I thought everyone was like this? No one has a perfect memory. I’m sure it’s a very small slice of people who have their memories filed in a database like lookup system? Some memories stick, most don’t?
Reading the article, I think I can do what the author can't, but I also think he probably imagines what he lacks to be more clear/detailed than it is for people without the issue. I can recall specific events from many years ago from my perspective, but it's tidbits, and the info feels lossy. The question he struggled with about past challenges is difficult for most people, I'd guess, but I do not think his issues are fake/normal because of that.
I think you're assuming more people are like you than actually are.
This is part of the classic debate around aphantasia – both sides assume the other side is speaking more metaphorically, while they're speaking literally. E.g., "Surely he doesn't mean he literally can't visualize things, he just means it's not as sharp for him." or "Surely they don't literally mean they can see it, they're just imagining the list of details/attributes and pretending to see it."
I suspect I'm close to the SDAM side on the autobiographical memory spectrum, since reading this my immediate thought was, wow. But you make a good point. So I have a question for you, which is, do you remember acquaintances from a few years ago who you haven't seen since?
I have these jarring social experiences where I encounter people who readily recognize me, refer to me by name, etc., and I have no idea who they are. Usually (although not always) they look vaguely familiar, so that I know I must have known them at some point, but they have essentially been erased from my mind. I cope with this by greeting them warmly and just faking it.
I am also absolutely terrible at remembering personal details from other people's lives, although I have great recall of scientific facts, figures and dates.
In general I feel like my past is about about three or four years long. I'm in my mid-forties and everything from before the pandemic feels like it happened a century ago. But I have no gauge on whether that is normal.
I can picture my wife's dead grandfather in my head. When I do, I can almost hear his gruff voice and the mannerisms with which he spoke. My mind also immediately conjured up an image of his garden full of cacti, and the yellow wooden chair that sat beside it.
I believe this is the stuff people with aphantasia struggle with.
Im always confused about this. I think my brain has rewritten memories to a large extent.
While its ok to have fictional memories for fun, I think this is disastrous for legal reasons.
Plus I do think memory recall is strong for a lot of people. Wanting retribution for harm done long back, or even life long trauma for bad things that happen to people early life is real.
I feel like a lot of responses here are lecturing about aphantasia rather than SDAM. I learned of SDAM from this article, but it resonates with my own experiences.
I would describe this in terms of telling stories from childhood. Many people I know can spin a narrative around significant events from their childhood, as if they're living it again as they tell it. This is something media has taught me is the normal way of experiencing a memory. But for me, it's just a list of facts. I can tell you various bits about the time I got punched in the face as a child (second grade, his name, my telling him to "make me" before he did it, every teacher not believing I could have been partially at fault), but those are simply fact lookups in list form. Part of that is aphantasia sure, but the other part is the lack of an emotional memory. I don't remember how any of that made me feel, I can just assume based on context. If I felt anything other than what would have made the most sense in context, it's logged as a fact about the incident.
Sadly, that means I have very little actual memory of my childhood. It's mostly a list of incidents and some data points about the incidents. I don't have emotional core memories of my grandparents, just some events associated with them that I know happened, but can't relive.
I'm somewhere in between. I mostly learn a lot like the author of the article says, just incorporating things into my worldview. I am terrible at remembering things like "so and so's" theorem/algorithm/historical proclamation. But when I absorb the idea, it becomes part of my own operating model. I'm terrible at citation.
Despite aphantasia, my autobiographical memory is a weird mixture of gaps and some very solid vignettes/moments where I remember a lot of detail. It's never a long-running scene. Many of these memories are pinned at some traumatic or surprising moment, but some seem to be much more mundane and yet somehow were recorded as if they were pivotal.
I have a pretty high ACE score. Ironically, some of my pivotal memories are meta-moments when I had a sudden veil lift from previously repressed memories. I'm remembering not the original traumatic moments, but the moment of realization that my memory had these decade-plus gaps or eras to it.
Half the time when people describe aphantasia, I want to say something like "you realize that most people don't 'see' things in their mind as clear as open eye visuals, right?" but I keep quiet because I know that the worst thing you can do with something like this is make them feel as though you've invalidated something that has become a core pillar of their identity by that point.
Hard to tell though - I don't have aphantasia, but I can't visualise images very vividly. I'm happy to accept that many people can "see" their visualisations much more vividly than I can though, because I can visualise sound, voices and music almost as well as actually hearing them, and maybe that comes at the cost of not being able to visualise images as well as others can (but visualising sound better perhaps).
opan|9 months ago
numeri|9 months ago
This is part of the classic debate around aphantasia – both sides assume the other side is speaking more metaphorically, while they're speaking literally. E.g., "Surely he doesn't mean he literally can't visualize things, he just means it's not as sharp for him." or "Surely they don't literally mean they can see it, they're just imagining the list of details/attributes and pretending to see it."
adriand|9 months ago
I have these jarring social experiences where I encounter people who readily recognize me, refer to me by name, etc., and I have no idea who they are. Usually (although not always) they look vaguely familiar, so that I know I must have known them at some point, but they have essentially been erased from my mind. I cope with this by greeting them warmly and just faking it.
I am also absolutely terrible at remembering personal details from other people's lives, although I have great recall of scientific facts, figures and dates.
In general I feel like my past is about about three or four years long. I'm in my mid-forties and everything from before the pandemic feels like it happened a century ago. But I have no gauge on whether that is normal.
educasean|9 months ago
I believe this is the stuff people with aphantasia struggle with.
kamaal|9 months ago
While its ok to have fictional memories for fun, I think this is disastrous for legal reasons.
Plus I do think memory recall is strong for a lot of people. Wanting retribution for harm done long back, or even life long trauma for bad things that happen to people early life is real.
foobarchu|9 months ago
I would describe this in terms of telling stories from childhood. Many people I know can spin a narrative around significant events from their childhood, as if they're living it again as they tell it. This is something media has taught me is the normal way of experiencing a memory. But for me, it's just a list of facts. I can tell you various bits about the time I got punched in the face as a child (second grade, his name, my telling him to "make me" before he did it, every teacher not believing I could have been partially at fault), but those are simply fact lookups in list form. Part of that is aphantasia sure, but the other part is the lack of an emotional memory. I don't remember how any of that made me feel, I can just assume based on context. If I felt anything other than what would have made the most sense in context, it's logged as a fact about the incident.
Sadly, that means I have very little actual memory of my childhood. It's mostly a list of incidents and some data points about the incidents. I don't have emotional core memories of my grandparents, just some events associated with them that I know happened, but can't relive.
saltcured|8 months ago
Despite aphantasia, my autobiographical memory is a weird mixture of gaps and some very solid vignettes/moments where I remember a lot of detail. It's never a long-running scene. Many of these memories are pinned at some traumatic or surprising moment, but some seem to be much more mundane and yet somehow were recorded as if they were pivotal.
I have a pretty high ACE score. Ironically, some of my pivotal memories are meta-moments when I had a sudden veil lift from previously repressed memories. I'm remembering not the original traumatic moments, but the moment of realization that my memory had these decade-plus gaps or eras to it.
viccis|9 months ago
numeri|9 months ago
stephen_g|9 months ago