Idiot Savant
Written by Azhar bin Mat Zin a.k.a Maniac Wolf
"You're an idiot!"
How often do people say things of this kind to you? Unless you're one of the gifted, it could be enough to annoy you. What if you're on the opposite side to the gifted? Born without the ability to show off super cool things?
Did you ever see a person saying things such as "You suck because you can't run!" to a person on a wheelchair. Or.. "You don't know the color of this thing? What a moron!" to someone blind.
But of course, you have surely often heard the words stupid, idiot, moron, lamer applied on normal people. But, are these people truly normal? Or do you consider them normal because you see and accept them as normal?
OK. Some articles about cool demoscene people start by telling about themselves. Let me do the same.
My name is Azhar bin Mat Zin, a.k.a Maniac Wolf. My website is at http://www.maniacwolf.com.
My first game machine was a NES. Go figure.
I can't remember the year, but my first PC had a monochrome display with 2 disk drives and no hard disk. Still, I enjoyed writing GWBasic programs.
My second PC had a CGA display, a mouse and two disk drives but still no hard disk. I started using Pascal. This is also the time I played the game 'Mean Street'. It was shocking to hear a human voice come out of a PC speaker, yes, a PC speaker, without a sound card. Some time later I found out about a program called 'Monologue'. It allows text-to-speech conversion, even on a PC without a sound card.
My third PC was a 486, 100 MHz with a sound blaster and SVGA monitor. This was the first time I watched Future Crew's Panic, Second Reality and Unreal. This was when I purchased books such as 'Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus' and some others. This is also the time I learned C/C++. There's also something interesting thing happened. I watched and played Mega Race. This was the first 3d animation I ever watched. Both the 3d animation and game graphics looked good. I wanted to do both game & demo programming and 3d animation!
Well, dude, where are your releases? I'm sure a lot of years have passed! Uh, urm, there's aren't any. :-) What!? You're such a ...... You may go ahead and say it (but don't go too far by flaming me in my In Box!). I heard it much too many times already.
I guess the history given above, although true, can't describe me enough. How about this.... I'm a university dropout! But that's not everything. When I was 21 years old, I managed to get lost at Petronas Science Discovery Center. I can't remember my friend's full name. Although I can ride the bike, I can't go everywhere because it's hard for me to remember the road. For these places, I just take a bus.
Now I'm 22. A lot of years have passed and I've heard enough of all those @#$%^ words. Still, I want to be just like anybody else. So I grabbed myself a copy of 'The Complete Idiot's Guide to Improving Your Memory'. After all, the book was made for idiots, it might fit me very well. :-)
It fit me well, indeed. To me the book is just like a scientific journal written in simple words. It contains a lot of important things. Some of them is.... (This is not the exact wording as I don't want to waste time searching the pages, but it has the same meaning.) "We don't know how the brain really work. But no matter if it work like a computer or any other thing, damages done to the brain do affect memory, and personality among other things." But of all words, the most that important is...
Idiot Savant
Idiot means stupid. Savant means learned person. So, what is an idiot savant?
"Savant (sometimes idiot savant): A mentally defective person with a highly developed special talent, as an ability to play music, to solve complex mathematical problems at great speed, etc." From The Complete Idiot's Guide to Improving Your Memory.
One good (and true) example from the book is about a woman called YX (the real name is kept secret by the book to protect her true identity). When she was a girl, she enjoyed music and singing. However, she was a very limited learner. Now that's she an adult, she still has to be assisted when dressing and undressing and to be taken to and from appointments.
Despite all these things, she is a brilliant musician. She's a member of a municipal band in her home city, and she leads a Dixieland group. She is also a first-chair trumpet is a classical orchestra. YX is capable of playing Haydn's trumpet concerto brilliantly.
The question asked by the book is....
Is YX deficient? Or gifted? Or both?
I don't know the answer. But at least I do know how to dress and undress myself. :-) But the important thing is, I DO KNOW that it hurts when someone calls you stupid, idiot, lamer. That's why I don't call others using such words.
I lack the ability to memorize. This has cost me a great price as in my country, most tests are based on memorizing the answer (without necessarily having to understand them completely). Education means good job. Good job means good money.
However, although I doesn't have to memorize certain things, I'm capable of understanding things. I do understand game programming and 3d animation. I'm going to do my best in this thing. This is because most of the information came to me at the press of F1. Not many things that I had to remember.
What with the demo scene? Well, I do wish to participate, but still not cut out to be a member. I guess being a true demoscene fan is OK enough. Especially if I watch .the .product 20 repetitive times after I downloaded it. I still watch Second Reality and Unreal.
The reason why I'm writing this acticle is to help all those newbie. So, let me ask that 'elite'... "Are you clever?" If you asnwered 'Yes'. Then let me ask you this... "Do you know calling other people lamers hurts their feelings?" If you answered 'No', then I think the answer to the first question is not valid. To me, you're not 'clever' enough. If you answered 'Yes'. Then that's mean you're bad. I hate, hate, hate bad people. Let just say I have my experiences and reasons.
Then let's come to my first topic. How do you know a normal person is normal? Well, it's hard. You can't see what's wrong to their brains. But as long as they're good people, give them a chance, don't call them things.
The more important question is, how do you know a person logged on the net is a normal person? If you can't even guess the sex from the handle, then don't assume this either.
So give them chance. Not just in demoscene, but also in everyday life. Please.
If you send people away just because they're idiots without giving them a chance, you're missing to see the savant part. Don't look at what deficits they have, look at what they excel in.
And to all savants all around the world....
"Just do what you can do best!"