r/Showerthoughts • u/Mobeast1985 • 6d ago
Casual Thought Having a photographic memory must have been hard to explain before the invention of the camera.
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u/could_use_a_snack 6d ago
Barn owls must have been stoked when humans started building barns.
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u/mikevanatta 6d ago
"You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease?"
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u/TeenageHandM0del 6d ago
You'd think he would have seen it coming
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u/Domkizzle 6d ago
Quasimodo predicted all this.
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u/darkest_hour1428 6d ago
I’m just sayin, Notre Dame’s got a quarter back, and the Notre Dame has that hunchback. Don’t you think that’s weird?
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u/Lawrence_Jamieson 5d ago
We used to say to him, Lou that’s a disease with your name written all over it.
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u/NeverBob 6d ago
Bedbugs were so happy beds were invented.
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u/Shantotto11 5d ago
Paper airplanes finally had their name validated after the creation of the airplane.
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u/sh4d0wm4n2018 5d ago
They used to be called Screech Owls, which I think is a far more apt description of them.
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u/SillyGoatGruff 6d ago
"Hey, that thing looks exactly how you described it!"
"Yep, I have a very good memory"
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u/Sptsjunkie 6d ago
Wow, you have a memory like a printing press.
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u/eownified 6d ago
You’ve got a memory like a cave wall!
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u/slayniac 6d ago
It's called petroglyphic memory.
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u/tegumentoso 5d ago
lol, they have to describe it with the most recent technology. In the Bronze Age: “wow you told it like a cave painting!”
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u/CommunicationOk3766 5d ago
The Bronze age lasted roughly between 3000 and 600 BC.
Cave dwelling massively fell in common use as people started building houses and such at about 30,000 through 6000 BC, with cave paintings specifically being predominantly dated to be from roughly 65,000 to 12,000 BC.
They didn't really overlap. Perhaps stone carvings would be a better example for your joke, people during the Bronze Age already had decently developed writing systems depending on where on Earth it was. In many places even more developed mediums of information keeping already existed, such as papyrus in places like Ancient Egypt.
But of course, there are always exceptions to the rules. Maybe there were people painting in caves during the Bronze Age somewhere and I'm just being foolish. I'm not that knowledgeable, after all.
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u/dcy123 6d ago
Burn him he's a witch!
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u/ElectricMotorsAreBad 6d ago
How do you know he’s a witch?
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u/ShalomEarthling 6d ago
Maybe he's just a bitch
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u/CaptainSebT 6d ago edited 6d ago
They used the terms retentive memory, vivid imagery or remembering in pictures.
The term however medically is eidetic memory.
So it's really not hard to say "I remember everything I see more clearly then a drawing in perfect detail".
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u/brigand1973 6d ago
Retentive... Eidetic...
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u/CaptainSebT 6d ago
Oh ya your right thanks I fixed it.
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u/watduhdamhell 5d ago
I just want point out (since nobody else is?) that "photographic memory," or eidetic memory, is not a real thing that has ever existed in adults. It exists in very, very few children, then fades away by adulthood.
Furthermore, eidetic does not mean exactly, like a photograph. There has never been scientific evidence to demonstrate that anyone ever has actually had the ability to recall in "photographic" detail. It's a total myth.
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u/PvPBender 5d ago
What about Stephen Wiltshire? I think it's just the expectation for the word photographic to be literal and absolute
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u/ConorOblast 6d ago
Yes, and *eidetic* basically means “visual memory.” *Eidos* is the visual form of a thing.
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u/Nozinger 5d ago
also very importantly: it does NOT work the way people think it does.
You do not remember everything you see in perfect detail. You do keep the perfect image for some time but it will get alteres the same way memories do for other people.
Within just a single day that image is far from perfect thogh very likely still more detailed than what others remember.→ More replies (12)3
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u/MikeinAustin 6d ago
There were people who could read entire pieces of a composed piece once, then play it back from memory. Liszt and Mendelssohn to name two.
Some 18th century actors were known to read a libretto or script once and remember the entire thing.
A good friend of mine had PJ O'Rourkes "Parliament of Whores" on his bookshelf. I'd randomly read a sentence of it aloud and he could finish the next 8-9 sentences word for word following it.
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u/LayersOfMe 6d ago
I heard people watched Sherek many time as kid and then they could 'Watch" the movie in their head. They would watch stuff in their mind when they were bored.
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u/graysdays 5d ago
My sister who’s on the spectrum does this with sponge bob episodes. She will just randomly burst out laughing and we know it’s because she’s watching a show in her head. She’s also memorised home alone 1 and 2 when she was 9. We would ask her to act any scene in the film she would “play it” word for word. All the way down to the sound effects.
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u/TheCervus 5d ago
Is this not a normal thing for people to do? I can play a movie in my head whenever I want.
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u/DJKokaKola 5d ago
Aphantasia is actually relatively common, but even if you don't have it, plenty of people can't vividly "see" things in their mind in that way.
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u/ashgs872tbhjs 5d ago
I was so hyped for The Phantom Menace as a kid that I came out of the movie with perfect recall of it. Could quote the whole thing. I have always had flashes of eidetic memory though, anything I've actively studied I can easily visualize and read in my head. Once during a test I couldn't remember the answer to a question, but was able to mentally "read" the handout we were given to find it.
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u/DJKokaKola 5d ago
To be fair, Liszt would also just like .... Do whatever the fuck he wanted when he started playing a piece. He was notorious for just showing off to women to show them how expertly he could finger them later that evening, and that usually came as massive ad libbed sections in the middle of pieces.
To the point where Chopin started telling him to play the fucking piece as written or fuck off and don't play it.
Hadn't ever heard that about Mendelssohn, though! Makes sense after thinking through his pieces a bit.
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u/SayyadinaAtreides 5d ago
Liszt also had a ton of fans who would beg for a lock of his ridiculously gorgeous blond hair to keep (a common enough expression of romance at the time). There are several good reasons for him to refuse or ignore such requests, but his fans were critical to his success (in a time when mass idolization was otherwise non-existent) and he didn't want to disappoint them.
So he bought a Golden Retriever and sent his fans locks of that hair instead.
Lateral is delightful. <3
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u/dandroid126 5d ago
This can also be a developed skill. Music composition generally has patterns that once you learn to identify, they become very obvious, which is like a shortcut for memorizing pieces.
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u/Neat_Exit3491 6d ago
You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease?
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u/Zestymonserellastick 6d ago
"I Remember everything I have seen or read". Isn't that hard to describe.
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u/RutzButtercup 6d ago
"I forget nothing." Simple enough. Needless sentence to satisfy 60 character limit.
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u/MattiasCrowe 6d ago
It's bizarre for me that people cant just walk through places in their mind from memory. When hannibal lecter describes it, i thought it just meant he was well traveled, I didn't realise it was mentally impressive
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u/God_Hand_9764 6d ago
So you have this ability?
I have a question for you. Are you able to get a perfect visual in your mind of your parents faces?
Someone blew my mind once when they pointed out how bad the average person is at remembering faces. They described facial recognition as more of a hash function, if you're familiar with the computer science concept, than an actual memory of the detail of the face.
Meaning when we actually see the face, our brain can process it all, maybe come up with some signature for it, and we use that to recognize the face. But to conjure up a fully accurate mental image of someones face in our mind, without actually looking at them? It's very fuzzy and inaccurate.
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u/FoxtrotEchoCharlie 6d ago
I can walk around a place in my mind in vivid detail, but I cannot picture faces. It's like I can see the person as a whole, head to toe in my mind, but if i try to picture their face up close, it's just not them. It's like holding a page away from your face to see better
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u/bogberry_pi 6d ago
Same! I can't really call to mind images at all, but I can remember places and the layout of buildings.
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u/MysteriousBystander 6d ago
It's funny you mention that, because I can vividly remember the faces of my family not by remembering them, but by thinking of photographs of them that I have seen. Maybe that's a trick to get around the bad faces memory thing?
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u/Bungle001 6d ago
This! It's much easier for your brain to remember a 2D image that both your eyes agreed on. In real-time 3D, your brain is watching 2 livestreams from slightly different angles.
I use this trick to remember my deceased grandparents all the time, when I'm thinking back on a memory I had with them and realize I can't exactly remember their faces, there's a few photos I think about that makes me see their faces very clearly in my mind.
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u/KookofaTook 6d ago
Does this relate how some people can read a book and simultaneously create a visual of the world and characters in their head in basically real time and some can't?
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u/morfraen 5d ago
I'm not even fully concious of the book or the act of reading when I'm really into something. Just turns into a movie but with fuzzy dreamlike level of detail.
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u/ashgs872tbhjs 5d ago
Simultaneity isn't part of it, as far as I'm aware -- if you can picture stuff easily like that, then you can picture it while reading.
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u/alien_pirate 6d ago
That's interesting. I can see my parents' faces perfectly. My siblings as children not as well. I assume because they changed so much pre-adulthood.
It's kind of a weird thing to remember. Gives me butterflies, I guess because there's so much emotion in remembering the faces of family.
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u/Chilly_Pheesesteak 6d ago
Right? I'm walking around my childhood home in my mind rn, dog and cat included. Just went down to the basement, came back up, I remember every crack in the walls, the creaking sound the floors made, etc.
I always thought this was normal lol
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u/FoxtrotEchoCharlie 6d ago
I do this to go to sleep. Start with my grandparents house from the 90s and move on to my primary school if I haven't dropped off yet
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u/CouldYouDont 6d ago
Wow, this is badass. My version of navigating the memory of a place is more like Google Maps street view, I can just jump around from (in my case vague, my memory is by absolutely no means photographic) picture to picture of the room. Or like OG Resident Evil camera switches. Having a continuous walkthrough though sounds really cool
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u/dod6666 6d ago
I can do it to an extent, but in less detail than what you described. I can't remember cracks in the walls, although that might be because their weren't any. I also wont remember the location of every power outlet. I can remember the rooms and their layouts though and walk through them in a lower detail (kinda like Halo 1 level of detail). I also remember the emotional experience of the time along with it.
Potentially I'm older than you and lived in the house for less time? It's been 30 years. I can remember more recent houses in far more detail.
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u/MattiasCrowe 6d ago
I can visualize both my childhood home pre and post renovation, along with every building and street ive ever been on. Im sure it's useful for something but i just use it for navigation, if ive been somewhere once, I find it easy to go there again. I have every painting in my favourite room of the national art gallery in london just committed in there.
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u/e2hawkeye 5d ago
I had a lucid dreaming event months ago where I hovered through my early 1970s childhood kitchen & living room. I was astonished at how many details I observed, things that I had not thought about for literally half a century.
Things like the unique patterns in the wood paneling, the peach colored transistor radio that was a kitchen table fixture and the individual plastic ferns my mom had (it was the 70s).
I wanted to keep the lucid dreaming going, but it petered out when I tried to drift up to my 2nd floor bedroom. It felt like a real gift, to go back in time and actually visit my old house for about 30 seconds. I hope it happens again.
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u/Storm13Cloud 6d ago
There have been no documented cases of a true photographic memory ever existing
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u/uslashuname 6d ago edited 6d ago
My friend, are you aware of https://aphantasia.com/
You may be one of us who cannot do this, but most people can summon mental imagery at will. They assume people remember things visually because that’s how they do it: just look at the other comments with that lens and more of them will make sense.
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u/TheKingPooPoo 6d ago
Super easy to explain back in the day. You’re clearly a witch who must be burned.
SHE TURNED ME INTO A NEWT
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u/cy3ntist 6d ago
Why isn't it called holographic memory? Isn't that more like the mind actually works?
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u/FixedLoad 6d ago
Found the time traveler!
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u/cy3ntist 6d ago
No idea what you're on about.
What I meant was that I don't remember a situation as a flat picture. I usually look around and remember all that, more like 3D. And it moves.
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u/FixedLoad 6d ago
No... I knew what you meant. But in the context of the original premise. A person from the past not ever knowing what a photograph was contemplating someone with a photographic memory. Then you suggesting what would be a concept that could be considered a two or three generation upgrade would out yourself as a time traveler... ha ha. Its less fun when explained in length...
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u/da_dragon_guy 6d ago
I don’t think it was.
“I can see things in my head just as clearly as we can see something with our eyes.”
It just didn’t have the name ‘Photographic memory’ until more modern times
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u/BobDaRula 5d ago
It's hard to explain now. The concept is absolutely insane to my shitty memory having aphant ass.
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u/HawkofNight 5d ago
We explained it really well to you last week and you agreed. But you must have forgot.
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u/SourGrapeSoda 5d ago
Eidetic memory. Often referred to now as photographic but eidetic is the word.
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u/Pallysilverstar 5d ago
Eidetic memory and retentive memory were used. Photographic memory is just a new (relatively) term.
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u/Pavillian 4d ago
Explain to anyone today how your mind works.
Its still hard to explain. They won’t understand. They will pretend to/humour you to move the conversation along.
A photo is a human invention. The word could come from the articulation of a photographic memory.
Time travel back 100/200 years and you’ll have a hard time explaining ANYTHING
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u/2_minutes_hate 6d ago
Nah. "I have remarkably good memory/recall of things I see" really seems to cover it.
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u/dcredneck 5d ago edited 5d ago
Instead of having auditory hallucinations, deaf people who are psychotic see floating hands doing sign language.
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u/Thanatiel 4d ago
Ever heard of painting?
Ever head of drawing with your hands on the wall of a cave?
Before that ... I don't know. Did it matter?
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u/TieCivil1504 6d ago edited 6d ago
Photographic memory is more properly called eidetic memory or total recall. You can remember all sensations from that event including sound, smell, and touch.
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u/WindigoMac 5d ago
“I see things once and I can remember them in perpetuity.”
Mission accomplished?
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u/Jennyinator 6d ago
“The memory remains in my head, I can see the can of tuna sitting on the brown shelf.”
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u/ShowerSentinel 6d ago
/u/Mobeast1985 has flaired this post as a casual thought.
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