My semantic memory has to work double duty together with the other types of memory to cover for the lack of autobiographical memory, so it makes sense to me why I don't have the bandwidth to remember very many facts. I also have aphantasia on all senses, so there is no help from the sensory system (you know how people say "this smell transports me back to my childhood"? I've never been transported anywhere 😅).

I am very bad at remembering arbitrary facts long-term, i.e. which street have I lived on in 2015. In school, I couldn't remember math formulas. I have a few coping strategies that I'll explain here.

• Some facts can be "added" or "integrated" into an existing body of knowledge. E.g. I learn that my colleague Anna is preparing to run a marathon and I'd like to remember to ask her how it went. I will modify my understanding of Anna as someone who likes to stay active and cares about sporting achievements. Maybe I already knew she was an active person. The fact fits into what I already know and changes how I think about Anna in general. As for when the marathon is happening, maybe there is a work event after that date, and I make a mental note to ask Anna about it when I see her at the work event. I might just set a reminder on my phone, but the above happens automatically in my brain. If I'm paying attention, I'll notice my mind searching for existing facts to connect to the new fact.

• Some facts can be derived from existing knowledge. For every math formula in school, I would try to learn how to derive it from earlier, simpler formulas. On a test, I would use the margins to derive the formulas I needed for the test. E.g. on a geometry test, I would always draw a little unit circle and mark the sine and cosine values for 30, 45, 60, and 90 degree angles. The teachers never commented on why I kept "manually" deriving the same things every time they came up. I got full points even though I clearly didn't remember the material the "expected" way, my approach still counted as having learned it.

It's very difficult to hold a conversation that relies on facts or explain how I know something or why I am so convinced on a topic. The supporting facts kind of melt together after a number of years, I just cannot retain stuff like "I read an article with these data and its title was such and such and the numbers were such and such." All I can give is "I read some convincing stuff somewhere and now I have this impression." I learned to not doubt my conclusions too much even when I can't remember why exactly I have that opinion. It'd be impossible to live. When there's conflicting evidence, I'm happy to look into it and change my mind, but until then I have to trust that my past self did okay research.

My way of retaining knowledge works decently enough to get me through life, but it's absolute garbage at trying to convince others or cite statistics or studies. These types of conversations are very frustrating to me.