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'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

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Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#81

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

Hi - I had similar experiences to you, but an old boss pulled me aside explained everything. For context, I was not doing great at work, I was missing deadlines, would get accounts confused, etc. While I was getting chewed out, he rattled off all the relevant numbers/structures/people for all the things I was missing. He told me he knew I didn’t care about my job because I couldn’t remember the details of my job. If I cared about it, I would know the details. Yet, when it came to the things I actually cared about (computers, video games, movies), I could list off of every minute detail. The framework of “you only remember the things you care about” helped me understand why I was dropping the ball in life and ultimately led to a happier life. I stopped doing some things I clearly didn’t care for and started doing more of the stuff I remembered more easily. The real kicker was that I also able to change the things I cared about. Work got much better a few weeks after that chat. I also got very good at remembering names because I started caring about others more deeply.

I hope you see parts of yourself in my story. You’re clearly a talented and smart individual - it’s never too late to turn things around.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#82

How far could this ability be pushed? Could someone basically become a human database, able to run queries right from their mind? In ancient times this might have been a very useful skill for those in power to employ such a person.

Isn't that effectively the mentats of Dune?

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is similar. I feel like I experience past events more as modifications to my world view rather than a log of moments. I like it, to be honest. I don't need to know the exact details. The only time it gets me in trouble is people sometimes equate remembering an event as somehow "caring" about that event. I forget details fast. Sometimes people interpret that as not being interested in the people I met or…

> I feel like I experience past events more as modifications to my world view rather than a log of moments That's interesting - I'm similar. I think of it in terms of remembering conclusions, rather than the reasons for the conclusions. Which can make it difficult to explain my reasoning sometimes - I tend to only remember the axioms/assumptions, and the conclusions, and have to try and recreate the intermediate step…

Heh, in deduction systems there is something called proof erasure, I believe asserting that any two proofs of the same proposition are equal. Maybe your mind's inference is working on something like a proof erasure principle? :-)

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#84

An ex-gf of mine was borderline HSAM. It was ridiculous. She was essentially a walking tape recorder. TIL there's a specific term for it.

Do you have any examples?

You should tell her to get in touch with researchers. Even if she doesn't quite have HSAM, they'd probably be interested. In fact, they might be even more interested to see someone who lives in the gap between HSAM and not-HSAM.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#85
post #63

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

I'm diagnosed as ASD, and a psych has said I'm almost certainly ADHD but untestable. I have an unusually acute visual memory - I can accurately describe the room I was in while Churchill's funeral was on TV, when I was less than 3 years old. Most university exams were effectively open book because I could recall the pages I'd read as images. I'm not convinced all the stereotypes about ASD/ADHD superpowers are true my…

Interesting, I used to have an extremely strong visual memory. It was like you said, seeing the words on the page of my textbooks (if not verbatim then largely).

That was mostly when I was 13-18. I can’t say it’s causal, but around the time I discovered weed (17/18) I pretty much lost this ability. I was never a particularly heavy or regular user, but it’s pretty easy for me to segment my memory acuity into before/after age 18. Of course at that age many things are changing, all very quickly. So who’s to say what the cause was. Maybe it was destined to decline with age anyways.

I do fine for myself now, but now I tend to rely on process and flow states rather than memory recall for getting things done.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#86
post #81

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

Hi - I had similar experiences to you, but an old boss pulled me aside explained everything. For context, I was not doing great at work, I was missing deadlines, would get accounts confused, etc. While I was getting chewed out, he rattled off all the relevant numbers/structures/people for all the things I was missing. He told me he knew I didn’t care about my job because I couldn’t remember the details of my job. If…

I'm glad this worked for you, but I don't think that you understand OP's central argument about the penalties imposed by the substantial ergonomic mismatch between ADHD "smart" and the conventional species, and may not have as strong a sense of what being on the inside of this condition feels like.

ADHD wiring essentially forces every task to be derived from a set of fundamental axioms about why the task must e done, why it must work the way it does, with an almost proof-like causal chain working all the way back to first principles, in order to simply remeber it in a stable way. Being interested in a subject can benefit you only in so far as it will provide you with motivation to build out a vast knowledge graph scaffold around the set of tasks that need to be done, in order to not feel like you are kicking a dead whale up the beach every time you have to start doing one of them.

But if you are presented with a subject where there is no time to do this, or the type of subject where it is actually not possible and only the muscle memory of rote memorization will power you through it, it doesn't matter how much it subjectively appeals to or interests you. You are going to be at the back of the pack despite your best efforts.

Attempts to give you help will only frustrate your (very likely memorization-gifted) tutors and mentors: they don't understand what's going on, so you merely look stupid, unmotivated or both. However, if you had enough runaway, they would find that not only you would catch up to wherever everyone else was (in one third of the time it took you,) but after another third share of prep time you would move from the bottom decile to the top, with gains still compounding. But this occasion almost never presents itself, because you're typically flushed out of the cycle long before you build enough inertia in the domain to show what you're capable of.

One can go almost sick with envy over the way neurotypically smart people are almkst unaware of how easily and quickly they retain multiple arbitrary lists of "how" steps in processes, even when these are largely self-contained and unconnected to any other chain of reasoning, and just get shit done without having to know how the entire superstructure is put together.

You'll be almost comically bad at (and find little pleasure in) all board games (except the most popular ones you've had years of exposure to), if you have not had time to master them ADHD style - even if you genuinely enjoy board games in principle. Whereas peers in your same nerd adjacent circle seem to reach competence or even mastery of any example in this genre of bureaucracy-as-a-sport within a few plays. Performing on stage, if there are more than a handful of lines to memorize, is utterly out of the question. Even if you love acting or theater, it's just not for you.

My own testament to this paradox is not from board games, but incredibly demoralizong experience trying to learn the piano (as an adult no less), something I had more than ample interest in and motivation to learn, but which in the initial stages presented almost insurmountable obstacles when it came to simply memorizing the basics of sight reading, scales, and the learner's songbook. skills that I watched 7 and 8 year olds, teens and even fellow adult learners, acquire in weeks but took me well over a year to reach parity. Since my job and self-image werent riding on being at the top of the class, I was able to keep with it accordimg to my own pace. And although I probably still wouldn't get hired even for a gig in the local shopping mall, my ability to improvise and stylize outside the set pieces I had received my basic training on inexorably began to surpass most of that cohort who had lapped me several times over back when we were just doing the rote basics.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#87

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

> For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow I have seen this cited a few times as evidence of ADHD, and without any comment at all on your own situation (a stranger, who I don't know, on the internet), isn't this in particular mostly true of everyone? I have a calendar and a todo-list app specifically for this reason.

ADHD is the latest in a very long line of "vaguely applies to everyone" diagnoses. The history of psychology is full of them. Asperger's was in vogue a few years ago, chronic fatigue syndrome is for people who like scary diagnoses, irritable bowel is one with a reputational devil may care, codependency is a bit antique, long COVID is topical. Any sufficiently motivated person can diagnose themselves with these. And boy are there motivations: have one of them and you instantly become special. (And yes before anyone says it, there are many genuine cases.)

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#88

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is…

I don't have a good memory at all, but for some reason, if I listen to a podcast a second time I can recall exactly where I was as the podcast goes on. For example, if I listened to the (fantastic) “search engine” podcast about pig butchering I would know where I was walking my dog, or cleaning the kitchen, etc… It's very odd

That's why memory locations are a common trick to memorize information. See Method Of Loci.

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow I have seen this cited a few times as evidence of ADHD, and without any comment at all on your own situation (a stranger, who I don't know, on the internet), isn't this in particular mostly true of everyone? I have a calendar and a todo-list app specifically for this reason.

ADHD is the latest in a very long line of "vaguely applies to everyone" diagnoses. The history of psychology is full of them. Asperger's was in vogue a few years ago, chronic fatigue syndrome is for people who like scary diagnoses, irritable bowel is one with a reputational devil may care, codependency is a bit antique, long COVID is topical. Any sufficiently motivated person can diagnose themselves with these. And b…

Have you ever done that trick where you position your fingertip in just the right spot where the nerves on the retina converge, causing your fingertip to disappear from the field of view?

When I first did this there were two surprises, the one I expected, when I saw my fingertip vanish. And then a bigger one I did not expect, which is noticing I had never noticed this deficiency before, despite it being literally right before my eyes my entire life.

When I was a teenager I held something approximately like your view on ADD, (there was no ADHD variant yet). That it was mainly a crutch, a blame-deflecting explanation for failure sought by those who couldn't get their shit together for character flaw reasons. This attitude made me turn down an offer by one of my professors, who also happened to be a clinical psych., to connect me with someone who might be able to diagnose whether or not I had this issue. I went without a diagnosis for another decade before circumstances press me to reconsider my position.

The very first time that I took medication that was prescribed to me was like that optic nerve blind spor revelation, but in reverse (and magnitudes larger in effext): a deficiency that had been with me my whole life, but completely invisible not because I could not see it, but because I saw everything through it, suddenly vanished.

The effect is difficult to summarize in a few words but it's as if I had gone my whole life not knowing that I needed to wear reading glasses (in a world where they were still quite rare and uncommon) - attributing my inability to remain engaged with any text longer than a few sentences without becoming strangely fatigued to a lack of willpower or mental conditioning - and then putting them on. "_this_ is what everyone else sees?!"

Re: 'Super memory': Why Emily Nash is sharing her brain with science

#90
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi - I had similar experiences to you, but an old boss pulled me aside explained everything. For context, I was not doing great at work, I was missing deadlines, would get accounts confused, etc. While I was getting chewed out, he rattled off all the relevant numbers/structures/people for all the things I was missing. He told me he knew I didn’t care about my job because I couldn’t remember the details of my job. If…

I'm glad this worked for you, but I don't think that you understand OP's central argument about the penalties imposed by the substantial ergonomic mismatch between ADHD "smart" and the conventional species, and may not have as strong a sense of what being on the inside of this condition feels like. ADHD wiring essentially forces every task to be derived from a set of fundamental axioms about why the task must e done,…

Perfect writeup.
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