My accusation is that the conversation memory works the same way as the BBQ party memory. You remember a skeleton. This subject was discussed, and things were said that gave me a feeling of ____. And a few more easily compressed details. The rest is interpolated. Imagine a language model the size of GPT-3 being trained on one particular person's manner of speaking and then given a one-paragraph summary of a conversation to get it started. Barring an audio recording or a transcript, who's to say that these weren't the words that were spoken?
Of course the engineer is tempted to test this by secretly recording a conversation and trying to trip up the perfect rememberer, a year later. But the non-geek life experience accumulated says don't go there.
I should add that as a geek I ought to have a better ability to remember, say, computer code that I've written. But am I the only one who, going back to something I haven't touched for two years, has to re-learn my own code?
>But am I the only one who, going back to something I haven't touched for two years, has to re-learn my own code?
No, that is perfectly normal, and it starts much earlier, weeks sometimes days after leaving the code.
Depending on its complexity and level of its abstraction.
You mentally build something highly abstract without much emotional or bodily bond.
Your brain has not much incentive to rememeber it.
Adding to that, there's a lot of sampling bias as well. If a function fits my mental model of it, then I'm unlikely to revisit it. If a function doesn't fit my mental model, then it is very likely that I'll misuse it, increasing the likelihood of a bug, and increasing the likelihood that I re-read the code.
Not to forget, memories are not only unreliable per se, but also change with each act of their remembrance.
For example, by character peculiarities, new experiences, current circumstances, etc.
Often they are made up on a whim, without the remembering person being aware of it.
So in a sense, memories have a past and a history.
Of course the engineer is tempted to test this by secretly recording a conversation and trying to trip up the perfect rememberer, a year later. But the non-geek life experience accumulated says don't go there.