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Here's a fun question: if someone had near total recall, what career or life path could they take where it would give them the biggest advantage? Gambling with

Here's a fun question: if someone had near total recall, what career or life path could they take where it would give them the biggest advantage? Gambling with cards is an obvious field. I've also worked with programmers who seemed to remember every bit of code they'd come across and that was a huge advantage (although it's a bit disconcerting when someone remembers your code better than you do).

trustingtrust 3y ago
"Gambling with cards is an obvious field." financial goals would not rank high. If I could remember every single thing I see, I would rather become a lawyer or a doctor where I would be able to have a much higher advantage over others and that would automatically solve any financial problems. If I had a superpower, I would use it to help people as a career path because gambling would get boring real soon as the money aspect of it would just disappear in a week or so (assuming any place allows you in twice). This is like the one where people who win the lottery become happy for a very short time but very soon after that they either go back their baseline happiness or worse, become depressed.
- 6510 3y ago
  The point of a bad memory is to forget, it seems to me lawyers and doctors run into a lot of forget-worthy situations. Running a (perhaps specialized) bookstore seems more fun.
  - jamestimmins 3y ago
    "The point of a bad memory is to forget" This is an interesting framing of the question. As someone with a bad memory, I definitely like the idea that it's not entirely a weakness.
- astrange 3y ago
  It doesn't really seem to me that this would be beneficial for lawyers. The most important skill for a lawyer is the same as any other business owner - the skill of getting people to give you money. Nothing else really matters, not even winning. As long as you don't steal from your clients.
878654Tom 3y ago
While having perfect memory you still need to be able to apply that knowledge. Someone who can perfectly recall a whole medical book does not make him/her a great doctor. Same for lawyers or any other "bookworm" professions. But to answer your question, I would think a politician. You will look smart and in debates you can always recall your opponents voting history, statements,...
- jamestimmins 3y ago
  Politician is a great example, although you definitely need a lot of other skills to succeed there. The same would apply to being a journalist. Being a Jake Tapper or similar who remembers everything someone ever said could make you an incredible interviewer.
dilawar 3y ago
https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/12247 https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/12247 I am a bit surprised not finding any reference to Lauria's book. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-mystery-of-s-the-man-with-an-impossible-memory https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-mystery-of-s...
- bookofjoe 3y ago
  This is one of the great books of my life. I've read it several times, first as a college undergraduate in 1968, when the English translation appeared. https://archive.org/details/LuriaTheMindOfAMnemonist https://archive.org/details/LuriaTheMindOfAMnemonist
noisy_boy 3y ago
If by advantage we mean ability to do their work well, Historian, Diagnostician, Lawyer, Archivist, Patent reviewer...
devoutsalsa 3y ago
The entire premise of Suits, the TV show, was that one of the main characters had a perfect memory & that made him good lawyer material.
- teddyh 3y ago
  More: <https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhotographicMemory#folder6 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhotographicMemo...>
jaggederest 3y ago
I have a significantly above average memory (read a book remember what was in it, not exactly but close), and I was told that Dermatology was the field I should pursue. Apparently it involves thousands of similar but slightly different diseases that, if you could remember them all perfectly, would make your life as a dermatologist an absolute cakewalk. I'm a programmer instead. School sucks when people don't understand why you don't need to study, and try to make you do it anyway. I remember essentially every line of code I've ever worked on, though, which can be an asset or a challenge depending - JScript version five is still knocking around in my brain somewhere, confusing my usage of modern Javascript.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I think a boss I had a long time ago was like that. An anecdote: he originally wrote the code years back. Then, a particularly hairy debug session involving potentially many millions of dollars in damages if the problem was not found, recompiled, fixed and deployed on embedded hardware in the field - a tense situation. The programmers doubling as field techs called in to this boss (original author of the code) who hadn't touched the code in years. Yet, after som prodding questions directed them to find a certain source file, an "if" at around line so-or-so in a 10k line (spaghetti, in my opinion) source file, make a single change, recompile and test. Of course, it worked. That anecdote changed my understanding of his code. To me, it was badly written, unstructured and so on. (And it was.) But what use is structure and order if you can keep all of it in your head at the same time? I lose track after a weekend, I need the order.
  - jaggederest 3y ago
    Absolutely, it took me a long time to learn exactly that. Even though I remember what's in the file and where things go and can build the structure in my head, that's not without a cost, a significant one. Having a bad day, can't engage your "superpowers"? Whoops, now your entire project is in park until you get a chance to focus. And of course, as soon as the project hits someone else's desk, I can't rely on them knowing the whole codebase implicitly either. One way I've used my ability in the past is that, for example, I can just read libraries or documentation and remember them, possibly better than the author does. I've done that for several major and minor versions of Rails, all historical now, but it gave me a significant edge at the time. On the other hand, as I mentioned, that also means there's a disturbing amount of obsolete information muddying the waters - another commenter here mentioned that he has a hard time distinguishing between his recollections of his own voice vs other people's, in his memories, and that is much how it operates for me - Was that documentation valid for Postgres 7.6, 9.6 or 14.6?
sdenton4 3y ago
I /definitely/ don't have perfect autobiographical memory, but do have an above-average recall for code. And a tendency to dig deep to understand how systems work. One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is when someone has a Weird Error and you can point them to the exact spot in some complicated framework code that's responsible for the trouble they're having.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bigbacaloa 3y ago
Filtering is important. Remembering everything is an obstacle to remembering the key things. Too much data is as useless as no data.
dyno12345 3y ago
Solomon Shereshevsky, the first reported case of this sort of thing, was employed as a journalist and was scolded by his boss for never taking notes. Shereshevsky was surprised to learn that other people needed to take notes at all.

trustingtrust 3y ago

"Gambling with cards is an obvious field." financial goals would not rank high. If I could remember every single thing I see, I would rather become a lawyer or a doctor where I would be able to have a much higher advantage over others and that would automatically solve any financial problems. If I had a superpower, I would use it to help people as a career path because gambling would get boring real soon as the money aspect of it would just disappear in a week or so (assuming any place allows you in twice). This is like the one where people who win the lottery become happy for a very short time but very soon after that they either go back their baseline happiness or worse, become depressed.

6510 3y ago
The point of a bad memory is to forget, it seems to me lawyers and doctors run into a lot of forget-worthy situations. Running a (perhaps specialized) bookstore seems more fun.
- jamestimmins 3y ago
  "The point of a bad memory is to forget" This is an interesting framing of the question. As someone with a bad memory, I definitely like the idea that it's not entirely a weakness.
astrange 3y ago
It doesn't really seem to me that this would be beneficial for lawyers. The most important skill for a lawyer is the same as any other business owner - the skill of getting people to give you money. Nothing else really matters, not even winning. As long as you don't steal from your clients.

878654Tom 3y ago

While having perfect memory you still need to be able to apply that knowledge. Someone who can perfectly recall a whole medical book does not make him/her a great doctor. Same for lawyers or any other "bookworm" professions. But to answer your question, I would think a politician. You will look smart and in debates you can always recall your opponents voting history, statements,...

jamestimmins 3y ago
Politician is a great example, although you definitely need a lot of other skills to succeed there. The same would apply to being a journalist. Being a Jake Tapper or similar who remembers everything someone ever said could make you an incredible interviewer.

dilawar 3y ago

https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/12247 https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/12247 I am a bit surprised not finding any reference to Lauria's book. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-mystery-of-s-the-man-with-an-impossible-memory https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-mystery-of-s...

bookofjoe 3y ago
This is one of the great books of my life. I've read it several times, first as a college undergraduate in 1968, when the English translation appeared. https://archive.org/details/LuriaTheMindOfAMnemonist https://archive.org/details/LuriaTheMindOfAMnemonist

noisy_boy 3y ago

If by advantage we mean ability to do their work well, Historian, Diagnostician, Lawyer, Archivist, Patent reviewer...

devoutsalsa 3y ago

The entire premise of Suits, the TV show, was that one of the main characters had a perfect memory & that made him good lawyer material.

teddyh 3y ago
More: <https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhotographicMemory#folder6 https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhotographicMemo...>

jaggederest 3y ago

I have a significantly above average memory (read a book remember what was in it, not exactly but close), and I was told that Dermatology was the field I should pursue. Apparently it involves thousands of similar but slightly different diseases that, if you could remember them all perfectly, would make your life as a dermatologist an absolute cakewalk. I'm a programmer instead. School sucks when people don't understand why you don't need to study, and try to make you do it anyway. I remember essentially every line of code I've ever worked on, though, which can be an asset or a challenge depending - JScript version five is still knocking around in my brain somewhere, confusing my usage of modern Javascript.

actionfromafar 3y ago
I think a boss I had a long time ago was like that. An anecdote: he originally wrote the code years back. Then, a particularly hairy debug session involving potentially many millions of dollars in damages if the problem was not found, recompiled, fixed and deployed on embedded hardware in the field - a tense situation. The programmers doubling as field techs called in to this boss (original author of the code) who hadn't touched the code in years. Yet, after som prodding questions directed them to find a certain source file, an "if" at around line so-or-so in a 10k line (spaghetti, in my opinion) source file, make a single change, recompile and test. Of course, it worked. That anecdote changed my understanding of his code. To me, it was badly written, unstructured and so on. (And it was.) But what use is structure and order if you can keep all of it in your head at the same time? I lose track after a weekend, I need the order.
- jaggederest 3y ago
  Absolutely, it took me a long time to learn exactly that. Even though I remember what's in the file and where things go and can build the structure in my head, that's not without a cost, a significant one. Having a bad day, can't engage your "superpowers"? Whoops, now your entire project is in park until you get a chance to focus. And of course, as soon as the project hits someone else's desk, I can't rely on them knowing the whole codebase implicitly either. One way I've used my ability in the past is that, for example, I can just read libraries or documentation and remember them, possibly better than the author does. I've done that for several major and minor versions of Rails, all historical now, but it gave me a significant edge at the time. On the other hand, as I mentioned, that also means there's a disturbing amount of obsolete information muddying the waters - another commenter here mentioned that he has a hard time distinguishing between his recollections of his own voice vs other people's, in his memories, and that is much how it operates for me - Was that documentation valid for Postgres 7.6, 9.6 or 14.6?

sdenton4 3y ago

I /definitely/ don't have perfect autobiographical memory, but do have an above-average recall for code. And a tendency to dig deep to understand how systems work. One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is when someone has a Weird Error and you can point them to the exact spot in some complicated framework code that's responsible for the trouble they're having.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bigbacaloa 3y ago

Filtering is important. Remembering everything is an obstacle to remembering the key things. Too much data is as useless as no data.

dyno12345 3y ago

Solomon Shereshevsky, the first reported case of this sort of thing, was employed as a journalist and was scolded by his boss for never taking notes. Shereshevsky was surprised to learn that other people needed to take notes at all.