
The Mystery of S., a Man with an Impossible Memory (2017) - keiferski
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-mystery-of-s-the-man-with-an-impossible-memory
======
Itaxpica
For a slightly more modern occurrence of something similar, the actress Marilu
Henner also has total, perfect recall:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner)

~~~
brandall10
There was a 60 minutes from several years ago with her and a handful of others
with this ability.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gift-of-endless-
memory/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gift-of-endless-memory/)

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IIAOPSW
This explains a lot about S. The mystery book with an additional story in the
margins and various artefacts tucked in the pages.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17860739-s](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17860739-s)

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SubiculumCode
As a memory researcher, I'd be interested in conducting case studies on such
superior (not perfect) recall. In particular, I'd like to examine relational
memory under incidental encoding conditions with materials not easily
verbalized with relations that are arbitrary. hat is, I am interested whether
their hippocampal dependent memory is superior, and/or whether it depends
mostly on extrahippocampal processes such as semantic-based organizational
mnemonics.

~~~
jaggederest
Do you have an example of something like that?

~~~
SubiculumCode
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. If you mean what kind of paradigm may be
used to try to get performance to inordinately depend on hippocampally-
mediated binding processes? See Konkel and Cohen, 2008 _Hippocampal amnesia
impairs all manner of relational memory_ or my own paper, Lee et al 2016:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4733390/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4733390/)
..although these were not under incidental encoding.

~~~
jaggederest
> incidental encoding conditions with materials not easily verbalized with
> relations that are arbitrary

An example of such conditions and materials.

~~~
SubiculumCode
[https://i.imgur.com/dqBFwBp.png](https://i.imgur.com/dqBFwBp.png) from Konkel
et al, 2008

Objects which are hard to name and have little meaning (very novel), and the
relations between them (e.g. spatial position, temporal order) are arbitrary.
These tend to impede organizational encoding or retrieval strategies. Not
impossible, but harder. You might be able to tag a color, but after seeing a
few dozen, that is hard.

~~~
jaggederest
Interesting. Thanks for the examples, those do seem challenging. I suspect I'd
do astoundingly well on that test in the medium to long term, at least
compared to population norms, and quite abysmal in the very short and short
term without time to process and encode the memories.

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Pimpus
> The editor picked up a newspaper and read at length from it, challenging S.
> to repeat everything back to him. When S. did so verbatim, the editor sent
> him to have his head examined.

Not sure whether intentional but this is the funniest thing I've read in a
long time.

~~~
keiferski
There are all sorts of hilarious little absurdist anecdotes in the book. Take
this one:

 _S: I 'm sitting in a restaurant—there's music. You know why they have music
in restaurants? Because it changes the taste of everything. If you select the
right kind of music, everything tastes good. Surely people who work in
restaurants know this._

~~~
coldtea
Well, that's not really absurd or far for the truth. Music is selected for its
effects on the consumer in all kinds of commercial establishments, and besides
trial-and-error (this kind of music works best for people to drink more in our
bar etc) there are lots of commercial research into it.

~~~
keiferski
In the context of the story and Shereshevsky's personality, it is. To him, a
person with extremely strong synesthesia, musical sounds literally have
flavors, flavors that are as strong as actual real food to a normal person.

He isn't saying, "Restaurants play certain music to push customers to feel a
certain way," he's literally saying that the flavors of music can match and
enhance the flavors of food.

~~~
analogyexpert
It could still be argued that the difference is in degree rather than in kind-
that the 'extra bandwidth connecting his senses' allowed him to clearly
articulate as sensation a phenomenon much more subconscious in the typical
patron's mind.

~~~
keiferski
No, not really. If you read the book, you will see that his mind was very
idiosyncratic and the associations he made were highly unique and imagination-
based, and _not_ some sort of heightened sensory input.

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jaggederest
Very interesting. I find myself in the odd position of having an extraordinary
memory akin to (though perhaps not as extreme as) Shereshevsky that is not
especially useful to me.

I often put it as "I don't think my memory is that good, but I've never met
someone with a better memory to check it against". I often find myself
reminding people of interactions we've had, conversations, what we had for
dinner, what they were wearing... Largely ephemeral recollections of no
particular relevance.

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dang
A small discussion from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14997702)

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chrisbennet
A friend of mine has a very, very good memory. He says it not always an
advantage as he can’t forget the bad things either.

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WheelsAtLarge
Am I the only one thinks that The New Yorker takes 5 pages to give 1 page of
information? Their articles are so frustrating to read!

~~~
keiferski
The New Yorker is a literary magazine, not an encyclopedia. If you're reading
it purely for gathering information, I suggest the Wikipedia article [1] or
Luria's book itself instead. [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky)

[2] [http://arteflora.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Luria-The-
Mi...](http://arteflora.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Luria-The-Mind-of-a-
Mnemonist.pdf)

~~~
nerdponx
I've always wished "long form" articles would put an abstract at the
beginning.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Me too.

I even tried to see if such a "summary" would be a viable business:
[https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-
Su...](https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/Weekly-
Summaries/2016-10.md)

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segmondy
Do y'all think folks with such memory will make better programmers?

~~~
cannabisceo
From what I'm reading on Wikipedia it isn't equivalent to being able to
memorize information. The skill is limited to being able to recall
autobiographical details...so what you had for lunch in 1992 but not what you
read in this CS textbook.

