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I do not remember my life and it's fine

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Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#131

Post by dmos62 »

mkfs wrote: post #26

To some degree, mind's eye clarity is an illusion, with many overestimating the fidelity of their mental imagery. One of the better, more recent examples is the "draw a bicycle" experiment: https://road.cc/content/blog/90885-science-cycology-can-you-... Granted, many can't draw at all, but people's inability to reproduce from memory an object of some complexity that they see (and likewise, use) every day is telling.…

You'd be surprised how developed these skills are in people that are in visual arts.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#132

Post by zgougou123 »

I once read a theory about aphantasia where the author thought that aphantasia mostly comes from a confusion regarding how one would describe their own internal thought. Some would use vivid terms or descriptions to describe their internal thought which would lead other people to think "wait, that's not how I view things, there must be something wrong with my thoughts".

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#133

Post by tgaj »

Nevermark wrote: post #79
bravesoul2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know you have emotionally forgiven (as in let go) even if you have forgotten? This is a rhetorical question... No need to answer for you situation but I wonder.

> It's more work for me to harbor a grudge. Sounds like functional forgiveness, as apposed to decision or emotional arc forgiveness. "Letting go" being a very strong default, that would require special maintenance to avoid doing. I am this way in the long run. Regardless of the situation, at some point I just realize I completely don't care. Once I know someone operates in a problematic way, I spend some time figurin…

I think it's more about not remembering the feel of being hurt by someone - like he knows that this person did something bad to him but he doesnt't remember emotions connected to that event, that's why it's harder to hold a grudge.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#134

Post by retsibsi »

Affric wrote: post #44
mkfs wrote: post #26

To some degree, mind's eye clarity is an illusion, with many overestimating the fidelity of their mental imagery. One of the better, more recent examples is the "draw a bicycle" experiment: https://road.cc/content/blog/90885-science-cycology-can-you-... Granted, many can't draw at all, but people's inability to reproduce from memory an object of some complexity that they see (and likewise, use) every day is telling.…

So I read your comment before following the link and drew a bicycle perfectly. I find it absolutely inconceivable that someone could be unable to draw a bicycle in Liverpool or a similar city. I am not sure this is related to what OP is talking about.

I've seen a lot of bikes (and ridden thousands of kilometres), but when I had reason to draw a bike I felt the need to look up some photos to refresh my memory. I'm pretty sure I would have made some basic structural mistakes without that visual reference.

If you find this inconceivable, IMO you're assuming other people's minds work more similarly to yours than they actually do!

In my case (not aphantasic, but I think my visual imagination is significantly weaker than average), the information just didn't seem to be filed in full detail. The image was weak, as are most of my mental images, and I guess I had never paid that much attention to the concept (i.e. how the parts of the bike fit together as a whole; when I had had to pay attention, it had been to specific things like how the brakes work, how to reattach the chain, etc.), so it was all a bit of a muddle.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#136

Post by strogonoff »

catskull wrote: post #32
OptionOfT wrote: post #10

This is exactly what I experience, and for me, this is a huge issue when it comes to 'selling myself', whether it is in an interview, or writing a self-assessment for a review. And just like the author, I couldn't answer questions about hard problems that I've solved, until someone pointed out a moment where I did something they would call an achievements. Now, at that moment I have the right references. It is still…

I have a very very strong episodic memory. I have a very hard time "selling myself". I've added solid stuff to my resume in the last year simply recalling what I've done from an outsider's view. From my perspective, I was just messing around. From another perspective, I was building "impressive" "successful" things. Learning to give myself credit for my accomplishments is what I think made me the difference between a…

The trick to jump from the “messing about” to the “impressive” perspective lies in big picture view and a few rounds of “why”. Ideally, you do it before you start (when it comes to the innermost whys you may encounter resistance, bad faith answers, or answers you don’t like), but if that ship has sailed you can still do it as a post-mortem.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#137

Post by 9witz »

I can see myself in this. Face blindness is really a problem for me, too. Thankfully younger people (who all look the same to me) have taken up tattooing themselves, which makes it a lot easier to identify them (because it's easier to remember than a face)

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#138

Post by dmos62 »

Oreb wrote: post #120
switchbak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the pain of reliving old memories? I could do with a little less of that right now.

Me too. I’ve had some very traumatic experiences the last few years, and the emotional scars will never heal. I’m not the same person I was before, and I never will be. Some people these days are hoping to combat aging and make potentially infinite life extension possible. I find that idea far more terrifying than death. Infinite lifetime would mean that experiences more emotionally and physically painful than I can…

I have many times thought about how scars and tattoos have a lot of similarities. From a certain perspective, a tattoo is simply a bit more intentional. A tattoo is like saying, "I belong to this group and it shows". I think of an emotional scar as a tattoo that is 100x bigger than a regular tattoo: it's so big, that you can't see it, it's like not being able to see an image when you zoom in too much. And, even though you might not see it with the naked eye, you can feel it, it's something on you that says "I was there", "I experienced that", "I used that to become the person I am".

And, then you might recognize that all of our personalities are constructed out of these scars, it's just that most of them we're not aware of and most of them aren't painful to think about. A time comes, when you notice that your association with a given negative memory becomes more neutral, there's a bit more distance between you and it.

I can say for myself that every experience I labeled as negative, I was haunted by, turned out to have a positive outcome at the end. There are hardships that "haunt" me now, and I don't know how it will have been a positive influence on me, but I believe that it will, and that helps.

I hope I don't come across as pushy with my viewpoints. I resonated deeply with what you said, and felt the need to share.

By the way, a practical tip, I find that if I prompt an LLM with something like:

> I'm going through [a difficult time]. Help me reflect. Ask a question or give me a prompt, I'll respond, and so on. Act like a friend.

That has been for me surprisingly effective for releasing debilitating emotional stress.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#139

Post by Malcolmlisk »

9witz wrote: post #137

I can see myself in this. Face blindness is really a problem for me, too. Thankfully younger people (who all look the same to me) have taken up tattooing themselves, which makes it a lot easier to identify them (because it's easier to remember than a face)

What nobody says is that, face blindness is a protection mechanism from our brain for protecting ourselves from losing our minds. When you see your friends growing up and don't remember when you were kids, or when you see the kids at school and you think 'they are younger than I were when I was in there', that's your brain using this mechanism. Forgiving all the faces that we had back then, so we don't feel so much like growing and getting old. That's why your family will always look like they are right now, and you need to make an effort to remember them when you were kids, and remember them in their kid form.

Re: I do not remember my life and it's fine

#140

Post by Kichererbsen »

Tor3 wrote: post #108
aidenn0 wrote: post #45

> For example, I think I may also have mild face-blindness, the difficulty in recognizing faces and linking them with names. Usually, it doesn't cause major issues, and with some effort and repetition, I can learn to recognize people. But the face-blindness really rears its head when I meet someone not-so-familiar in an unexpected place, like random encounters on a train. Since I don't have the usual contextual cues…

I also have problems with faces, if they've changed slightly or I see them in unfamiliar places. I don't have aphantasia, or problems recalling my past - quite the opposite, I have strong visual memories from before I was three. On the other hand I'm extremely good at recognizing people from their gait. I can see someone in the far distance and know who they are, even if we haven't met in years. For some reason I als…

I have a similar thing about the gait and I think it might have to do with me needing glasses, but it being mild enough (-1.0, -2.0) that I didn't wear them as a teenager and in my early twenties - so my NN just trained on the data it had ready access too: Gait, preferred colors, movement patterns etc.

The not recognizing people in unexpected locations is something I just mark down to "page fault" and move on. Nobody expects total recall anyway.

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