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Comment by forapurpose | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm ... your job is to cover the actions of 540 people elected to DC, many of whom you already recognize, and you can't remember what they look like? I'm not a journalist, but that seems like an essential thing to memorize, along with some minor metadata (locale, party, a bit of bio). Spend a weekend and do it.

Every profession has things you can look up and things you just have to memorize. 540 people isn't much - can sports journalists recognize 540 athletes? Otherwise you'll be in situations where you don't have an opportunity to look them up (e.g., can't get a photo, no time, etc.), and you'll have many false negatives: If you don't know what they look like, you won't realize it's a member of Congress at the party with the coke.

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As the article states up top, there's decent churn in Congress, making this more than a one-time or annual thing. Also, it's not just members of Congress who are important to cover in a beat, but their senior staff members and aides.

Spending a significant amount of time developing a process for face memorization and undertaking it would be an example of needless/premature optimization, especially for people who may be covering Congress tangentially. Most of a Congress reporter's job does not depend on having random encounters with members of Congress.

> Most of a Congress reporter's job does not depend on having random encounters with members of Congress.

So much for my fantasy of a reporter's life; press conferences and hearings sound boring. But I will nitpick a minor point:

> there's decent churn in Congress, making this more than a one-time or annual thing

I don't remember the rate at which incumbents are re-elected, but it's pretty damn high. Unfortunately, after you memorize them once, you'd only have to learn a few more at a time.

The House turns over a lot. The Senate is a different story, those guys fossilize.

This election the house will have 55 voluntary departures + 2 people resigned so far. Assuming ~90% get relegated which may be high that's easily ~100 new members. It varies quite a bit but 2010 for example was down to 85% that won their races.

> The House turns over a lot. The Senate is a different story

I respectfully refer the gentleperson from Spooky to the following:

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php

Few things in life are more predictable than the chances of an incumbent member of the U.S. House of Representatives winning reelection.

They don't provide a number but eyeballing the chart, I think that number starts with a "9" over several decades, and is increasing. Here's an article that says it was around 96.6% in 2014;[0] it must be embarrassing to find yourself in the bottom 3.4 percent of any group.

(It also says House members are reelected more often than Senate members.)

[0] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/nov/...

Representatives also face 3x as many elections.

You’re totally right, but being a rank and file congressman is kinda miserable... many transition to other offices, federal/state appointments, etc.

Remembering the 150 names of the memebers of my fraternity, along with their hometown, big brothers name, major and several facts about them took me nearly 8 weeks to completely. And to be candid I still didn’t know about 50 of them. It’s difficult memorizing those things and I was actively engaging with them on a daily basis and putting work towards memorizing their names. I could imagine it would be a stretch to remember that many names, many of whom you will never talk to in your life along with possibly their home state and party affiliation. Especially since they mentioned the number of congressmen/women is constantly changing.

> can sports journalists recognize 540 athletes?

Well... I don't know if that's a fair comparison. Members of Congress don't generally walk around with their names embroidered on their shirts (but, hey, that might be a good idea!)

Also, athletes look like...athletes, with non-facial physical characteristics, such as height and muscle mass, that make it easier to pick them out from a general crowd. A congressmember is less easier to pick out in a room full of other suit-wearing middle-senior aged people.

The smell, the outstretched hand, the other one in your pocket ...

This sounds like 2018's version of "you won't always have a calculator."

Not all brains have an equivalent ability to recognize faces. Like, "face blindness" is a real thing.

Prosopagnosia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia

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