Ask HN: How good (or bad) is your memory?

[LVB]

Prompted by David Lynch's passing, a friend messaged me: "Remember when we watched Blue Velvet in the artsy Milwaukee cinema?"

Nope… I have no recollection of that event, or the movie.

This isn't a surprise. I will watch movies and write reviews of them in my journal, and 18 months later have no recollection of ever seeing it, and reading the review brings little to nothing back. I'm used to it, and this has been me for decades. I have few memories of my wedding, or when my kids were young (like, 5-8 years ago), etc. I'll spend a week somewhere on vacation and barely recall more than "I was there". I don't like taking too many pictures because it can be frustrating to see myself in places that I have no recollection of (or that I'd even gone there). Sometimes its embarrassing, like when I'll recommend some place and then the person I'm talking too tells me we visited it together.

This rarely bugs me though, which surprises some folks. I live very much "now" and eschew most nostalgia. My wife has a good memory, but it comes with a burden of bad/painful experiences hanging around. e.g. she'll have a sour view of someone, but it's for something they said 10+ years ago. OTOH I literally rely on the fact that I'll forget many irritating things in days or weeks.

HN seems to be interested in memory-related stories, and I'm curious how folks view their own memory, good or bad, and whether its something they think much about, struggle with, etc.

[christophilus]

I’m similar to you. I have the memory of a gnat. It might be related to many years of undiagnosed sleep apnea. Or maybe it’s a side effect of a handful of experiences with general anesthesia.

My mom is similar, though, so I suspect it’s just inherited. Like you, it doesn’t bother me.

[dlcarrier]

Everyone's memory of events is really bad. Eye witnesses are useless.

[swah → dlcarrier]

I don't know. I'm like op and feel like getting worse. My wife otherwise will remember minor stuff like when my son last went to the doctor "oh yeah that was june 5th, because two days before dad was visiting..." and I'll be like "your family visited this year?" then she'll give more information say "we even went to the new Hard Rock with them" and I'll concede: "you're right, I have a faint still image of us sitting in that balcony table there". I would kill for having that. She never heard of PKM or Obsidian, and sucks at basic tasks like charging her phone and remembering the weekly appointments, but for that kind of stuff... its ridiculous.

[rpaddock → swah]

Females have better episodic memory than males. The structure of the brain is physically different. Male brains are wired more front to back and female brains more side-to-side:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1316909110