prase comments on How is your mind different from everyone else's? - Less Wrong
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I have lines for weekdays and months, but they are trivial (the mont sequence turns 90 degrees right in the middle of June, on 1st September, just before Christmas and on 1st January, forming a rectangle. The weekday line turns right before and after the weekend, so two weeks together make a rectangle.
My lines can also have a fractal substructure - if looking in a detail on a particular region, further turns appear, usually inherited from the general number line or another relevant line or part of it. This may not be compatible with the overall structure: for example, from greater distance the stretch from 1910 to 1920 is a straight line, but in detail, any single year has the "closed rectangle" structure, beginning and ending in the same point.
To help understanding the interplay of cultural bias and synesthesia, this is the hopefully full list of turns in my history line when looked at in detail (the probable cause for the turn - a historical event or other thing - is in parentheses)
Yeah, mine have that substructure-available-on-zoom too. It seems pretty clear that our brains are doing the same thing here. Out of curiosity, do you feel that you read more quickly or more slowly than others? I'm a very slow reader -- my silent reading speed is about on par with my reading-aloud speed, and I've sometimes wondered if this is connected at all to my tendency to visualize things, or is completely unrelated.
On the other hand, I think having a detailed timeline helps me to remember when events took place. I've noticed on movie rounds at pub trivia that I'm often able to make more use than some of my teammates of the year a movie was released, if that information was given, to rule out possible answers -- not because I know the exact dates of when many movies came out, but because if I'm familiar with the film at all, then I have a general sense of where it should go on my timeline. (Disclaimer: it's quite possible that this is all just confirmation bias on my part.)
I have no idea how quickly others read. My silent reading is generally faster than reading aloud, but the speed depends on what I am reading and I am not sure how big the difference is.