The Blaugust Group Project for today is:
There are a lot of things I could ask for and, on a different day, I would probably choose something else. But for me at the moment the power I’d most like to have is selectively flawless eidetic memory.
Why I choose this power
My memory has never been very good. Memorization of concepts has always been my forte, but facts, figures, names, and precise details often elude me. My greatest weakness in this regard is remembering people. I am that guy who hides at social events and rarely says “Hi!” because I’m perpetually fearful that I should know the person I’m talking to. I often even know that I know them, but the name and place of our acquaintance doesn’t appear in my recollection.
Selectively flawless memory would give me the ability to pick memories to file away. I imagine a system whereby everything is perfectly recalled unless I choose to ‘soften’ the memory. This weakening or softening of recollection would be something I’d reserve mostly for painful memories: grief, sadness and the like.
I became increasingly aware recently with my mental breakdown in December that my mind is imperfect. I’ve always known my memory was flawed as it is for all normal humans. Despite what we may think, none of us have perfect recollection of all facts other than perhaps a few extreme examples with true eidetic memory in adulthood. But all of us think we have better memories than an we really possess. Spending time in a mental ward gave me a clearer understanding of how wrong that perspective really is. What we perceive and recall is extremely malleable and oftentimes not to be trusted. I imagine it would be nice to have perfect trust in flawless recall.
What I would do with it
Equipped with perfect recollection I could call up technical documents and manuals with absolute clarity: no more scrabbling through my own notes to try to find what I did last time I solved a similar issue. This would be a great boon for both my computing hobby and my leisure reading. When reading fiction I often have to flip back dozens of pages or even an entire book in order to link a current happening on the page in a story to something that happened previously.
Perfect recall would be extremely helpful in most of the day-to-day things I enjoy. I normally read a couple of dozen articles per day via RSS feeds, and having normal human memory it is easy to misremember or conflate what I’ve read. If I could bring back the articles instantly without any backtracking I could write blog posts with confidence on the first try. Maybe I could even achieve the mythical 31 posts in 31 days of Blaugust!
Most obviously to the external observer, however, is the fact that I would be more confident in social situations. My fear of meeting someone I should obviously know but not remembering their name would be gone. I could impress people with my recollection of our connection, sure, but mostly I would just be comfortable talking to them without that overarching fear.
Well most red hat people have perfect memory, so perfect it’s even better than written records, and it’s very selective 😉
On a more serious note: this is exactly that angle used to promote “smart” AI glasses. You look at a person and facial recognition identifies them, then pulls up and displays all their curriculum vitae and summarizes previous interactions.
And the failure is revealed in your accurate, but probably unintentional phrasing using the word “connection.”. Recall of data even important points like a person’s name, is not the same as connecting with them.
Yes, it would be nice to not have to worry about being the doofus that forgot everyone’s name, or worry about hurting someone’s feelings because it doesn’t seem like you cared about the 1 afternoon 4 ears ago you spent training them in a class of 10.
But the truth is, you will be a doofus, and some interactions that are important to others just aren’t going to be significant to you. Having facts on easy recall won’t change that.
The emotional response is more important than the factual. Empathy and kindness matter, so accept you will be a doofus: just try to be a nice one 😉
I agree that the emotional response is more important than a factual one. But unlike some people I was never gifted with good recall of facts and figures: that includes people’s names and even sometimes their faces. That has left me with a kind of social anxiety that I wish I didn’t have: thus my fantastical wish for perfect recall.
As for empathy and kindness: pshaw, who needs that stuff? I kid, I kid… 😉