So - I proofread a lot of material on my work before we ship it out to print (high quality magazines and the like) due to, well, me being good at seeing errors.
Recently, we were in the process of making a magazine for a client I saw a week ago, which contained a ton of grammatical errors and spelling and syntax and what have we.
i got the magazine for proofreading today before it was to be shipped to printing, and starting jotting down the few errors I noticed. I went into our designer and showed him what to correct, until we reached an error which wasn't an error on his screen.
He claims its the exact copy of what he sent me - I said no, look at what i wrote here was the error - He said well, thats simply not so.
I went back to my own screen to show him I was right...well, I wasnt - I was wrong. The text was exactly as it should be. The error had been there a week ago though but was since corrected.
Is that not a bit scary? My mind saw/remembered what was there a week ago, instead of what was actually there?
You might want to get it checked out just in case, but otherwise I'd say welcome to aging.
I've been having a thing for the past couple of years where if I quickly see a headline on a newspaper I will think it says something totally ridiculous that I know couldn't possibly be true - like "Anal Report" instead of "Annual Report" - and I will literally do a Cary Grant-esque double-take.
Yeah - I remember reading that our brain interprets and fill in the blanks in a lot of cases of us actually not seeing what we think we see as well and I figure it was something like that, where I simply didn't pay attention.
And nice to know I can look forward to more fun times like that! :-D
I don't find that particularly alarming. It's just one of those things that occur when you're working with text/numbers a lot. The mind plays tricks sometimes, especially if you're tired or something is affecting you from outside the realm of work. Not always easily detectable - but I wouldn't worry about something as seemingly minor as this.
Yeah, unless there is some underlying condition, like you've got worms squirming about in your brain, this really isn't a huge issue. It is a bit odd that you seemed to be recalling old errors that had been fixed, but I've misread many things before out of haste before as have other people my age going all the way back to high school.
Well, no worms that either me nor my GF has noticed yet, so there's always that!
I find the weirdest part of it all, that I wrote down the damn word that was mispelled and wrote what it should say instead on a piece of paper with all the other corrections...and the word simply wasnt in the magazine anymore.
This utterly fascinating article explains how memory is actually more like a continuous retelling of a story than like any kind of fixed record. Definitely a much, much more useful perspective for understanding how memory actually functions.
Brain worms actually specifically block you from noticing them. Because they're in your brain, see.Originally Posted by Razgon
Next time that happens, trying reading it backwards, sentence by sentence. I learned to do this when editing my own papers in college. I already knew what it was supposed to say, and I would miss a lot of mistakes if I read it from the top.
Got me on that one. Fucking brain thinking it knows something, all like "I don't have to pay attention, I got this". That will teach it a lesson.
Just for the record, we young folk have this problem as well. It isn't an aging thing; it's a human thing.
Kong you got me too. :(
Kong, you have some typos on that message you posted. Unless you gotta dig Bick... probably shouldn't have buried Bick in the first place.
I had a freaky experience after anesthesia for heart surgery a year ago. For several days was seeing things, not recognizing people, acting all kinds of nutty. Well, a year later, my brain seems to be all kinds of foggy.
- I put my keys in the fridge one day (spent all day looking for them)
- I got a bruise from trying to walk through the turnstyle without swiping my card
- I will do something and seconds later (no exaggeration) not remember doing it
- Walked to the subway 5 blocks away before I realized I was carrying the garbage bag.
...and other assorted nonsense.
If you really think you're having more memory-related issues than you should, you should talk to a doctor. The brain is a bag of chemicals and chemical reactions, so while one should expect to experience hiccups from time to time, there are any number of things that could actually be off.
I've done many of those things without the benefit of year-old anesthesia to blame it on. In short, our brains are far from flawless.
That said, I'll echo Kong: if anyone feels there's a significant dropoff in your memory, talk to your doctor. He or she will go over the usual suspects (stress, lack of sleep, diet, etc. - all of which can play a very significant role) and if nothing seems to fit then they will have you do some follow ups after which you can hopefully tell all your friends "It's not a tumah!" and get away just that one time with recycling a twenty year old line to show off your awesome memory skills.
Kong, you have some typos on that message you posted. Unless you gotta dig Bick... probably shouldn't have buried Bick in the first place.
I had a freaky experience after anesthesia for heart surgery a year ago. For several days was seeing things, not recognizing people, acting all kinds of nutty. Well, a year later, my brain seems to be all kinds of foggy.
- I put my keys in the fridge one day (spent all day looking for them)
- I got a bruise from trying to walk through the turnstyle without swiping my card
- I will do something and seconds later (no exaggeration) not remember doing it
- Walked to the subway 5 blocks away before I realized I was carrying the garbage bag.
...and other assorted nonsense.
Looks like we need another internet trophy here...
The horrors from years of YouTube and Yahoo comments have left me unable to separate text sarcasm or jokes from honest stuff. I mean, it's possible that he wrote the post down in notepad or something, and forgot he had posted it, right? Right!?!
:'(
Sounds like stuff I do frequently. Of course, I'm dyslexic and my short-term memory...well, yea.
My latest trick is never remembering where I put my drink down.
Never put your drink down. Problem solved.
How old are you people, anyway? This kind of stuff only started happening to me after I was into my fifties (unless you count that time I came home from high school, took a carton of ice cream out of the freezer, put my car keys back into the freezer instead of the ice cream, and put the ice cream carton on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, with no memory of doing any of that. I spent several hours looking for my keys and then wondered who put the ice cream in the fridge. )
Now I'm lucky if I can find my reading glasses from minute to minute.
I put shaving cream on my toothbrush when I was 35.
I once brushed my teeth with spermicide. But it was a strange bathroom and it was dark. My mouth was numb all day.
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