What Would You Do If You Had A Superhuman Photographic (i.e. Eidetic) Memory?

What would you do if you possessed a highly advanced photographic memory?

Hit the blackjack tables in Vegas

There are people with this, saw a special once, I believe Marilu Henner the actress has the genetic condition that causes it, as well as her son.

She can instantly recall any date in her history and tell you what happen.

So she became and actress.

Me I would probably become a full time student studying everything.

Eta

Hyperthymesia

Probably go insane from information overload. Sometimes it's nice to not be able to remember all of my failures and horrible emotional times in life.

Read..lots of reading. Books on engineering and science...
But problem with that is, even though you may remember everything..it doesn't make the trudge through dull reading any better.

Still..would be nice to know how to whip up a solar panel using dental floss and a tin can at any given moments notice.

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens

we need to forget ! as we need to remember what it is important for us.
I have not any supernatural .... but I am still studying and I do not know to say what I would do more !!

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


To be honest I'm one of the only people I know that has a very good memory. I don't know if I could call it photographic memory. However, I always have been able to remember anything regardless of the littlest to no details. My mind is very weird.

You can train your self, some people gain the skill faster. Your brain is like a muscle the more you work certain parts of it the more your neurons get worked, making more connection. A good exercise is to get a deck of cards look at all the cards one by one then try to remember witch order they are in. It seems impossible but their are techniques to get you started. Remember the cards like a story. For example you could say the 5 of harts represents 5 hot chicks and the 9 of diamonds represents 9 blinged out gangsters. Make a story out of it, one of the easiest ways is to make a destination and a start. For example you start at your home and you walk to the store on the way to the store you see 5 hot chicks by your house (5 harts) when you get to the corner you see 9 blinged out gangsters (9 of diamonds ect... Any one can build memory. Their are a wide verity of games on the net witch help.

You may not be able to remember like the people on these TV shows but you can train your self to remember allot more then you thought you wear capable of. I wish schools tough this way.

I am already one of these people with a reakish ability to recall information.

I do have some limitations though, I have a hard time with names and numbers.

For example mary lou lives at 2345 parkmans place.

I will easily remeber parkmans place and mary lou, and every interaction and conversation we have ever had, including mundane details such as what we ate, what the guy walking down the street wa wearing the first last and every interaction in between.

However will not remeber the street address phone number or name of the person so well.

I will always end up describing a persons atributes and wait for another to be the one to say "you mean mary lou?"

It is kinda annoying at times.

Most of the people that kniw me would tell you I am very smart, this is sadly not the case though, I am no smarter than anyone else.

I just have a huge supply of accrued data inside my head that I have almost instant recall of, so it seem I am smart, when in fact, I just have a good memory.

A lot of people don't seem to understand the difference, but I do know it, as some folks are razor sharp intellectually, but have short memories, I jnow this because I remeber a lot of things they don't about our interactions.

So I also remmber all the times I saw how very much smarter than they really are, they are just limited in recall, not overall processing power.

It kinda hurts my feelings that actually smart people put me on a pedastal, when I remember all too clearly who is the smartest of us two.

I used to point it out, but they often brush it aside as " no remember last week when you remembered that trip 5 years ago, I had forgotten all about it".

Yes I remember, and I was the idiot that coulnt figure out the problem, you solved it like I blink my eyes.

However I will not have to solve the problem ever again, as I will remember the solution, so others seem to think I am smart, because I figured it out, when in fact I simply remembered the answer.

You humble long term idiot, made to seem smart, through exceptional long term memory

Inverslyproportional

I use to suffer with having a photographic memory; and I emphasize suffer. You can't turn it off anything your senses have experienced you retain everything, it's not just knowledge but sensations textures etc. all easily recalled in an instant. So many things trying to link and make logical rational connections in the mental filing cabinet to where you can't sleep or shut the mind off. It's an overload to the system because the brain never rests and when it finally does; it wakes non rested just more tired than when you went to sleep.

Then when a situation arises, where someone is trying to recall what they say and you tell them, and they say I never said that... when you know everything they ever said verbatim, all of a sudden you're accused of being full of poo and twisting things they've said. Sure they have a different recall than what they've said because what people mean to say and actually say are usually two different things... they will recall the meaning or feeling but not the actual words then when it comes back rarely is it in the form originally issued from their mouth.

This so called gift rarely comes with the other skills required to take advantage of it; instead it is usually accompanied by extreme social anxiety and social awkwardness. So in my experience it is one of those; be careful what you wish for because the genie grants wishes with a twist, and rarely what it is actually cracked up to be.

I started this post with; I use to suffer. Fortunately, polishing a lot of aluminum required by one of my hobbies has been causing this curse to disappear, and I couldn't be more thankful... not being able to recall an infinitude of things throughout the day that have occurred and actually really truly sleep... is a blessing.

reply to post by BigBrotherDarkness


Agreed, it is more of a curse than a blaessing at times, as I always remember things everyone would like to be forgotten.

It is akin to reading minds, people aren't meant to remember everything about people, any more than they are supossed know all the things they think.

I agree with the social ackwardness, and the sleeping disorder, I used to use alcohol, and left handed cigarettes in my youth, but have grown out of it somewhat now in my mid 30s. So I don't drink much anymore, and am too old for other, that belongs in the realm of highschool and college aged kids.

I would kinda like to know if there are others out there with these same symptoms, and if they are common place, or if the memory thing is just a result of having ADHD so bad, or vise versa.

Somthing I will have to look deeper into when I get the chance.

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


That is an interesting question. I read through the other comments and saw that it is more of a curse...hmm...I wonder if you could control it, if it would still be a curse?

I would want to learn Russian. I also would love to read everything I could on quantam mechanics and physics.

I just do not have a good memory at all which deeply saddens me. Brain injury did not kill me but will not let me rest.

Peace and Love
~nat

reply to post by inverslyproportional


I'm not sure if it, is attributed to any particular genetic mutation, but I happen to fall between aspergers and savant on the Autistic scale, which most cases of photographic memory seem to fall.

I personally think it is a mind filtering issue. The average person gets totally absorbed or mesmerized by whatever their focus may happen to be on and everything else tends to drop away... wouldn't that be nice? It can be trained using one pointed meditation however, so there is a hope for some normalcy but it takes time. Whereas on the Autistic spectrum there is no filter you see it all you hear it all and feel it all etc all seemingly at once, how this seems to differ from attention deficit scales, it that the attention is drawn to the new stimulus over riding the draw of the main focus.

I dated a woman with severe adhd and I can honestly say autism and adhd get along well enough but when one can talk volumes on a subject no one seems to care about and the other seems to have the attention span of a gnat... no offense intended it can get frustrating for both sides.

reply to post by natalia


If it was something controllable by sheer will? Then no I don't think it would be such a curse... but I think there is actually something in the short circuiting of the mental filter, that actually produces the phenomenon, so I think control of it if possible would be a very hard skill to learn, not impossible, just a lot of constant mindful self discipline and trying to forge a path without a guide in how to go about it and succeed all by your lonesome.

But even when learning a language you still have to have the motivation and put forth effort to do so. The things you naturally have an curious nature about come easier the same as it is will anyone... or else the subject is like pulling teeth and you could care less about it and even avoid such subjects on purpose...

Language is actually pretty easy; learn all the verbs... there's not really that many, then learn to conjugate them with he, she it etc. then the rest is just vocabulary... the easy way for that is how many words do we have for the same thing? Shoe, sneaker, sandal etc. the foreign word? just add it to the list...shoe, sneaker, sandal, chaussure, zapato, Schuh, obuv'... etc. becomes pretty easy if you think of the new language as nothing more than synonyms... (same meaning different word) put like that I suppose it sounds pretty obvious, that that's all it ever was to begin with, but you can actually learn a couple of languages, at the same time that way.

I suppose the oddest thing of all? I can speak a two whole languages, that I never studied... Indonesian and Farsi, but I have no idea what I am saying, and couldn't write or translate them if I wanted too... but dictated out into a language program they fit exactly, what I was meaning to say in the situation, and those two remain the same language, It's really bizarre. I also speak a weird conglomerate mutt dialect; of several languages to my cat, all mixed together that translate into making sense, putting the individual words through a translator.

Channeling that ability into something viable; where I know what I am saying in my mind into the English equivalent, instead of the meaning and intention of the words fluently flowing out would be nice... but I have no idea how, I could go about that in a simple way... I also lack interest in trying to do it. I just take it as a weird quirk I have. But it has to be a side effect of photographic memory... I watch a lot of foreign films not dubbed.

But in my opinion, turning it off and on just doesn't seem to go hand in hand, with what causes it to arise in the first place. But poisoning my brain with aluminum dust has granted me some solace; from what I do think of as a curse... yes it helped in school and college but recall without comprehension into the actual subject it pretty useless... you're just a parrot repeating information without any depth or insight into the subject matter in those situations... which is is part of the problem facing education today, most of it is just rote memorization that requires no actual comprehension of the subject matter.

Pretty sure that's probably why; the word idiot oft times predicates savant.

If it would help me remember how to do math, I'd like to be a scientist and invent new stuff like Tesla! But in reality I'd probably hit casinos in Vegas and the Indian Reservations every few weeks and make some money to travel.

I agree with bigbrotherdarkness and inversely proportional.

People think we are smart just because we can remember things they can't.

Those same people end up hating us down the road because we remember details they want to forget or wish no one remembered.

In the past I have been ostracized for my memory, it was sad when no one wanted to be my friend because they knew I would remember every detail down to who said what first what we were wearing, where we were going and what we ate for lunch and why we decided the salad was better than the soup. When people don't like the real past they input what they feel comfortable with or worse when they know I know the truth and they don't want me around anyone that they are hiding the truth from they will simply cut me out of their life or call me a liar or worse.

It's not a gift it sucks. It causes fights between friends and family and as I have found most people to be inherently deceitful they never want someone around that remembers the truth.

Ive recently been able to make a few friends only by never letting on that I remember anything, that way they get the illusion of thinking no one knows they are lying about last tuesday and I don't lose another bbq invite.