Young Sherlock

Mahes

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This show is pretty forgettable. I watched through a few episodes but it never really grabbed me. I agree with the above poster that I always thought of Sherlock as a super perceptive kind of person, not a photographic memory kind of person. The scenes where he essentially is showing the ability of a person with an Eidetic memory is just odd.

I give it a 5/10. Ho Hum.
 

Rabbit_Games

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The plot is a little convoluted but we liked this one. No blacks, no obviously woke shit that I recall. I don't really recall Sherlock Holmes having a photographic memory where he can go back and re-examine things he saw before for additional clues, and I think it's dangerous to make a character with that ability. You show him ANYTHING he remembers it, forever?
Been a REALLY long time since I read the books, but I feel like his, and his brother’s, IQs are off the fucking charts. And high IQ people tend to have really strong memories.
 

Sheriff Cad

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Been a REALLY long time since I read the books, but I feel like his, and his brother’s, IQs are off the fucking charts. And high IQ people tend to have really strong memories.
IQ doesn't give you the ability to retrospectively examine memories and notice things that you didn't notice the first time. If you didn't notice it, it's not part of your memories. Thats not how memories work.
 

Rabbit_Games

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I haven’t watched the show yet, but with memory you can SEE something without registering it at first, but then remember it. I’ve done that many times, and I’m no genius.
 

Khane

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Apparently even Conan Doyle's version of Sherlock Holmes had what you could consider a photographic memory, though it was referred to as a brain attic (and it was called a Mind Palace in the BBC series with Cumberbatch). But that was less about remembering everything you see and instead, somehow storing ONLY pertinent information and not mundane details.
 

Sheriff Cad

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I haven’t watched the show yet, but with memory you can SEE something without registering it at first, but then remember it. I’ve done that many times, and I’m no genius.
For anything to be remembered, your brain has to attend to it and encode it into long-term storage. If Sherlock truly didn't notice a detail in the moment, it simply doesn't get stored. There's nothing to "recall" later.

It's a common misconception which is reinforced by dumbass tv shows and books constantly. Nobody can do this.
 
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fris

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mind or memory palace is more a type of remembering than your iq, but iq does impact it. instead of just thinking, that's joe and his name is joe, you have an imaginary room, and in that room, you place joe. then you place in that room, anything that is associated with joe. so when you want to remmeber something about joe, in your mind, you go to joe's room.

crazy memory people use this to 'memorize the phone book'
 
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Phazael

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IQ doesn't give you the ability to retrospectively examine memories and notice things that you didn't notice the first time. If you didn't notice it, it's not part of your memories. Thats not how memories work.
Not necessarily true. You can experience something and have a memory of it, but not understand its significance until you gain more information later on. I am by no means eidetic, but I do have a very freakishly strong memory, especially long term things. It does have a high correlation with high IQ (and depression as one might expect), but its not a given and there is no direct connection to having both. Most people, like you said, are no apple live in the moment mouth breathers who only actually remember things that directly impact them in the moment. Still others who are smarter compress experiences into a kind of mental short hand that reflects their interpretation at the time of the experience. Then you have people with excellent memory who basically actively have to filter shit and can recall specific conversations and observations that would seem to most to be completely irrelevant at the time. If you are a trial lawyer, your experiences with the average witness probably involves mostly the former two types. But you can have complete retard Rain Man types with perfect eidetic memory, but lack the reasoning skills to review said memories to compare against added information to draw conclusions. Then you have people like the Holmes bros who see something seemingly innocuous and file it away then immediately make a connection when new information is presented to them.

Personally, I am above average in intelligence with an exceptional memory and honestly it kind of sucks, especially now that it is starting to fade with age finally. Remembering every single mistake or bad experience with total clarity is grueling. And now I am losing the benefits that came with it to age. But at my peak when I participated in some tests and studies back in my college to 30s years, yeah I could rewind back to a previous thing I had experienced and visualize all the details with sharp clarity. Not to the degree portrayed in fiction of course, but well enough that I remember every phone number I have ever had in my life, have vivid memories of things that happened as far back as when I was five, and can recite written passages, faces and names of hundreds of casual acquaintances from over the years, and a bunch of other completely useless trivial shit I wish my head was not crammed with. And if you don't have this degree of memory, it in no way implies you are stupid just that your brain is more efficient at filtering out irrelevant data. And probably not spending every night in bed doing a complete review of the prior day instead of getting enough rest.

Having said all that shit, human brains are fucked up enough with their heuristic shortcuts, perception bias, and basic chemical analog nature that I would never every trust human memory as a single source of evidentiary truth under any circumstances. And with where AI is headed, I can't say I have much faith in electronic memory anymore either.
 

Sheriff Cad

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Not necessarily true. You can experience something and have a memory of it, but not understand its significance until you gain more information later on. I am by no means eidetic, but I do have a very freakishly strong memory, especially long term things. It does have a high correlation with high IQ (and depression as one might expect), but its not a given and there is no direct connection to having both. Most people, like you said, are no apple live in the moment mouth breathers who only actually remember things that directly impact them in the moment. Still others who are smarter compress experiences into a kind of mental short hand that reflects their interpretation at the time of the experience. Then you have people with excellent memory who basically actively have to filter shit and can recall specific conversations and observations that would seem to most to be completely irrelevant at the time. If you are a trial lawyer, your experiences with the average witness probably involves mostly the former two types. But you can have complete retard Rain Man types with perfect eidetic memory, but lack the reasoning skills to review said memories to compare against added information to draw conclusions. Then you have people like the Holmes bros who see something seemingly innocuous and file it away then immediately make a connection when new information is presented to them.

Personally, I am above average in intelligence with an exceptional memory and honestly it kind of sucks, especially now that it is starting to fade with age finally. Remembering every single mistake or bad experience with total clarity is grueling. And now I am losing the benefits that came with it to age. But at my peak when I participated in some tests and studies back in my college to 30s years, yeah I could rewind back to a previous thing I had experienced and visualize all the details with sharp clarity. Not to the degree portrayed in fiction of course, but well enough that I remember every phone number I have ever had in my life, have vivid memories of things that happened as far back as when I was five, and can recite written passages, faces and names of hundreds of casual acquaintances from over the years, and a bunch of other completely useless trivial shit I wish my head was not crammed with. And if you don't have this degree of memory, it in no way implies you are stupid just that your brain is more efficient at filtering out irrelevant data. And probably not spending every night in bed doing a complete review of the prior day instead of getting enough rest.

Having said all that shit, human brains are fucked up enough with their heuristic shortcuts, perception bias, and basic chemical analog nature that I would never every trust human memory as a single source of evidentiary truth under any circumstances. And with where AI is headed, I can't say I have much faith in electronic memory anymore either.
None of you are getting what I'm saying.

In this show, Sherlock is going back and "replaying" memories in his head to examine for things he didn't know to look for and totally didn't notice at the time. He's not thinking back to something he remembered and thought it was innocuous. He's re-examining memories and discovering new things.
 

Phazael

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mind or memory palace is more a type of remembering than your iq, but iq does impact it. instead of just thinking, that's joe and his name is joe, you have an imaginary room, and in that room, you place joe. then you place in that room, anything that is associated with joe. so when you want to remmeber something about joe, in your mind, you go to joe's room.

crazy memory people use this to 'memorize the phone book'
I can definitely say from personal experience that there is a layer of organization that goes on, even if its unconscious. Also, training does factor into it. People with exceptional memories will tend to have freakishly strong memories when the subject matter involves something they are well learned in (which is true of memory in general), like music, number based identification, or detailed astronomy information in my case. Someone like Cad probably has a lot of legal information memorized to a ridiculously precise degree. Basically you are developing parts of your brain to specialize in that type of information and as a result are more efficient with it. IQ aspect of it is more about connecting the dots with what information you have.
 

Phazael

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None of you are getting what I'm saying.

In this show, Sherlock is going back and "replaying" memories in his head to examine for things he didn't know to look for and totally didn't notice at the time. He's not thinking back to something he remembered and thought it was innocuous. He's re-examining memories and discovering new things.
No, we get it. People can actually do this. Think of it in terms of something like watching the movie Fight Club and how many seemingly pointless details are in the movie that you do not make the connection on until the second viewing. For people with exceptional or eidetic levels of memory, they can go back like rewinding a movie (to varying degrees) and note something that they observed and filed away at the time, but were not significant in the initial experience. Now as for the shows portrayal of this process, well yeah that might be exaugurated, but some people absolutely can relive an entire past experience and focus on things they perceived but did not consider important at the time. Its the opposite extreme on the whole live in the moment version of memory.
 

Sheriff Cad

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No, we get it. People can actually do this.
Sigh.
they can go back like rewinding a movie (to varying degrees) and note something that they observed and filed away at the time, but were not significant in the initial experience.
Now read what you wrote here, particularly the bolded large part, and tell me how that's different than what I said.

I'll help:

Sherlock is going back and "replaying" memories in his head to examine for things he didn't know to look for and totally didn't notice at the time.
 

Phazael

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I get that you're arguing this like a lawyer but I was mainly debating the idea that people can't go back to past memories and look for additional details about specific things they didn't find noteworthy at the time. You're trying to diffuse it into some nebulous issue because you operate on personal anecdotes and this is not one you've personally experienced. I might not be the doing the best job arguing it but it's a case of being something that's hard to explain to someone who has never personally experienced it. I do agree with your original point that writing a detective who has eidetic memory faces some serious storytelling challenges similar to anytime Superman gets used in a storytelling context. And the super observational and super memory phenomenon gets overly done in a lot of works of fiction. If I had to pick one show that gave a good example I would say the series Monk is probably pretty good in its representation of that . Most other shows either over exaggerate or oversimplify how that kind of memory process works . But the idea that this sort of strong memory phenomena doesn't exist is patently false.