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I do not remember my life and it's fine

aethermug.com

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

#151

Post by burnt-resistor »

achenatx wrote: post #117

I have aphantasia, SDAM, and face blindness. Like the author i rely on mental models (I wrote a book called visual models for software requirements), Im good at getting to the heart of things and am constantly organizing information so I can remember the principle. I do get anxiety about not remembering people once they pass away. I might only remember a few things about them. But when I look at pictures I can often…

I have aphantasia now and I miss being able to visualize anything at all.

I have the opposite of face blindness and subconsciously process every face but I have lethonomia (cannot remember people's names). Years ago, I was once riding my bicycle from campus at probably 21 mph / 30 kph and recognized the brother of a lab partner when they were completely to the side of me and 75' / 22 m away in profile after seeing a photo of them once. I'm probably not as good as I once was due to a TBI.

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

#152

Post by burnt-resistor »

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.…

Memory uses lossy compression where sometimes the compression is terribly inaccurate or leaves nothing at all. C'est la vie.

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

#153

Post by lll-o-lll »

yoko888 wrote: post #143

[dead]

First performance review? The dog and pony show should be proceeded with a trawl through the emails and an early summary emailed to the manager. You will be thanked, but it’s your best chance to “remind” the boss of all the great things you’ve done.

You struggle to remember? The manager will struggle more. Unless you always want to be judged on the last couple of weeks you’ve worked, this prep makes a big difference. Get in quick before the manager forms an opinion difficult to shift.

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

#154

Post by criddell »

jaggederest wrote: post #113
constantcrying wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like people who aren't thinking about the problem at all and don't even think about the mechanical problem. I have no doubt that many of my recollections are bad, but I can imagine essentially every detail of a bicycle, all the mechanical components and how they interact.

> I can imagine essentially every detail of a bicycle, all the mechanical components and how they interact. As I understand it, this is extremely uncommon, perhaps you might be categorized as hyperphantasia. How's your memory? They're commonly linked attributes, as per the article, some people with hyperphantasia have hsam - highly superior autobiographical memory, apparently from being able to conjure such accurate…

I suspect if you ask the person who did a good job drawing a bicycle to label the parts, they would do well at that too.

I could do a decent job a drawing a bicycle and know the names of the parts because I’ve done a lot of the maintenance on my bike so I’m pretty familiar with it mechanically.

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

#155

Post by sausagefeet »

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 do not have ADHD but also struggle to "sell myself". It's something I had to work on. My view is that the industry can be kind of obsessed with these kind of stories. It's kind of like the "great man of history" world view, but in the small. A common challenge for me is in companies that have a "cultural" interview where they want you to talk about some conflict that happened and how you resolved this, either I'm incredibly naive or I just don't see conflict in this way that makes it a story. I just try to treat people with respect, I try to talk to them in a way that makes them feel open to talk to me. If I have hit conflict it didn't strike me as a moment where I had to think about it in that or it never escalated to being a problem. And it can be the same for programming. I don't have a cool story about the "hardest bug I ever solved" because it's just the same iterative process as any other challenge I have and it feels the same to me in the moment and after, just sometimes it takes longer. And I am no way trying to imply this represents some exceptional behaviour on my part, it's just by nature or nurture how things work, I didn't choose it.

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

#156

Post by numeri »

viccis wrote: post #65
numeri wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing, some people do see things in their mind that clearly. It's about as rare as full aphantasia, but it's absolutely a spectrum.

There's really no way to know this, as it's all based on subjective experiences in which two people could easily describe the same sensation differently.

That's a bold claim! Actually, there are plenty of scientific experiments that show actual differences between people who report aphantasia and those who don't, including different stress responses to frightening non-visual descriptions, different susceptibility to something called image priming, lower "cortical excitability in the primary visual cortex", and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

So we know that at least the people who claim to see nothing act differently. Could it just be that people who act differently describe the sensation differently, you might ask?

No, because there are actual cases of acquired aphantasia after neurological damage. These people used to belong to the group that claimed to be able to imagine visual images, got sick, then sought medical help when they could no longer visualize. For me, at least, that's pretty cut and dry evidence that it's not just differing descriptions of the same (or similar) sensations.

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

#157

Post by jiggawatts »

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.…

How could people possibly be this bad at drawing a bicycle!?

Was this study done on aboriginals living in a rainforest that have never gone to a paved part of the world where people use bicycles?

Sure, I'd get a bit flustered if asked to draw a modern mountain bike with rear suspension. Err... there's a spring back there... somewhere?

But an ordinary road bike? How could you get that wrong?

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

#158

Post by TacticalCoder »

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…

[dead]

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

#159

Post by jiggawatts »

retsibsi wrote: post #134
Affric wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

Did you see the pictures in the link? The chain was going between the front and back wheel! The pedals were where the seat goes! Basically, a bunch of nonsense. There are chat-bots now that can do better.

I couldn't draw a detailed 3D technical drawing of a derailleur, but I can draw a sketch of a bicycle without needing a photo reference!

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

#160

Post by smeej »

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.…

I have hyperphantasia, and only realized within the last decade or so that most people are not walking around with a detailed virtual overlay on the whole world.

This bicycle example really helps me appreciate the difference between how things are in my mind compared to most people's, and I appreciate your sharing it!

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