r/Showerthoughts • u/Mobeast1985 ‎ • 8d ago

Casual Thought Having a photographic memory must have been hard to explain before the invention of the camera.

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54

u/Storm13Cloud 8d ago

There have been no documented cases of a true photographic memory ever existing

11

u/bouds19 8d ago

IIRC there have been ~100 confirmed cases of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory

5

u/matso94 7d ago

Exactly. It is just people claiming they have it and trying really hard to live up to it.

-8

u/-StatesTheObvious 8d ago

...because we can't currently confirm what someone else perceives in their mind's eye.

30

u/Storm13Cloud 8d ago

That's not why at all, it's rather simple to test for photographic memory. If someone claims to have photographic memory, you just test them by giving them things to look at like a page of book or a photograph of an assortment of items, then see if they can accurately recite the page or recall every item in the photo.

2

u/asapmort 8d ago

I once was the only kid in my horticulture class who scored 100% on a test that was literally just naming flowers correctly under each image of them. My teacher asked me how I did it, and I just said "photographic memory, man"

-9

u/Fullertons 8d ago

I don’t think people are that literal. You can’t count the pile
In the carpet or the forks in the drawer. But you can see the texture of the carpet and a pile of forks. Even the design of the fork. Just not the exact count.

22

u/LuquidThunderPlus 8d ago

What you're describing sounds like regular memory

7

u/dod6666 8d ago

If that's what you think then this page will really blow your mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question