Comment by rf15
7 hours ago
That's sadly impossible, because the brain, as a limited number of cells, cannot store infite data. The problem lies in the people observing them, but you have some fun mechanisms (and a few of the commonly known fallacies and biases) at work here, that can all contribute to that perceived effect/illusion. Consider the following ideas:
- people can be slightly better than a given random observer, because they learned and prioritise to pay attention. They are better at recalling memorable and minor details, especially in short term memory and in memorable situations that a lot of people share long term. They will still forget long term information that is irrelevant.
- any such person and also observer can easily talk themselves into the belief that their skill must be absolute, especially since the observer will largely only test from his own inferior dataset.
- once the belief takes hold (because people love a good story), observers tend to look less for flaws and more for further confirmations to keep mythologising people.
There are many people who remember everything they have done, read, or experienced: those born with the hyperthymesia disorder. They'll remember every meal they've eaten, and the day they ate it, among other things.
There must be a limit to human memory, but we haven't found it yet.
Memories are highly compressed, anyways. So remembering all conversations and experiences probably requires fewer neurons than you'd expect.