Comment by fishtoucher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fishtoucher | Hacker News Reader

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I think I have a fairly similar experience to the author. Different in some respects, I'm not aphantasic, but I resonate strongly with the lack of autobiographical memory and feeling like an observer in my own history.

I can't describe how many times someone's asked me what I did last weekend and I told them that I did just had a quiet one at home, then later I'm reminded I actually went skiing or something notable that I completely forgot. Not just passing conversations with strangers either, this happens with family just as much.

I take a more pessimistic view on how it affects my life than the author does though. He handwaves the downsides even saying that he '... had learned my lessons from them [trials in university], even though I forgot how they unfolded.' I understand the desire to think that but I'm not sure how you can really justify it. The brain definitely learns to compensate in other ways and I have really unbalanced cognitive tests I took as a kid as evidence, but memory deficiencies are undoubtedly a disadvantage.

This is uncanny, I was going to write almost this exact comment. I've been told mine is due to a deficiency in working memory, which can then lead to the brain not converting to long term memory. something that ADHDers present commonly with.

I'm in the opposite camp - I also have poor working memory, but instead I have extremely good episodic memory. Good enough I have to remind other people about our shared experiences routinely. I never claim to have eidetic memory but I've only met a couple other people who have memory like mine (one is my mother, so that's kind of cheating)

It's interesting though because I associate with a lot of what the article is talking about with spatial and knowledge memory too. I often have to remember where something was to "step into" the memory again.

Depression causes similar memory impairments.

> and I told them that I did just had a quiet one at home, then later I'm reminded I actually went skiing or something

This is wild!

It's a ridiculous and extreme example but it actually did happen. I was going skiing quite often at the time though so maybe it didn't have the sticking power it would've normally.

In general, without some kind of trigger my ability to remember specific episodes is nonexistent. The OP talks about this too but those times when you have to give 3 fun facts about yourself or when someone asks my hobbies are moments of of existential dread because I genuinely have no idea what to say.

I realised recently that there are whole years of my life I'm basically missing when I think back. Like I know where I was living, what job I was working, and my general circumstances, just not anything specific I actually did.

I have come back from week long international trips, having arrived by plane on Monday or Tuesday, and by Thursday someone will ask me what I did last weekend, and I'll draw a blank, and the social pressure of not having an answer and not wanting to pause for a whole minute to exercise my memory to reconstruct the last week will make me say something like, "nothing much, you?". It's that by the second or third day of being back in my routine, I forget what it was like outside of that routine, feel so immersed in it day-to-day, so unless I remember that I did have a disruption I won't really remember anything...

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