[HN Gopher] Research into why some people have a better sense of...
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Research into why some people have a better sense of direction
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 157 points
Date : 2024-04-13 12:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| chiph wrote:
| The article focuses on latent ability. And goes somewhat into the
| classification of people who use direction vs. those that use
| landmarks to navigate.
|
| There's a graphic in the article with four maps drawn from memory
| by different people. They say that #1 is perfect and that #4 is
| bad. As a programmer, I see them as connected graphs and that
| both are nearly a match to each other. But #4 has a different
| orientation and doesn't show curves in the road. But IMO it would
| still allow you to get to the locations marked if you turned the
| paper as you moved.
|
| There are also people who have lost their sense of direction due
| to injury. I had a neighbor who could not go to the supermarket
| by themselves because of brain damage (from a car accident). They
| were totally reliant on a family member - or later a GPS unit
| just to travel as little as 3-4 blocks.
| jprete wrote:
| Unfortunately, you've completely missed the point of the four
| drawings - seeing whether the drawer could identify and use
| likely routes that they weren't shown. If map #1 is accurate,
| then I can turn right when I get to the tree and take a
| shortcut to the brick wall, or cut across from the lamps to the
| green box without going through the four-road crossroad. Map #4
| will be misleading at best for understanding the whole area -
| if I try a shortcut from that map, I'll either get to the wrong
| destination or leave the original area and be totally lost.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Everything in map #4 is backwards with respect to left/right
| turns.
| alwaysrunning wrote:
| "the unique experiences each person accumulates as their life
| unfolds. Good navigators, it appears, are mostly made, not born"
|
| As the self proclaimed worst person in the world with directions,
| I can vouch for this. I was never taught how to find north,
| south, east, west as a kid, was never told to pay attention to
| landmarks on your way somewhere, never told to pay attention to
| street names, so on. And as a ultra runner my wife actually
| stopped coming to my races for a while bc you are expected to
| arrive at the next aid station around a certain time and if I
| wasn't familiar with the area I would get lost and she would
| worry that I was killed by a bear or smth. Since the advent of
| GPS on your wrist and such I don't get lost nearly as much. I
| honestly liked getting off course, being somewhere and seeing
| views most of all humanity would never see. But I still fail the
| test of 'point towards the lake' from sitting on my own couch. I
| can't quite make the connection in my mind, like driving I can't
| quite map out the entire route and often get streets confused.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| I was never told any of that either nor was I taught that in
| any capacity in school. However, the key difference ive noticed
| is being in the moment IE paying attention to your immediate
| environment and not getting lost in thought (or phone) that
| differentiates those who have an intuitive sense of direction
| versus those that don't.
|
| With that said, I don't feel comfortable when I don't know
| which way is north so I always try and figure that out first.
| shitter wrote:
| I think this is it for me. Since I was a kid, I've always
| gotten lost in thought when walking around and don't readily
| absorb my surroundings as a result. Even when I actively try
| to do so, it's still hard to navigate because my brain isn't
| well-trained to think that way.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That's wild to me. I don't know how you wouldn't pay attention
| to those things. No one told me to pay attention to landmarks,
| I don't understand why you _wouldn 't_. Very interesting.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I don't because it is hard to pay attention. I have always
| something else I am thinking about and it overrides ability
| to look at buildings or landmarks. I have to put in a lot of
| effort to intentionally look at buildings and memorise them.
| But also I wonder if somehow I care less about the buildings.
|
| When I am travelling and visiting landmarks or sights it just
| seems like something I do because everyone does it and people
| reacting to it seems like they just do it to react. I guess
| they do feel something. But I don't see much difference
| compared to being myself there vs what I could also see in
| Google images. So it always feels to me as if people are
| hyping up the fact of themselves being there. I do enjoy the
| sun and hot climate though so I like travelling for those
| reasons.
|
| Sure, I could go into thinking how awesome those landmarks
| are and the history, how they were built, but I feel like I
| have other things to think about as well.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Not sure what you mean. I just mean "ok here's the
| McDonald's, the turn is coming up soon. Ok yup it's a
| right, there's the red building it's just past that."
| rossant wrote:
| Same here. I get lost all the time. I always forget to make
| attention to landmarks and surroundings.
| masklinn wrote:
| I also get lost all the time.
|
| When I pay attention to landmarks they don't "stick", and
| neither does travel time. I'll have vague recollections,
| but as often as not they'll cause issues because I'll
| vaguely recollect at the wrong location.
|
| GPS has saved my bacon time and again.
| krisoft wrote:
| Btw landmarks in the navigational sense are not the same as
| landmarks in a tourist sense.
|
| A tourist landmark would be "the grand canyon" or the
| "eifel-tower". A navigational landmark is something like "a
| scrawny bush which seems to have grown leaning on that big
| rock with a flat top", "the 3 story building where the
| middle level had a fresh coat of paint on the corner window
| frames", or "corner of a park where 3 roads meet, and one
| of them has a deli with the picture of a prawn in the
| window"
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| They should also correlate navigational ability with IQ.
|
| If such a correlation exists or doesn't exist says a lot about
| navigation.
|
| An informal test:
|
| Are there any really smart people here with credentials and
| credibility to prove it who are also complete garbage at
| navigation?
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I have a PhD in pure math yet rely on GPS for navigating all
| but the most familiar routes.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| I also maintain a PhD, not in pure math, I know which
| direction I am facing at all times and can navigate without
| explicitly referencing a physical map.
|
| How close are we to developing a representative sample?
| dschroer wrote:
| My partner is a medical doctor. She can't navigate around. I
| don't think there is any link. Navigation was something that I
| was taught early and is a skill like anything else.
| eightys3v3n wrote:
| Awesome and productive suggestion. :D It seems we already have
| one piece of evidence but I would add: Often the people who
| live in the middle of nowhere are not thought of as smart, but
| they can drive or walk 10s or 100s of km through the wilderness
| and get to their destination. While those working high paying
| jobs in a city often use a GPS to drive anywhere off their
| usual route and never use any roads outside the main roads that
| are familiar to their route. I for example, can completely
| avoid rush hour going with the direction of rush hour, by
| taking a different road. This wouldn't work if most people in
| the city were good navigators (assuming they cared of course,
| but I would argue good navigators way-find more creatively even
| when they don't care much).
| julian_t wrote:
| My wife has very poor navigation skills, but is currently
| completing her second masters out of six degrees. So pretty
| smart, I guess.
|
| But she's also really dyslexic, and we've wondered if that
| could have anything to do with it.
| neom wrote:
| FWIW: Never met a dyslexic bad at navigation, your wife is
| the first I've heard of and I ask every other dyslexic I've
| met. I'm extremely dyslexic and extremely good at navigating.
| Look at Google maps once and generally don't need to again, I
| just keep the mental image of the map in my head. Can she
| hold the mental photo of the map? Does she mixes up her left
| and right? Does she also have dyscalculia?
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Anecdotally speaking I see no pattern. I can't see IQ
| predicting whether one gets lost in a telephone box or not.
|
| What I have noticed is that basement and lab dwellers are
| hopeless at navigating.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| > Are there any really smart people here with credentials and
| credibility to prove it who are also complete garbage at
| navigation?
|
| Anecdatum: I think I'm smarter than the average bear. I have an
| MS and work at a FAANG. However, I'm absolute shit at
| navigation. Last month, I hung out with a friend who is
| similarly bad at navigation and we lost the car for 15 minutes.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > credentials
|
| The more common stereotype is a negative correlation, nerdy
| smart people getting lost, unable to dress themselves, etc. I
| say 'stereotype' because that word very strongly correlates
| with BS.
|
| Still, I expect a negative correlation to intellectual
| credentials: Those take a lot of work doing things that usually
| don't involve navigation. Anthropologists I expect to be pretty
| good at it, and archaelogists and architectural historians are
| probably awesome. MDs, mathematicians - sorry.
| rossant wrote:
| I have a PhD and get lost all the time. GPS makes it a bit
| easier, although I always have to walk a few seconds to check
| my direction by looking at the movements of my GPS position.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I would say I'm a good navigator. I credit my ability to easily
| navigate around cities to playing 100s of hours of GTA as a kid.
| parpfish wrote:
| when I lived in a city with an underground transit system, it was
| interesting how my mental map developed in a non-contiguous way.
|
| I'd learn lots of little disconnected areas around each transit
| station. But it would take a long time to learn how all those
| little maps would relate to each other.
|
| And each time I started realizing how two of those little
| "islands" were related by streets on the surface, my initial
| reaction was always disbelief. in my mind they were each distinct
| little areas and it didn't seem possible that you could just walk
| from one to the other
| rnewme wrote:
| I had the same experience. Even walking the same street down
| from one side during night and then adjacent during the day,
| not realizing it is the same place for weeks. The one day I had
| most mind melting moment xd
| marcosdumay wrote:
| IMO, living in neighborhoods where the streets are not
| organized in a grid is the most disorienting thing.
|
| You suddenly discover that those two places, that need
| completely different routes to get into are right at the side
| of each other. And you do that again and again, at completely
| random places.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| That's rather a description of a tendency to cut
| neighboring areas, rather than grid system. There's plenty
| of places in the world where places close to itself are
| close to travel between.
| life-and-quiet wrote:
| This is such a great description of learning in general. You
| get pockets of information, and then BAM suddenly you can see
| how they relate.
| senkora wrote:
| This is why I love doing long runs in the city. It helps me
| connect all the little islands in my mind together.
| the_sleaze9 wrote:
| I got a great tidbit a long time ago, whenever you move to a
| new city and want to get to know it, start training for a
| marathon. You'll know every nook cranny and hole-in-the-wall
| in no time.
| tetha wrote:
| I was about to say exactly the same thing.
|
| Early one, a city kind of feels like an old school point and
| click adventure. There is train station x, and to the left of
| one exit is this location, to the right of that exit is that
| location.
|
| But eventually there is that realization: Oh wait. 15 minutes
| down this street is that other train station. 8 minutes down
| that street is a bus line which connects to the line going
| home. It's a bit of a rush to make these connections.
|
| And that in turn opens up interesting options. I could just
| walk with people I've been hanging out with at a concert,
| because I'll just know how to get back home. Or from some
| venues, there is good food nearby so you grab that and eat
| while walking somewhat towards home for 20 minutes on a sunny
| evening.
| dasil003 wrote:
| When I moved to London the fact that cycling was my primary
| mode of transportation meant I quickly learned the overall
| distance and distribution of common destinations and landmarks
| in central London to a much greater depth than many
| acquaintances who had lived there for years.
| ghaff wrote:
| As an undergrad that was so me with Boston/Cambridge which, in
| many cases, I saw as T stops that were not really connected at
| street level.
|
| I still remember one time I made 2 line changes in downtown
| Boston, walked about a block, and realized I was back where I
| started :-)
| zabzonk wrote:
| the london tube map is a classic of this - the map is all about
| how to navigate the tube system, not about distances above or
| below ground. i moved to london about 40 years ago, and it took
| me a while to work this out.
| addminztrator wrote:
| People keep telling me to get lost but I never do... I really
| need to learn this skill
| majmanhn wrote:
| TIL about orienteering- seems fun! Also interesting (and maybe
| intuitive) to see reliance on GPS correlates with diminished
| navigational skills.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I'm in my 50's, so when I learned to drive there was no GPS or
| phones or anything to help me. I liked to explore and see things,
| so it all had to be done by maps. So I quickly learned to
| oriented myself against NSEW and the roads.
|
| Later in life I likewise got into hiking prior to GPS being
| widely available. That really motivated me to be aware of my
| environment and directions.
|
| I am not perfect at it and can get disoriented if I'm not
| careful, but generally speaking I almost always have a background
| thread in my head keeping track of where I am and my orientation
| when driving.
|
| This came in incredibly handy a few months ago when my phone died
| and I was picking up my son at a friend's house an hour away I
| had only visited once before. It took a bit but I was able to
| find the house again with zero electronic aids.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm more careful hiking but I don't have maps from this century
| in my car--and don't actually know what _is_ in there other
| than knowing I have a satchel with some maps in it. I should
| probably do an inventory one of these days.
|
| It's really easy to depend on your phone for lots of things and
| then not to have a backup plan if it fails.
| jonah wrote:
| "It's really easy to depend on your phone for lots of things
| and then not to have a backup plan if it fails."
|
| We see this so often in search and rescue. People take off on
| some random hike they found on an app without charging their
| battery and without knowing how long the hike will take
| _them_. So, sooner or later, it gets dark and they start
| using their phone as a flashlight which kills the battery on
| their only navigation device. But, ehh, since they probably
| don 't know how to read a map or orient themselves on it or
| find their way back to the trail which they invariably
| deviated from as some point and went ahead instead of turning
| back. (Also, not a lot of cell coverage in the backcountry
| anyway and probably didn't cache the maps.)
|
| /Rant
| ghaff wrote:
| I'll take shortcuts on very familiar easy local trails. But
| anything else, I'll have map, compass, headlight, water,
| some extra clothing, at least a minimal first aid kit, etc.
|
| re: getting dark. I so often see people heading up a trail
| at 3pm or whatever. Maybe they're just planning to go up a
| ways but I wouldn't count on it. I've observed that even
| fairly experienced people can be pretty bad about
| establishing a sensible timeline.
| tekla wrote:
| People are so used to the luxuries of modern life, that
| even a minor inconvenience becomes life threatening.
|
| People go on hikes with no food, a single bottle of water,
| and its a 13 mile hike up this mountain. Blank looks when I
| ask "do you know where you might get more water????"
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I wish it talked more about place-naming, routes, roads, and all
| that.
|
| I can't give you directions to a lot of places because I can't
| memorize the arbitrary sequence of route 123, then left on 56A,
| exit 6, then sharp right onto 9. They're just mostly arbitrary,
| indistinguishable roads. The numbers have some meanings [1], but
| it's not enough. Routes and roads should be named according to
| distinguishable landmarks or features, maybe in addition to their
| number. Birch Parkway better be dotted with birch trees.
| Cathedral Street better have a big cathedral that rises up above
| the other buildings. The canyon road flanked with sandstone
| should be called Red Rock Pass. These names are not only prettier
| than random numbers, but they're meaningful and useful.
|
| Of course places and features change over time, but not that
| dramatically, and even if they do, just rename them.
| Constantinople is now Istanbul. We can change the meaningful
| names, but keep the number IDs.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway...
| jprete wrote:
| US highway numbering was meant for machines, not people - even
| if the machines of the time consisted of people obeying rules
| and following instructions.
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| One thing I don't see mentioned as a hypothesis for a factor in a
| good sense of direction is inner-ear ability (directional
| proprioception). A few years ago I met Buzz Aldrin at a NASA
| conference, and he told me that he thought that people with a
| poor innate direction sense make good astronauts, because having
| good directional proprioception tends to lead to serious
| spacesickness. The UCL game study would miss this because people
| can't use bodily cues when navigating online. VR sickness is
| quite related to this.
|
| Anecdotally, my mother had a balance disorder, and could get lost
| very quickly in even familiar surroundings, while I get motion
| sick quite easily but have very good direction sense.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| This is really interesting. I have amazing directional
| awareness in real life, but the literal worse in video games.
| quickslowdown wrote:
| Same, my friends get frustrated playing Minecraft or other
| large open world games with me because I'm constantly lost.
| We walk 30 seconds or so away from the base and suddenly I'm
| turned around and have no concept whatsoever of which
| direction I came from or how to get back. Which just doesn't
| happen to me in real life
| hobs wrote:
| It's definitely a skill different to the physical one
| though, and one that needs plenty of practice - mapping
| your virtual world and keeping a running tally of all the
| objects and things you literally cant see except through a
| tiny box is not something that comes naturally to most.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Heh my kids ever so gently asked me to stop gaming with
| them because I was perpetually lost in open world games or
| so bad in a gun battle i contributed negative value to the
| team.
| tstrimple wrote:
| My wife is the same way. She has an almost supernatural
| ability to determine which direction is north no matter
| where we are. But she gets lost immediately in game worlds.
| Even with a minimap and player icons she is constantly
| getting separated and needs someone to backtrack.
|
| I'm the opposite. I can't tell you which way north is from
| my own house. It takes me quite a while to get a feel for
| where things are in relation to each other in the real
| world. But in game worlds I'm quite comfortable navigating.
| Even in 3d zero gravity environments like in Shipbreaker
| where you have to quickly reorient yourself while salvaging
| the ship and you've got to let go of the concept of up and
| down as absolutes. Of course, never having been to space, I
| have no idea if it would translate or if I'd just be a
| motion sick mess with no frame of reference.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Zork drove me nuts in this way. I have a good sense of
| direction and maps but I never put the map of Zork together
| in my head.
| jemmyw wrote:
| I wonder if this applies to me. I never learnt navigation
| skills but I have a very good sense of direction and I'm also
| very quick to motion sickness in games and on boats.
|
| I actually consider it to be slightly dangerous that I'm over
| confident about where I am and the direction I'm facing. It has
| led to be marching down the wrong track, not realising I'm on a
| parallel path that then sightly deviates.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Counterpoint. I have excellent directional ability whether
| blind hiking through an untraveled forest, paper maps, or
| plotting a course. I also do not suffer any form of motion
| sickness on land sea or in air. Haven't been to space but would
| go in exchange for being subject of an experiment so long as I
| can take pictures and return to earth safely.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Here I thought your anecdote was going to end with your mother
| going to space.
|
| As a counter anecdote, I have a good sense of balance and don't
| get motion sickness, but a good sense of direction. My wife
| gets motion sickness very easily (she has a hard time being a
| passenger in a car) but has a terrible sense of direction.
|
| The person with the worst sense of direction I know just has
| ADD (like my wife) but no motion sickness.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I don't think it has anything to do with your inner ear.
| Rather, I think it's your brain being able to process and
| visualize input. I have significant issues with my inner ear
| and yet have an excellent sense of direction.
|
| I use a combination of visual, kinesthetic, and touch senses
| for balance instead of my inner ear. Sound is situationally
| useful. If I know where the source of sound is in a room
| physical world, I can use that to estimate my position and
| direction in that room.
|
| Of course, it's possible there are multiple ways to have a good
| sense of direction. Mine works like a map. For other people it
| may just be an intuitive sense using a different type of
| analysis.
| tekla wrote:
| Some people refuse to learn. I've always been fascinated that
| people forget that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west
| and if you can see the sun, you can have a general idea of where
| you are going (assuming you know roughly when noon is).
|
| Some are just amazed that I can tell where we are going until I
| remind them I can see their shadows.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Tip: Having tried to communicate the same thing, shadows are
| easier for people to work with. They point precisely in a
| certain direction rather than 'that big bright ball is over
| there'.
|
| Now coming up with the precise direction the shadow is pointing
| is trickier but usually people need little precision, maybe the
| 8 most cardinal directions on the compass.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Definitely not genetic. Folks in the same close family have
| diametrically opposed abilities in this line.
|
| I blame GPS navigation for a strong dip in talent in this
| generation. They refuse to show you the map beyond a postage-
| stamp area in the immediate vicinity. Making it utterly
| impossible to get your bearings and make good decisions. You
| become totally dependent on the device.
| gedy wrote:
| While true, I do wonder if there's something more innate. My
| mother is totally unable to find her way around, but I've
| always had a keen awareness of directions. E.g. my memories and
| even dreams include position of things N, E, W, & S
| wcedmisten wrote:
| Totally agree on the device dependence. Sometimes I'll navigate
| a route a few times with GPS and then try to find my way there
| without it, just to learn the route.
|
| I was thinking it would be cool to make an app that helps you
| learn navigation. Maybe like a game to find your way to a given
| place, and you get hints if you're off track.
| ramenbytes wrote:
| > They refuse to show you the map beyond a postage-stamp area
| in the immediate vicinity. Making it utterly impossible to get
| your bearings and make good decisions.
|
| I didn't realize this until I started using a Thomas Guide in
| the past year, and then it hit me like a bag of bricks. It's so
| much easier to (re)orient myself with a properly sized and
| detailed map. Not to mention I don't have to fiddle with Google
| Maps to coax it into showing me street names. I don't think
| Google Maps is very good at actually being a map.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Before smartphone gps, navigation was something I was really
| proud of having as a skill. I could find my way around town by
| just landmarks and directions from those landmarks.
|
| Nowadays that skill is entirely lost. I recall playing arma 3 and
| needing to use a map and compass. That was a fun exercise .
| post_break wrote:
| I'm very good with knowing where I am and where I'm going. It's
| like a sixth sense compass I have built in. I don't know if it
| was learned or what but at times it feels like a super power.
| Grew up without GPS but did start driving around the time it got
| good.
| parasti wrote:
| I largely credit my spatial awareness to studying maps and also
| learning levels in Nexuiz (the original Nexuiz, a Quake-like
| video game) and how teleport entrances/exits are oriented. That
| felt like learning a skill that at one moment just clicked and I
| haven't lost it since.
| yazzku wrote:
| That and the minimap in Diablo 2. Some people can't tell left
| from right anymore when the car is pointing South.
| netsharc wrote:
| One tip I like is to set your navigation app to "north up". This
| way you're aware which direction (in general) you're heading
| towards. If you know you're going south east and there's a
| detour, you know you need to find a parallel street heading
| south-east-ish.
|
| If translating the arrow pointing left and the next turn is down
| to "turn right ahead" is confusing, on Google Maps at least the
| top of the screen still has arrows pointing left or right how far
| away you are from the turn, so this info is still there.
|
| The tip is from Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, who does a lot of
| driving.
| svat wrote:
| Strong agree; came here to recommend this -- this is something
| I came up with by myself and thought I was the only one who did
| this; glad to find others think the same. Doing this has
| greatly improved my sense of direction (to much better than it
| was before I started using GPS/navigation). It's like getting
| instant feedback for your direction sense (e.g. I was driving
| west and just now I turned left, so I'm now driving south), and
| remaining oriented about where different places are wrt each
| other.
|
| A couple of screenshots for anyone confused:
|
| Before:
| https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/112/264...
|
| After:
| https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/112/264...
| naasking wrote:
| This is probably only good for people who already have good
| spatial reasoning and can make the transformation on the fly
| from screen orientation to what you're seeing ahead of you.
| Many people have poor spatial reasoning skills though, and
| probably find the direct view more useful.
| analog31 wrote:
| I have to have my map on "north up" or I get lost. I'm 60. I
| also grew up in the US Midwest, where there's a NSEW square
| grid of roads over a large portion of the region.
| emmelaich wrote:
| I usually "north up" but when navigating, the navigation view
| gives you more of what's ahead in screen space.
|
| I wish "north up" would do the same; I'm sure it's do-able.
| xtreme wrote:
| It's not doable because your current location needs to be in
| the center of the screen in north up mode but can be placed
| lower in regular mode. Also the non square aspect ratio of
| the phone screen means that you don't get the same field of
| view in all four directions.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > your current location needs to be in the center of the
| screen in north up mode
|
| No it doesn't, so you just identified an easy opportunity
| for improvement.
| boneitis wrote:
| Thank. You.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| My car has two screens, a big one for the overview map and a
| small one for the "next turn" map. I always said the big view
| to north up. Works well.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Did you set it up that way, or did it come that way?
|
| If the latter what car model comes with 2 screens you can
| use for navigation?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Tesla Model X, the old kind with the vertical screen.
|
| (However, please don't take this as a recommendation for
| Tesla cars. I would never buy another one.)
| Animats wrote:
| Stan Honey, who invented car navigation systems (Etak, pre-
| GPS), once told me that they started out with always displaying
| maps with north at the top. He's a sailor, and sailors have
| used maps with north at the top for centuries. So the car nav
| system just followed marine navigation.
|
| They discovered in user testing that about 20% of the
| population cannot rotate a map in their head. So they rotated
| the map in software. Keeping the labels in normal orientation
| was tough. Now everybody does that.
| PeterisP wrote:
| This is a good example of accessibility tradeoff - it
| obviously was needed to make the solution accessible and
| usable for that 20%, but in the process it made it worse for
| at least some of the 80%..
| b33j0r wrote:
| A compass rose is pretty much the same concept as the XYZ
| widget in any 3D app, a reference frame. I'm wondering. Since
| cartography was pretty well established by the 20th century,
| was this really much of a debate for nav systems?
|
| If I asked you to draw a map of the room you're in, I highly
| doubt you'd orient the straight angles of the walls with
| respect to the angle of your body. You'd draw them along a
| compass rose relative to the structure. Rotating a map to
| your gaze is actually not very intuitive when your goal is to
| usually to transform the world to be outside of your
| reference frame.
|
| The transformation of the map into your perspective is a
| last-mile problem: it's important when you reduce your
| decisions to "what landmark is in front of me, and what is to
| my left and right?"
| netsharc wrote:
| I think a "my direction up" would work better if the
| compass direction is displayed on top of the screen, like
| on video game/military aircraft HUDs https://eu2.contabosto
| rage.com/2baf1d556e44458999c03b1595ea0... , or since the
| directions are around the "you are here" marker, the
| N/E/S/W markers (and its subdivisions) could be placed on
| the 4 edges the screen, and would move around as the phone
| changes its heading.
|
| Someone else said elsewhere on this comment section, if
| only a navigation app would also show the position of the
| sun at that moment. If we already have the compass
| directions, the direction of the sun can be an extra UI
| element.
| tzs wrote:
| I've never done marine navigation so how I expect it to work
| just comes from movies and the occasional reality TV show so
| how I'm imagining it works may be way off, but the impression
| I've gotten is that the navigator (by which I mean the person
| planning the route) and the driver (the person or people who
| execute the navigator's plan) are logically separate. They
| might be the same person on a smaller boat, but the processes
| is still separate.
|
| The navigator uses the maps to produce instructions for the
| driver which will be things like sail in this particular
| direction until we pass that specific island then turn some
| specific amount and so on.
|
| The navigator doesn't even have to look outside while doing
| this, and all the directions are specified by compass points,
| so of course a north on top map makes sense.
|
| For a car nav system the nav system is both doing that high
| level planning that a ship navigator does _and_ is doing very
| low level navigation for the driver, and the driver is
| executing the plan by looking out the window and matching
| what they see to what the plan calls for. Also events are
| happening much faster in a car, because (a) cars are typical
| traveling faster than boats, and (b) cars are typically in
| environments with a lot more obstacles, and (c) those
| obstacles are more closely spaced than typical ocean
| obstacles. For telling someone how to turn right now most
| people will do better with "turn 90 degrees right" or "turn
| left at the upcoming intersection" than instructions to
| change their heading to a specific compass direction.
|
| So far a car nav system it does make more sense to make the
| nav device's view match more closely what the driver sees.
|
| Ideally I'd like something that switches views depending on
| the situation. Say I'm driving from the Seattle to Los
| Angeles. When I'm cruising down I-5 a north up map view
| zoomed out so I can see the big picture would be great. If I
| decide to stop in Sacramento for gas and a snack, then
| switching to a smaller, current direction up, view just big
| enough to show my current position and the gas station when I
| exit I-5 would be more useful.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Also events are happening much faster in a car,
|
| Yea, getting off some of the interstates in Texas has
| situations like this.
|
| You are traveling 60-75 MPH then you exit interstate right,
| then you quickly split on an capillary highway that splits
| to the left, then moments later split to the right again
| then have to get in the right or left lane for a turn
| depending on which direction you're heading. All while
| having local traffic that knows the traffic pattern fly
| past you where it's more than one lane. I swear it feels
| like one of those space fighter games where you're
| attempting to avoid asteroids and other ships at a fast
| pace.
| boneitis wrote:
| I want to say I'm astonished by this comment thread, but hey.
| It's to be expected these days.
|
| I would have theoretically said the same thing that the sibling
| comments are about getting north to be "up". But, that is
| already the default (at least on my phone), but who knows for
| how much longer. The app quite aggressively tries to keep you
| from getting comfortable with this mode but instead wants to
| derail your sense of direction in general.
|
| First, it was a minor inconvenience to lock your orientation,
| then they hid it deep inside a settings menu, before eventually
| removing entirely the ability to lock the map to the cardinal
| directions, and everyone I complain about this to acts like I'm
| crazy.
|
| I've long ago given up. I don't get it.
| yterdy wrote:
| While we're fixing this, I'd also like a "South-up" option.
| Maybe even "West-up" or "East-up" one.
|
| I'm not joking. Beyond training one to think about their
| location in multiple orientations, it also opens your eyes to
| assumptions one makes about places based on their location.
| West Wing famously flipped the script (literally), but
| there's also the lateral bias to think about. Go into Google
| Maps and flip it 90 degrees; does your understanding of
| distance, shapes, and spatial relationships of "familiar"
| geography change?
| hobofan wrote:
| I think the same goes for on-foot navigation.
|
| Anecdotally, I find that my friends that just willy-nilly
| rotate around their Google Maps are the ones that have the
| worst sense of direction. Of course you are going to get lost
| after one wrong turn if you throw out your frame of reference
| that would help to reorient yourself!
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I think the same goes for on-foot navigation."
|
| This is the absolute opposite. You orient your map to north
| (generally magnetic north when using magnetic compasses). If
| you have your map oriented for "north up" your headings will
| be all wrong.
| giantg2 wrote:
| To anyone who has done some actual navigation setting a map to
| "north-up" seems terrible. I'm pretty sure my GPS tells me what
| my general heading is, not that I've ever had to use it.
|
| If it works, it works. But I would strongly recommend that
| people try orienteering to learn about land nav.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Why disagree?
| RajT88 wrote:
| My wife likes to orient her GPS map according to the direction
| she is heading.
|
| I orefer North. I am the better navigator.
|
| Related: I have spent a lot more time in youth and adulthood
| wandering places on my own. She of course was discouraged from
| doing so for the reasons the article cites.
| euroderf wrote:
| A software complaint.
|
| In mapping apps, why can't I get an indicator of where the sun is
| in the sky ? Then if there's no landmarks, or I'm at an awful
| intersection, or whatevs, I can use sun position to get oriented.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you have a working phone, you have a compass though.
|
| There are ephemeris apps for photography but not sure what that
| adds to just getting oriented with a compass, whether on your
| phone or a separate mechanical device.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| In my experience, the compass can be totally backwards when
| you're around tall buildings.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| It shouldn't, unless your phone is placed against a magnet.
| The earth's spinning magnetic core is the size of the moon.
| Those nearby buildings will not interfere with that.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| The phone may be using GPS for headings instead of an
| actual compass causing it to act that way.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Why would it do that? Digital magnetometers are cheap,
| low power, and ubiquitous.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Some inexpensive phones don't include it due to cost
| reasons, it could also be bad software or a defective
| magnetometer in the unit.
| mkl wrote:
| And also, IME, completely unreliable. The compass in my
| car's sat nav never points north, and my phone's compass
| constantly needs recalibrating.
| emmelaich wrote:
| I'd also like some sense of zoom. Like graticules of 1k or 10k;
| they could even change. If it makes the screen too busy, make
| it just ticks on the edges.
| euroderf wrote:
| Also I'd like an option to keep North at the top unless & until
| I manually twist the map. Auto-orienting away from North is
| extremely unhelpful nearly all of the time.
| eszed wrote:
| One game I've played with myself whenever I've moved to a new
| area is to drive or walk until I've felt irremedially lost, and
| then break out the map or GPS to get back home. (I remember once
| or twice trying it with random dice rolls at intersections, but
| this didn't work as well as taking the least-familiar or most
| interesting-looking choice.) It's a great way to discover places
| you'd otherwise never visit, and is a fantastic way to give
| yourself a gestalt sense of the locality.
| spacecadet wrote:
| "Internal GPS" here, but grew up navigating the deep Maine woods.
| Also spent time navigating a single engine over the Alaskan bush
| and various rally/overland races. I really like navigation, dead
| reck, etc. It aint wrong, takes alot of practice and interest in
| navigation to become fluent.
| sramsay wrote:
| Whenever I say, "I probably have the worst sense of direction of
| anyone you will ever meet," people invariably say, "Oh, me too!"
|
| And I say, "Really? So you are never surprised by what you see
| when you walk out of the building you've been working in for 20
| years (you know where the exits are, you just can't figure out
| which exit leads to which side)? When you're sitting in a room in
| your house you can determine -- within, say, ten or fifteen
| minutes -- what room is above/below you? You _routinely_ get lost
| going to places you 've been to hundreds of times in your own
| city? There are perhaps only two or three places you can get to
| in said city without a GPS receiver, but that's about it. You are
| never, _ever_ without a compass? Anywhere? "
|
| Really, folks. I've been like this my whole life (I'm 53), and I
| have no other cognitive deficiencies that I know of. But when
| people talk about "mental maps," I'm not entirely sure what
| they're talking about. When someone says, "Oh, I know a shortcut"
| it's always an absolute revelation. Navigating anywhere is like
| being asked to memorize a 19-digit number.
|
| Whenever I hear about greater or lesser abilities with navigation
| -- and how one might go from lesser to greater -- I always assume
| they are not talking about people like me. I really feel like I'm
| truly impaired when it comes to this, and I'd love to know why!
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I am also like this. I had a fight once with my SO where they
| were upset with me for not trying to level up my navigation
| skills. I have a growth mindset about many other things, but
| I've just absolutely given up on navigation without a
| smartphone.
|
| I also have a hard time recognizing faces of celebrities, but
| not people I know in real life.
|
| From reading about prosopagnosia and other agnosias, I suspect
| there's something funny with my fusiform gyrus.
| erwinmatijsen wrote:
| I've always linked my inability to navigate to my inability
| to visualize things in my head. Even in the area where I've
| been living for about 15 years now, I still struggle to
| determine routes if I don't travel them very regularly.
|
| This afternoon, we drove to a place in the city nearby. By
| now, after so many years, I can guess which exit to take, but
| I don't know whether to turn left or right at the end of the
| exit until I'm at the end and recognise it from previous
| times I've been there. But I can't picture it in my head
| beforehand.
| neRok wrote:
| I also have aphantasia but can navigate just fine. I read a
| comment on here once from someone with aphantasia that
| couldn't navigate in the real world, but they worked in
| network admin and knew that layout just fine (knew where
| everything routed and what it connected to etc). I pondered
| that if they could remember cable routes, why don't they
| apply the same mental map to roads? Roads are fixed and
| have a beginning and end too! But they reckon they could
| not. So it's a strange problem.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I think the challenge is relating your current locatiom
| in a 3d environment to a top down 2d map?
|
| The 3d environment is full of noise and info which is a
| lot to take in while something like routing is very
| simple, and you don't have to convert your own placement
| in 3d map to 2d.
|
| Also routing likely has good intentional reasons why
| something follows the other. While roads have evolved
| more naturally throughout history.
| 7thpower wrote:
| Are you me? If I had been born 15 years earlier, before GPS
| nav, you would not be reading this because I would be dead in
| a ditch somewhere.
| mhandley wrote:
| I have a hard time visualizing things when I'm fully awake.
| Ask me to picture my wife or my kids' faces, and I can't do
| it. I feel I can subconsiously visualize them with no
| problem, but as soon as a try to consciously do it, the
| picture disolves. Same with any fully awake visualization -
| can't quite see the image in my head - it's like it's in my
| peripheral vision but scoots away as soon as I look. But I
| can lucid dream, and do things like complex 3D mechanism
| design while lucid dreaming (that I can later turn concrete
| using CAD).
|
| Anyway, I have no problem with navigation - I can look at a
| map, and navigate from the (non visualizable!) memory for
| ages (an hour if hiking, maybe several hours if driving), and
| pretty much always tell you where north is. But I still
| cannot bring the image of the map back into my conscious
| mind. The brain is a very weird thing indeed.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| What does visualisation of someone face even mean. If I
| have to ask that does it mean I have aphantasia?
|
| I don't think I have it, but I don't know.
|
| Like are you seeing colors in your mind eye, because surely
| visualization should require it.
|
| I am definitely not seeing any colors.
| datascienced wrote:
| I can't remember faces of people I see say 4 times a year and
| who are not friends. A random parent at the school for
| example.
| koyote wrote:
| Counter data point:
|
| I am an excellent navigator but can't recognise people I know
| on the street, even if I know them reasonably well. If I know
| I will be meeting them, and I know them well I mostly
| recognise them but even then I am sometimes surprised when
| they show up and say hello to me.
|
| Celebrities is even worse...
| koyote wrote:
| Counter data point:
|
| I am an excellent navigator but can't recognise people I know
| on the street, even if I know them reasonably well. If I know
| I will be meeting them, and I know them well I mostly
| recognise them but even then I am sometimes surprised when
| they show up and say hello to me.
|
| Celebrities is even worse...
|
| (Good) navigation is not really about recognising landmarks
| (although that helps) but about having a mental version of
| the map of the place you are in, with you in the centre.
| Think of it like the GTA mini-map that live updates as you
| walk around. I think that comes naturally to some people and
| just does not exist for many others.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I'm the absolute opposite way. One of the stories my parents
| usually like to tell is when I was like 5 we were in unfamiliar
| city, they got lost and could not find the car for over an hour
| ignoring me, and when they finally listened to me I've managed
| to get them back to the car in 5 minutes. I can easily
| recollect how to get from points A to B in cities I've been
| once 5 years ago.
| mhandley wrote:
| I'm like you - my mum and her sister were both infamously bad
| at navigation, and family stories tell how they got lost
| driving home from the city centre. Eventually they paid
| attention to two-year old me standing up in the back seat
| (this was before cars had seat belts in the back) saying
| "it's that way!". Apparently I navigated them all the way
| home across the city at the age of two. Now I don't know how
| much this was exaggerated, but as long as I can remember,
| I've always had near-perfect navigational skills while my mum
| is hopeless, so there's probably some truth to it.
|
| Given my mum was so bad, even when I was very small, my
| parents would give me the map to navigate from the back seat
| whenever we went anywhere new. My father would usually drive,
| and he was a good navigator so may not have needed me, but
| sometimes my mother would drive. Either way, I would navigate
| across the country. I don't know how young I was when we
| started this, but probably about seven. I always loved maps.
|
| Only when I was an adult did I discover that different people
| thought about navigation in different ways. Most people, it
| seems, navigate by waypoints. "Turn left at the Red Lion pub"
| and so on. Some people, including me, can navigate by
| absolute directions - "go north east, then west" and so on,
| and actually think this way. If you ask me which way is
| north, in the daytime I'm pretty much perfect, no matter the
| weather. At night or indoors, I'm good, but sometimes can be
| a bit off - maybe up to 45 degrees. Not sure exactly what I'm
| picking up from outdoors, even when it's cloudy, but I know
| I'm completely reversed if I visit Australia, so likely
| something to do with polarised light.
|
| So is it learned? Sure, I got a huge amount of practice when
| I was young in pre-GPS days. But I could do it at the age of
| two, so probably there was some capability there from the
| start. Now I'm in my fifties and use GPS everywhere, mostly
| for traffic guidance. But I do feel I'm not as good at raw
| navigation as I used to be. But in the 1980s when I was first
| driving long distance, I'd stare at a map for a few minutes,
| and then drive 200 miles across England without needing to
| look at a map again. For those from the US, in England, 200
| miles is long way and a lot of junctions! Not sure I could do
| that these days, so maybe it is practice. Or maybe I'm just
| getting old.
| jvm___ wrote:
| I have a map in my head of all the roads I've ever been down.
| Adding to it is a treat, I love adding new roads to it.
|
| The limits are that I don't remember all the hundreds of
| Craigslist pickups I've done.
|
| Also, I navigate by always knowing which way the CN tower is
| relative to my current location, I live within 100kms of it.
| If we go on vacation the reference location switches to
| wherever we're staying.
| datascienced wrote:
| Kids are dumb fallacy right there. Kids are gonna be better
| at you at some things even from 4 yo!
| akira2501 wrote:
| > But when people talk about "mental maps," I'm not entirely
| sure what they're talking about.
|
| In the visual theater of my mind I can literally construct a
| top down view map and place myself in it dynamically. When I
| want to determine which exit to use, I use this mechanism and
| then route myself through it. It's something that /seems/ to
| turn on and off when I need to make the next turn decision, but
| if I've used it recently, it's easier to recall than it is the
| first time.
|
| For a building, it's typically nailing down the elevator
| lobby's orientation with respect to the rest of the city around
| it, then building a smaller mental map from an individual floor
| that is also referenced to the lobby. If I need to think about
| how my desk is oriented to larger features in the city, I have
| to do two orientation and projection steps in my mind.
|
| Anyways.. do you think visually or textually?
| eru wrote:
| > Anyways.. do you think visually or textually?
|
| What about verbally?
| akira2501 wrote:
| I can't speak to that. I guess that might be owing to how
| visual my thinking is, I perceive verbal thinkers as
| reading a book in their mind, which I only now realize is a
| terrible metaphor.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| One maybe a stupid question. If your thinking is visual,
| wouldn't you have to close your eyes to be able to think?
| Or how can you still see? Is it like augmented reality?
|
| Actually since I think, I think by hearing a continous
| record of text, when I do that, it does make it hard to
| listen to people. I have to attune that record exactly to
| what people are saying and it is something I have had
| challenges doing my whole life. Then I have to fight, put
| effort in, to be able to keep it on track. I prefer
| watching films with same language subtitles for that
| reason. Then I read the subtitles and doing that my
| thought track is somehow in sync. But it is impossible to
| keep the thought track in sync with realtime voice. I
| could only repeat it out of sync.
|
| If people had subtitles, on top of their heads as they
| were talking I could pay attention much better in social
| situations.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > One maybe a stupid question. If your thinking is
| visual, wouldn't you have to close your eyes to be able
| to think?
|
| Kinda like multiple monitors on a computer. It's possible
| to see both at once. I do often do my best sleeping in
| bed at night with my eyes closed however.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| But with multiple monitors you have to look at one at a
| time, and if you do that you won't see the others? So if
| you are focusing on a visual thought shouldn't you be
| unable to see the real world? Or you are kind of zoomed
| out far enough that you do, but then you are seeing it
| side by side with real world? But still then are one of
| those things more blurry depending on where you focus
| exactly?
|
| It is fascinating to try and understand it. It doesn't
| feel like I can relate to it at all or see how it is
| possible.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| People have talked about a disorder? where folks can't
| picture things in their mind. Believe called aphantasia.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
| eru wrote:
| > If your thinking is visual, wouldn't you have to close
| your eyes to be able to think?
|
| When I think verbally, I don't have to use ear plugs to
| think. Though very noisy environments make it harder.
| When I think visually, I don't have to close my eyes to
| think. But visually noisy environments make it harder. I
| guess that's (part of) why people sometimes stare off
| into space when deep in thought?
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Data point from me. I also think I have terrible ability to
| remember places or directions. I feel like it is maybe
| because I am not paying attention to all the details. I would
| think I am at the very least bottom 5 percent performer.
|
| People say something like "oh we turned from here, I remember
| this building". I wonder how they are remembering something
| like that and why I never do.
|
| I feel many of my anxious situations in life have been where
| I was asked to do something where people expected me to know
| where to go and I just had no idea.
|
| I think textually, but not seeing text, rather hearing it as
| one continous line of thought and maybe some odd less focused
| lines of thought in parallel.
|
| I had a cognitive abilities test done by a psychologist.
| Visual memory was one of the worst percentually.
|
| The test included I think some sort of drawing with lines and
| recreating it later in the test after doing some other
| activities inbetween.
|
| Strongest area was abstract logical reasoning. Which was top
| 1 percent.
|
| But my main concerns were memory and why I did the test in
| the first place.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > oh we turned from here, I remember this building". I
| wonder how they are remembering something like that and why
| I never do.
|
| My memory is primarily visual such that I can replay a
| video like experience in my head of a lot of events. This
| extends to things like spellings which I will recall as a
| visual representation of the word.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| How would you even have the storage room for a video. Not
| doubting, but just crazy to think for me. It probably
| must be some very deeply compressed video that gets
| reconstructed from objects from the internal structure
| somehow and then perhaps constructed runtime, meaning it
| won't be the same everytime.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Not like a recorded video, more like a video game, drawn
| on demand with vectors ;-).
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| For me it's very similar to the 3D maps in games like Doom
| (the one from 2016) or Deep Rock Galactic.
| Tagbert wrote:
| 'But when people talk about "mental maps," I'm not entirely
| sure what they're talking about. '
|
| For me, knowing where things are in the space around me or in
| the larger navigation zone is like knowing where the parts of
| my body are. After spending just a little time in a space, it
| all feels like one thing and I can mentally point to various
| places within that space.
|
| I can still get turned around if I have been going through
| multiple corridors inside with no visibility outside,
| particularly underground and particularly if some of the
| corridors are slightly off of rectilinear. Then I can come out
| thinking I am facing south and it turns out to be east.
| However, the next time I move though that space, chances are it
| will all connect up in my mind and then I will know where I am
| and which direction is which.
|
| My husband is a little more like you. When we exit a building,
| he will seemingly choose a direction at random. It almost seems
| like he kind of gets it but backwards and almost always goes
| the opposite direction. He is not as far off as you. He can
| learn to navigate familiar spaces but it takes him a long time.
| pesus wrote:
| I'm not quite as bad, but I'm still pretty damn bad. If you're
| a 10/10 on the bad-at-directions scale, I'm probably at a 7-
| 7.5. Any chance you have ADHD or anything along those lines?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well, people with Aphantasia [1] don't have to have poor
| navigation sense.
|
| You could try to study a map of an area you want to be in and
| think about where you were on it one day and where you wanted
| to go to.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I think those of us who came up before GPS and phones had an
| advantage in developing a sense of direction (and I'll add here a
| sense of orientation). I do tend to be aware of the cardinal
| directions and can generally point them out with reasonable
| accuracy when asked. Unfortunately, when I give people directions
| I tend to say "Just to the East of such & such" or "Go south from
| there" and people kind of give me a blank expression (especially
| younger folks who haven't navigated without a phone/GPS) and I
| have to figure out a different way to describe the orientation.
| To me it makes sense, but giving cardinal directions seems to be
| making less sense to people.
|
| I think the other (related) aspect to this is being able to find
| some place again after you've been there once. Usually I don't
| need to consult a map to find a place if I've been there once,
| but I know people who find this difficult and will continue to
| consult online maps even after they've been somewhere before. So
| someone might ask me "how do I get to that place" and I'll reply,
| "we were there just last month - same place" and then I have to
| remember that not everyone is able to find a place they've only
| been to once before.
| vsuperpower2020 wrote:
| It's probably not a blank stare. Most of the time young people
| don't actually want non-GPS directions and are just being
| polite while you finish talking.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Yeah it is totally this. If someone is giving me directions
| like that, I am thinking, "why on earth are they doing
| that?", and waiting to be able to grab my phone.
| Scrapemist wrote:
| Then why ask for directions in the first place?
| Shadowmist wrote:
| Nobody asked.
| krisoft wrote:
| Usually the situation is that we ask for an address, and
| get told directions instead.
| VS1999 wrote:
| It's always funny to me when I'm new to an area and they
| offer me 14 precise turns and landmarks to get to the
| park 2 miles away. I'm just going to plug "the park" into
| my maps and know precisely where it is.
| krisoft wrote:
| Our family was heading somewhere specific in the
| countryside with multiple cars and our pre-GPS relatives
| insisted on driving as a convoy. They wanted to show us
| exactly where to drive instead of just agreeing on a time
| and a place and "see you there".
|
| And it totally makes sense. If you don't have navigation
| software arriving at a specific place in a small village
| somewhere in the countryside where you have never been
| would be super stressful. They probably thought they are
| doing us a solid by leading us there.
| angiosperm wrote:
| There are languages that have no relative directions. You never
| "turn left", you only "turn south" or whatever.
|
| People who grow up with one of those as their first language
| all have absolute direction, even two-year-olds. If their boat
| overturns at sea in a storm, they will never doubt whether
| their boat blew away to the north or south. Everybody has to
| get it right just to be able to speak with comprehensible
| grammar, just the way you need to know what is past or to come.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| What are some languages like that? Also does this ability
| mean they might have any beyond random ability to tell north
| and south when they were dropped to a new location, being
| blindfolded before? I assume there are hints like sun
| position depending on the day, so that could help them.
| defrost wrote:
| Several [1] (of many in total [2]) of Australian indigenous
| languages - although all native speakers tend to have
| exceptional spatial orientation.
|
| Also, traditionally they're territorial over _large_ areas
| (eg: quarter the size of the UK) but over the course of a
| lifetime commonaly travel all corners of tat area -
| "randomly dropped" means they'll recognise vegetation,
| landforms, spot shadows, see water flow trace on the ground
| from up high looking out .. all the natural world things
| that orientate people who live there in the same manner as
| (most) urban people navigate cities; major freeways, tall
| buildings, changing architecture styles from region to
| region.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guugu_Yimithirr_language
|
| [2] https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| But I guess if they were taken from there and dropped
| somewhere in the northern hemisphere they would fail?
| defrost wrote:
| In the sense of not knowing where they are in (say)
| germany, a country they've never visited, then "yes"
| they'd "fail".
|
| They might even have to resort to pulling out their
| iPhone and ringing a relative who's living in Germany.
|
| In the sense of not being able to survive in a Mexican
| desert _if_ they were originally a desert dweller .. then
| I suspect they 'd get by - ditto coastal, river, forrest,
| dwellers.
|
| Survival skils transfer well enough across known similar
| habitats, a western desert nomad would be on the tough
| end of a learning curve in Alaska.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I mean that they would lose ability to tell where is
| north. Because theoretically, but probably not in
| practice they could have some sort of magnetic sense like
| birds are thought to have so it would translate beyond
| hemispheres. But unlikely since they never needed cross
| hemisphere ability. Also haven't heard of people
| developing a magnetic sense so far.
|
| But I do think some mammals may have magnetic sense so
| maybe...
|
| I specifically meant fail as in ability to determine
| north, not survival, put down or any sort of other
| negative reason to be clear.
| defrost wrote:
| > I mean that they would lose ability to tell where is
| north.
|
| You're aware, I trust, that the sun rises in the east and
| sets in the west, regardless of hemisphere?
|
| FWiW this isn't a theorectical "what if" .. right from
| the get go Europeans were taking southern hemisphere
| indigenous people to the northern hemisphere:
|
| https://australian.museum/about/history/exhibitions/trail
| bla...
|
| https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-
| moments/resources/aboriginal...
| Taniwha wrote:
| Depends - as I learned when I moved to the US at least
| some of my mental maps are based on where the sun is in
| the sky (and the sun and moon are upside down there) took
| me a few months for it to all turn around in my head,
| there are still parts of the first places I visited which
| are backwards in my mental maps 40 years later
| luma wrote:
| The poster you've replied to mention that they are 53. They for
| sure learned to drive and move around the world for a couple
| decades before consumer GPS navigation solutions were
| affordable for hobbyists.
|
| That post resonated with my own life. I had a passenger seat
| full of atlases, then later mapquest printouts, then some of
| the early handheld GPS solutions as soon as I could afford
| them. As they mention, it isn't something that seems to be
| learned later in life, for me I rely on GPS because I'm
| hopeless without it.
| lolinder wrote:
| You're replying to a top level comment that's presumably
| responding to TFA. The comment you're referring to is here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40026374
| konstantinua00 wrote:
| website navigation is also a skill, apparently
| yzydserd wrote:
| > The poster you've replied to mention that they are 53. They
| for sure learned to drive and move around the world for a
| couple decades before consumer GPS navigation solutions were
| affordable for hobbyists.
|
| Garmin portable units like the Street Pilot were available in
| 1998 for 400usd when the 53 year old would have been 27 years
| old.
| delfinom wrote:
| I know plenty of people who are at the age they should have
| learnt to navigate without phones and they still suck at
| direction.
|
| It could just be a problem just like how 4% of the population
| have no ability to visualize mentally aka aphantasia
| datascienced wrote:
| If it is not urgent I like to get lost without the GPS and use
| it as a backup. Then I learn where stuff is!
| eternityforest wrote:
| I have no idea where I am, ever, unless I've been there literally
| a dozen times. Even then it's not a guarantee. If I wasn't
| actively paying attention I won't just passively pick up
| knowledge about the route.
|
| One of my personal rules is to treat rotation as if it's an ultra
| complex operation only computers should do.
|
| I won't even try to read a map that's not oriented to match
| reality, and I will assume I got the map upside down unless I
| have multiple references points to confirm(Phone compasses seem
| to mess up more than the actual GPS...).
|
| I also regularly confirm direction by making sure the GPS says
| I'm actually going towards where I think I am.
|
| I will check the map again after _every_ turn, I assume that any
| rotation invalidates whatever nonsense I think I know about where
| I am.
|
| If it's unfamiliar enough that I even think about using a map at
| all, I am very careful because of how many times I've gotten lost
| a block or two away from my destination and wound up going half a
| mile the wrong way following upside down maps.
|
| This extends to other areas of life. If I have to compare any two
| things in different orientations I assume it's a high failure
| rate part of the project.
|
| One would probably assume this causes me a lot of mental
| discomfort... but luckily I also have maybe a bit too much trust
| in computers. I can always just use my phone. If it ever runs out
| of battery I can ask for directions.
|
| If I ever decide to solo hike or something like that, I will
| probably get a book on navigation and study as best I can, but
| also bring a satellite beacon.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| You can score yourself on the quiz mentioned in the article here:
|
| https://hegarty-lab.psych.ucsb.edu/node/226
| twodave wrote:
| I'm pretty good navigating when I'm alone. If anyone else is in
| the car it's like I'm on autopilot to "wherever my subconscious
| would like to go today." So I use the GPS just to snap me out of
| it so I don't miss turns.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Not sure if related but I often imagine a map of concepts when
| trying to understand or remember things.
|
| Linux kernel, software skills, career progression. All maps.
| conductr wrote:
| I have a keen sense of orientation and direction. I don't know my
| innate physical situation however I know I'm an "observer"
| personality. I am always aware of my surroundings and often
| people watching, etc. As a kid I just stared out the car window
| and noticed everything. Then I quickly correlated everything (I'd
| see a random sign and know to ask for ice cream because the ice
| cream shop was near, stuff like that.) However, I grew up during
| the paper maps era and sometimes I'd just take note of street
| signs and intersections because I was usually helping my mom get
| unlost.
|
| My wife on the other hand I think I know well enough to say she's
| completely oblivious to her surroundings and wouldn't venture far
| from home without a GPS. She's definitely not an observer (ok,
| sometimes of other women's clothing if anything) but oblivious is
| the best word I can use to explain it.
|
| Our 5 year old son is like me. He observes a lot and especially
| when on drives. It helps we never allowed screens in the car and
| he's just bored, which is good. But he notices all the things
| around places we frequent and also likes to look at the GPS
| screen and tell what every indicator is.
|
| I don't know what my point is other than maybe some people just
| find it more interesting and try harder / practice more from an
| early age ?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I'm good at navigating also, I put this down to being out in
| the mountains, on trails and such as a young kid. I come from
| the southern hemisphere so I discovered I needed to re-
| orientate myself when I first went to the northern hemisphere
| which didn't take long.
|
| I recall being in New York and for a day or so I found myself
| walking 180deg the wrong way - going north when I was supposed
| to be heading south, etc. Obviously I'm navigating by the sun
| or the brightest part of the sky. It wasn't until I was first
| in the northern hemisphere that I realized this as back home I
| was doing it automatically without being aware of the fact.
| quartesixte wrote:
| I am like you. I grew up without screens, and grew up spending
| a lot of time in car trips. I remember distinctly being keenly
| aware of my surroundings out the window, and playing games with
| my parents on how many exits I had left before we got off the
| highway. In amusement parks, I was charged with the map and
| navigating to the next ride (a six year old!).
|
| Now, whenever I travel to a new place, I at the very least make
| sure to track the journey there so I can, by memory, journey
| back the same way. I make note of any distinct landmarks along
| my route, and pay attention to the logic of the local
| connecting roads, in case I must detour. I then compare that
| against any heuristics I have about city planning and my
| initial preview of the area on a map.
|
| The trick is that this is all rather effortless and intuitive,
| if not instinctual. I wonder if my habits as a child, and my
| parents' reinforcements of said habits, made it so.
| trappist wrote:
| I have often been described as oblivious (I prefer "focused")
| and I have yet to encounter someone with a worse sense of
| direction/orientation than mine. I could tell endless funny
| stories about how bad it is.
|
| OP mentions a study involving navigating within a game, and I
| have the same problem in games. I simply cannot learn my way
| around a "map", as far back as Doom and still today. I can
| eventually learn specific routes, and eventually enough of
| these that I can perform reasonably well, but I don't form a
| mental model of the map even if I've played it hundreds of
| times and even if it's relatively small.
|
| But I can follow directions, and I did passably well at
| military "land navigation" using a map, a compass and a
| protractor.
|
| I would love to better understand why this is. My best guess
| currently is that "oblivious" is quite important - I've tried,
| many times, to start noticing landmarks so that I could use
| them later to get to a place without GPS or directions, but I
| always find myself having missed everything, or having
| "forgotten to notice" anything. My mind wanders, I guess.
| cinntaile wrote:
| > But I can follow directions, and I did passably well at
| military "land navigation" using a map, a compass and a
| protractor.
|
| Then your sense of direction is quite alright.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Do you have Aphantasia?
| stouset wrote:
| As a counterpoint I'm constantly focused on other things than
| what's in front of me. I'm often absorbed in my phone or
| thinking over some problem in my head. But I can almost always
| instantaneously orient myself as long as I started out oriented
| or have even a vague sense of the geography of an area.
|
| I just "know" which way to leave an elevator or train station
| as long as the layout and exits are sensible (NYC is sometimes
| hard, Paris is often impossible). Even if I'm mentally focused
| on other things.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Ditto. I find it really hard to understand how people get lost
| - it's like "well, how did you get here?".
|
| As a small child I would take myself off on excursions, often
| through deep snow in woods with bears and wolves, or in a post-
| industrial waste filled with lord knows what hazards - but
| getting lost was never even something which occurred to me,
| even as I'd set off off trail, as I would just know that home
| is _that_ way. I apparently wandered off by myself in Hong Kong
| aged 2, miles from home, only to then successfully get the
| right tram back with a backpack full of booty I'd collected on
| my adventure.
|
| My poor parents I think became numb to it after a while -
| although the time in the alps had helicopters and all sorts
| when I nonchalantly turned up back at my grandmother's a few
| hours later.
|
| My kiddo seems to be the same. She's all of 14 months old and
| can navigate her way through forest from A to B, and isn't shy
| about taking a short cut rather than following the path.
|
| My wife is having kittens. For me, it's "yes this is what
| children do as I recall".
|
| I honestly can't say if it's nature or nurture - I can't recall
| ever learning to navigate, and she seems to just have an
| excellent sense of what is where from the get go - she'll set
| off in a seemingly random direction, I'll follow her, and we'll
| end up at her favourite pond, or by the mint beds, or at the
| truck, within which she'll then be like "ok now you drive and
| I'll scream if you turn the wrong way, we'd better be going to
| see auntie Maria".
| ggm wrote:
| For many years I persisted in claiming this ability. Evidence to
| the contrary required me to say I formerly had it, but i tend to
| believe it was itself, a false belief.
|
| I have a very rich interior model of the world and my orientation
| inside that model. The problem is the model diverges from reality
| in matters of substance like the exact meaning of "left" and
| "right" based on my current frame of reference, who I am speaking
| to, how flustered I am, and especially if I think I am holding or
| viewing the map upside down, evidence to the contrary
| notwithstanding.
| jerjerjer wrote:
| GPS and map apps nerfed noticeably my ability to navigate-in-my-
| mind and a sense of direction in general. I wonder if it's a loss
| of a skill or just me getting older.
| fouc wrote:
| I think the interesting litmus test for having a good sense of
| direction - or at least one form of it - is being able to
| successfully navigate by car while driving, to a destination they
| originally saw 20 years ago, as a 10-year old car passenger. And
| that's for a city they hadn't driven in before.
| yzydserd wrote:
| I lament the vast reduction of street signs, at least in my
| country, that can be used for navigation. Like a sign that says
| to turn left for City X 15mi away. These used to be ubiquitous-
| you could get between city A and B through those signs alone. Sat
| Nav means there is vastly less need for signposting routes
| between major towns or landmarks. Growing up before sat nav, even
| as a child passenger, these signs helped me build a mental model
| of what was where and possibly train an early sense of direction.
|
| When my kid was young I'd frequently ask them to draw to scale on
| paper the mental maps they have of where everything in their
| world is. I reckon this helped form their sense of direction. If
| you have a youngster and not tried this then give it a go, it's
| illuminating. "Point to where you think X is" also helps train a
| kids sense of direction through feedback loops.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| If I am going somewhere unfamiliar, I do use a map ... but only
| to make directions that I internalize beforehand. I believe that
| this mental exercise improves your sense of direction and general
| orientation.
|
| I don't merely do a "turn here onto Route X," rather I note if I
| will be passing a particular road on the left, if I will be going
| through a town, and so on. My turns are always in the "left/east
| onto," including both my personal orientation and world
| orientation. It is a little time-consuming but there is an
| eventual payoff.
| beAbU wrote:
| I recently moved from the southern to the northern hemisphere. My
| (subjectively) good sense of direction and spatial awareness was
| _completely_ thrown off, and it took me about 3 months to
| reorient myself and gain the confidence I had before. All because
| the sun is now in the wrong part of the sky.
| daveslash wrote:
| I moved from the north east corner of the US to the south west
| corner. That threw me off. It used to be "everything in the US
| is to the south-west of me", whereas now it's "everything in
| the US is to the north-east".
|
| I lived on the Wasatch Front for a while, and mountains always
| ran north-south on your East. Now I work on the Front Range,
| and mountains run north-south on your West.
|
| I know the feeling you're describing.
| saltcured wrote:
| I had a similar experience, but in the tropics, where this
| changes seasonally in the same place!
|
| I got over it, and like to think I've improved my self-
| navigation. But it's possible I've just deemphasized shadow
| perception, and might be worse off back where I first developed
| the skills...
| sib wrote:
| Yes! I moved from the US east coast (first three decades of
| life) to the west cost and it took about 6 months to reorient,
| as the ocean was now on the wrong side, which messed everything
| up...
| roughly wrote:
| I moved from southern California, where the ocean was west,
| to Santa Cruz, where it was south, to San Francisco, where if
| you're looking at water the only thing you know is you're not
| looking south, and that's about when I gave up.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| Man I miss Microsoft Soundscape (https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/research/product/soundscape/), although it has been open-
| sourced.
|
| As visually-impaired I can't really make use of stuff like street
| signs that much. I mean, I _can_, but I have to be really
| conscious about it and I've never really gotten good at it. With
| Soundscape, you'd wear earbuds and it'd read you out the street
| names as you were approaching them, but the street names would be
| read out from the correct direction using spatial audio that was
| also head tracked.
|
| So for the first time I felt like I could start using way more
| cues to build that map in my head. Unfortunately I discovered it
| far too late because about a year (I think) after I started using
| it, it was discontinued. Would love to see a fully device-local
| version of something like this.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm surprised this isn't integrated into the hololens. Seems
| like there could be a few interesting use cases.
| ornornor wrote:
| That looks pretty cool! Bummer that it isn't available anymore
| :(
| grugagag wrote:
| I used to naturally have a very good sense of direction and
| orientation. That until I hit a work related burnout. The
| recovery from the burnout was largely okay and much of my old
| abilities were restored but my sense of orientation took a hit.
| While Im not really bad at it and I generally manage okay it is
| not what it used to be.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Since I have memory, I've always had a great sense of
| orientation, I've moved across cities, living in Milan, Rome,
| Ravenna, London, Berlin and Amsterdam and even if I went for a
| walk on the first weeks there, I was able to sense my way back
| home or to where I had to go without using maps.
|
| I thought it was due to me growing up in a city with many small
| streets, undocumented, some having stairs (my home town is on a
| hill), a labyrinth more or less, so I trained it my whole life
|
| But I am also not scared of taking unknown small streets, I can
| sense, "I came from there, there was this small street on the
| other side so this small street should be the ending of that one"
|
| But sometimes I find myself in deadends and have to go all the
| way back
| mattpallissard wrote:
| It can be learned as well. As a child my old man would randomly
| ask the same question; which way is the river? I have a pretty
| good sense of direction.
|
| I've drilled friends of mine with poor sense of direction
| similarly over the years. The improvement over time can be pretty
| dramatic. I realize that some of it is natural inclination, but
| forcing yourself to build mental map habitually is a large part
| of it. Practice anything enough and you'll improve.
| ornornor wrote:
| I've tried that a while back with my SO who has a very keen
| sense of _disorientation_. It was very aggravating to my SO and
| I quickly decided I value our relationship more than always
| being the one to read the map. YMMV.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > Practice anything enough and you'll improve.
|
| Assuming you have the necessary working hardware that makes
| improvement possible. There are some things my brain or body is
| not capable of.
| roughly wrote:
| What made a big difference for me recently was biking more -
| both because I couldn't reference the map while moving and
| because I had to pay a lot more attention to what was going on
| around me while biking. I had a pretty good sense of my city
| before, but now even when driving I skip the GPS most times.
| WalterBright wrote:
| TLDR: People get better at it with experience, i.e. people learn.
| gcanyon wrote:
| When I was younger, I had a remarkably strong sense of "place" --
| I could drive back to any place I had driven once, and most
| places I had only ridden to. I could sketch out the layout of
| buildings I had been to years before.
|
| Some of that remains now, but GPS has destroyed the driving
| thing. If I focus I can still do it, but if I'm following my
| phone, very little sticks.
| erictd wrote:
| So the old adage of how to get to Carnegie Hall is doubly true -
| practice!
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