Memory Problems is its Aphantasia
1 min readByNathaniel Langley
To start I want to mention that I have absolutely no imagination. Instead what I have noticed is that my entire mind works like a relational database. As an example for food I can’t remember what food tastes like but I remember that I like X more than Y.
This extends further into my memory in the form of how I know something, for a basic example since I’m an engineer I’ll use how I learned to draw zeta and capital zeta. To draw either of these symbols for the longest time I would have to look them up because I could not remember what they looked like. After about 3 months of this I could finally write it without looking it up. How this happened is that the pattern became engrained in me. In example I know how to right a 7 because I’ve seen it enough and I consider 7 common knowledge. However when I went back to my old high school, I applied the same logic to capacitors and inductors. My logic was that they have taken physics therefor they know how these work.
To wrap this point up my memory is actually very good but I have to have the initial relational pointer to remember it. Without that relational pointer I can’t remember what I did yesterday or years ago.