of upkeep in order to be fluent. For a single language you are talking about over 10000 vocabulary words and hundreds of grammatical patterns not to mention learning the normal way to say things like what verbs typically go with a noun. And then there's also deeper learning the correct way to pronounce everything let alone the mannerism and body language you should use while speaking it. You have to do all of this without losing competency with any of the other languages you know and without mixing up anything between them.
In order to reach these crazy high number of languages you will have to make compromises.
Roughly 2000 words are enough for a basic level. Because some of these languages are related, their vocabulary and grammatical patterns overlap.
You are underestimating the capability of some people to memorize certain information. Sometimes it is called "eidetic" memory. The best chess players just don't forget any chess position they ever see. Similar reports in music. Most of them are useless when memorizing any other form of "data". The carpet cleaner in question probably has that facility for words, phonemes and grammar. He just doesn't forget that stuff.
> The way Vaughn describes it, any time he reads something in a book, he can remember it almost perfectly. When he returned to school, he had even more to say, and more that he could understand.
Rather, as with programming languages, the first five paradigms are the hardest. ;)
As a native Scandinavian, I understand most Scandinavian (except Finnish) without having spent more than fifty hours with various Scandinavians, and without having attempted to learn much. (It's mostly deciphering dialects, remapping certain words.) Having unwillingly learned German as a child, I can enjoy German television and navigate German cities as a confident, talkative tourist. Having learned fluent Esperanto, I can decipher a bunch of words in French and Italian, but can't follow conversation.
As for Chinese, 1.5 years in, I can form sentences like a shy 1.5-year-old: Anything above 3 characters is probably grammatically incorrect, or "you could say that... but a native speaker wouldn't." Different paradigm altogether. But a Chinese can pick up decent Japanese in less time. (https://www.quora.com/How-difficult-is-is-to-learn-Japanese-...)
Learning Ruby if you know Python is kind of learning another European language, if you already know one.
Learning Haskell or Prolog is kind of learning Chinese if you only know imperative languages.
It sounds in several places in the article like he has a severe case of impostor syndrome.
Fortunately (spoiler) at the end of the article, after his time at the MIT research lab, he sees that some traditionally super smart people value him and see him as intellectually special.
No, he wouldn’t. Programming languages have virtually no vocabulary, compared to natural languages. The differences between two programming languages aren’t the same kind of thing as the differences between two natural languages. Developers already pick up new programming languages easily, and talent there comes from being able to absorb its documentation rapidly.
If we know he has a good memory and doesn’t forget stuff, that is generally an advantage, but the connection that it is a “language” is not the reason.
My natural aptitude for reading programming languages has never helped me out speaking languages. After 20 years, I still only speak 3 words of French. Inability to pronounce or hear certain phonemes is a real phenomenon.
I thought I'm quite good with my about 7 foreign languages with basic competency. I only ever became really fluent in English though. My latest addition was Arabic, and the Duolingo course wasn't exactly deep.
Interesting. The end implies he doesn't want to clean carpets any more. I hope he can find a job translating in a capacity that makes him happy to use his language skills he clearly finds so much joy from.
He probably doesn't have the skills for a traditional translating job, just as the average bilingual person hasn't. There are jobs for "unskilled" translators, not sure how much and in what contexts. Not sure if there is a job description out there for "hyper-polyglot genius". Niche-skill at best, unfortunately.
My experience with these guys(usually kids) is they speak English well and can say a couple of phrases out of the other languages. The trick is they confidently copy the intonation of the language they're "speaking" in to fool those who dont speak it.
[+] [-] Ir0nMan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] regpertom|4 years ago|reply
The article talks of him like he’s a child. Bouncing around at all the attention. Thrilled to make new friends. Bordering on mockery. Hidden behind wonder, the call goes out: look at you, who are not one of us. A carnival ride for the writer, gather ‘round everyone!
Smart enough to do anything he wants, not smart enough to be normal.
“There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.“
[+] [-] grayclhn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rob74|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fristechill|4 years ago|reply
The hidden motivation behind this is fear of other people and the fear of evil which for most people has all but conquered their love of reality, truth, and so on.
If one does have other genuine interests and pursuits (for example foreign languages) then the task of appearing normal is harder. So the implication that he isn't smart enough to be normal is in this sense correct.
Which by the by suggests that motivation is the key to learning, not attention control, repetition, particular books, starting young or the other usual suspects and methods. These are downstream from motivation.
[+] [-] unethical_ban|4 years ago|reply
I think they presented it honestly without being derisive.
[+] [-] recuter|4 years ago|reply
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god those who preach peace do not have peace those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
[+] [-] Uniblaab|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhosek|4 years ago|reply
⸻
1. My wife is a native speaker of Spanish. Her English is accentless² and she has above-average reading/speaking/writing skills in English. She also speaks French.³
2. Mostly. Schwas still trip her up from time to time.
3. Most of her family is at least trilingual, speaking English, Spanish and one other language. I think her cousin with the most languages has five: English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic. At his sister's wedding, he gave a toast in French with a flawless accent⁴ that blew me away. I often joke that I almost speak one language, but I haven't learned all the words in English yet. I'm semi-functional in Spanish, but my kids are quick to point out that my accent is “horrible” and with my hearing loss, it’s a challenge to participate in conversations. There are a few languages I can read with a dictionary, but I don’t know that I can claim any facility in them.⁵
4. I suspected that his accent was good, but I verified it with the francophones at his sister’s wedding (she married a quadrilingual Belgian).
5. One thing I’ve found is that in general, Americans tend to overestimate their linguistic abilities and non-Americans to underestimate their skills. It’s typical that someone who took a couple years of French in high school ten years ago and hasn’t used it since will claim that they speak French. A European who says that they speak “a little” Italian will be able to function just fine in a conversation with an Italian.
[+] [-] paranoidrobot|4 years ago|reply
> Her English is accentless
I don't mean to pick on you, but every English speaker has an accent. It might be some kind of American accent, but it's still an accent.
[+] [-] willyt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charcircuit|4 years ago|reply
In order to reach these crazy high number of languages you will have to make compromises.
[+] [-] bayesian_horse|4 years ago|reply
You are underestimating the capability of some people to memorize certain information. Sometimes it is called "eidetic" memory. The best chess players just don't forget any chess position they ever see. Similar reports in music. Most of them are useless when memorizing any other form of "data". The carpet cleaner in question probably has that facility for words, phonemes and grammar. He just doesn't forget that stuff.
[+] [-] rectang|4 years ago|reply
Giant caudate nucleus at work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpTCZ-hO6iI&t=700s
[+] [-] radicaldreamer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sshine|4 years ago|reply
As a native Scandinavian, I understand most Scandinavian (except Finnish) without having spent more than fifty hours with various Scandinavians, and without having attempted to learn much. (It's mostly deciphering dialects, remapping certain words.) Having unwillingly learned German as a child, I can enjoy German television and navigate German cities as a confident, talkative tourist. Having learned fluent Esperanto, I can decipher a bunch of words in French and Italian, but can't follow conversation.
As for Chinese, 1.5 years in, I can form sentences like a shy 1.5-year-old: Anything above 3 characters is probably grammatically incorrect, or "you could say that... but a native speaker wouldn't." Different paradigm altogether. But a Chinese can pick up decent Japanese in less time. (https://www.quora.com/How-difficult-is-is-to-learn-Japanese-...)
Learning Ruby if you know Python is kind of learning another European language, if you already know one.
Learning Haskell or Prolog is kind of learning Chinese if you only know imperative languages.
[+] [-] B1FF_PSUVM|4 years ago|reply
Totally dumb and illiterate in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Thai, whatever. No prospects of improvement.
[+] [-] ars|4 years ago|reply
And now I know why he's not working another job. Depression is the life killer.
[+] [-] blunte|4 years ago|reply
Fortunately (spoiler) at the end of the article, after his time at the MIT research lab, he sees that some traditionally super smart people value him and see him as intellectually special.
[+] [-] pcthrowaway|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ferrotin|4 years ago|reply
If we know he has a good memory and doesn’t forget stuff, that is generally an advantage, but the connection that it is a “language” is not the reason.
[+] [-] kzrdude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|4 years ago|reply
and then i realized i still have no intuition as to the answer.
just it's a great question. glad you wrote it down.
[+] [-] threatofrain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dismantlethesun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesian_horse|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesian_horse|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sensitivefrost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bayesian_horse|4 years ago|reply
He probably doesn't have the skills for a traditional translating job, just as the average bilingual person hasn't. There are jobs for "unskilled" translators, not sure how much and in what contexts. Not sure if there is a job description out there for "hyper-polyglot genius". Niche-skill at best, unfortunately.
Maybe as a tester for multilingual software?
[+] [-] bradhe|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] masturbayeser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] to1y|4 years ago|reply