<p>I'm always amazed when the exceptional mathematical skills of some autistic-savant people hit the news. My question is: can they outperform a computer in problems which we believe too hard for even a computer to solve?</p>

<p>Of course I haven't heard that any of them could. But I'm not sure if that's because they fundamentally can't or just no one bothered to ask them right questions.</p>

<p>For example if I ask:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Sir, can you tell me which two integer numbers I need to multiply to
  get this huge number?</p>
  
  <p>30885595542097078048530024995687899997024041750973847393477559897447391573878575270082706367139186728487020986897882643061865394945737579541836152606087611656762824124167456134969494253726435638776260179938318355412387553479545957502637298284851360234398784003069626709425392069487597686079260312041858526437519290451126677173785415389420329825181564012716675865830263098249948022195474980538298331998208615558178711421936619071576025836780179671597012185469978359221693046590783292027645460672357953215860301121762021294392026714148819989367905598842533973708083447918228276991009085148912935055442293643589623179239</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Any chance they can ever come up with a correct answer?</p>

<p>It would be a world sensation if they could as the number above is the RSA 2048 bit SSL public key modulus of a website. Which is currently believed to be secure enough (no computers can break it in reasonable amount of time). And integer factorization is a know hard problem and the entire RSA cryptosystem depend on it.</p>

<savant-syndrome>
Can autistic savants beat computers in known computationally hard problems?
Calmarius
# Can autistic savants beat computers in known computationally hard problems?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-02-23)

I'm always amazed when the exceptional mathematical skills of some autistic-savant people hit the news. My question is: can they outperform a computer in problems which we believe too hard for even a computer to solve?

Of course I haven't heard that any of them could. But I'm not sure if that's because they fundamentally can't or just no one bothered to ask them right questions.

For example if I ask:

> Sir, can you tell me which two integer numbers I need to multiply to
> get this huge number?
>
> 30885595542097078048530024995687899997024041750973847393477559897447391573878575270082706367139186728487020986897882643061865394945737579541836152606087611656762824124167456134969494253726435638776260179938318355412387553479545957502637298284851360234398784003069626709425392069487597686079260312041858526437519290451126677173785415389420329825181564012716675865830263098249948022195474980538298331998208615558178711421936619071576025836780179671597012185469978359221693046590783292027645460672357953215860301121762021294392026714148819989367905598842533973708083447918228276991009085148912935055442293643589623179239

Any chance they can ever come up with a correct answer?

It would be a world sensation if they could as the number above is the RSA 2048 bit SSL public key modulus of a website. Which is currently believed to be secure enough (no computers can break it in reasonable amount of time). And integer factorization is a know hard problem and the entire RSA cryptosystem depend on it.

**Tags:** savant-syndrome


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## 0 answers

