Reading the article, I think I can do what the author can't, but I also think he probably imagines what he lacks to be more clear/detailed than it is for people without the issue. I can recall specific events from many years ago from my perspective, but it's tidbits, and the info feels lossy. The question he struggled with about past challenges is difficult for most people, I'd guess, but I do not think his issues are fake/normal because of that.
I think you're assuming more people are like you than actually are.
This is part of the classic debate around aphantasia – both sides assume the other side is speaking more metaphorically, while they're speaking literally. E.g., "Surely he doesn't mean he literally can't visualize things, he just means it's not as sharp for him." or "Surely they don't literally mean they can see it, they're just imagining the list of details/attributes and pretending to see it."
>I think you're assuming more people are like you than actually are.
What I'm trying to say is that from his perspective, how he imagines people with more "normal" memory recall things, might be a bit exaggerated. He doesn't know what he's missing exactly so he might imagine it to be better than it really is. I'm not trying to say that everyone else is like me or that he's like me. Like if he can't imagine an apple in his mind at all and he hears other people can, he may imagine it's as clear as staring at an apple in real life or a picture of an apple on a computer screen, while the reality is somewhere in the middle. I do believe his claims about himself, but his claims about me or people like me don't seem entirely accurate.
I suspect I'm close to the SDAM side on the autobiographical memory spectrum, since reading this my immediate thought was, wow. But you make a good point. So I have a question for you, which is, do you remember acquaintances from a few years ago who you haven't seen since?
I have these jarring social experiences where I encounter people who readily recognize me, refer to me by name, etc., and I have no idea who they are. Usually (although not always) they look vaguely familiar, so that I know I must have known them at some point, but they have essentially been erased from my mind. I cope with this by greeting them warmly and just faking it.
I am also absolutely terrible at remembering personal details from other people's lives, although I have great recall of scientific facts, figures and dates.
In general I feel like my past is about about three or four years long. I'm in my mid-forties and everything from before the pandemic feels like it happened a century ago. But I have no gauge on whether that is normal.
>do you remember acquaintances from a few years ago who you haven't seen since?
This is tricky, because the first couple people I think of are people who sort of "exist" in some sense online. Maybe I haven't seen them physically in 5-10 years, but I see their handle on a friends list or maybe I've messaged them in that time. I can remember things from back when I did see them in person, but perhaps their presence in some form since then has kept things more active. (Maybe they're more friends than acquaintances, admittedly it's hard for me to draw a line there without a clear definition)
I'm leaning toward "yes", though. I can remember old people who I fixed computers for once or twice and never really talked to again otherwise. They weren't related to me or anything, it was purely business, but I can remember things like them offering me a drink or asking certain questions or that they pronounced a word in an unusual way.
The pandemic might need its own special studies because a lot of adults have weird temporal experiences associated with it.
For me it also feels like pre-pandemic years were a lifetime ago, that life events around 2018/19 happened to someone else. But I don't think I have SDAM as I do have good recall for personal experiences, though it feels like it's getting weaker as I get older and the frequency of novel experiences wanes.
The other confounding factor is I moved to the opposite side of the world after completing my education, which meant a lot of those really foundational memories didn't get reinforced as much as they did for my peers. Because they got to hang out frequently and relive those tales together, while I felt them slipping away like sand from my fingers.
