Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
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Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#2I was a kind of quirky kid when I was younger... I sort of memorized the Hobbit without really intending to, along with every other book I ever read. Being something of a quirky kid it took me until about middle school before realizing a) this sort of thing is not normal and b) sometimes its better to keep it under your cap. (I can't do it word-for-word anymore, although I still have fairly good retention. I just stopped doing it and it stopped happening. Happy/sad about that, mostly happy. Being "scary" makes for an uncomfortable middle school experience, and being unable to forget the uncomfortable bits sucks royally. Trust me -- been there, done that.)
One of my friends from high school, also diagnosed as being LD, still remembers my drivers license number. He saw it when I showed him my photo after passing the exam, more than a decade ago. Oddly enough, I have never had a particularly good memory for numbers, even back in my freakish days. (It also took me until about age 10 to figure out the difference between left and right. My little brother, who was exasperated at that and thought I was playing, mentioned that left is always the same side as the mole I have on my left wrist. I still check my wrist to this day, out of semi-conscious habit.)
Ahh, the human brain -- it is pretty freaking weird.
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#3I don't forget either -- I just never really remembered in the first place.
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#4A long time ago (before Internet gambling), I remember reading in Reader's Digest about a professional card player with a photographic memory who got caught in a tragic casino fire. In the article, it said that since the fire, he'd been unable to enter any casino because his photographic memory brought back the scenes of the fire vividly into the present.
I also remember the hypnotist at my college orientation who hypnotized a bunch of our class. He had a couple revert to kindergarten memories, telling him who sat where in the classroom, who their friends were. In the most memorable sequence, however, he asked a guy in childhood mode the question 'did you ever make a special sound'. The guy/kid was shy and said 'yes but I'm not sure I want to do it.' Eventually, the hypnotist coaxed and encouraged the guy/kid enough ... and the guy/kid did the most spot-on, uncanny, loud Chewbaca roar. He got the nickname Chewy around campus after that.
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#5It is interesting to note that having a very good memory used to be a tremendous advantage. I mean before ubiquitous books (never mind the web).
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#6Previously on Ms. Price:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373529
And similarly:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192454
And necessarily:
"Funes, The Memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#7Previously on Ms. Price: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373529 And similarly: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192454 And necessarily: "Funes, The Memorious" by Jorge Luis Borges http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~morton/bigidea/funes.txt
I see you don't forget URLs.
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#8I was a kind of quirky kid when I was younger... I sort of memorized the Hobbit without really intending to, along with every other book I ever read. Being something of a quirky kid it took me until about middle school before realizing a) this sort of thing is not normal and b) sometimes its better to keep it under your cap. (I can't do it word-for-word anymore, although I still have fairly good retention. I just sto…
left is always the same side as the mole I have on my left wrist. I still check my wrist to this day, out of semi-conscious habit.
In a similar fashion, I learnt left and right because I 'write with my right hand'. I still run through this in my head to this day.
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#9I was a kind of quirky kid when I was younger... I sort of memorized the Hobbit without really intending to, along with every other book I ever read. Being something of a quirky kid it took me until about middle school before realizing a) this sort of thing is not normal and b) sometimes its better to keep it under your cap. (I can't do it word-for-word anymore, although I still have fairly good retention. I just sto…
About left and right, I have a friend, a black-belt karate student, and he can't figure out either. He says he developed a method, and asked his teacher to do it instead of saying "punch with the right", "punch with the left".
The "method" is just saying "punch with the hand that you write", "punch with the hand that you don't write".
I had a hard time believing, until a couple days later, he was driving and I said "turn to the left!" (many times) and he missed the road. Then we developed our own method, which was "turn to the side of the radio", and "turn to the side opposite of the radio".
Freaky. But fun :p
Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget
#10In the `Small Book about a Large Memory,' Aleksandr Luria described the case of `S.' a man with an even more astounding capability of recall. The Russian version of the monograph is even available online: http://www.psy.msu.ru/science/public/luria/small.html