Hacker News Reader

Comment by aetherspawn | Hacker News Reader

I have had something similar to this (heavy fog and inability to continue creative work) and I use coffee, bulk vitamins and regular walks with music to work through it.

I also started eating more fresh food and less frozen food, even if it meant eating-out fresh, because it was much worse when I was reheating a lot of tasteless frozen food.

But no matter how hard I try, I have focused my career into an area that requires a lot of creative effort, and I think that this has given me nearly permanent long term memory problems. Over the years, my relationships always get irritated that I don't remember anything. Actually, I thought my memory was normal, until I started to contrast it with people around me who worked in hospitality and such.

View on HN

Middle aged here. Almost, but not quite, no autobiographical memory. Been that way since I was really young. So that’s fun.

Often I remember that something happened. Order gets wonky, even a week back. Sometimes I can kinda remember an image or a snippet, but not reliably. I gather most people hold on to a lot more than that.

Fine with facts and such. Never a problem in school.

I do have trouble remembering the names of characters and details of incidents in books I read, shows I watch, et c. Not as bad as my autobiographical memory, but not great.

And yeah, it’s frequently annoying for my wife, too.

“Tell me about a time when…” questions in interviews are interesting. I have to prep things from my notes ahead of time or I literally won’t be able to answer them. I’ll not be able to come up with a damn thing. The most stressful questions in elementary school were ones like “what did you do over summer break?”

Can you visualize things in your mind as if they were physically in front of you? People with aphantasia cannot and they often can't remember visual events from the past as a result. Perhaps you have it too.

As someone else with similar issues, I'm pretty deeply aphantasic. The best mental visualization I can manage of even simple imagery (think "a red triangle on a black background") is roughly comparable to a half-transparent blurry watercolor, and I can't clearly picture faces at all (though I don't have any particular trouble with recognizing people when I see them).

Is that really aphantasia? I understood it to be the absolute absence of any mental imagery. Your description actually sounds similar to my own experience. I'm capable of summon up imagery with effort when I need to, but it's never very clear or frequent.

My visualization is somewhere between wireframes and chalkboard diagrams, usually closer to the later. Also have little autobiographical memory. I suspect I’m somewhat on the autism spectrum, but that wasn’t diagnosed much back in the 60’s when I was growing up.

Wait. You're telling me that you're supposed to be able to do so? I thought it was some mind hack that gives you the power to become an artist, not everyday stuff.

Interesting. Do you have dreams? Do you see things in “full 3D” there? When I’m awake I can visualize things but they definitely don’t have the full dream-like quality. I suspect it’s because so much brain “bandwidth” (not the right term) is going towards other stuff.

How can I tell if I am unable to do this? I think maybe I kind of can, but I have to focus really hard and it is a flickering image and I am not sure if I am actually imagining that I am imagining if that makes sense at all. Or the fact that I am not sure is already telling? I don't think I try to imagine anything in my daily regular life though.

Haha, exactly my thought! I can form a mental image (photo) in my mind, but how do I know others can "see" it similarly?

It's not very clear as I can't really see it in front of me, but it's in my head, and there's a different kind of "seeing" happening...

One evening I asked my 5yo daughter that when she imagines something in her head, does she see it almost like in real physical 3d? She said yes. I wouldn't say yes to that question. But again, it's so subjective...

I have terrible autobiographical memory- everything is out of order and I don’t know what happened last year or ten years ago. But at the same time I think mostly in images and visuals. If I want a fork the image of a shiny fork in my hand will flash in my mind but then sometimes I can’t think of the word for it and I’ll just say, I need the um, the ah, the thing, what is it called... while picturing it very clearly in my minds eye.

Yeah, seem to have middling abilities there.

I’m fairly normal in most other ways, mentally, with really high (tested) spatial reasoning, and a good-but-nothing-special (on HN, anyway) tested IQ.

Just badly deficient autobiographical memory.

I didn’t even realize there was anything wrong until my mid 20s. Turns out this is a relatively-recently-discovered disorder of some kind, and on reading accounts by people who have it, I was like “…oh.” Not super well studied, I think in part because it tends (incredibly!) not to actually impair living an OK life. You just don’t really remember it like a normal person does.

We have really similar stories. I'm 32, never used drugs (since other comments were asking for that). It's really hard to explain to the people why you do not remember something, they will just assume that you do not remember because you don't care.

It's really hard to explain to the people why you do not remember something, they will just assume that you do not remember because you don't care.

The typical mind fallacy should be taught a lot earlier in school.

Same here. I've always had terrible personal memory since I was young, despite dramatic lifestyle and diet changes over time. Distinctive characters in fiction stick with me, but not order of events: I couldn't tell you anything useful about the plot details of my favorite films and books despite revisiting them many times.

It applies to short-term memory, too. I give myself very specific places to put things, because if I didn't I would lose track of my keys and wallet literally every day.

Weirdly enough, these issues don't seem to apply to logical or spatial memory at all, which is probably the only reason that I'm an effective programmer.

> Distinctive characters in fiction stick with me, but not order of events: I couldn't tell you anything useful about the plot details of my favorite films and books despite revisiting them many times.

I can usually slowly work my way back through a book, maybe with a couple prompts from someone else to help me piece it back together, but only for stuff I’ve read in the past few years. Farther back and it’s gone. Character names rarely stick. I did watch the Star Wars trilogy so much as a kid that I could replay it in my head, every frame, sound effect, and line, every cut perfectly timed. Not anymore, but that part of me’s not totally broken, I guess. I think I’m not far off average on that stuff, maybe a bit below.

> Weirdly enough, these issues don't seem to apply to logical or spatial memory at all, which is probably the only reason that I'm an effective programmer.

Yep, exactly that here, too.

> Often I remember that something happened. Order gets wonky, even a week back. Sometimes I can kinda remember an image or a snippet, but not reliably. I gather most people hold on to a lot more than that.

Isn't this memory about your memory itself a pretty detailed autobiographical memory? Or is it that you can remember sort of templates and categories of things that happened but not a specific instance?

Sounds like you're trying to take care of yourself but one suggestion is to be rational about things - not sure why everyone hates on frozen food as if it's pumped with chemicals or something. It's literally the best way you can get the food on the table other than cooking it yourself. A frozen veg medley is healthier than a McDonald's burger right.

I wonder if you may have aphantasia, and I also wonder if it may be more common (selected for even) amongst engineers.

If I say: "imagine a red triangle", can you do it easily? Is it red? Does it visually exist in front of you?

I have asked many people this, and many people say it is laughably easy. This tells me it is "normal".

I can't do this. I also have a terrible episodic memory. But my semantic memory is fantastic.

I can not really imagine a whole object at once, I can only easily imagine the features/edges individually, although I know that they form a triangle.

Not sure if it's a useful data point, but my ability to construct things in my head improved dramatically after I'd been messing around with CAD for a few months.

My guess is it just got my brain to improve it's ability with that stuff, and the side effects helped in other areas (like this) too. :)

It exists but not in my visual field, so not in front of me. I can imagine it in my visual field but that is distinct from it actually being there, which may not make much sense unless you do the same.

Frozen vegetables are some the cheapest ways of getting decent nutrition.

And if they're frozen soon after picking they can be more nutritious than fresh vegetables that have been out of the ground longer.

Just echoing the other comments on this tree; hits very close to home. I admit I might have some other triggers, but it's just been so persistent from growing up until now, and it's getting worse the moment I switched my work to mostly developing/programming instead of talking to people.

This is all sounding very familiar to me :-/

Same here. Mid 30s and my memory is completely shot. Here's hoping it's not permanent or an early sign of things to come :(.

Sleep. Get enough sleep every single night, not just some nights. Sleep cements the memories of the day.

Do you use any drugs?

coffee, tea I used to drink a bit but not much compared to some and not anymore.

Never smoked or did any other recreational drugs.

This hits close to home.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com