Jim Cristea
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2012–2025
9:00 · 1.3M views · Dec 9, 2008
A short TV segment on Jill Price, a woman with highly superior autobiographical memory who recalls nearly every day of her life. She describes the good and bad sides of never forgetting.
Cited in discussions of perfect memory as an illustration that it can be a burden rather than a superpower.
3 comments from Hacker News
> Glowacki is on the autism spectrum and has superlative memory and calendar recall skills. I've also known several autistic people who have great memories; I don't know if the right word would be "interest", "obsession", or "compulsion", but they have an inclination to go over certain facts in their heads over and over, so of course developing a good memory for those facts is natural. I've seen similar articles and TV segments about people who particularly remember autobiographical facts, what they were doing everyday for decades. Again, it's not "automatic" memory, as it tends to be sensationalized, but rather the result of an interest or obsession to continually think about it. For instance, this woman talks about being somewhat obsessive-compulsive about her past: this video > Unfortunately, it didn’t translate into academic exam success in his weaker subjects like maths and science: “I only remember things I like.” When you're interested in something, you will naturally think about it more often. So the memory itself really isn't the phenomenon so much as the relative rarity of someone being interested in such details in the first place. --- The real magic would be to be able to remember something without effort, interest, or attention. I'd love to be able to read a book while daydreaming and then reread it in my head later for processing. Or remember some detail from another day that I didn't pay attention to at all at first, rewinding it in my head like a video. And thoug
> On the plus side I live in today and dont dwell on the past. It is like a superpower for happiness. This is true on many levels. 4:10 @ The Woman Who Could Not Forget - Jill Price this video Perfect Memory = Perfect Inability to Forgive | House M.D. [LINK]
According to A.J. (aka Jill Price) herself, it is more a curse than a superpower: this video "We can say time heals all wounds," said Price's mother. "Doesn't for her."