tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post5511639504248253415..comments2024-03-27T18:24:19.683-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: "Jill the Memorious"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75048216768302812462008-05-13T16:51:00.000-07:002008-05-13T16:51:00.000-07:00Part of American cheery optimism is about absence ...Part of American cheery optimism is about absence of memory. Slavery, Indian wars, ho hum. Gee, this new reality TV show is funny.<BR/><BR/>On the other end of the spectrum is something like Judaism, which is based on memory, memory, memory. Every little slight? It goes down in the book. <BR/><BR/>Consider: most Americans think the 1800's is ancient history, impossibly long ago and irrelevant. Contrast: Jews celebrate their liberation from the Pharaoh and their exile in Babylon.<BR/><BR/>So much of what people criticize about the American life is its "rootlessness." Meaning, lack of memory. Everything is treated as brand spanking new and surprising. Our culture has erected pretty remarkable barriers to prevent memory formation. That's the real folly of "hedonism." It is a failure of mind and failure of heart.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-24823345516450996202008-05-13T16:12:00.000-07:002008-05-13T16:12:00.000-07:00Hmm, this article reminded me (without Googling) o...Hmm, this article reminded me (without Googling) of the following:<BR/><BR/>"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."<BR/>Oscar Wilde<BR/><BR/>'There are two kinds of presidents, the fox who knows many small things and the hedgehog who knows one great thing.'<BR/>paraphrase of James MacGregor Burns<BR/> <BR/>'The mind is like an attic with limited storage space. I choose to retain only those facts worth remembering.'<BR/>paraphrase of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.<BR/><BR/>'Just as the calculator diminished the economic value of the person who can quickly work figures in their head; the Internet, Google specifically, has diminished the value of a person who can easily remember random and obscure facts.'<BR/><BR/>I forget who made this last point, though it sounds like something James Fallows would say.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-46996546937349878922008-05-13T13:37:00.000-07:002008-05-13T13:37:00.000-07:00Remember the TV show Taxi? I think the red-haired ...Remember the TV show Taxi? I think the red-haired broad from that show has an eidetic memory.C. Van Carterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09918883799053031223noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-85116267982715461082008-05-13T13:25:00.000-07:002008-05-13T13:25:00.000-07:00Anonymous, though we didn't use term "amnesia", Ho...Anonymous, though we didn't use term "amnesia", Hopefully Anonymous and I had a discussion on experiences similar to your's <A HREF="http://hopeanon.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/03/my-writings-on.html#comment-111454332" REL="nofollow">here</A>.TGGPhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11017651009634767649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-6591144629416378812008-05-13T12:46:00.000-07:002008-05-13T12:46:00.000-07:00It might be the fault of McGaugh and Price's other...It might be the fault of McGaugh and Price's other intermediaries that such obvious dates were chosen as displays of her affliction rather than more obscure dates. I read an article not too long ago about another man who claimed to have this condition (it might even have been this Williams guy), and his stories were of obscure dates. Maybe Price's book will have more convincing examples.<BR/><BR/> Bill: Great story.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-38821115038565638542008-05-13T12:06:00.000-07:002008-05-13T12:06:00.000-07:00Alas, memory is not cool. Loss of memory is cool.C...Alas, memory is not cool. Loss of memory is cool.<BR/><BR/>Consider, Matt Damon makes a movie based on amnesia and becomes a first cabin movie star. His unindicted co-conspirator, Ben Affleck, counters with his own amnesia movie. It didn't advance his career that much but others continue to try.<BR/><BR/>There are a at least two Hollywood movies a year based on the amnesia plot premise. Yet no one knows anyone who actually has or had amnesia.<BR/><BR/>Except me of course. I ran my motorcycle into the side of Kezar Stadium which messed up my short term memory of the event. I lost about a half hour. I wonder if I was recruited by the KGB while I was out?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-71713198561658731202008-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:002008-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:00Gene Wolfe is my favorite writer, so I am always r...Gene Wolfe is my favorite writer, so I am always ready to give him a plug. If you have not tried Wolfe yet, and don't want to start one of the long epics like the New Sun books or the Soldier books, I recommend the short story "The Doctor of Death Island," about a man who wakes up to find himself immortal, but locked in a prison.MPorciushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15515742639389937221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-91628489864125036182008-05-13T10:17:00.000-07:002008-05-13T10:17:00.000-07:00If the memories bother her too much, she can alway...If the memories bother her too much, she can always pick up a bottle of Jim Beam down at the local liquor store and get to work rinsing them from her brain. <BR/><BR/>Yes, a strange memory can be a difficult thing, but it can also be fun. Once I met a girl, and after talking to her for a while she told me she liked the song "Southern Cross." I then asked her whether she'd spent a summer digging latrines in Guatemala. Her jaw dropped. <BR/><BR/>I could remember her from a radio request from years before where I'd heard her ask for "Southern Cross" because she used to listen to it while on a charity mission to Guatemala, where she dug latrines. All it took to ring a bell was the voice and the mention of the song. She refused to believe that I could have remembered her from that, insisting that I must have heard about her trip from someone else. She was highly suspicious of me thereafter. <BR/><BR/>Although those kinds of tricks can be amusing, I don't usually like having to deal with too many memories. I try to erase them, and have had some success, but they come back if I ease up. They haunt you in a way, coming back while you're trying to sleep or just relax and have a good time. When they're tied to emotional experiences they can cause sudden mood swings. It becomes tiresome after a while. <BR/><BR/>I won the regional spelling bee at 12, and would have advanced to state if I hadn't taken a trip at the time. I never studied for it. <BR/><BR/>My father has the same memory. He also collects stuff -- electronics in his case. My sister has some of the same tendencies. We're Prices. I wonder whether Price is Jill's maiden name?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-9045972556787813772008-05-13T08:04:00.000-07:002008-05-13T08:04:00.000-07:00Bet she's a great multi-tasker. Every task a new a...Bet she's a great multi-tasker. Every task a new adventure, with no worrying implications, no hooks of thought digging into the brain.<BR/><BR/>It's when one connects one thing to another that he's in trouble with his fellow men (boss, wife, enforcers of orthodoxy, deadlines). He is stirring up trouble, breaking the gestalt and imposing one of his own. Folks don't like that. You're supposed to "go along."<BR/><BR/>A world bred for the memorious and presumably diminishing the population of reasoners, would be almost ideal for the powerful. "Almost" because, after all, the subjects will still remember things, in who knows what dangerous associative sequences...? Safer to go for universal lobotomy.<BR/><BR/>I have to go and watch TV now.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-29143318051838027662008-05-13T07:29:00.000-07:002008-05-13T07:29:00.000-07:00I came across that story as well, and like you I w...I came across that story as well, and like you I wasn't terribly impressed. It's not a quite a hoax. There's definitely something there, but it's pretty lame overall.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-87819996670810166942008-05-13T06:43:00.000-07:002008-05-13T06:43:00.000-07:00I wonder, doesn't this offer a clue to the neurolo...I wonder, doesn't this offer a clue to the neurological basis of memory -- that it takes up certain spaces in the brain (as opposed to being more generally spread out) and that an over-developed memory can impinge on certain, well-defined (and probably spatially identifiable) brain areas? Probably certain neurons, or closely bunched bundles of neurons (or of glial ceels for that matter), are responsible for memory, as opposed to the idea, for instance, that memories are stored within the interior chemistry of neurons.<BR/><BR/>I dunno. Just a thought.Luke Leahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11290760894780619646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-52490720491519454792008-05-13T06:28:00.000-07:002008-05-13T06:28:00.000-07:00"By the way, if you haven't read a Borges story, '..."By the way, if you haven't read a Borges story, 'Funes' is as good as any. They resemble what science-fiction would be like if it was written by philosophers instead of engineers."<BR/><BR/>Gene Wolfe is a science fiction writer profoundly influenced by Borges (and Nabokov). Memory is a recurrent theme in his works, which feature protagonists with eidetic memory (The Book of the New Sun), with a lack of memory (Soldier of the Mist), and so on.<BR/><BR/>He also is a engineer. His second major contribution to Western Civilization is having designed the machine that makes Pringles potato chips.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com