But out of curiosity, I set up a test where I recorded a boardgame session with my friends. After we finished playing, we sat and wrote down our memories of that time with as much detail as possible, in a different room and with no input from others, and then watched the recording.

I was broadly correct in my recollections and able to correctly paraphrase others, but whenever I went into detail my recollections were incorrect more often than not.

Turns out, I was gifted at bullshitting myself, lol. My friends and I had a great time executing that little test, we laughed a lot and learned about each other.

Have you ever conducted a test on yourself like the one I conducted?

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

Yeah; I've run similar tests and my working memory is exactly average, which is where my belief that the ability to store long term memories permanently is available to everyone.

For extra long memory validations, I've got photographs, and I also leave "memory checkpoints" in the real world, like landmarks in the slipstream of time, or physical objects in vaults that I can reference.

They're important for the continuity of self, but also to have empirical anchors of "real" objects:

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

My brother has a pretty amazing memory for events when we were growing up, but he also wrote in a calendar every night, synopsizing the day's events. And he enjoyed reading those calendars regularly. Now, at almost 70 years old, he can still remember details of vacations we took when we were young, and I'm certain it's because of that journalling he did.

[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

That's incredible, and a great way to do it!

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