system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why can't most adults remember the exact order of letters without reciting part of the alphabet?

It seems odd that despite seeing the entire alphabet in front of me over and over again throughout my life I am still unable to immediately recall what order the letters are in. Instead, I have a fuzzy grasp of which letters are near each other and need to mentally  recite a group of 2-4 of them in order to know their precise order. This seems to be true for most adults. Why is this?

Edit: to clarify, I am wondering why part of the alphabet needs to be recited in order to know where a single letter stands relative to others. This is opposed to the numerical system, where the order of numbers can be recalled immediately - I need to think about whether S follows R but not if 8 follows 7.
gpt
Because the order is completely arbitrary.  There is no relationship between K and L that would put them next to each other, and no reason K should come before L.  There are also not a lot of situations where have to go directly from K to L, so there is little reason to know this any better than "H-I-J-K-L".

Contrast this with number, which have all kinds of real relationships between them, and which you practice counting up and down with all the time.