I feel like I'm in the handful of people in this world that finds this trait kinda cute. I know nothing about solving rubiks cubes, but I listened to a guy talk about it unrestrained for like 2 hours.
The saddest thing is that as I get older, I find my recall starting to fail. I'm struggling more and more to pull facts I know that I know. The deluge of information coming from my yammering maw is increasingly choppy and punctuated by trying to remember exact bits of info.
My nicknane was "walking encyclopedia" when I was a kid so that tracks.
In my undergrad I went from being a chemistry/physics double major to a biochemist and finally finished my chemistry degree. (I am not far from having 3 degrees) I studied ASL, German and Japanese, modded video games and competed in a semiprofessional starcraft league. I wrote instrument guides and procedures for undergrads, contributed to papers on bioremediation, synthesized nanoparticles using genetically engineered enzymes. I developed a method for a plant alkaloid assay and a new way to reduce noise in an experiment designed to measure the rate of certain reactions that occur in extremely diluted systems. i.e single or double digit number of molecules in the entire sample.
Now I tutor college students in chemistry, physics, math and biology and work on computational chemistry projects.
Trust me, you don't want this. It took me 15 years to finish my degree. I was diagnosed in my last semester right before the pandemic started after having a mental breakdown and subsequent year of therapy. It turns out it wasn't (clinical) anxiety and depression, it was ADHD.
Friends started to make bets that within 5 minutes of any conversation, I'll perk up and say excitedly, "I researched that!" And then bring up obscure, detailed facts. I don't like that I can be so predictable.... But wait, you ask, did the three fates have names? Well, I only know the Greek version, but there were Roman fates, fates in other cultures, woah, that made me think of Romulus and Remus for some reason, I read a fascinating book about them... 2 minutes later we are talking about the rise and fall of Rome, and the geopolitical realities of some obscure eastern European country in the spring of 1654.
You say "predictable", I say "effective brand image". I'm not joking, being known for things that you like doing is a pretty effective strategy to select for the kind of people who enjoy your infodumps.
That's trivia night for me. I get my question, everyone looks at me bemused, there's no way you know that, and I prattle off whatever answer comes to my head. Usually I'm dead on
At dinner with my friend tonight I tried explaining quantum entanglement and also explained the double split experiment. Then I went on a long tangent about how we are probably in a simulation.
Holy hell. In the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about quantum physics, the observer effect, the double slit experiment, how misunderstanding leads to a lot of confusion, quantum woo, quantum mysticism. Ive literally been practicing how to explain these things to a lay person. That, for instance, the observer effect, it has nothing to do with a human observing.
Anyhow, hello from my equally nerdy side of the universe.
I tend to accumulate seemingly random know-how and info but it is all easily traced back to interests and projects. (Assuming i can remember where I learned it ...)
"How do you know this tailgate comes from a 1987-1991 Jeep Grand Wagoneer and why?"
My wife is still amazed that I know the make and model of every car by the headlight's light beams from the view mirror. My knowledge goes back to the mid 80s.
I'm in a bit of a similar situation. I like to get mad at people who drive witg their lights off when it's raining and I've memorized which cars have their tail lights off when the daytime running lights are on so I know which ones to flash my highbeams at and which ones can be seen by people behind them.
Easily distracted and bored = binging wikipedia and any other reading material you find interesting when you should be doing literally anything else. Combine that with poor impulse control and now you're metaphorically strapping people into chairs and taping their eye lids open for your 6 hour lecture on random things you learned that week.
No one focuses on multiple things at once. At least not well. ADHD is about not being able to easily control what you focus on. It isn't about how many things you focus on at once.
I mean... one or both are for many of us. Both anxiety and depression have a high co-morbidity with ADHD. And even "mild" Autism+ADHD is like ADHD with Hard mode turned on.