Who Is This?

[glatt]

I was considering this one, and a certain name kept popping into my head, but I wasn't convinced so didn't announce it. I finally had given up and did something I never do. I cheated. And damn if it wasn't the name that was popping into my head.

I still don't entirely see it. I must have seen a "when they were young" page once in the past and it registered in my memory. I bet I saw that photo before.

[Spexxvet]

Burt Reynolds?

[Clodfobble]

Not Burt Reynolds. It's...


David Hasselhoff!

[Diaphone Jim]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Not Burt Reynolds. It's...


David Hasselhoff!

Never heard of or seen Momoa, but Hasselhoff also Aquaman.

[Clodfobble]

And now the stupidly hard one. Note how the hair is shellacked into straightness, and combed down in front to hide the already-balding spot...

[glatt]

This one, I've seen before, so I feel like it's cheating to answer. It's a good one though.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by glatt

This one, I've seen before, so I feel like it's cheating to answer. It's a good one though.

OK, the brain is so weird. The first time I looked at the pic, I had no idea who it was. But the moment I read that you've seen it before, I realized who it was.

So I MUST have seen it before... because the idea of "seeing it before" triggered the name of the person. Right now I'm absolutely certain that I've seen it before. (But I still had to cheat to verify it 100%!)

The deep recesses of the mind... may those clouds stay where they are, and not advance into everyday life

[glatt]

Isn't it amazing that our brains remember such trivial details that we saw briefly years ago?

I guess faces are something that would be evolutionarily advantageous to remember though, so we must be hard wired to encode that information somewhere. I bet we can recognize thousands of faces. Maybe tens of thousands. Even if we have trouble placing them.

[BigV]

John McCain

[fargon]

I cheated and I have never heard of him or the show he was on.

[glatt]

Yes you have.

[fargon]

If you say so.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by glatt

I bet we can recognize thousands of faces. Maybe tens of thousands. Even if we have trouble placing them.

I have an abnormally good ability to recognize faces, and an abnormally bad ability to put them in context. On multiple occasions, I've recognized someone that I spent as little as an hour with as a child, some 15 years after the fact. And yet, more than once I have seen an actual, current friend of mine out of context--like they're a parent at my kids' school, and I see them at the grocery store without their kids--and I can't for the life of me figure out how I know them.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I have an abnormally good ability to recognize faces, and an abnormally bad ability to put them in context. On multiple occasions, I've recognized someone that I spent as little as an hour with as a child, some 15 years after the fact. And yet, more than once I have seen an actual, current friend of mine out of context--like they're a parent at my kids' school, and I see them at the grocery store without their kids--and I can't for the life of me figure out how I know them.

I'm glad I have a driver's licence to refer to when I can't remember my own name. Either that or wait ten minutes when it pops up while trying to remember something else.

A couple years ago I had a guy walk up to me at a car show and I had no clue. I had given him (charged $1) a '67 Chevy Impala SS convertible a year before that. He was black and I don't interface with that many black guys, and it wasn't like I couldn't remember his name, no connection at all.
Don't lend me money.

[sexobon]

That's understandable. The studies I've heard about say that despite the hundreds; or, even thousands of contacts you may have IRL and over social media, humans can process a maximum of only about 150 relationships at a time. People are constantly moving in and out of that group.