Daniel Tammet: Different ways of knowing

http://www.ted.com Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia -- meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world. The author of "Born on a Blue Day," Tammet shares his art and his passion for languages in this glimpse into his beautiful mind.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

Category:

Science & Technology

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• TED
• TEDTalks
• Daniel Tammet
• linguistic
• numerical
• visual
• synesthesia
• Born on a Blue Day
• languages
• perception

[KnasiTaket]

is it just me or does he actually sound like Ali G? thumbs up if u agree

[popitypop]

@biakuya 75 = (3/4)*100, so 64*75 = 64 *100* (3/4),

hence = 6400 * 3/4, so if u visually caculated tt, its 3 boxes of 16 squares * 100, or {3* 16 *100}, or 4800

haha hope tt helps

[jomonomona]

Turn on closed captioning.

At 4:07, you see, "the sketches, I'm black and whites here, but in my mind, they have CONDOMS?!?"

[jomonomona]

errhemm...

1:58

"Every time I read jack-off, oops, sorry, thats Chekov, my bad"

[FromHundredAcreWood]

@insanic1 He's gay anyway. He could always donate sperm Robert Graham style.

[HevyMetalSnap624]

@KnasiTaket HAHA Just what I thought of!

[maikeru01]

i like daniel. i loved his books but i disagree with his idea about language. if he learned an asian language he'd see that the sounds words make have nothing to do with our intuitive feelings as a species. there is no universally happy or sad sounds for example. maybe among europeans that is true but only because the languages or cultures might have common descent. cases outside of that i suspect are just examples of a confirmation bias. been learning japanese for 10 years.

[bigambul]

I wonder what the mathmatical sum of Jackson Pollack's "Blue Poles is?

[dudejohnny]

@gabsylv

Well, the college graduates didn't.

[chinchillalovers1]

@gabsylv That´s ok. :)

[gabsylv]

@chinchillalovers1 Based only on the video's content.. I don't deny he's a genius or whatever, I just don't see anything that knocks my socks off here. Sorry if I gave an overly negative impression

[TrantisionerMarin]

@insanic1 his "ability" apparently wasn't cause by genes but from brain damage which u cant pass through sperms.