The blessing and curse of people who never forget | Hacker News Reader

The blessing and curse of people who never forget

bbc.com

48 pointspmcpinto33 comments

I can rewatch every movie/series I have seen in my mind. I always thought that is normal until someone told me it is not. I can't even describe how it works, but basically I can see the movie and forward/rewind. Since I watch a huge amount of movies/series (1500+ movies alone) there is a lot in me head I guess. Can be fun though, if you are bored and got no tv/computer/phone around, I can close my eyes and watch something on demand :)

I also can remember most days in my life like this. As stated it can be a burden, those unhealed wounds of dramatic experiences that you live through over and over again in every detail.

I'm the same way, but with classical music. I can "listen" to pretty much any piece I've ever played. And in fact I often can't stop it. The second a person or conversation or situation loses my interest, the music turns on in my head, and I'm no longer paying any attention to you. I'm listening to a Brahms quintet or a Beethoven symphony. I hear it just as clearly as if it were playing over speakers.

It's actually kind of a problem. I don't in general have a particularly wonderful memory. It's just that I constantly reinforce.

Interesting, I listen to music all day, all types of genre, lot of classical pieces too, but I can't recall them like I can with video. But I am a very visual person in general, I also see what I think about, even words or numbers.

Now that I can relate to. But am I wrong in thinking that most people can do this? Not for classical music but for popular songs.

Ie if you ask someone to think of one of their favourite songs, couldn't they basically listen to it in their mind?

When you say you can 'see the movie' does this mean hear also?

Is the movie detail to the extent where you could answer something like 'in the scene with x character there is a vase in the background, what color is it?'

Apologies if you get bored of these type of questions but I find this fascinating. I'm interested in the parameters of what is remembered vs not.

Regarding the hear: no, it is different stated before. For detail question: How to answer? I am not sure, we'd have to test it, but I can remember sometimes the smallest details, same goes for real life. I never paid any attention to how detailed my memory is in that regards

If you want to test detail, tell me a movie you watch and I'll shoot you some questions.

Does this also include conversations, word-for-word? And facts told to you in those conversations?

For instance, if as part of a conversation, someone rattles off a long number or nonsense string of letters, can you repeat it back exactly long afterward?

Good question, I doubt that, mostly because the "audio" part of the movie is not like the video for me. I don't remember it as a stream. But I'd be curious enough to test that. I never thought about this much.

What often happens if that someone asks me if I have seen movie/series X and then I recall and fast forward through the video to remember the plot and characters. That must sound very weird/unrealistic but can't describe it better.

To try to understand what this feels like, there are some movies I can do this with, like Star Wars or The Matrix because I've seen them so many times.

Can't imagine being able to do this for everything I've watched though!

I have a friend that has a very good memory and it is kind of a problem for him.

He can recall all character, places names, etc. from books he read years ago, while I cannot recall even the plot.

But when it comes to bad situations in the past he also recalls them vividly. So he has a hard time forgetting abut old deeds. Sometimes he is rambling about a problem he had with a guy he worked with 5 years ago, or even about something that happened more than 10 years ago.

> “It is like having these open wounds – they are just a part of you,” he says.

I understand that it is this way for him, but it is sad that some what trivial memories get in his path to be happy. And I don't know how to help him.

Does your friend spend a lot of time alone? As someone who struggles with the same thing, I find that being alone a lot of the time makes me reflect on the past a lot and old wounds tend to fester.

Some people are thinkers in that way, and while it can have its upsides, it certainly has downsides. I think spending more time laughing with others, relating to them and having fun is better than thinking all the time. But personally I'm in the process of finding people I can relate to better.

I have anxiety disorder and you have highlighted an insight of mine after examining my condition for a while. The moments that my condition flares up uncontrollably are the moments when I've spent a significant amount of time "thinking". When I spend time with friends I genuinely care about and can relate to, I get so distracted, I almost feel like a normal person.

I've been there. Now that I'm back to normal, I love my thinking time, but during the anxiety times I never wanted to be alone.

Great to hear that you were able to come out on top. I'm taking medication right now, exercising and taking it one step at a time at the moment. I would love to get rid of it entirely but I'm starting to acknowledge that unless there's a revolutionary break through in medical science then I'm stuck with this condition for the rest of my life. Just have to figure out ways to cope.

Maybe, maybe not. Here's the obligatory 'what worked for me'.

I looked at a bundle of research and treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy appeared to have better long-term outcomes and after 10 years or so of depression and several years of anxiety I had never tried it.

So I gave up the 'I'm stuck with this forever' mentality and started retraining my brain to not have the anxiety response. After roughly 6 months of work I was able to shake it and I'm not on SSRI, Benzos or whatever.

IMO anxiety is recursive, having anxiety gives people anxiety and trains you to have an anxiety response (see hebbian learning). Getting out of that loop is a huge deal.

Thanks! Always love hearing stories like these. I definitely do not want to get stuck on medication for the rest of my life and of course having a 'stuck with this forever' mentality is hardly useful.

Indeed, while it has great advantages in various fields like computers and history, not being able to forget your old misdeeds is an unending curse, akin to open wounds that can never close. You have to find ways to make peace with yourself, accept that you are a fallible person (and you gain respect for the doctrine of Original Sin), and it's a strong motivation to improve so you commit less of them.

This sounds like a excellent plot for a movie.

"My name is Earl" has similar premise

I think of it not as good recall but rather a comparatively longer duration of "the present". Which does present (heh) problems because some things are still in the present for me while for most others those things have been consigned to the past.

It is a really interesting way of looking at it.

I don't know if there is any kind of concept like "long present" for people that does have a hard time forgetting things. I will be one of the "short present" guys for whom what happened this morning is a long time ago. :)

My friend is always correcting me when I say, some time ago when he recalls perfectly that it was two days ago. I guess that two days ago is part of his "present" while it is just part of my "past".

At the beginning I was trying to ask him to forget about that issues, that only was making him unhappy. But I was able to see that it was a different way of perceiving things. Do you have found any way of moving things faster to the past? Or you are not able or don't want to do it? It will be also interesting to know how much people can control this. I have seen a lot of techniques to try to remember more, but not so much to try to remember less.

I remember the Jill Price case. Turned out she was obsessively going over all her memories, non-stop, all the time. So hers was a normal brain, just trained very well to retain memories by unending repetition.

I just skimmed the article, but findings seem no different -- only more people are found to have this condition, and it actually has a sciencey name now: HSAM.

I wonder why BBC is running a story about this again?

> I wonder why BBC is running a story about this again?

The BBC's science reporting is just shitty. They will repeat essentially any claim that is told to them. Off the top of my head, I can recall:

* They ran an article about a "three-headed frog" discovered by some schoolchildren, when in reality it was obviously three frogs engaged in amplexus. [0]

* They ran an article about an entirely forgettable mathematical crackpot who claimed to have "solved" division by zero. [1]

* They ran an article about blondes going extinct. [2]

* They ran an article that was essentially the plot of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. [3]

[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/3534361....

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/content/articles/2006/12/06/d...

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2284783.stm

[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/6057734.stm

I know content is king... But seriously this is just sad.

I thought you were exaggerating, but dear God.

Because it's fantastical to think that some people have superpowers even though that's not the case. As an anecdote, I've met a couple of people who have claimed to have eidetic memories. All have turned out to be full of s++t :)

> Veiseh even thinks his condition has made him a kinder, more tolerant person. “Some say ‘forgive and forget’, but since forgetting is a luxury I don't have, I need to learn to genuinely forgive,” he says. “Not just others, but myself as well.”

This is probably the best insight of all here. A lesson for all of us to remember.

Very true, he's likely also keenly aware of how his words and actions can have long lasting effects on others.

I wonder if this is nuanced at all. I seem to recall every plot twist, gizmo, and character in Science Fiction that I read, it takes any joy out of re-reading that book because I already know it front to back, but other books on the fringes, like fantasy or the harry potter series? I can re-read those enjoyably.

I used to have an very accurate and detailed memory, but as I have got older it is no longer as good. Once upon a time I would have bet my life on the accuracy of my memory, but now I would not. It totally sucks, but I guess that is part of ageing.

I have always assumed these were some kind of scam but I looked up Jim McGaugh in wikipedia and his credentials are well established. It's truly hard to believe.

It's such an interesting article. I do see the association of the "open wounds", if used wisely it can prevent an individual from repeating the same error. I would love to see this app that the researchers are trying to release.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com