This thread has been broken out of the FQ thread of a similar title. The FQ thread discusses the origin of the “factoid” that we only remember 3% of our lives. This thread is for discussion of the factoid itself.
The original FQ thread may be found here:
Please discuss how memory works and other issues related to how much we remember here in this thread, and use the original FQ thread for discussion of where this factoid originated.
It’s just impossible to quanity. If they mean what I’m thinking from second to second it is way way less that 3%.
On the other hand, I can summarize pretty well (I think), and I am sure that a lot of things have not happened in a period of time, so it’s not like it’s entirely gone from memory either.
I caught an interview with her a couple years back. I can’t remember what medium- TV interview, podcast, I don’t know (I clearly don’t have HSAM). But I seem to remember it was a visual medium because the interviewer was quizzing her, asking questions like “what were you wearing on ‘X’ episode of Taxi on ‘Y’ day”? She would answer “I was wearing a blue dress” and I seem to remember they then showed the scene and sure enough, blue dress.
To remember everything like that- I don’t know if it would be a great or terrible thing.
@Chefguy the 60 Minutes episode about her and people with that ability was truly fascinating
Regarding @Moriarty ’s post, those are excellent points. I think most of us don’t remember those things. On my calendar I’ve tried entering a daily log that includes places I went to that day. Something as simple as —
Home
Post Office on Villa
Home
Safeway
Walgreen’s
Tire store
Home
It’s a sequential, ordered listing of places I’ve been that day. I also log anything I think is important for that day. It’s not meant to be s comprehensive activity log, but between that and that day’s calendar of appointments it might help to jog my memory.
When I was growing up, my best friend was a girl who lived next door. She was the same age as me, and we played all the time. She and her family moved when I was six years old.
After all these years (I’m 57 now), I still remember the times we played together. A couple years ago I took some photos of the house she grew up in, and sent them to her via Facebook. She replied, “I have no memories of living there.” I found this just… odd. I have tons of memories from when I was 3, 4, 5… 6.
And then there are the times you remember something you thought you’d forgotten. Perhaps you visit a town for a couple of days, and make a mental map of the street layout; this map can get completely lost in the lumber-room of your memory, but then if you go back there ten or twenty years later you can still find your way around.
Except where the town planners have knocked down your favourite pub.
@Crafter_Man that is amazing. I have only a few foggy memories of when I was 5 or 6. I doubt I remember anything from 3 or 4.
I’d say so. One of those ‘factoids’ that get propagated on the internet… and even before.
There is a Borges story about this:
‘Funes the Memorious - Wikipedia’
My eldest son is like that. He remembers what color pajamas he was wearing when we went to a drive-in movie when he was very young.
No, it begins sometime in childhood but not at a consistent age. In my post, I called this condition hyperthymesia. In Marilu Henner’s case, she says that it began at age 11 as you can see in Marilu Henner - Wikipedia .
You need to define the first question better. Who are people?
One random YouTuber? Your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving? The vast majority of humanity? Researchers specializing in memory?
On the face of it, I can’t see how it could be anything but a made up factoid someone pulled out of thin air simply because it’s too poorly defined, as others have pointed out.
If anyone is saying it, It doesn’t seem to be as popular as the 10% of brains thing but that could be that the 10% myth is trotted out by motivational speakers and life coaches more often.
There’s a great podcast that just dropped a couple of weeks ago that covers this kind of thing:
Sorry if this trays from the OP, but…
One item I recall reading was bout what memory is exactly. The author (who studied memory) says that generally our mind works off of scripts. think of an event or day or whatever like a tree. I went to the doctor for a check-up. Therefore I must have driven, likely using this route or that, sat in the office, his receptionist was there, I saw the doctor, etc. Off of that script we hang memorable events… I saw a guy riding a horse in the middle of the suburbs, I saw a bright blue Lamborghini, I met Bob at the doctor’s which I hadn’t done before, I don’t recall what the doctor said so I must have been fine. We hang these memorable bits on the tree of the general script.
That last bit points to another aspect of memory which may be relevant to the OP’s question. Often when we don’t have anything memorable to hang on the script, we may assume certain things (“the doctor always tells me to lose weight, so I guess he did”) and may slowly convince ourselves “well, of course that’s what happened”. This is one reason why eye-witness testimony can be unreliable.
So do we actually remember more than 3%? Probably not. If we try to remember, our mind tries to fill in the gaps with logical inferences which we may assign various amounts of certainty to.
As to age, I recall some stuff from - I think - when I was about 4, and 5. But what I remember is a few memorable (or weird) snippets, not the whole movie. I remember trying to follow my brother’s bicycle on my tricycle, which unlike him, I had no brakes on the hill. I remember the stuffed alligator in the atrium of the hotel during a trip. I remember playing with my toys, small plastic to trams, at a restaurant. Or the holly tree down on the corner past our house. etc. The ages and dates I can only inferr decades later - “i must have been about 5, it must have been 19xx.”
I have the same experience; very short snippets of moments in time. It’s odd to vividly recall something your father told you one time when you were 14, or a site you saw when you were 6, when the rest of that time period has been forgotten.
I believe it has something to do with the degree of emotional attachment to the memory; things that had a deep impact are more memorable than things which do not generate such a reaction.
So, an exciting moment from your childhood, or something unsettling, would be retained.
But the more I think of this, the more I think it’s far less than 3% of our time alive.
Instead, we operate on short term memory for our daily living. How far back does that go? It seems that after a few days (maybe a week ), details of one’s short term memory start to get fuzzy.
It’s not really short term memory that you’re talking about. Short term memory is a specific type of memory that lasts less than one minute. Anything retained longer than a minute has been entered into long term memory, but long term memory is of course incomplete and can decay over time.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Sodokufan’s other posts
Is this true, or just listed as one of those things “people say”? Very intriguing if confirmed.
So I was molested when I was quite young, but didn’t really figure that out until I was in my early twenties. Incidentally it was at the end of an LSD experience.
But what I can say is that I didn’t, for the first time, “remember” the abuse. Rather, I remembered the memories of it. Given the context of being older and more aware, I recognized what had occurred for the first time, but it wasn’t the first time I recalled the events (And at that point had an epiphany as to why I had also exhibited certain behaviors while growing up).
Those were memories from when I was less than 4 years old. But once they were unlocked, they were readily available for recall.
Whenever a person testifies, they are doing so from memory (which is sometimes “refreshed” while on the stand). If a person’s memories depend on hypnosis, that’s a potential basis to challenge their veracity.
As I said, though, at least for me my own self medicated hypnosis allowed my memories to coalesce. It didn’t create them.
I recall how back in, I think it was the 1970s and 1980s “recalling past lives via hypnosis” was popular with the occult crowd. One of the interesting things to come of the efforts of debunkers was discovering how apparently historically accurate details of “past lives” could be traced to things like the subject having casually paged through a history book as a child.
There does seem to be evidence that there’s a lot of information in our brains that’s consciously inaccessible, but available to our subconscious mind and that can pop up in an altered form without us even realizing what it is.
I can believe 3%.
I remember specific details for only a few days in 2024. Like July 4, Thanksgiving, my birthday etc.
My memory tends to remember broad projects. I remember painting the guest bedroom in June 2022. But I can’t say the exact day that I purchased the paint or what day I emptied the room.
That’s true at work. Its only big projects that I remember and that’s only for a particular month in 2024.
I couldn’t tell you for sure what I worked on in 2016.
Yeah, even now I don’t recall directly the abuse. It’s more like I can recall memories surrounding the abuse.
I think this explains a lot of seemingly irrational human behavior. In my opinion, a lot of self harm and self sabotage, especially including toxic relationships, is rooted in our reaction to things buried by our conscious mind.