I have an absolutely atrocious memory for specifics when it comes to interpersonal interactions. I have a very difficult time saying what a person did or said even later that day. What makes this strange is that I have an excellent memory for a more abstract accounting of people’s abilities and can predict people’s reactions to different situations with a high degree of accuracy. I deal with utilizing people very often in my job (military officer) and I am known and respected for being very good at putting the right team together for a situation and splitting tasks between people in the most efficient manner. I always have a high confidence model of what a person is capable of, how trustworthy they are, how much stress they can handle etc, but when I try to analyze where this opinion originates from I can never remember anything. Since studying rationality I’ve become somewhat skeptical of how accurate I actually am in this regard, but after many attempts to test my gut opinions about people I’ve concluded that whatever my brain is doing, even in the absence of any consciously accessible data, seems to work.
I have an absolutely atrocious memory for specifics when it comes to interpersonal interactions. I have a very difficult time saying what a person did or said even later that day. What makes this strange is that I have an excellent memory for a more abstract accounting of people’s abilities and can predict people’s reactions to different situations with a high degree of accuracy. I deal with utilizing people very often in my job (military officer) and I am known and respected for being very good at putting the right team together for a situation and splitting tasks between people in the most efficient manner. I always have a high confidence model of what a person is capable of, how trustworthy they are, how much stress they can handle etc, but when I try to analyze where this opinion originates from I can never remember anything. Since studying rationality I’ve become somewhat skeptical of how accurate I actually am in this regard, but after many attempts to test my gut opinions about people I’ve concluded that whatever my brain is doing, even in the absence of any consciously accessible data, seems to work.