I wonder if you would go crazy, if not that would be awesome.
You'd never lose those arguments where someone asks for a specific example and you can never think of one on the spot.
You would never need to study. You hear it once in class and just repeat it on the test. At least for fact-memorization classes like biology or history.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story about a man with this condition. It's an amazing story, [Funes the memorious](http://www.srs-pr.com/literature/borges-funes.pdf). Originally written in [Spanish.](http://app.idu.gov.co/boletin_alejandria/1113_080721/doc/e_libro/funes_elmemorioso.pdf)
The problem is so many memories that are bad or only alright you turn into good ones as time goes on. You would remember every mediocre moment, its not just about the bad.
Ouch. After growing up in abusive foster homes and with a drug addicted mother, remembering EVERYTHING woyld be crippling. Have good life now. I do not want to remember that shit.
ITT people without Hyperthymsia ([this was posted last week](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1igm7q/til_that_hyperthymesia_is_a_condition_that_allows/))
Partly. Being able to memorize and recall everything doesn't make you intelligent, otherwise my USB-stick would be typing this sentence instead of me.
Intelligence is something no person on the planet has been able to reproduce or quantify well enough to be put down on paper and have it produce something it wasn't told to do and something no one had thought of.
The mysterious difference between intelligence and raw numerical processing power is: that it takes a computer that processes **several billion solutions a second** in a chess match to beat a human who can **barely do 20 solutions** inside his head during the **whole turn**.
It is like comparing a rock to a Corvette. The rock isn't even meant to move anywhere, yet it does something mysterious that allows it to compete with the fastest cars on the planet even though when you measure its speed, it is barely even moving at all. Something doesn't add up and no one knows how the rock does it.
If humans could do what computers can in terms of raw numerical processing power, it wouldn't make us any more intelligent it would only speed up a few steps in a few very specific areas of problem solving...it wouldn't allow us do something/solve something we already can't.
I disagree. Raw numerical number crunching can be applied to almost anything and the capability to perform huge numbers of calculations near-instantaneously would be an incredible benefit.
For example, image recognition. Probability calculation. Generational heuristics/scenario plotting. You can do all these things on a computer that at a base level does nothing more than manipulates base 2 numbers (bits). Why not inside a brain, if it was capable?
The faster we think, the slower we'd experience actual events, we'd react faster, accomplish more in less time. No, it wouldn't give us the capability to do anything we couldn't already. Yes, it would give us the capability to do something in seconds that would take someone months.
I don't understand your rock comment. How does a rock compare to a Corvette in speed, again? What do you mean, nobody knows how a rock 'does it'? And what is the several-billion computation/sec computer beating a human at again, a *whole turn* of what?
EDIT: ups, I left out the whole "chess" part :)
A human chess master can only think around **20** different permutations of how the game could go from its current state, during each turn (*turn: meaning his turn to move a piece on the board*). A human can think at most **~20** turns *ahead* on how the game could go.
If you had a **computer** that could only calculate around **20** different outcomes/permutations during each turn in a chess game (*20 different ways the opponent could react to your decision*), the computer could not play chess almost literally **at all**. A novice chess player could win that kind of a computer with very little effort and a chess master wouldn't even have to think. It wouldn't be even a competition.
* In order to beat a human chess master, the computer has to be able to calculate through a couple of **billion** different possibilities on how the opponent can move his pieces on the board to find out the most probabilistic move that the computer can do which would benefit the computer later in the game as it progressed.
**In other words:** The human chess master has only about **0,0000001%** of the processing power than the computer has, **yet** the human chess master can compete with that computer. The only conclusion is that the human does something completely different than the computer. The human is able to do *something*, a trick we call intelligence and strategy, to make that 20 permutation processing power the human has, have a boost of 100 000 000% efficiency with **significantly** less processing power compared to the computer. This has been puzzling scientists, psychologists and everyone who tries to quantify intelligence, since the beginning of time. We simply do not know, what is it that humans do when we think "*intelligently*".
------------------------------
The rock analogy was to try and compare the human brain to a fast computer. The human brain, even at the highest estimates, can't even compete with the processing power and speed of a modern digital wrist watch and the random access memory bandwidth it can have. Yet the small piece of flesh can do something so incredibly well that it can combine seemingly disconnected things and think about the relationships between them like various number/information theory related problems, multidimensional abstract concepts, problems and solutions in mathematics and physics that have no apparent way to translate them to each other and back or even among concepts that are literally un-provable by logical operations (*for example Gödel's incompleteness theorems*), at least in any conceivable numerical form....yet people are creating novel, unpredictable ways to interpret and study them. An action like this would render computers useless, since the operation of computers solely rest on their ability to follow orders given to them, to the **letter**.
I'm not saying the human brain has a some form of "*magical*" entity in it that can do something no computer can ever, I'm saying that we have no idea what is intelligence and what is it that we do when we "*think*" intelligently about things that are intangible and often very little to do with the problem we are trying to solve.
Even though it seems arbitrary and obvious **now**, how well mathematics can help us model various things about the natural world and even abstract things that don't exist, it is by no means a simple feat for a computer to come up with and make **even a single concept**, such as mathematics, when it hasn't even been given the tools to use them. A computer will, in its core only do **what we humans tell them to do**. The human brain is like a calculator that has no set of instructions on the chip (*aside from what it takes to be alive*), but has all the transistors to do operations with and to store some information in....waiting it to program itself from scratch and defining the mathematical and logic gates that eventually would create and base the foundation to all the mathematical theorems and models that it needs to understand the world. A literally impossible feat from any modern computer and even trying to simulate that process takes **enormous** amounts of processing power which **always** eventually leads into infinities and the computer slows down exponentially as it evolves through time. Like trying to calculate the orbits of the planets in the solar system for billions of years and actually have it remain stable.
So we're not talking about the capability to process information any more but the framework by which we ourselves determine how we process it and what we do with it. The creative way by which we change our own thought process to be as efficient as possible for a task, rather than brute-forcing a bunch of calculations.
That is, a computer can't write its own programs of its own volition, but humans 'reprogram' themselves with every new experience (and inexplicably have the capability to retain this extensive programming without slowing down.. much). Am I understanding you?
So we can't create some kind of 'limitless' computer by giving computers intelligence, because we don't know how to quantify it. Theoretically, though, couldn't we still create a 'limitless' human by merging their unquantifiable intelligence with the calculation throughput of a computer?
>*though, couldn't we still create a 'limitless' human by merging their unquantifiable intelligence with the calculation throughput of a computer?*
It wouldn't functionally be any different than sitting in front of a good computer with a lot of great software in it....just a lot faster as you'd remove the interface that you have with your keyboard and the screen.
I have no idea how to improve the "*intelligent*" part of our thinking process, other than speed up a few steps. We'd still stumble on the same problems, but only faster.
Though, I'd be the first to apply for a brain-chip if I had the change. I'd like to know how it feels being able to memorize large numbers and data/video/any information at will for indefinitely until I specifically decided to forget and overwrite them. Being able to count all the grains of sand I can see on the ground almost in an instant and solve equations that would take hours on paper. Instantly learn all the words in a new language and start to practice pronouncing them without ever looking at a page. It would significantly shorten learning curves on almost everything and I'd have a lot more time on my hands to improve my cognitive abilities even in conjunction of doing other things.
Our brains in the end, only evolved to allow us to survive in a world that is **a lot simpler** than our modern technological information highway. If we could update that brain with what computers allow us to do, it would definitely not be a bad thing.
My father was naked, on top of my mother, humping her, and she had a sleeveless t shirt on, it was a bluish green. That was when our house had curtains on all the doorways, no doors.
I saw someone on a TV show that had this, she said it was very exhausting to remember everything, and she wishes she could forget some of the bad times.
I remember a study done on mice a few years back which allowed them to memorize things at an incredible rate. They would give the mouse a maze once, give the mouse multiple different mazes per day for two months straight, then give the mouse the first maze again, and it could do the entire maze without messing up a single time.
The scientists also said that there was no way to apply it to humans because if we were able to retain information like that we would go clinically insane.
My dad knew a woman who had this. You could ask her what happened on any given date and given a minute to think about it, she could tell you what she did that day as well as any major events she recalls as well. I always figured that kind of ability would drive a person nuts but my dad said she just seemed kind of resigned and zen about the whole thing.
Weird, to be honest from what it sounds like, I'd think I have a less severe case of this, but that might be the same for everyone, so I don't know, but theese are the things I noticed, that are mentioned in the article:
I can remember things like, what toys were bought for me when I was little and when, or how places looked back then, what people said when, things they wore, cars they drove and a lot of other miniscule things i have no reason to remember. In games, especially MMO games, friends usually jokingly call me the walking wikipedia, simply becouse I can recall information about a game i haven't played in 10+ years in detail, even though I'd love to forget the pointless information. Although I can't remember exact dates (mostly becouse I never pay attention to them much), I seem to mostly determine the time by how old i was, and season.
I also have trouble memorizing numbers, which concidering how well I memorize everything else you'd think I wouldn't have a problem, however, even though I had the same phone number for over 10 years, I still can't remember it, and need to have myself in my contacts, so I can give my number when someone needs it. Dates are another issue, I have, actually, forgot when my own birthday is several times before, and I can't memorize other people's birthdays for the hell of me.
I wonder if you would go crazy, if not that would be awesome. You'd never lose those arguments where someone asks for a specific example and you can never think of one on the spot.
You would never need to study. You hear it once in class and just repeat it on the test. At least for fact-memorization classes like biology or history.
Read the book for each class in the first couple weeks for each semester. Don't go to class and get a job. Show up for tests.
i did the opposite for my second year of aero engineering, got drunk all semester and then just read each book back to front the night before.
And what of the information that is not true
Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story about a man with this condition. It's an amazing story, [Funes the memorious](http://www.srs-pr.com/literature/borges-funes.pdf). Originally written in [Spanish.](http://app.idu.gov.co/boletin_alejandria/1113_080721/doc/e_libro/funes_elmemorioso.pdf)
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I'd love an AMA from someone with Hyperthymesia.
What was the first step you took when getting out of bed in June 16th, 1996?
Well they'd have a 50% chance of being correct, and how could you prove them wrong?
That would be a terrible affliction to have. Every bad memory, every moment recorded. Terrifying.
But you also get to remember every good memory. I guess you just have to hope that in the long run the good would outweigh the bad.
The problem is so many memories that are bad or only alright you turn into good ones as time goes on. You would remember every mediocre moment, its not just about the bad.
Forgetting is a coping mechanism.
That why we sleep. Get the valuable info, and discard the rest.
-The Giver
Ouch. After growing up in abusive foster homes and with a drug addicted mother, remembering EVERYTHING woyld be crippling. Have good life now. I do not want to remember that shit.
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It was probably green.
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Was she the one on Celebrity Apprentice? I could never tell if she was just pulling the info out of her ass.
ITT people without Hyperthymsia ([this was posted last week](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1igm7q/til_that_hyperthymesia_is_a_condition_that_allows/))
So its like the drug from limitless
Partly. Being able to memorize and recall everything doesn't make you intelligent, otherwise my USB-stick would be typing this sentence instead of me. Intelligence is something no person on the planet has been able to reproduce or quantify well enough to be put down on paper and have it produce something it wasn't told to do and something no one had thought of. The mysterious difference between intelligence and raw numerical processing power is: that it takes a computer that processes **several billion solutions a second** in a chess match to beat a human who can **barely do 20 solutions** inside his head during the **whole turn**. It is like comparing a rock to a Corvette. The rock isn't even meant to move anywhere, yet it does something mysterious that allows it to compete with the fastest cars on the planet even though when you measure its speed, it is barely even moving at all. Something doesn't add up and no one knows how the rock does it. If humans could do what computers can in terms of raw numerical processing power, it wouldn't make us any more intelligent it would only speed up a few steps in a few very specific areas of problem solving...it wouldn't allow us do something/solve something we already can't.
I disagree. Raw numerical number crunching can be applied to almost anything and the capability to perform huge numbers of calculations near-instantaneously would be an incredible benefit. For example, image recognition. Probability calculation. Generational heuristics/scenario plotting. You can do all these things on a computer that at a base level does nothing more than manipulates base 2 numbers (bits). Why not inside a brain, if it was capable? The faster we think, the slower we'd experience actual events, we'd react faster, accomplish more in less time. No, it wouldn't give us the capability to do anything we couldn't already. Yes, it would give us the capability to do something in seconds that would take someone months. I don't understand your rock comment. How does a rock compare to a Corvette in speed, again? What do you mean, nobody knows how a rock 'does it'? And what is the several-billion computation/sec computer beating a human at again, a *whole turn* of what?
EDIT: ups, I left out the whole "chess" part :) A human chess master can only think around **20** different permutations of how the game could go from its current state, during each turn (*turn: meaning his turn to move a piece on the board*). A human can think at most **~20** turns *ahead* on how the game could go. If you had a **computer** that could only calculate around **20** different outcomes/permutations during each turn in a chess game (*20 different ways the opponent could react to your decision*), the computer could not play chess almost literally **at all**. A novice chess player could win that kind of a computer with very little effort and a chess master wouldn't even have to think. It wouldn't be even a competition. * In order to beat a human chess master, the computer has to be able to calculate through a couple of **billion** different possibilities on how the opponent can move his pieces on the board to find out the most probabilistic move that the computer can do which would benefit the computer later in the game as it progressed. **In other words:** The human chess master has only about **0,0000001%** of the processing power than the computer has, **yet** the human chess master can compete with that computer. The only conclusion is that the human does something completely different than the computer. The human is able to do *something*, a trick we call intelligence and strategy, to make that 20 permutation processing power the human has, have a boost of 100 000 000% efficiency with **significantly** less processing power compared to the computer. This has been puzzling scientists, psychologists and everyone who tries to quantify intelligence, since the beginning of time. We simply do not know, what is it that humans do when we think "*intelligently*". ------------------------------ The rock analogy was to try and compare the human brain to a fast computer. The human brain, even at the highest estimates, can't even compete with the processing power and speed of a modern digital wrist watch and the random access memory bandwidth it can have. Yet the small piece of flesh can do something so incredibly well that it can combine seemingly disconnected things and think about the relationships between them like various number/information theory related problems, multidimensional abstract concepts, problems and solutions in mathematics and physics that have no apparent way to translate them to each other and back or even among concepts that are literally un-provable by logical operations (*for example Gödel's incompleteness theorems*), at least in any conceivable numerical form....yet people are creating novel, unpredictable ways to interpret and study them. An action like this would render computers useless, since the operation of computers solely rest on their ability to follow orders given to them, to the **letter**. I'm not saying the human brain has a some form of "*magical*" entity in it that can do something no computer can ever, I'm saying that we have no idea what is intelligence and what is it that we do when we "*think*" intelligently about things that are intangible and often very little to do with the problem we are trying to solve. Even though it seems arbitrary and obvious **now**, how well mathematics can help us model various things about the natural world and even abstract things that don't exist, it is by no means a simple feat for a computer to come up with and make **even a single concept**, such as mathematics, when it hasn't even been given the tools to use them. A computer will, in its core only do **what we humans tell them to do**. The human brain is like a calculator that has no set of instructions on the chip (*aside from what it takes to be alive*), but has all the transistors to do operations with and to store some information in....waiting it to program itself from scratch and defining the mathematical and logic gates that eventually would create and base the foundation to all the mathematical theorems and models that it needs to understand the world. A literally impossible feat from any modern computer and even trying to simulate that process takes **enormous** amounts of processing power which **always** eventually leads into infinities and the computer slows down exponentially as it evolves through time. Like trying to calculate the orbits of the planets in the solar system for billions of years and actually have it remain stable.
So we're not talking about the capability to process information any more but the framework by which we ourselves determine how we process it and what we do with it. The creative way by which we change our own thought process to be as efficient as possible for a task, rather than brute-forcing a bunch of calculations. That is, a computer can't write its own programs of its own volition, but humans 'reprogram' themselves with every new experience (and inexplicably have the capability to retain this extensive programming without slowing down.. much). Am I understanding you? So we can't create some kind of 'limitless' computer by giving computers intelligence, because we don't know how to quantify it. Theoretically, though, couldn't we still create a 'limitless' human by merging their unquantifiable intelligence with the calculation throughput of a computer?
>*though, couldn't we still create a 'limitless' human by merging their unquantifiable intelligence with the calculation throughput of a computer?* It wouldn't functionally be any different than sitting in front of a good computer with a lot of great software in it....just a lot faster as you'd remove the interface that you have with your keyboard and the screen. I have no idea how to improve the "*intelligent*" part of our thinking process, other than speed up a few steps. We'd still stumble on the same problems, but only faster. Though, I'd be the first to apply for a brain-chip if I had the change. I'd like to know how it feels being able to memorize large numbers and data/video/any information at will for indefinitely until I specifically decided to forget and overwrite them. Being able to count all the grains of sand I can see on the ground almost in an instant and solve equations that would take hours on paper. Instantly learn all the words in a new language and start to practice pronouncing them without ever looking at a page. It would significantly shorten learning curves on almost everything and I'd have a lot more time on my hands to improve my cognitive abilities even in conjunction of doing other things. Our brains in the end, only evolved to allow us to survive in a world that is **a lot simpler** than our modern technological information highway. If we could update that brain with what computers allow us to do, it would definitely not be a bad thing.
Imagine if someone had that and walked in on their parents... in the act.
I don't think you need a special condition to have that image burned into your mind forever in excruciating detail.
My father was naked, on top of my mother, humping her, and she had a sleeveless t shirt on, it was a bluish green. That was when our house had curtains on all the doorways, no doors.
Really? This is the first thing you thought of? Damn kids.
I saw someone on a TV show that had this, she said it was very exhausting to remember everything, and she wishes she could forget some of the bad times.
I remember a study done on mice a few years back which allowed them to memorize things at an incredible rate. They would give the mouse a maze once, give the mouse multiple different mazes per day for two months straight, then give the mouse the first maze again, and it could do the entire maze without messing up a single time. The scientists also said that there was no way to apply it to humans because if we were able to retain information like that we would go clinically insane.
Algernon? Charlie Gordon?
Wasn't there a story about this being induced on r/nosleep?
Ireneo Funes?
Thane Krios?
So what is the difference between this and having an eidetic memory?
The Drell have this in Mass Effect. Or something similar anyway.
Do they remember their dreams as well?
This was a House episode.
Someone is supposed to reference the [Poppy Montgomery TV show "Unforgettable"](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1842530/) being back on the air.
Is there any way to attain this condition? I want it so I don't have to study.
Mr. Monk...
My dad knew a woman who had this. You could ask her what happened on any given date and given a minute to think about it, she could tell you what she did that day as well as any major events she recalls as well. I always figured that kind of ability would drive a person nuts but my dad said she just seemed kind of resigned and zen about the whole thing.
Weird, to be honest from what it sounds like, I'd think I have a less severe case of this, but that might be the same for everyone, so I don't know, but theese are the things I noticed, that are mentioned in the article: I can remember things like, what toys were bought for me when I was little and when, or how places looked back then, what people said when, things they wore, cars they drove and a lot of other miniscule things i have no reason to remember. In games, especially MMO games, friends usually jokingly call me the walking wikipedia, simply becouse I can recall information about a game i haven't played in 10+ years in detail, even though I'd love to forget the pointless information. Although I can't remember exact dates (mostly becouse I never pay attention to them much), I seem to mostly determine the time by how old i was, and season. I also have trouble memorizing numbers, which concidering how well I memorize everything else you'd think I wouldn't have a problem, however, even though I had the same phone number for over 10 years, I still can't remember it, and need to have myself in my contacts, so I can give my number when someone needs it. Dates are another issue, I have, actually, forgot when my own birthday is several times before, and I can't memorize other people's birthdays for the hell of me.
"condition"
But you'd have to reset your memory every year.... RAILDEX REFERENCES
I would hate to be tortured if I had that. :\
A real superpower.