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Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

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Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#11

Post by cdr »

patio11 wrote: post #2

I 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…

I had trouble with left and right for a long time. Then, one day on an elementary school ski trip, another kid indicated he wanted to go right at the top of a hill. I somewhat embarrassedly admitted I wasn't sure which way that was.

Response: "Look, this way (point) is right, this way (point) is left." Never had trouble with left/right again.

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#12

Post by icey »

inerte wrote: post #9
patio11 wrote: post #2

I 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 "…

To this day I'll hold up my hands and make an L shape with my pointer finger and thumb. The one that looks like a proper L (and not a mirrored L) is left.

East and West gives me a hard time too, so I have to think about where California is or where Florida is.

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#13

Post by silentOpen »

mahmud wrote: post #7
gojomo wrote: post #6

Previously 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.

The Internet never forgets. Where we once had oral retellings of epic sagas, we now have synthesis of radical new ideas. Humans are extraordinarily adaptable machines. We've now built a ubiquitous information retrieval system and it will only get better.

If you could trade memory for creativity, would you?

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#14

Post by joe_adk »

tdm911 wrote: post #8
patio11 wrote: post #2

I 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.

The way I learned: my left hand makes an "L" when the thumb and forefinger are perpendicular.

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#16

Post by nikron »

patio11 wrote: post #2

I 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…

I was like this for east and west when given north for the longest time. I would always ask my little brother which way east or west was.

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#17

Post by knightinblue »

I soon find that except for her own personal history and certain categories like television and airplane crashes, Price's memory isn't much better than anyone else's. She struggled in school, is no good at history before 1965, and seems genuinely miffed that she was once asked when the Magna Carta was signed ("Do I look like I'm 500 years old?").

That was the most interesting part to me out of the entire article. It raises the question of whether she consciously makes a decision to remember facts that she's interested in (herself, disasters) and exclude others or whether she just never spent any mental energy remembering these 'outside' events.

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#18

Post by Dobbs »

nikron wrote: post #16
patio11 wrote: post #2

I 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…

I was like this for east and west when given north for the longest time. I would always ask my little brother which way east or west was.

Never Eat Soggy Waffles. Point in the four directions clockwise. It took many years of saying this alloud before I had it anywhere near down. I still ocasionally have issues. I also had problems with left/right and the months of the year.

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#19

Post by websevenpointoh »

wallflower wrote: post #4

A 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 hy…

That's a pretty awesome story -- I've always wondered whether it was our memories or our ability to recall them that faded! Does anyone know of good reading on the subject?

Re: Total Recall: The Woman Who Can't Forget

#20

Post by JacobAldridge »

patio11 wrote: post #2

I 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…

I still have the same left-right confusion. For me, the odd part is that I have no trouble with port and starboard.So my wife gives me driving directions in nautical speak.

I figure if I care about it enough, I can probably fix it one day.

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