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I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal o

I'm curious how this relates to neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic learning where someone has weak rote-memorization skills and mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow, but if you ask me how computers work, I'll start with explaining electron orbitals and band gaps, doping, masking, VLSI, assembly language, C, functional programming and where AI is heading from first principles. Unfortunately instead of being some kind of superpower, it's mainly been debilitating for me, because I've spent my career writing CRUD apps in an endless series of failed startups. Because most people don't think this way, and instead see only the use-case before them as a stepping stone to another goal, usually financial. It would be easier for me to design spaceships than manage my bills, but I seem to be relegated to doing chores for the rest of my life and dying penniless.

interstice 3y ago
I associate strongly with this, my memory is almost entirely compartmentalised. Even to the point of what happened earlier today being a fog unless I can find a leap off point. The answer is start a business, it’s a strength to be able to deep dive into all areas and leap between them at will, I’ve found.
dclowd9901 3y ago
Wow what a whirlwind that comment was. Circling back to the main point, it seems like her recall has some manner of fractal association to it, by how she describes remembering things.
vbezhenar 3y ago
But you're living in US. In US you got paid crazy salaries for programming. Why do you work at failed startups? Just get some job with crazy salary, work there for 5 years and then retire.
- oumua_don17 3y ago
  As GP refers to >> neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic >> paid crazy salaries for programming may be it's difficult to go through the typical interview loops for such jobs as they are not designed to be inclusive for ND etc despite all the diversity and inclusion BS (more often than not) at such workplaces.
  - zackmorris 3y ago
    I just wanted to interject that my struggle wasn't with interviews, but in suspending disbelief in order to focus and work in ways I didn't believe in. Because I could trivially automate most of the work I'm forced to do, so I struggle to find meaning in work itself. And when I did automate, they just gave me more work at the same pay until I burned out. So it's just as important not to take a job you can walk onto. Work for someone you want to be someday. My struggles were largely due to moving back to the city nearest to where I grew up after college, which wasn't a tech hub for 20 years, although it's becoming one now. So I've been on a career odyssey. Now most of what I know is obsolete, but I'm having a hard time adapting to my new reality after so many decades of negative reinforcement. I agree with Paul Graham about moving to where the energy is. Network effects are everything.
  - astrange 3y ago
    I think calling FAANG programmers neurotypical is a bold statement.
- hsjsbeebue 3y ago
  At a FAANG. Depends if you can jump the requisite hoops and also stick it out.
wvh 3y ago
This sounds familiar, including an unstable or uncertain view of oneself caused by – depending on the situation – not knowing if one's pretty smart and inventive, or a total idiot not capable of living life. Finding the right environment and well, just age help a lot.
- swagmoney1606 3y ago
  > This sounds familiar, including an unstable or uncertain view of oneself caused by – depending on the situation – not knowing if one's pretty smart and inventive, or a total idiot not capable of living life. Also a familiar feeling to me as well.
  - username135 3y ago
    Fellow idiot chiming in
thefourthchime 3y ago
I don't have a good memory at all, but for some reason, if I listen to a podcast a second time I can recall exactly where I was as the podcast goes on. For example, if I listened to the (fantastic) “search engine” podcast about pig butchering I would know where I was walking my dog, or cleaning the kitchen, etc… It's very odd
- hsjsbeebue 3y ago
  My memory is rubbish generally except I can draw the floorplan of anywhere I have lived or stayed. But directions, conversations, dates, forget it!
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  It's not just you! I make the same association with podcast episodes, except I usually listen to podcasts while gaming, so for me it's in-game locations or quests.
- klipt 3y ago
  That's why memory locations are a common trick to memorize information. See Method Of Loci.
petesergeant 3y ago
> For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow I have seen this cited a few times as evidence of ADHD, and without any comment at all on your own situation (a stranger, who I don't know, on the internet), isn't this in particular mostly true of everyone? I have a calendar and a todo-list app specifically for this reason.
- sandspar 3y ago
  ADHD is the latest in a very long line of "vaguely applies to everyone" diagnoses. The history of psychology is full of them. Asperger's was in vogue a few years ago, chronic fatigue syndrome is for people who like scary diagnoses, irritable bowel is one with a reputational devil may care, codependency is a bit antique, long COVID is topical. Any sufficiently motivated person can diagnose themselves with these. And boy are there motivations: have one of them and you instantly become special. (And yes before anyone says it, there are many genuine cases.)
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    Have you ever done that trick where you position your fingertip in just the right spot where the nerves on the retina converge, causing your fingertip to disappear from the field of view? When I first did this there were two surprises, the one I expected, when I saw my fingertip vanish. And then a bigger one I did not expect, which is noticing I had never noticed this deficiency before, despite it being literally right before my eyes my entire life. When I was a teenager I held something approximately like your view on ADD, (there was no ADHD variant yet). That it was mainly a crutch, a blame-deflecting explanation for failure sought by those who couldn't get their shit together for character flaw reasons. This attitude made me turn down an offer by one of my professors, who also happened to be a clinical psych., to connect me with someone who might be able to diagnose whether or not I had this issue. I went without a diagnosis for another decade before circumstances press me to reconsider my position. The very first time that I took medication that was prescribed to me was like that optic nerve blind spor revelation, but in reverse (and magnitudes larger in effext): a deficiency that had been with me my whole life, but completely invisible not because I could not see it, but because I saw everything through it, suddenly vanished. The effect is difficult to summarize in a few words but it's as if I had gone my whole life not knowing that I needed to wear reading glasses (in a world where they were still quite rare and uncommon) - attributing my inability to remain engaged with any text longer than a few sentences without becoming strangely fatigued to a lack of willpower or mental conditioning - and then putting them on. "_this_ is what everyone else sees?!"
cyrillite 3y ago
This is how my memory works, especially for autobiographical things. Aka me a direct autobiographical question and I may not be able to retrieve it. Find an association and I can recall with quite astonishing clarity and in ways which I can confirm, with testing and with historical research, aren’t mere confabulations.
lr4444lr 3y ago
What makes you say that autistic people have weak rote but strong associative memory? One common feature of high functioning autistics is an obsession with the memorization of minutiae (on some topic of intense interest) without at all understanding context. For example, a former classics professor I knew told us about a relative of his who memorized the entire Persian king list for dozens of dynasties long. He couldn't tell you much actual Persian history at all, but the professor unabashedly admitted that almost no one of his colleagues outside of the actual specialists in Persian history could recite that list even with a gun to their heads, despite being capable of lecturing on Persian history due to their education.
- zackmorris 3y ago
  Good question. I might be more like 80/20 ADHD/autistic and have mostly learned about the (monotropism?) symptoms from @nd_psych on TikTok. I spend an inordinate amount of time simulating other people's minds trying to understand how they arrive at conclusions that don't make sense to me, in pathological demand avoidance (PDA), and in autistic burnout due to masking. I don't seem to have the stereotypical pedantic/critiquing/savant or memorization skills seen in portrayals like Rain Man or The Accountant. My lived reality is just a crushing, unending, series of external asks that have all but obliterated my sense of self and autonomy. From the moment I wake up until I go to bed, I'm just running, performatively matching the constraints required of me to tread water. I used to be very self-driven, but after so many decades of this, I don't have a strong sense of being able to take care of myself. I would have been homeless at many times in my life had it not been for the generosity of friends and family. Where this matters for me is that I've lost too many years to stuff like politics. I've learned recently that left and right just live in different realities. No amount of mental simulation will allow me to fully understand another person's context. Because they're not even thinking about the same problems I am, they're prioritizing other things. For example, I was raised under a largely feminist/humanist framework and identify as progressive, so empathy dominates my decision making. But imagine you're in a hostage situation, who do you want to rescue you? Someone raised under positive reinforcement (left), or tough love (right)? I think most of us want conservatives dropping in from the ceiling and getting it done. So I've been working on expanding my mindset to accept multiple points of view and leave behind us-versus-them winners and losers thinking. Opening my mind to notions like not knowing and letting go. Seeing the power in being wrong sometimes, allowing others to help, and delegating to be part of a stronger team. It's sure hard sometimes though. Sorry if that's more than what you were asking, but hey, I guess I'm interested in it!
Perenti 3y ago
I'm diagnosed as ASD, and a psych has said I'm almost certainly ADHD but untestable. I have an unusually acute visual memory - I can accurately describe the room I was in while Churchill's funeral was on TV, when I was less than 3 years old. Most university exams were effectively open book because I could recall the pages I'd read as images. I'm not convinced all the stereotypes about ASD/ADHD superpowers are true myself. And yes, autism super skills don't equate to commercial success for most of us.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  I wonder if this has to do with IQ. likely yours is very high . People with high IQs can have very accurate memories
  - Kuinox 3y ago
    IQ is a measure, not a cause. Also, memory is used in IQ tests, so having a great memory will improve the tests results.
- appplication 3y ago
  Interesting, I used to have an extremely strong visual memory. It was like you said, seeing the words on the page of my textbooks (if not verbatim then largely). That was mostly when I was 13-18. I can’t say it’s causal, but around the time I discovered weed (17/18) I pretty much lost this ability. I was never a particularly heavy or regular user, but it’s pretty easy for me to segment my memory acuity into before/after age 18. Of course at that age many things are changing, all very quickly. So who’s to say what the cause was. Maybe it was destined to decline with age anyways. I do fine for myself now, but now I tend to rely on process and flow states rather than memory recall for getting things done.
slibhb 3y ago
> It would be easier for me to design spaceships than manage my bills, but I seem to be relegated to doing chores for the rest of my life and dying penniless. What a drag!
markisus 3y ago
Your interests seem to lie closer to the systems and hardware side. Can you elaborate on why your career is in CRUD apps? What about working for SpaceX?
- zackmorris 3y ago
  Well I wanted to say "solve warp drive" but didn't want to sound eccentric. I'll lump the comment by ghufran_syed in with this. I'm fond of SpaceX and deeply admire what they're doing. But honestly my heart is in helping people, rather than taking humanity to new heights. I originally wanted to be a genetic engineer back in the '80s during the AIDS crisis, and because progress on cancer was glacial then. Prejudice was a lot higher than it is today. So the powers that be didn't want to do a moonshot for genetics like they did with the X Prize in the '90s, and I went into tech instead. Today if I could do it all over again, I'd like to see a moonshot to cure all genetic disorders by 2030 with tools like CRISPR and mRNA vaccines. Loosely that just means that from the context of a show like For All Mankind, I identify more with NASA than I do with Helios. Although Dev Ayesa's non-hierarchical work structure resonates with me more than what Elon Musk is doing. Ayesa's was the original vision of the '90s tech scene that we've lost today under wealth inequality. On that note, I'm concerned about Musk's embrace of center-right politics and the cognitive dissonance we're seeing around free-speech-for-some. Humanity is moving the opposite direction towards egalitarianism. I hope that he comes around, but until then, I can't really endorse any of his companies anymore. And that makes me sad on a profound level. I'm sick of losing my heroes. Anyway, the gatekeeping around medicine is so high that maybe I let myself give up on the dream of genetics. Which is sad too, because AI is what will solve it. We don't have large epidemiological studies or a simulation where we can rapidly iterate on cures. Although we do have a mountain of data in Ancestry and 23andme. I don't think that medical researchers have any idea what programmers would be capable of in that space if we were given autonomy. Ethics aside, I see that as the last frontier until we move out into the stars. Sooo, with my passions out of reach, I turned towards basic survival, mostly CRUD apps to make rent. It's hard to climb a corporate ladder when getting to the top doesn't mean anything to oneself. I don't want success, I want financial freedom so that I can start getting real work done outside of external expectation. To invent real solutions that would help free people from their day to day chores and bills so they can self-actualize. That's why I'm such a proponent of UBI. When any of us struggle, we all struggle. So far none of the projects I've been involved with have won the internet lottery yet. And my body/psyche won't let me work through burnout like I used to. Somehow I have to start over, and that's daunting. I suspect I'm not alone in that feeling.
proteal 3y ago
Hi - I had similar experiences to you, but an old boss pulled me aside explained everything. For context, I was not doing great at work, I was missing deadlines, would get accounts confused, etc. While I was getting chewed out, he rattled off all the relevant numbers/structures/people for all the things I was missing. He told me he knew I didn’t care about my job because I couldn’t remember the details of my job. If I cared about it, I would know the details. Yet, when it came to the things I actually cared about (computers, video games, movies), I could list off of every minute detail. The framework of “you only remember the things you care about” helped me understand why I was dropping the ball in life and ultimately led to a happier life. I stopped doing some things I clearly didn’t care for and started doing more of the stuff I remembered more easily. The real kicker was that I also able to change the things I cared about. Work got much better a few weeks after that chat. I also got very good at remembering names because I started caring about others more deeply. I hope you see parts of yourself in my story. You’re clearly a talented and smart individual - it’s never too late to turn things around.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  I'm glad this worked for you, but I don't think that you understand OP's central argument about the penalties imposed by the substantial ergonomic mismatch between ADHD "smart" and the conventional species, and may not have as strong a sense of what being on the inside of this condition feels like. ADHD wiring essentially forces every task to be derived from a set of fundamental axioms about why the task must e done, why it must work the way it does, with an almost proof-like causal chain working all the way back to first principles, in order to simply remeber it in a stable way. Being interested in a subject can benefit you only in so far as it will provide you with motivation to build out a vast knowledge graph scaffold around the set of tasks that need to be done, in order to not feel like you are kicking a dead whale up the beach every time you have to start doing one of them. But if you are presented with a subject where there is no time to do this, or the type of subject where it is actually not possible and only the muscle memory of rote memorization will power you through it, it doesn't matter how much it subjectively appeals to or interests you. You are going to be at the back of the pack despite your best efforts. Attempts to give you help will only frustrate your (very likely memorization-gifted) tutors and mentors: they don't understand what's going on, so you merely look stupid, unmotivated or both. However, if you had enough runaway, they would find that not only you would catch up to wherever everyone else was (in one third of the time it took you,) but after another third share of prep time you would move from the bottom decile to the top, with gains still compounding. But this occasion almost never presents itself, because you're typically flushed out of the cycle long before you build enough inertia in the domain to show what you're capable of. One can go almost sick with envy over the way neurotypically smart people are almkst unaware of how easily and quickly they retain multiple arbitrary lists of "how" steps in processes, even when these are largely self-contained and unconnected to any other chain of reasoning, and just get shit done without having to know how the entire superstructure is put together. You'll be almost comically bad at (and find little pleasure in) all board games (except the most popular ones you've had years of exposure to), if you have not had time to master them ADHD style - even if you genuinely enjoy board games in principle. Whereas peers in your same nerd adjacent circle seem to reach competence or even mastery of any example in this genre of bureaucracy-as-a-sport within a few plays. Performing on stage, if there are more than a handful of lines to memorize, is utterly out of the question. Even if you love acting or theater, it's just not for you. My own testament to this paradox is not from board games, but incredibly demoralizong experience trying to learn the piano (as an adult no less), something I had more than ample interest in and motivation to learn, but which in the initial stages presented almost insurmountable obstacles when it came to simply memorizing the basics of sight reading, scales, and the learner's songbook. skills that I watched 7 and 8 year olds, teens and even fellow adult learners, acquire in weeks but took me well over a year to reach parity. Since my job and self-image werent riding on being at the top of the class, I was able to keep with it accordimg to my own pace. And although I probably still wouldn't get hired even for a gig in the local shopping mall, my ability to improvise and stylize outside the set pieces I had received my basic training on inexorably began to surpass most of that cohort who had lapped me several times over back when we were just doing the rote basics.
ghufran_syed 3y ago
spacex is hiring... https://www.spacex.com/careers/jobs?discipline=engineering+-+software+%26+analytics https://www.spacex.com/careers/jobs?discipline=engineering+-...
flashgordon 3y ago
You know I was watching Amadeus about 15 years ago. It was the first time I had even heard about Salieri. In one of the first scenes an aged Salieri fails at a suicide attempt. Enraged and out of his mind he yells past his wardens (I think at a mental asylum) - "I am Antonio Salieri - the patron saint of mediocrity". WTF I thought to myself. The "second best" musician was bemoaning his mediocrity. What ever hope would someone like me ever have. It's been a long time since then. Fuck it if I was not going to have an opportunity to work on interesting things and am relegated to building stupid crud apis in my 40 hours! At least il make money so my family benefits while i get to build compilers, game engines, deep learning frameworks from first principles in my spare time (and I have a lot of it once I realized my work is not me). Nobody can take that away from me. Nobody can take that away from you!
- zackmorris 3y ago
  Thank you!
MadcapJake 3y ago
This is me as well! In college, I once met my professor for lunch and I knew he had a matching taste in music and I listened to a lot of music and was excited to meet someone with an eclectic taste like me. He promptly asked me my favorite bands and I couldn't think of a single one! It's become a recurring nightmare of mine and something I still struggle with today: I can't just reach in and grab a memory, it has to be associated with something that triggers it to be pulled back up. I don't have any kind of list functionality and that extends to todo lists, chore lists, family/friend lists. Even when I finally find something that ties into what needs to be listed, I lose track of where i am in the list before i can get even 3 items listed...but start talking about some interesting history, philosophy, psychology, science and I will recall vast sums of knowledge. My current job in project management is a perfect fit for me because i mostly respond/react to changing business priorities and my recall of history is super useful in that context. When I have to start in a new area or new feature, I rely on my stakeholders to get me lists of pain points and I can then apply my skillset to mold it into a refined vision for development. Also, big tip: don't be afraid to say you need someone to remind you of things; as soon as someone broaches the topic, my mind goes to work and my recall is activated. You'd be surprised how often others are just waiting for that overview again to get back up to speed.
me_me_me 3y ago
look up bullet journal, might help offloading the memory and focus to a simple journal
Nevermark 3y ago
Wow, are you me? > mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. I have described this as a graph representation, without any visual/dimensional embedding. I naturally represent things as configurations of connected things, both in long term and working term memory. I have that same uniformly connected view of existence, from spacetime Planck distances and quarks on up, through chemistry, life and artifacts, through to societies and systems. It is one graph. And also no practical sense of time, but see our history from the big bang, to alternate universe endings, with all our history and current events along the way, and our quantum multiverse foam of versions that we cut through, as one seamless thing. One drawback, is I often have trouble putting into words something I can clearly "see", on the spot without effort. Even with regard to "normal" topics. Too many connections, in familiar or tractable forms (to me), that we don't have words for. Although given time I can explain things well, I just have to compile the order I see into words. And I have no trouble visualizing and spacial reasoning about anything dimensional/graphical. -- Super side track, for extending spacial visualization: Imagine points in space whose brightness vary, and must have the same brightness to collide. That's 4D. Now imagine groups of points changing both their brightness and position at the same rate, regardless of the relative differences in brightness and position. Those points are translating through 4D space together. Move points together through normal 3D space, and through brightness changes, and then different amounts of each together with varying rates of change, or even cyclical change. That's general 4D translation. Now consider and practice how to dynamically tradeoff between a points brightness and its distance in any 3D direction, using a sin/cos relationship. Starting rotating between one of x, y and z, against w (brightness) is easy - it is just 2D but with different pairs of axes. Then practicing rotating between brightness an any 3D direction. Then a series of partial rotations, between brightness and various 3D directions. Finally, work out how to rotate a 4D point around the direction defined by the origin to another 4D point. That is general 4D rotation. That was the hardest step. All down hill now... Practice rotating and translating 1D lines and line segments, by translating and rotating their points together. Now practice the same for 3D planes, triangles, squares, etc Practice visualizing, translating and rotating the points of 3D objects. Then 4D shapes, starting with a 5-point 4D pyramids and 16-point hypercubes. Imagine objects constructed from several hypercubes, starting with the 4D equivalent of three hypercubes making an L-shaped object, a 5-h-cube plus, etc. Add/remove hypercubes. Add/remove hypercube spaces within a hypercube. Then start to play around with 3D in a 4D environment. For instance, start with a cube with an empty cube center, and pass another cube that starts outside of it, into its center, without touching, using the 4th dimension. "Paint" a 3D cube, or 3D pyramid, onto a 3D side of a 4D cube. Etc. Once you get familiar with using brightness to visualize the 4th dimension. This takes no work at all, you are now familiar with the 4D and don't need that hook anymore. e across a lot of situations, you can stop treating Now you can reintroduce brightness as a hood to starting exploring 5D. :) I don't think our brains have any barrier to higher dimensional reasoning, except lack of exposure and familiarity. -- The variety of internal representations we must all have will be interesting to discover, catalogue and compare, if we can one day detect and watch our detailed thoughts in action.

interstice 3y ago

I associate strongly with this, my memory is almost entirely compartmentalised. Even to the point of what happened earlier today being a fog unless I can find a leap off point. The answer is start a business, it’s a strength to be able to deep dive into all areas and leap between them at will, I’ve found.

dclowd9901 3y ago

Wow what a whirlwind that comment was. Circling back to the main point, it seems like her recall has some manner of fractal association to it, by how she describes remembering things.

vbezhenar 3y ago

But you're living in US. In US you got paid crazy salaries for programming. Why do you work at failed startups? Just get some job with crazy salary, work there for 5 years and then retire.

oumua_don17 3y ago
As GP refers to >> neurodivergent/ADHD/autistic >> paid crazy salaries for programming may be it's difficult to go through the typical interview loops for such jobs as they are not designed to be inclusive for ND etc despite all the diversity and inclusion BS (more often than not) at such workplaces.
- zackmorris 3y ago
  I just wanted to interject that my struggle wasn't with interviews, but in suspending disbelief in order to focus and work in ways I didn't believe in. Because I could trivially automate most of the work I'm forced to do, so I struggle to find meaning in work itself. And when I did automate, they just gave me more work at the same pay until I burned out. So it's just as important not to take a job you can walk onto. Work for someone you want to be someday. My struggles were largely due to moving back to the city nearest to where I grew up after college, which wasn't a tech hub for 20 years, although it's becoming one now. So I've been on a career odyssey. Now most of what I know is obsolete, but I'm having a hard time adapting to my new reality after so many decades of negative reinforcement. I agree with Paul Graham about moving to where the energy is. Network effects are everything.
- astrange 3y ago
  I think calling FAANG programmers neurotypical is a bold statement.
hsjsbeebue 3y ago
At a FAANG. Depends if you can jump the requisite hoops and also stick it out.

wvh 3y ago

This sounds familiar, including an unstable or uncertain view of oneself caused by – depending on the situation – not knowing if one's pretty smart and inventive, or a total idiot not capable of living life. Finding the right environment and well, just age help a lot.

swagmoney1606 3y ago
> This sounds familiar, including an unstable or uncertain view of oneself caused by – depending on the situation – not knowing if one's pretty smart and inventive, or a total idiot not capable of living life. Also a familiar feeling to me as well.
- username135 3y ago
  Fellow idiot chiming in

thefourthchime 3y ago

I don't have a good memory at all, but for some reason, if I listen to a podcast a second time I can recall exactly where I was as the podcast goes on. For example, if I listened to the (fantastic) “search engine” podcast about pig butchering I would know where I was walking my dog, or cleaning the kitchen, etc… It's very odd

hsjsbeebue 3y ago
My memory is rubbish generally except I can draw the floorplan of anywhere I have lived or stayed. But directions, conversations, dates, forget it!
spondylosaurus 3y ago
It's not just you! I make the same association with podcast episodes, except I usually listen to podcasts while gaming, so for me it's in-game locations or quests.
klipt 3y ago
That's why memory locations are a common trick to memorize information. See Method Of Loci.

petesergeant 3y ago

> For me, I can't remember that I have an appointment tomorrow I have seen this cited a few times as evidence of ADHD, and without any comment at all on your own situation (a stranger, who I don't know, on the internet), isn't this in particular mostly true of everyone? I have a calendar and a todo-list app specifically for this reason.

sandspar 3y ago
ADHD is the latest in a very long line of "vaguely applies to everyone" diagnoses. The history of psychology is full of them. Asperger's was in vogue a few years ago, chronic fatigue syndrome is for people who like scary diagnoses, irritable bowel is one with a reputational devil may care, codependency is a bit antique, long COVID is topical. Any sufficiently motivated person can diagnose themselves with these. And boy are there motivations: have one of them and you instantly become special. (And yes before anyone says it, there are many genuine cases.)
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  Have you ever done that trick where you position your fingertip in just the right spot where the nerves on the retina converge, causing your fingertip to disappear from the field of view? When I first did this there were two surprises, the one I expected, when I saw my fingertip vanish. And then a bigger one I did not expect, which is noticing I had never noticed this deficiency before, despite it being literally right before my eyes my entire life. When I was a teenager I held something approximately like your view on ADD, (there was no ADHD variant yet). That it was mainly a crutch, a blame-deflecting explanation for failure sought by those who couldn't get their shit together for character flaw reasons. This attitude made me turn down an offer by one of my professors, who also happened to be a clinical psych., to connect me with someone who might be able to diagnose whether or not I had this issue. I went without a diagnosis for another decade before circumstances press me to reconsider my position. The very first time that I took medication that was prescribed to me was like that optic nerve blind spor revelation, but in reverse (and magnitudes larger in effext): a deficiency that had been with me my whole life, but completely invisible not because I could not see it, but because I saw everything through it, suddenly vanished. The effect is difficult to summarize in a few words but it's as if I had gone my whole life not knowing that I needed to wear reading glasses (in a world where they were still quite rare and uncommon) - attributing my inability to remain engaged with any text longer than a few sentences without becoming strangely fatigued to a lack of willpower or mental conditioning - and then putting them on. "_this_ is what everyone else sees?!"

cyrillite 3y ago

This is how my memory works, especially for autobiographical things. Aka me a direct autobiographical question and I may not be able to retrieve it. Find an association and I can recall with quite astonishing clarity and in ways which I can confirm, with testing and with historical research, aren’t mere confabulations.

lr4444lr 3y ago

What makes you say that autistic people have weak rote but strong associative memory? One common feature of high functioning autistics is an obsession with the memorization of minutiae (on some topic of intense interest) without at all understanding context. For example, a former classics professor I knew told us about a relative of his who memorized the entire Persian king list for dozens of dynasties long. He couldn't tell you much actual Persian history at all, but the professor unabashedly admitted that almost no one of his colleagues outside of the actual specialists in Persian history could recite that list even with a gun to their heads, despite being capable of lecturing on Persian history due to their education.

zackmorris 3y ago
Good question. I might be more like 80/20 ADHD/autistic and have mostly learned about the (monotropism?) symptoms from @nd_psych on TikTok. I spend an inordinate amount of time simulating other people's minds trying to understand how they arrive at conclusions that don't make sense to me, in pathological demand avoidance (PDA), and in autistic burnout due to masking. I don't seem to have the stereotypical pedantic/critiquing/savant or memorization skills seen in portrayals like Rain Man or The Accountant. My lived reality is just a crushing, unending, series of external asks that have all but obliterated my sense of self and autonomy. From the moment I wake up until I go to bed, I'm just running, performatively matching the constraints required of me to tread water. I used to be very self-driven, but after so many decades of this, I don't have a strong sense of being able to take care of myself. I would have been homeless at many times in my life had it not been for the generosity of friends and family. Where this matters for me is that I've lost too many years to stuff like politics. I've learned recently that left and right just live in different realities. No amount of mental simulation will allow me to fully understand another person's context. Because they're not even thinking about the same problems I am, they're prioritizing other things. For example, I was raised under a largely feminist/humanist framework and identify as progressive, so empathy dominates my decision making. But imagine you're in a hostage situation, who do you want to rescue you? Someone raised under positive reinforcement (left), or tough love (right)? I think most of us want conservatives dropping in from the ceiling and getting it done. So I've been working on expanding my mindset to accept multiple points of view and leave behind us-versus-them winners and losers thinking. Opening my mind to notions like not knowing and letting go. Seeing the power in being wrong sometimes, allowing others to help, and delegating to be part of a stronger team. It's sure hard sometimes though. Sorry if that's more than what you were asking, but hey, I guess I'm interested in it!

Perenti 3y ago

I'm diagnosed as ASD, and a psych has said I'm almost certainly ADHD but untestable. I have an unusually acute visual memory - I can accurately describe the room I was in while Churchill's funeral was on TV, when I was less than 3 years old. Most university exams were effectively open book because I could recall the pages I'd read as images. I'm not convinced all the stereotypes about ASD/ADHD superpowers are true myself. And yes, autism super skills don't equate to commercial success for most of us.

paulpauper 3y ago
I wonder if this has to do with IQ. likely yours is very high . People with high IQs can have very accurate memories
- Kuinox 3y ago
  IQ is a measure, not a cause. Also, memory is used in IQ tests, so having a great memory will improve the tests results.
appplication 3y ago
Interesting, I used to have an extremely strong visual memory. It was like you said, seeing the words on the page of my textbooks (if not verbatim then largely). That was mostly when I was 13-18. I can’t say it’s causal, but around the time I discovered weed (17/18) I pretty much lost this ability. I was never a particularly heavy or regular user, but it’s pretty easy for me to segment my memory acuity into before/after age 18. Of course at that age many things are changing, all very quickly. So who’s to say what the cause was. Maybe it was destined to decline with age anyways. I do fine for myself now, but now I tend to rely on process and flow states rather than memory recall for getting things done.

slibhb 3y ago

> It would be easier for me to design spaceships than manage my bills, but I seem to be relegated to doing chores for the rest of my life and dying penniless. What a drag!

markisus 3y ago

Your interests seem to lie closer to the systems and hardware side. Can you elaborate on why your career is in CRUD apps? What about working for SpaceX?

zackmorris 3y ago
Well I wanted to say "solve warp drive" but didn't want to sound eccentric. I'll lump the comment by ghufran_syed in with this. I'm fond of SpaceX and deeply admire what they're doing. But honestly my heart is in helping people, rather than taking humanity to new heights. I originally wanted to be a genetic engineer back in the '80s during the AIDS crisis, and because progress on cancer was glacial then. Prejudice was a lot higher than it is today. So the powers that be didn't want to do a moonshot for genetics like they did with the X Prize in the '90s, and I went into tech instead. Today if I could do it all over again, I'd like to see a moonshot to cure all genetic disorders by 2030 with tools like CRISPR and mRNA vaccines. Loosely that just means that from the context of a show like For All Mankind, I identify more with NASA than I do with Helios. Although Dev Ayesa's non-hierarchical work structure resonates with me more than what Elon Musk is doing. Ayesa's was the original vision of the '90s tech scene that we've lost today under wealth inequality. On that note, I'm concerned about Musk's embrace of center-right politics and the cognitive dissonance we're seeing around free-speech-for-some. Humanity is moving the opposite direction towards egalitarianism. I hope that he comes around, but until then, I can't really endorse any of his companies anymore. And that makes me sad on a profound level. I'm sick of losing my heroes. Anyway, the gatekeeping around medicine is so high that maybe I let myself give up on the dream of genetics. Which is sad too, because AI is what will solve it. We don't have large epidemiological studies or a simulation where we can rapidly iterate on cures. Although we do have a mountain of data in Ancestry and 23andme. I don't think that medical researchers have any idea what programmers would be capable of in that space if we were given autonomy. Ethics aside, I see that as the last frontier until we move out into the stars. Sooo, with my passions out of reach, I turned towards basic survival, mostly CRUD apps to make rent. It's hard to climb a corporate ladder when getting to the top doesn't mean anything to oneself. I don't want success, I want financial freedom so that I can start getting real work done outside of external expectation. To invent real solutions that would help free people from their day to day chores and bills so they can self-actualize. That's why I'm such a proponent of UBI. When any of us struggle, we all struggle. So far none of the projects I've been involved with have won the internet lottery yet. And my body/psyche won't let me work through burnout like I used to. Somehow I have to start over, and that's daunting. I suspect I'm not alone in that feeling.

proteal 3y ago

Hi - I had similar experiences to you, but an old boss pulled me aside explained everything. For context, I was not doing great at work, I was missing deadlines, would get accounts confused, etc. While I was getting chewed out, he rattled off all the relevant numbers/structures/people for all the things I was missing. He told me he knew I didn’t care about my job because I couldn’t remember the details of my job. If I cared about it, I would know the details. Yet, when it came to the things I actually cared about (computers, video games, movies), I could list off of every minute detail. The framework of “you only remember the things you care about” helped me understand why I was dropping the ball in life and ultimately led to a happier life. I stopped doing some things I clearly didn’t care for and started doing more of the stuff I remembered more easily. The real kicker was that I also able to change the things I cared about. Work got much better a few weeks after that chat. I also got very good at remembering names because I started caring about others more deeply. I hope you see parts of yourself in my story. You’re clearly a talented and smart individual - it’s never too late to turn things around.

ChainOfFools 3y ago
I'm glad this worked for you, but I don't think that you understand OP's central argument about the penalties imposed by the substantial ergonomic mismatch between ADHD "smart" and the conventional species, and may not have as strong a sense of what being on the inside of this condition feels like. ADHD wiring essentially forces every task to be derived from a set of fundamental axioms about why the task must e done, why it must work the way it does, with an almost proof-like causal chain working all the way back to first principles, in order to simply remeber it in a stable way. Being interested in a subject can benefit you only in so far as it will provide you with motivation to build out a vast knowledge graph scaffold around the set of tasks that need to be done, in order to not feel like you are kicking a dead whale up the beach every time you have to start doing one of them. But if you are presented with a subject where there is no time to do this, or the type of subject where it is actually not possible and only the muscle memory of rote memorization will power you through it, it doesn't matter how much it subjectively appeals to or interests you. You are going to be at the back of the pack despite your best efforts. Attempts to give you help will only frustrate your (very likely memorization-gifted) tutors and mentors: they don't understand what's going on, so you merely look stupid, unmotivated or both. However, if you had enough runaway, they would find that not only you would catch up to wherever everyone else was (in one third of the time it took you,) but after another third share of prep time you would move from the bottom decile to the top, with gains still compounding. But this occasion almost never presents itself, because you're typically flushed out of the cycle long before you build enough inertia in the domain to show what you're capable of. One can go almost sick with envy over the way neurotypically smart people are almkst unaware of how easily and quickly they retain multiple arbitrary lists of "how" steps in processes, even when these are largely self-contained and unconnected to any other chain of reasoning, and just get shit done without having to know how the entire superstructure is put together. You'll be almost comically bad at (and find little pleasure in) all board games (except the most popular ones you've had years of exposure to), if you have not had time to master them ADHD style - even if you genuinely enjoy board games in principle. Whereas peers in your same nerd adjacent circle seem to reach competence or even mastery of any example in this genre of bureaucracy-as-a-sport within a few plays. Performing on stage, if there are more than a handful of lines to memorize, is utterly out of the question. Even if you love acting or theater, it's just not for you. My own testament to this paradox is not from board games, but incredibly demoralizong experience trying to learn the piano (as an adult no less), something I had more than ample interest in and motivation to learn, but which in the initial stages presented almost insurmountable obstacles when it came to simply memorizing the basics of sight reading, scales, and the learner's songbook. skills that I watched 7 and 8 year olds, teens and even fellow adult learners, acquire in weeks but took me well over a year to reach parity. Since my job and self-image werent riding on being at the top of the class, I was able to keep with it accordimg to my own pace. And although I probably still wouldn't get hired even for a gig in the local shopping mall, my ability to improvise and stylize outside the set pieces I had received my basic training on inexorably began to surpass most of that cohort who had lapped me several times over back when we were just doing the rote basics.

ghufran_syed 3y ago

spacex is hiring... https://www.spacex.com/careers/jobs?discipline=engineering+-+software+%26+analytics https://www.spacex.com/careers/jobs?discipline=engineering+-...

flashgordon 3y ago

You know I was watching Amadeus about 15 years ago. It was the first time I had even heard about Salieri. In one of the first scenes an aged Salieri fails at a suicide attempt. Enraged and out of his mind he yells past his wardens (I think at a mental asylum) - "I am Antonio Salieri - the patron saint of mediocrity". WTF I thought to myself. The "second best" musician was bemoaning his mediocrity. What ever hope would someone like me ever have. It's been a long time since then. Fuck it if I was not going to have an opportunity to work on interesting things and am relegated to building stupid crud apis in my 40 hours! At least il make money so my family benefits while i get to build compilers, game engines, deep learning frameworks from first principles in my spare time (and I have a lot of it once I realized my work is not me). Nobody can take that away from me. Nobody can take that away from you!

zackmorris 3y ago
Thank you!

MadcapJake 3y ago

This is me as well! In college, I once met my professor for lunch and I knew he had a matching taste in music and I listened to a lot of music and was excited to meet someone with an eclectic taste like me. He promptly asked me my favorite bands and I couldn't think of a single one! It's become a recurring nightmare of mine and something I still struggle with today: I can't just reach in and grab a memory, it has to be associated with something that triggers it to be pulled back up. I don't have any kind of list functionality and that extends to todo lists, chore lists, family/friend lists. Even when I finally find something that ties into what needs to be listed, I lose track of where i am in the list before i can get even 3 items listed...but start talking about some interesting history, philosophy, psychology, science and I will recall vast sums of knowledge. My current job in project management is a perfect fit for me because i mostly respond/react to changing business priorities and my recall of history is super useful in that context. When I have to start in a new area or new feature, I rely on my stakeholders to get me lists of pain points and I can then apply my skillset to mold it into a refined vision for development. Also, big tip: don't be afraid to say you need someone to remind you of things; as soon as someone broaches the topic, my mind goes to work and my recall is activated. You'd be surprised how often others are just waiting for that overview again to get back up to speed.

me_me_me 3y ago

look up bullet journal, might help offloading the memory and focus to a simple journal

Nevermark 3y ago

Wow, are you me? > mainly remembers things as a fractal of associations. I have described this as a graph representation, without any visual/dimensional embedding. I naturally represent things as configurations of connected things, both in long term and working term memory. I have that same uniformly connected view of existence, from spacetime Planck distances and quarks on up, through chemistry, life and artifacts, through to societies and systems. It is one graph. And also no practical sense of time, but see our history from the big bang, to alternate universe endings, with all our history and current events along the way, and our quantum multiverse foam of versions that we cut through, as one seamless thing. One drawback, is I often have trouble putting into words something I can clearly "see", on the spot without effort. Even with regard to "normal" topics. Too many connections, in familiar or tractable forms (to me), that we don't have words for. Although given time I can explain things well, I just have to compile the order I see into words. And I have no trouble visualizing and spacial reasoning about anything dimensional/graphical. -- Super side track, for extending spacial visualization: Imagine points in space whose brightness vary, and must have the same brightness to collide. That's 4D. Now imagine groups of points changing both their brightness and position at the same rate, regardless of the relative differences in brightness and position. Those points are translating through 4D space together. Move points together through normal 3D space, and through brightness changes, and then different amounts of each together with varying rates of change, or even cyclical change. That's general 4D translation. Now consider and practice how to dynamically tradeoff between a points brightness and its distance in any 3D direction, using a sin/cos relationship. Starting rotating between one of x, y and z, against w (brightness) is easy - it is just 2D but with different pairs of axes. Then practicing rotating between brightness an any 3D direction. Then a series of partial rotations, between brightness and various 3D directions. Finally, work out how to rotate a 4D point around the direction defined by the origin to another 4D point. That is general 4D rotation. That was the hardest step. All down hill now... Practice rotating and translating 1D lines and line segments, by translating and rotating their points together. Now practice the same for 3D planes, triangles, squares, etc Practice visualizing, translating and rotating the points of 3D objects. Then 4D shapes, starting with a 5-point 4D pyramids and 16-point hypercubes. Imagine objects constructed from several hypercubes, starting with the 4D equivalent of three hypercubes making an L-shaped object, a 5-h-cube plus, etc. Add/remove hypercubes. Add/remove hypercube spaces within a hypercube. Then start to play around with 3D in a 4D environment. For instance, start with a cube with an empty cube center, and pass another cube that starts outside of it, into its center, without touching, using the 4th dimension. "Paint" a 3D cube, or 3D pyramid, onto a 3D side of a 4D cube. Etc. Once you get familiar with using brightness to visualize the 4th dimension. This takes no work at all, you are now familiar with the 4D and don't need that hook anymore. e across a lot of situations, you can stop treating Now you can reintroduce brightness as a hood to starting exploring 5D. :) I don't think our brains have any barrier to higher dimensional reasoning, except lack of exposure and familiarity. -- The variety of internal representations we must all have will be interesting to discover, catalogue and compare, if we can one day detect and watch our detailed thoughts in action.