Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It almost sounds like she’s just passively absorbing banal shit rather than there being any kind of consciousness. So? They don't want to use her as a trove of historically important information, but to study her as a person which "super memory". For that, it doesn't matter if it's about human anatomy, quantum physics, or what was said in every episode of Melrose Place. The mechanism by which those are absorbed and…
Sorry, I don’t think I’m making myself very clear… I think what I’m after here is almost like survivorship bias. Yes, she’s remembering all these things, but I’m wondering about all the things she isn’t either remembering or in control of remembering that would have otherwise been within here sphere to have remembered. From the article it wasn’t clear to me what control she actually has over any of this. Does that ma…
Yes, now it kind of makes sense. But why assume her ability is counterbalanced by having trouble remembering other stuff? Nothing of the short is hinted at in the article, and if she had any such issue, I'd expect her or her parents to have noticed. And even if that was the case, why would that make it any less interesting to study?
"Passively absorving banal shit" and remembering it would be any less important to study than some conscious ability to chose what important thing to remember. The latter might be more apparently useful to the person and in general, but a super memory mechanism is interesting enough to study on its own, even it just concerns past lotto numbers.
It's also not the case that "all the examples given are out of the tabloid headlines" - the article gives all kinds of other examples (from a "memory game" as a kid, to answering questions about what she wore, ate, etc at random dates on past years).
In any case, this Nash person has a beautiful mind!