Re: Adaptive Mutations

1

I'm the opposite of your cow-orker. I forget shit that's all of half an hour old. My memory is a seive. The only way I can keep things in memory is repeating them to myself over and over. It's very annoying.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 8:19 AM
horizontal rule
2

1: like I before E except after C?

I have a multitasking mutation of this sort, but I've mentioned it here before and want to see if other people are bragging/disclosing before I say too much.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 8:22 AM
horizontal rule
3

2.1: Exactly!

Don't brag about multitasking skills or I'll have to hate you for it. I simply don't multitask at all. Give me one thing to do and let me bury myself in it and generally I'll do a good job. Throw tasks at me shotgun-style and I'll fuck them all up simultaneously. Which is a form of multitasking, I suppose.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 8:45 AM
horizontal rule
4

It's not ALL multitasking. It just turns out I'm uniquely suited to listen to something and do real-time transcription (say everything I'm hearing with punctuation and formatting macros) and can do that while reading and/or typing something else. Or knitting or doing needlepoint, but that part is less surprising. It's being able to run multiple simultaneous verbal streams that I think is unusual. (I have no idea if this connects at all to aphantasia, but it might.)


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 8:53 AM
horizontal rule
5

4: You've mentioned that before here, and it's completely amazing to me.

I can sometimes listen and remember what someone told me, as long as I'm not doing something else. or thinking about something else.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 8:56 AM
horizontal rule
6

My other thing where I'm a weird outlier is not work-related, thank goodness.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:11 AM
horizontal rule
7

I have a maladaptive trait, which is currently causing me problems. It's impossible to stop skimming and read closely for deathly boring documents.

The worst situation is hiring committees and promotion situations, where there's a huge, boring file to wade through, and all the important stuff is written in coded language, and the stakes are very, very high.

I welcome any advice.


Posted by: President I don't know | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:41 AM
horizontal rule
8

My only really unusual skill/ability is the capacity to make obvious jokes ever so slightly faster than other people.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:42 AM
horizontal rule
9

I didn't even know that was a skill.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:43 AM
horizontal rule
10

7: Oooh, I have a case of that one too. Let me know if you figure anything out. I have tried actually mumbling the words out loud, but that takes forever.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:44 AM
horizontal rule
11

10: I thought 90% of lawyering was close reading of deathly boring documents. I guess maybe it's not if you're a litigator.


Posted by: AcademicLurker | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:48 AM
horizontal rule
12

Cases are often actually interesting, I don't have trouble with those. It's more background documents. And other people's badly written briefs are hard to read closely too -- I end up doing the SAT reading comprehension thing where I skim, and then ask myself questions and go back into it to find the answers: are they claiming X? What about Y?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:52 AM
horizontal rule
13

I appreciate the post. I think I've mentioned before that, while I'm fairly resistant to imposter syndrome, I do have one area in which I feel a bit of it -- I don't feel like I fit the stereotype of a expert programmer.

I'm good at my job, but not because of exceptional technical knowledge, or the ability to do fancy coding tricks (or even a great interest in programming languages per se).

So the post is a good reminder that, even in a field like programming which requires a fairly specific set of skills, there really is a wide range of abilities that can contribute, and different ways to be good at it.

That said, I also had a moment of bitterness reading the OP, because I used to be able to display (some of) those sorts of memory abilities when I was in my 20s and early 30s, but that's long gone now.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 10:00 AM
horizontal rule
14

7: I have this problem. I take notes as I read, if it's important.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 10:06 AM
horizontal rule
15

7: I have this problem. I take notes as I read, if it's important.


Posted by: jms | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 10:06 AM
horizontal rule
16

7: for proofreading, a good trick to prevent skimming is to read backwards, a sentence at a time (as in you read each sentence forwards, starting with the last sentence).


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 10:17 AM
horizontal rule
17

A colleague of mine could reliably recall four-digit ticket numbers and then, when they topped 10,000, was totally thrown and kept forgetting them. I teased him about just ignoring the extra 1 (since so few earlier numbers below 5000 were likely to surface), but no, extra digits are a bitch. (Go for it, opinionated Anne Boleyn!)


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 10:53 AM
horizontal rule
18

4 is just amazing. I cannot juggle multiple streams of words; I can barely talk while typing, etc.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:00 AM
horizontal rule
19

A colleague of mine could reliably recall four-digit ticket numbers and then, when they topped 10,000, was totally thrown and kept forgetting them.

There's a scene in The Parking Lot Movie in which one of the attendants says that he used to remember the license plate number of every car that drove out without paying. But after the state moved from 6 to 7 digit license plates he was no longer able to do so, and that was an improvement in his life -- to not have to be carrying around the mental list of grudges.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:01 AM
horizontal rule
20

They do make identification too easy at times.


Posted by: Opinionated Count Rugen | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:02 AM
horizontal rule
21

I used to be able to remember credit card numbers when I was younger. Functions, too. No longer.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:09 AM
horizontal rule
22

Newly introduced credit card numbers I mean, not my own.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:11 AM
horizontal rule
23

The kids today have to use a skimmer to steal other peoples credit card numbers.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:14 AM
horizontal rule
24

Ooh, I have a good random-attribute-as-job-advantage thing, where it is a mixed blessing/curse: I have a sort of attentional glitch in the auditory domain, so that I can't tune out meaningful auditory signals like conversations and music. As a kid this meant I was always the one who would start humming, like, the 2nd rhythm guitar line in a pop song, immediately ruining the song's unity-of-sound quality for everyone else listening. Now, I am alone in my lab, and increasingly in my entire field, in using wide-bandwidth audio feedback to detect the kind of electrical signal we're interested in. Generally people record blind and find (or not) the signal of interest in post hoc analysis, whereas I put on some headphones, listen to the whole mess, and detect it with my own ears through the noise (which, to be fair, used to be the only way to do it, back in the day). To a person, nobody I've met here in the field believes I can do this until I prove it by showing them, whereupon they act like it's magic. So that makes me feel a bit ninja. As well as a bit old, and eventually, probably a bit deaf. I recently had a very excited "you have that too?" conversation with a successful scientist in my field.

On the other hand, as a result, I literally cannot tolerate chaotically noisy environments with too many competing conversations/music because I pull out so much signal that I cognitively fatigue really quickly. That made clubs, noisy parties, and the like effectively off limits for me during the time of life one is supposed to enjoy that type of thing. Now that I'm older, it's easier to get everyone to come along to a nice quiet pub.

Ech, this feels a bit special-snowflake to write, but you did ask, so.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:19 AM
horizontal rule
25

Right now I have the most amazingly easy-to-remember credit card number, and I'm constantly worried they're going to send me a new one. It makes ordering stuff online such a delight.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:22 AM
horizontal rule
26

As a kid this meant I was always the one who would start humming, like, the 2nd rhythm guitar line in a pop song, immediately ruining the song's unity-of-sound quality for everyone else listening.

This is me!

On the other hand, as a result, I literally cannot tolerate chaotically noisy environments with too many competing conversations/music because I pull out so much signal that I cognitively fatigue really quickly. That made clubs, noisy parties, and the like effectively off limits for me during the time of life one is supposed to enjoy that type of thing. Now that I'm older, it's easier to get everyone to come along to a nice quiet pub.

This is me, too! E. Messily is rolling her eyes at us, FYI.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:25 AM
horizontal rule
27

So that makes me feel a bit ninja.

That sounds a bit ninja. How awesome that you ended up working in an environment where that was useful and you get to show off.

I literally cannot tolerate chaotically noisy environments with too many competing conversations/music because I pull out so much signal that I cognitively fatigue really quickly.

I also find that very tiring. I don't know if it's signal processing or just that noise in general is fatiguing for me, but it tends to make me no fun as well.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:36 AM
horizontal rule
28

I'm weirdly good at picking out covers. Like it'll be like three lines into a song in an elevator and I'll be like 'Is this a smooth jazz cover of White Stripes?'. But the weird thing is, I'm really bad at remembering songs to reproduce them - both the melody and the lyrics. Lyrics are basically a total black box to me which I realize occasionally when I finally somehow hear the lyrics of a song I've listened to literally 100 times (Wait, One Man Guy is about that?). I grew up playing violin and memorizing music was so so so hard for me. I could only do it because my music teacher wrote the fingers to use and I'd memorize those (with appropriate strings). Also, in spite of growing up in NS, I have never been a fiddler nor do I have the ability to learn songs by ear. Just completely missing.

Anyway, with that introduction, I once bought a CD of some lounge singer doing covers of 90s music and played it for a friend. I thought it was absolutely hilarious and she couldn't hear what the songs even were. This is a woman whose job is to listen to recordings made in the middle of the forest and id all the species she heard. She's memorized what every single bird sounds like, and she can't hear Black Hole Sun? I, fittingly, have memorized 5 bird calls based on imagining where I was when I heard the call often - House Sparrow, Belted Kingfisher; or because their call really does sound like the mnemonics - Barred Owl, Phoebe. Probably another one. (I do know like kittiwake and murre calls but no one cares, and storm-petrels, my namesake!)


Posted by: hydrobatidae | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:39 AM
horizontal rule
29

I have a memory that's good for random details, not quite to the level in the OP, but pretty good. I feel like a lot of the value I bring to my job is that I read internal documentation/discussion/announcements and can successfully tell people "oh, your fooble isn't working? That's because two weeks ago they turned off the blax-to-blort adapter and you have to switch to new-fooble or build your own blorts."


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:44 AM
horizontal rule
30

I do know like kittiwake and murre calls but no one cares

I officially care.

||
Will no one join me (in the previous Trump thread) in flipping my shit about the Sessions nomination? RIP, my extremely short-lived short-term strategy of blocking out the news. Couple of helpful items in this post as well.
|>


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:45 AM
horizontal rule
31

A downside is that it feels like I waste a lot of time reading mailing lists and stuff, but some of it pays off.


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:46 AM
horizontal rule
32

I have very good food recall, with a vivid sense-memory, which wasn't particularly useful until I started reviewing restaurants on the side. Now I don't even have to take notes*, because I pretty reliably can describe the intricacies of a dish's flavor even a week later. When I go back and look at a years-old review, I can often conjure up the tastes (and much else about the meal). Indeed, it's surprising to me when I don't recall a decade-old meal pretty clearly (again, with review in hand).

*sometimes elaborate dishes where the menu description is minimal, or I'll have exactly the phrasing as I eat.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:57 AM
horizontal rule
33

I can smell fear, if you marinate the fear in garlic.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 12:57 PM
horizontal rule
34

My mother can remember the movie theater and where she sat in the theater for every movie she's ever seen. She usually can't remember anything about the movie though.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 1:08 PM
horizontal rule
35

Has she seen more than a few movies?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 1:21 PM
horizontal rule
36

My mind is currently confusing Bannon the white supremacist with O'Banion from Dazed and Confused.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 1:27 PM
horizontal rule
37

35: Yes! Probably not as many as Barry, but a whole lot more than me.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 1:36 PM
horizontal rule
38

I saw a movie once. It was okay.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 1:42 PM
horizontal rule
39

I've been informed that I'm going to see a movie this weekend.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 1:47 PM
horizontal rule
40

I am ridiculously excited about Moana.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 1:57 PM
horizontal rule
41

39: Moana?


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:00 PM
horizontal rule
42

Swope is Jodie Foster and is going to find aliens.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:01 PM
horizontal rule
43

32: That sounds like a pretty fun ninja power.

42: That is, actually, pretty much how it feels. To the description above, you can add sitting in the dark in the green glow of an oscilloscope screen. I have used the listening-for-aliens notion to describe my day-to-day work experience often.


Posted by: Swope FM | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:12 PM
horizontal rule
44

In Germany, they rename every movie. Weirdly, they rename it from one English title to another. For example, "Captain America" became "The First Avenger", and "The Good Dinosaur" is "Arlo and Spot". Since "Moana" isn't really an English word, I thought they would keep it, but they renamed it "Vaiana".


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:18 PM
horizontal rule
45

44: The First Avenger was the subtitle here.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:22 PM
horizontal rule
46

However the swap from Moana to Vaiana was claimed to be due to possible trademark issues that the name posed in Europe. With Disney Spain tweeting that "The 'Moana' mark is registered in Spain and in some European countries. So the film 'Moana', will be Vaiana."

https://themonsoonproject.org/2016/07/12/from-moana-to-vaiana-why-disneys-newest-polynesian-inspired-film-will-be-very-different-in-french/


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:27 PM
horizontal rule
47

Is everyone else liking Google's James Welch dealio?


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:30 PM
horizontal rule
48

I just can't make myself go to movies based on comic books. I think the first "Iron Man" was the last one I saw.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:32 PM
horizontal rule
49

E. Messily is rolling her eyes at us, FYI.

I mean, I usually am, anyway.


Posted by: E. Messily | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:33 PM
horizontal rule
50

47: I think I must have read one of his books in college, but can't really recall much.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:34 PM
horizontal rule
51

47: I am. I had never heard of him before.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:34 PM
horizontal rule
52

51 is surprising to me. Stop what you're doing right now and read Winter in the Blood.

Read 'em all.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:38 PM
horizontal rule
53

Movie trailer


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 2:46 PM
horizontal rule
54

Like I said the other day, I'm not very familiar with the northern Plains.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 3:26 PM
horizontal rule
55

Actually, Walt, are you sure they didn't just make the subtitle more prominent? German Wikipedia lists both "Originaltitel" and "Deutscher Titel" as identical.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 3:39 PM
horizontal rule
56

Wow. I have all sorts of weird ninja powers where software is concerned but what happens is I get in a space where the established culture is to not use them. Then there's this whole thing about trying to propagate my memes (/apologies) or at worst try to stick something sensible into a nutso project.

TBH, "culture" is not the same as (but similar to) "are you a vim animal or are you a human who uses emacs? Hmm, okay; I get that but when are you going to grow up? Oh: never? Well that sux."


Posted by: DaveLMA | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 4:46 PM
horizontal rule
57

Right, and reading Welch will definitely help with that.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 5:13 PM
horizontal rule
58

Fair point, yeah.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 6:22 PM
horizontal rule
59

Thorn, do you think your mutation is similar to the one that simultaneous interpreters enjoy? We had some of those at my recent conference in Seoul and I was just floored by their ability to do English/Korean and then Korean/English on the fly, with no pauses from the source speaker, and the subject matter being computer bullshit no less.


Posted by: lourdes kayak | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 9:31 PM
horizontal rule
60

(I do know like kittiwake and murre calls but no one cares, and storm-petrels, my namesake!)

I know nothing about kittiwakes or murres or storm-petrels BUT I do know that kittiwakes, at least, feature memorably in the beginning of William Everson's "A Canticle to the Waterbirds":

Clack your beaks you cormorants and kittiwakes,
North on those rock-croppings finger-jutted into the rough Pacific surge;
You migratory terns and pipers who leave but the temporal clawtrack written on sandbars there of your presence;
Grebes and pelicans; you comber-picking scoters and you shorelong gulls;
All you keepers of the coastline north of here to the Mendocino beaches;
All you beyond upon the cliff-face thwarting the surf at Hecate Head;
Hovering the under-surge where the cold Columbia grapples at the bar;
North yet to the Sound, whose islands float like a sown flurry of chips upon the sea;
Break wide your harsh and salt-encrusted beaks unmade for song
And say a praise up to the Lord.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 10:06 PM
horizontal rule
61

My disappointment that it's really Heceta Head is very slight. Those are good lines.


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 11-18-16 11:21 PM
horizontal rule
62

So, tonight I went to the holiday party for the arts center I'm on the board of, and met one of the actresses from Winter in the Blood.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11-19-16 12:46 AM
horizontal rule
63

And now I really want to see Certain Women. Did anyone see it?


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11-19-16 12:52 AM
horizontal rule
64

59: Simultaneous interpreters train themselves to develop separate but interconnected listening/speaking tracks, starting off by "shadowing" in the same language (repeating what someone is saying verbatim with a delay of a few seconds) before moving on to do the same thing in a different language. Some people are good at this right off the bat, others can learn how to do it, and some never manage it and decide to stick to consecutive interpreting or translation.


Posted by: Ume | Link to this comment | 11-19-16 6:44 AM
horizontal rule
65

I bet at least a few of them go into real estate.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-19-16 8:05 AM
horizontal rule
66

60: Thanks! That's lovely.


Posted by: hydrobatidae | Link to this comment | 11-19-16 8:30 AM
horizontal rule
67

Thanks for 60 nosflow!


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 11-19-16 8:38 AM
horizontal rule
68

More thanks for 60


Posted by: NW | Link to this comment | 11-20-16 4:25 AM
horizontal rule
69

Typos make me itch. You would think that would preclude enjoyment of blogs and comment threads, but no.


Posted by: Doug | Link to this comment | 11-20-16 4:26 AM
horizontal rule
70

As if you got poison ivy on you're skin?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 11-20-16 7:38 AM
horizontal rule
71

I think typo's only count if they're accidental.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 11-20-16 8:13 AM
horizontal rule
72

70: THEN IT RUBS THE CALOMINE LOTION ON IT'S SKIN, OR IT GETS THE HOSE


Posted by: OPINIONATED BUFFALO BILL | Link to this comment | 11-20-16 8:20 AM
horizontal rule