What Universal Human Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It? (2014)

I've had this in both directions.

On the one hand, I cannot remember faces at all. I've spent a lot of time painting portraits, yet still cannot remember the faces of my friends and family.

I also have a hard time comprehending audio speech when spoken at a normal talking speed. I need it sped up to be able to easily understand it.

On the other, I realized recently that I have a sense of smell far exceeding that of a normal person. I can often smell scent trails of people, even distinguishing them from each other. It's like I'm following a "path" where I can tell they've walked. The other day I walked into the men's restroom and knew without even looking who was inside before I'd opened the door, then who was in each stall without checking shoes. I wasn't walking around sniffing, just walked in to wash my hands and had an errant thought that I needed to talk to Jim, and lo, here he was in stall two. This struck me as odd, so I started asking and realized that this is unusual.

Likewise, I can remember a person's speaking voice so clearly as to be able to usually detect a person from a single word. And even actors I've only seen in one movie a decade ago, I'll pause a cartoon after a single sentence, then mentally flip through a voice match in my head before remembering where I've heard them before.

I suspect both are this way because I have absolutely terrible vision from my father's side. It started when I was very little, yet due to some unusual circumstances I didn't get glasses for six months or so when I first needed them. I wonder if that time of near blindness while developing caused my brain to grow into these other senses as compensation.

I’m 35 and my sense of smell is terrible now compared to when I was a kid. I can vividly remember all sorts of smells from back then - how different rooms smelled differently, how opening a closet, cupboard, book, bag or whatever would flood my mind with different sensations. Today I have to stick my nose directly down to things to smell them properly.

Then once in a while, some days my sense of smell magically works a lot better. I then go around smelling everything almost like a crazy person and I get extremely nostalgic with all the memories that comes flooding back. Then the next day it’s gone. Doctors at a loss and I’ve found no connection to what I eat. It’s infuriating.

On the flipside my mental imaging skills have always been very good. I’m quite good at following maps and it’s like I always mentally knows which way is north/south/east/west. I can mentally “fly through” entire 3D scenes (between cities, through 3D maps in computer games) and I visualize most algorithms I program in some abstract 3D space. If asked to recite a license plate I have to bring up a mental image of the plate and then read it off of that. For things I know by heart I don’t have to of course. I used to (badly) remember birthdays as an arrow pointing on a date on some circular disk representing the year. Because I had so little interest in remembering birthdays when I was younger, my sisters made a disc for me with the birthdays on it - but my sisters mental view of the year wasn’t the same (rotated) so it confused me even more than it helped.

During preschool we were introduced to the various ways people learn (visual, aural, verbal, physical, logical, social, solitary). It is probably not a very accurate representation of how we actually learn but it was an eye opener to me that not everyone saw the way that I did.

This is a great question. Personally, I have very low mental-image ability. I think I realized that this is a thing when a friend was genuinely grieving that he was losing the ability to visualize his mother's face aside from picturing photos he has. My mother is alive and well but I have never been able to literally visualize her face, or anyone's.

Similarly, I've known people who are problematically unaware of smell and particularly their own body odor. I know it's supposed to be a thing that you become to used to your own smell, but I've known more than one person who simply never realized that they, or anyone really, can be smelled by other people.

I was going through some stress and while dreaming I was able to hear and remember high fidelity symphonic music in way that felt like I was listening to live music.

Normally my thoughts around sound were more symbolic or descriptive but not the actual vibrations of the bow against a string.

This carried over into waking life and I was able to conjure all sorts of instruments in symphonies. I am a fairly lousy composer. Reader's Digest Condensed Time Life Symphonies kinda quality. The effect has faded, but it made me realize the depths of which our perceptions of the world can differ. It has made me more curious about how people think and perceive the world.

This brings to mind what experiences could we give ourselves that nobody has ever had before...

I've thought a lot about giving myself thermal vision through electrode arrays on my tongue, or hooking a Geiger counter to some vibrating patch. I get really excited by intelligence augmentation and have wondered if I could someday hook a math co-processor into my brain.

I've seen things about adding prehensile tails, and third arms, and virtual telepathy.

The future will have a lot of new adventures, and lots of things that we can't even imagine yet :)

This article puts some pressure to reflect upon oneself. Talks about various inabilities people wouldn't just realize until a kind of epiphany, which to an external observer seems downright silly.

I can’t believe I’m 35 and have never seen a dead human body or killed an animal more sophisticated than a fish.