I think it's horrible, what has been seen cannot be unseen.
What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?
51–57 of 57 posts
Re: What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?
#52Two follow up questions: 1) Would it then be safe to conclude that Mozart probably had photographic memory, since he could remember a whole song just by listening to it once ? 2) Do people with photographic memory feel isolated, and if yes, do they suffer from it ? The author hinted at that, but I wonder if there is any kind of general trait there.
The ability to remember music is more like chessmasters being able to remember configurations of the chess board who can remember any chess board configuration but suddenly become like any of us when trying to memorize an impossible configuration. It is, for example, unlikely that Mozard would have had instant recall for Indian music that has many rhythms, 22 tones in an octave and some very different harmonic constr…
I suspect Mozart would have been helped by the fact that he grew up in the heart of the classical era and the concert music of the day was quite formalized. There were certain things that always happened in a piece of concert music, and certain things that never happened.
It may go without saying, but part of the reason why such relatively strict musical forms were popular in the 18th century is that they made the music easier for amateurs to memorize and perform. There was a big boom in middle-class amateur musicianship at the time.
Modern musicians operate at a handicap relative to Mozart because modern music, even if we restrict ourselves to Western concert music, is stylistically and formally all over the place.
Re: What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?
#53I had a somewhat atypical memory through early high school. Long story short: I was really, really good at memorizing books without trying to, and could recall them word-for-word, with essentially random access inside the book if you spotted me two sentences to work off of. This also extended to remembering events/conversations/etc in my own life, and they often became "intrusive thoughts." Was anybody hear ever pick…
I met an amazing young woman at USC, she was 12 and taking the same Physics class I was as a sophmore EE. She could recite any formula in the textbook, call up any worked problem in the handouts or previous exams, she was getting the highest grade in the class. She didn't understand physics. I wonder if her abilities moderated as she went through puberty and into young adulthood. I felt sad for her, as her life to th…
She didn't understand physics.
Yeah, her and nearly every other teenage physicist I ever knew, certainly including myself. ;)
My experience of physics is that it takes time on the order of a decade to learn, mostly because you have to approach it from so many different directions before you finally grasp it. I'm not sure it matters which angle of attack you pursue first, provided you can remain interested enough to eventually come back from a different angle.
There were bits of physics that I could handle algebraically but which I didn't intuitively understand, and there were bits that I intuitively understood but where I didn't have the formalism so I would kind of flail around. And the knowledge of the landscape, of how a particular problem fits into the universe of known problems, is yet another level.
Re: What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I met an amazing young woman at USC, she was 12 and taking the same Physics class I was as a sophmore EE. She could recite any formula in the textbook, call up any worked problem in the handouts or previous exams, she was getting the highest grade in the class. She didn't understand physics. I wonder if her abilities moderated as she went through puberty and into young adulthood. I felt sad for her, as her life to th…
She didn't understand physics. Yeah, her and nearly every other teenage physicist I ever knew, certainly including myself. ;) My experience of physics is that it takes time on the order of a decade to learn, mostly because you have to approach it from so many different directions before you finally grasp it. I'm not sure it matters which angle of attack you pursue first, provided you can remain interested enough to e…
I would agree that we were all a bit clueless when we took high school physics but this was the second year of physics, in a four year degree program either on physics or on electrical engineering. (which I believe were the only two degree tracks at the time that did the full four year core physics curriculum) The time for not understanding was past.
Re: What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
She didn't understand physics. Yeah, her and nearly every other teenage physicist I ever knew, certainly including myself. ;) My experience of physics is that it takes time on the order of a decade to learn, mostly because you have to approach it from so many different directions before you finally grasp it. I'm not sure it matters which angle of attack you pursue first, provided you can remain interested enough to e…
I would agree that we were all a bit clueless when we took high school physics but this was the second year of physics, in a four year degree program either on physics or on electrical engineering. (which I believe were the only two degree tracks at the time that did the full four year core physics curriculum) The time for not understanding was past.
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Re: What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ability to remember music is more like chessmasters being able to remember configurations of the chess board who can remember any chess board configuration but suddenly become like any of us when trying to memorize an impossible configuration. It is, for example, unlikely that Mozard would have had instant recall for Indian music that has many rhythms, 22 tones in an octave and some very different harmonic constr…
I suspect Mozart would have been helped by the fact that he grew up in the heart of the classical era and the concert music of the day was quite formalized. There were certain things that always happened in a piece of concert music, and certain things that never happened. It may go without saying, but part of the reason why such relatively strict musical forms were popular in the 18th century is that they made the mu…
Well I was referring to Allegri' Miserere in particular which is not a classical piece of Music, yet Mozart was able to transcribe it from memory after hearing it only once. Its all a capella as well.
Re: What Is It Like To Have a Photographic Memory?
#57I had a somewhat atypical memory through early high school. Long story short: I was really, really good at memorizing books without trying to, and could recall them word-for-word, with essentially random access inside the book if you spotted me two sentences to work off of. This also extended to remembering events/conversations/etc in my own life, and they often became "intrusive thoughts." Was anybody hear ever pick…
My memory these days is terrible. But I have very high recall of certain events from when I was very very young. I remember describing my earliest memory to my family a few years ago, and they commented that it was impossible that I remember that as I wasn't even walking or even out of a crib at that time. It's not a continuous set of memories, just small snips here and there.
Those memories are also rather weird since I have them from a time in my life when I had almost no life to reference them against...hard to explain.