Johnny von Neumann was another likely candidate for having HSAM, based on all those stories of him being able to repeat almost everything he ever read verbatim. I wonder if it had anything to do with his mathematical prowess, given that autobiographical memory is usually considered a separate thing from wherever math goes.
'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
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Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#22What's great about Emily's life as opposed to Marilu Henner is Emily has access to Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet. It'll be interesting to see the limits of her memory in the future. Will she be able to remember every time she gets into those Wikipedia deep dives where you end up spending hours reading about some random topic, following link after link? If so, she really will be a super hero.
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#23Johnny von Neumann was another likely candidate for having HSAM, based on all those stories of him being able to repeat almost everything he ever read verbatim. I wonder if it had anything to do with his mathematical prowess, given that autobiographical memory is usually considered a separate thing from wherever math goes.
Can this lady(or other people with HSAM) actually recite what they've read in the past verbatim? It seems like she can just tell you what she was doing or what happened on a given day, but didn't delve into how far that goes - maybe she can tell you she was reading book X, but couldn't necessarily recite passages from book X?
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#24I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…
I associate strongly with this, my memory is almost entirely compartmentalised. Even to the point of what happened earlier today being a fog unless I can find a leap off point.
The answer is start a business, it’s a strength to be able to deep dive into all areas and leap between them at will, I’ve found.
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#25I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…
Wow what a whirlwind that comment was.
Circling back to the main point, it seems like her recall has some manner of fractal association to it, by how she describes remembering things.
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#26I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…
But you're living in US. In US you got paid crazy salaries for programming. Why do you work at failed startups? Just get some job with crazy salary, work there for 5 years and then retire.
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#27I’m astonished they didn’t ask her if she remembered being born
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#28This is fascinating, but I’m left confused at the banality. Maybe it’s just the way the article was written, but truly, who cares that she can remember what was playing on Netflix three years ago? It does cause me to wonder if brains are attuned to certain things - like in this woman’s case, is she particularly interested in celebrities and that’s why all the examples given are out of the tabloid headlines? The artic…
Yea the choice of questions to ask her was ridiculous. I mean start there maybe, and escalate to something more interesting, or go further back in time etc. Such a lack of imagination.
It's almost like everyone wanted to believe and didn't want to push the limits to break their impression of it being some super power.
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#29This is fascinating, but I’m left confused at the banality. Maybe it’s just the way the article was written, but truly, who cares that she can remember what was playing on Netflix three years ago? It does cause me to wonder if brains are attuned to certain things - like in this woman’s case, is she particularly interested in celebrities and that’s why all the examples given are out of the tabloid headlines? The artic…
> truly, who cares that she can remember what was playing on Netflix three years ago?
That's kind of the point, though -- she retains trivial information that 99.9999% of brains will discard.
Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science
#30What's great about Emily's life as opposed to Marilu Henner is Emily has access to Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet. It'll be interesting to see the limits of her memory in the future. Will she be able to remember every time she gets into those Wikipedia deep dives where you end up spending hours reading about some random topic, following link after link? If so, she really will be a super hero.
> Emily has access to Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet
True, but I think we've forgotten that there was actually a lot of information available before the internet. Bookstores, libraries, lots of magazines, and even TV (with fewer options but still non-stop availability). Of course, back then it was harder to pick and choose what info you had access to. But still, I'm always surprised at the amount of useless info and details that I know from --where??-- before ~1995.