[HN Gopher] Teach yourself to echolocate (2018)
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Teach yourself to echolocate (2018)
Author : Anon84
Score : 220 points
Date : 2024-11-16 22:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| Centigonal wrote:
| relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD3Y1l8XyUw
|
| It appears that the hardest part of echolocation for humans is
| the "produce a directed, crisp click" part. The "process the
| sound" part is readily handled by our brains with a relatively
| mild learning curve.
| browningstreet wrote:
| E- chocolate
|
| E- chocolate
|
| Don't get it.
|
| Oh..!
| Sn0wCoder wrote:
| LOL, I passed by the article a few times reading the same
| thing. When I finally clicked in thinking it was something to
| do with the windows package manager. Something about the
| capital E. As soon as it was spelled with the little e, it
| clicked.
| mrblampo wrote:
| Yep same. "Teach yourself to eat chocolate."
| acosmism wrote:
| had a french voice in my head going "teache yourself to eatee
| chocolate"
| patja wrote:
| There is a wonderful book about the blind man who was probably
| one of the earliest innovators in using a cane for echolocation.
| "A Sense of the World" by Jason Roberts is the story of James
| Holman, who traveled the world in the early 19th century despite
| being blind, often being in a great deal of pain, and having
| limited mobility.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Wow it just struck me that the cane is for echolocation and not
| just obstacles. I did learn that the blind have keenly adjusted
| hearing.
| fao_ wrote:
| Blind people _can_ use a cane for echolocation, but it 's not
| necessarily reliable (especially in a busy city), and to be
| honest I'm hard-pressed thinking of any blind people I know
| that actually know how to do that.
| high_priest wrote:
| They are probably constantly aware of surfaces the cane is
| bouncing off & use it as a redundant confirmation of what
| they "see" by touch
| lynx23 wrote:
| Wha? Well, there are blind people who barely know how to
| use their cane, but... Let me explain.
|
| Manfred Spitzer once wrote that he thinks there are two
| groups of people on this planet who really have good audio
| location capabilities. Blind people and conductors.
| Conductors because they need to be able to listen to a
| particular performer, to isolate them from the rest of the
| orchester. And blind people, because we use the ear to
| navigate the world.
|
| Now, I actually use everything around me as a source of
| sound. Tapping with the cane is one of them. However, if I
| want to "scan" my environment, I usually make a clicking
| noise with my tongue.
|
| But those are the a small part of the game. The rest of the
| noises I use come from outside. Just a small example,
| before I loose myself in thsi comment: I can hear poles and
| trees on the sidewalk. Not because they emit so much sound,
| but because they eat it up. If a car drives behind the pole
| along the street, I can actually hear the point where the
| external sound doesn't reach me, infering that there must
| be a pole or a tree. Echo location is not always about what
| you send. Its m6ore about you learning how the sound waves
| around you behave. Sometimes, but this is getting
| borderline esoteric, I can hear the materials involved.
| Walking towards a wooden wall sounds destinctly different
| from walking towards a concrete wall...
| karl-j wrote:
| Fascinating. That's a lot like Passive Coherent Location
| (PCL), if normal echolocation is like radar.
| vasco wrote:
| For most it's not, echolocation is not widely taught.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Maybe only distantly related to this, but thought it worth
| sharing that when I visited Seattle for the first time this year
| I caught a show by a band called La Cerca at Central Saloon and
| loved their song "Echolocation", with ethereal sounding guitars,
| including the bass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NYeqA2Kve8
| pkoird wrote:
| Here's an idea, use a (portable) ultrasound emitter device that
| sends a pulse every set second and use an earpiece receiver that
| produces equivalent acoustics in audible range. The setup may
| reduce "tongue-fatigue' and the ultrasound will travel farther
| and can reflect off smaller objects. Would be an interesting
| experiment if nothing else.
| bezmiran wrote:
| I suspect it would be a very challenging problem for the
| earpiece part to recreate the directional info as well as our
| own ears, since the brain's ability to detect the direction of
| sounds depends on the shape of the ear itself.
|
| Maybe a simple mechanical clicker device like those used for
| dog training could be a useful tool.
| zafka wrote:
| I have one of these - purpose built for blind people to use.
| Pretty sure I picked it up at a NFB convention in Atlanta
| around the turn of the century. (NFB = National Federation of
| the blind)
| mmooss wrote:
| How well does it work?
| zafka wrote:
| I will get back to you on that. I just found it in my
| desk. I myself am sighted, and have never used it for
| echo location - yet. Looking at it I realized that it was
| given out by my old employer: Blazie engineering.
| Coincidentally, I just ran into the founder recently.
| Next time I see him, I will ask him about the feedback he
| got on these clickers. I will say that after twenty years
| in a drawer it sounds good to my uneducated ears.
| laborcontract wrote:
| Seems like a fun use case for spatial audio on the airpods.
| gniv wrote:
| If the wavelengths are not far from audible, wouldn't it be
| mostly a translation?
| usgroup wrote:
| See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD3Y1l8XyUw
|
| Another route would be to mix the ultrasound with another sound
| closer to the ear, then there is no need for an electronic ear
| at any point. The interference between sound can cause the
| inaudible frequencies to become audible.
| usgroup wrote:
| Just on this topic, would it be possible to make a whistle to
| do the same thing? I.e. crafted so it emits both ultrasound,
| and the audible counterpart which interferes with it to make
| the return audible?
|
| Perhaps it could be such that the ultrasound warbles whilst
| interfering sound does not (or vice versa), which would make
| the sources easier to distinguish also.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| Meanwhile, after reading this article, I have my face one inch
| from a wall making clicks to see if I can hear the echo.
| Hopefully, nobody sees, or hears, me.
| mmooss wrote:
| We understand you. <3
| mmooss wrote:
| I don't have much sense of the reasonably expected or maximium
| performance of this ability. They give a few sensational
| demonstrations, but how accurate is it (as in complete, correct,
| and consistent)? How fast? In what environments? How granular? Is
| it practical for everyday use?
|
| For some interesting context, here is a description of dolphin
| echolocation:
|
| https://www.britannica.com/animal/cetacean/
|
| _" The amount of information obtained by an echolocating dolphin
| is similar to that obtained with the eyes of a sighted human. ...
|
| Toothed whales use extremely high frequencies, on the order of
| 150 kilohertz, for refining spatial resolution from their echoes.
| They are capable of "seeing" into and through most soft objects
| such as other dolphins, though the effectiveness of toothed whale
| echolocation drops off at distances greater than about 100
| metres."_
|
| Maybe with enough practice ...
| hackernewds wrote:
| Sounds travels very differently in terms of velocity scatter
| etc in water though. If somehow dolphins were capable, they
| would not nearly have the same echolocation capability on land
| deegles wrote:
| I have tinnitus and can't hear much in a range around 4.5khz... I
| wonder if this would still work for me
| amatecha wrote:
| I noticed when I was younger that I can "hear" when I'm near a
| wall, or just generally get a sense of the size of space I'm in
| solely via sound, but it never occurred to me to make a "ping" to
| sense the resulting sound reflections! Super interesting - I will
| have to try this. Probably my prior spatial sense from hearing
| was based on really subtle background noise of either my own
| footsteps or just environmental sounds reflecting around, I
| guess? I always felt like I am "hearing the room I'm in" but
| never quite knew how else to describe the sensation, but knowing
| people quite literally make a clicking noise to echolocate
| suddenly makes it much more clear!
| jcims wrote:
| Comb filtering
| (https://youtu.be/Amj4UevyRfU?si=5pwjHKwAw6bdmG2x) plays a role
| in this.
|
| I was listening to a podcast and realized I could hear the
| speaker turning pages under the microphone by the way it
| affected their voice in the microphone rather than the rustle
| of the page. It was pretty wild. I could 'see' it before i
| recognized what was going on.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Thanks for the video, I wouldn't have guessed it shows well
| on a video.
|
| Kinda off topic but I'm on a brand new phone (not logged in
| and no history) and the next video suggested by YouTube is a
| French fascist promoting (actual) nazis policies. Why would
| YouTube do that?! It has absolutely zero connection with
| audio topics. I just have my OS language set to French.
| That's so worrying for the youth with being exposed to pure
| hate for no reason.
| Groxx wrote:
| Because it makes Google money.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I did that, too, but I took it a bit further, possibly as a
| product of not having vision for about a year as a toddler,
| other than "light" and "dark."
| almd wrote:
| This is often used by audio mixing engineers and taught in a
| roundabout way at schools and studios. We think a lot about where
| thins "sit" in the mix. Proximity wise, and even height wise in a
| stereo mix. Eventually you learn how to locate things in
| headphones and it's a really weird sensation when you realize you
| can do it. The kicker is we start out by simulating real
| environments in mixes, but then end up having to simulate what
| people expect from the medium as opposed to real life. For
| example something I learned doing video audio, if someone is
| writing something on a train, viewers expect to hear the pen on
| paper. But irl, there's not a chance it's audible. Explosions are
| always distorted because microphones end up clipping due to the
| volume, etc.
|
| A great book on spatial simulation is The Art of Mixing by David
| Gibson. Older but forever relevant
| hackernewds wrote:
| You went on quite many topics there. Could you expand on the
| proximity and height? Fascinating
|
| The closest analogue I can think of is how due to practice now
| anyone can close their eyes and imagine typing entire essays
| how they know exactly where the keys are. Try it.
| high_priest wrote:
| I have played alot of videogames & at some point identified,
| how can I guess, the source of sounds. Guess, because it's
| nowhere near actual approximation. Most often, source is
| guessed by context. E.g. The door knocking sound illusion,
| which was used to troll streamers.
|
| Then you have directional localisation based on delay between
| ears, difference in volume & properties of reverberations.
| Things to the sides are going to arrive in either ear at
| different moment. Add source if first echo & you have
| confirmation that a sound is coming from either right or
| left. The more directly to the side is the sound, the bigger
| the delay between ears is, so you get approximate angle.
|
| Now we consider sound muffling, caused by shape of our head &
| ears. Things in front are going to sound clearer in the
| opposite ear, than sounds from the back.
|
| The same principle is used for detection of height. Things
| below are going to get muffled, things above will be clearer.
| In reality, feeling sounds with the whole body helps in
| source localisation, which can't be emulated with headphones.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ive seen a BBC doc that tested this. They had people use
| putty to change the shape of thier ears, resulting in an
| inability to judge the height of a sound. Given how
| differently-shaped ears are, as opposed to the inner
| structures which are virtually identical, this result
| points towards a learned skill rather than something
| genetic. We each must learn how our paticular ear shapes
| modify sound.
| dnh44 wrote:
| I once lived in a shared 4 story house and I always
| intuitively knew where everyone in the house was, even if
| they weren't being loud. You could just tell where everyone
| was based on how the house creaked in response to
| footsteps. We had someone new move in once who walked very
| quietly and it made me feel slightly uneasy because they
| were sort of invisible to my hearing.
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| There is a video for the art of mixing. It is indeed
| fascinating.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjOdqZFvhY
| vasco wrote:
| > For example something I learned doing video audio, if someone
| is writing something on a train, viewers expect to hear the pen
| on paper
|
| Just yesterday was watching Territory season 1 where the
| characters have an intense suspenseful, almost whispering
| "serious voice" conversation while standing next to a running
| helicopter, without even raising their voices which took me out
| of the scene.
|
| So the question is, do viewers want it, or do know it all
| producers say people do and put it in?
| Moru wrote:
| When they say viewers want it, they mean just about 90% won't
| notice. Most people haven't been close enough to a running
| helicopter to understand.
|
| I'm having problems watching movies at all, there is so many
| things breaking my immersion. :-)
| kibwen wrote:
| _> When they say viewers want it, they mean just about 90%
| won 't notice._
|
| Even more than that, they _will_ notice if you don 't it
| the "wrong" way that they've come to expect. This is called
| The Coconut Effect: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/
| Main/TheCoconutEffect
| Moru wrote:
| Ah, had no idea it had a name!
|
| My clearest memory of that was me as a kid watching a
| Bond-movie where a sportscar makes a screaching sound
| when driving down a sandy beach. I turned of the TV and
| don't think I ever saw a full Bond movie after that.
|
| The list on the page you linked had one thing that isn't
| toally correct though:
|
| >The very specific (but entirely unrealistic) echoing
| thud that is heard when all the lights are turned on in a
| large spacenote .
|
| That sound is realistic if it is an old building with the
| heavy type of power relays or whatever they are called.
| They do make that sort of sound if the acoustics are
| right. They could be set up with timers so they don't
| start the lights at exactly the same moment to prevent
| overloading the fuses.
| romwell wrote:
| That's not at all what echolocation is. What you describe is
| locating the _source of sound_ using binaural hearing (similar
| to how we can gauge distances using stereoscopic vision).
|
| Echolocation is finding out distance to _objects_ (not sound
| sources!) by _sending_ a sound wave in a direction, and
| listening for echos that bounce back. Hence _echo_ location.
|
| The only sound source is _you_.
|
| It's a form of _active_ sensing: literally how a submarine
| sonar works (or radar, for that matter). Bats do it, too.
|
| This has very little to do with "locating things in
| headphones", as that is entirely missing the _active_ part in
| the first place.
|
| Then, locating sound sources using binaural hearing is not the
| same as analyzing the scattered echoes when the sound source is
| _you_ (relative to yourself, you know where you are already!).
|
| It's interesting that this is currently the top comment. I
| wonder how many people read the article before engaging in this
| discussion.
| planewave wrote:
| This comment captures a lot of important detail about
| echolocation.
| yazzku wrote:
| > literally how a submarine sonar works
|
| And dolphins and whales, no need to go to submarines.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Interestingly, it took until after the invention of SONAR
| for the theory that bats navigate by echolocation to be
| accepted. The theory that bats use hearing for spatial
| awareness was first proposed in the late 18th century, with
| experimental evidence, but was rejected by the scientific
| establishment for more than a century. People didn't know
| marine mammals used echolocation until the 1950s.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| This is great, now we are going to have a bunch of autistic
| developers walking around the office clicking like dolphins
| while we're trying to concentrate on work. When we ask them
| politely to stop whilst in our vicinity we'll be screamed
| at as being "ableist" for preventing their triangulation of
| the location of the coffee machine. Great for everyone's
| work productivity.
|
| Thank goodness for 100% WFH.
| bestouff wrote:
| I think what you mean is that all your examples don't work when
| recorded. But a human being in a train may hear the pen on the
| paper.
| sorwin wrote:
| I'm curious if people with aphantasia would also be able to
| create a "mind map" of the area around them
| Eduard wrote:
| it's somewhere between silly and mischievous that AtlasObscura
| provides cute visual drawings yet fails to provide acoustic
| examples.
| schoen wrote:
| (2018)
| djtango wrote:
| I'm so glad this is surfacing. I remember reading about the
| skepticism scientists had about this only for them to be finally
| proven wrong.
|
| My anecdotal experience is that we are so out of touch with our
| bodies these days that we routinely underestimate just how
| adaptable we truly are if we have the will or need to learn. So I
| get frustrated when very useful things like echolocation are
| suppressed by ignorant and cynical scientists who are unaware of
| their blind sides because they think they studied hard and read a
| bunch of papers.
|
| Our realities are shaped by our own experiences but what is sad
| is when people then shape other people's realities based on their
| own skewed realities.
|
| I'm glad that the internet is so good at spreading disparate,
| niche and folky knowledge and forcing scientists to reconsider
| their priors more often.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Why am I seeing so many comments disparaging "lofty elite
| scientists" lately? Every scientist I know is a very curious
| person, more willing than most to listen to the most outlandish
| ideas people come up with.
| eschneider wrote:
| This is really interesting. As someone who's been gradually
| losing his vision, I've noticed some of this stuff on my own, but
| it's nice to see a good writeup so one doesn't have to figure out
| everything from first principles.
|
| Just one more thing to add to my bag of tricks.
| lazycrazyowl wrote:
| I initially misread it as "Treat yourself to a chocolate"
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| I misread as "Teach yourself to e-chocolate" and was even more
| confused.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| Teach yourself to echocolate
| croisillon wrote:
| Related:
|
| - Humans Can Learn to Echolocate (Livescience, 2015)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10699105
|
| - How humans echolocate 'like bats' (BBC, 2018)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16782557
|
| - Humans Can Learn How to 'Echolocate' in 10 Weeks, Experiment
| Shows (Sciencealert, 2021)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27404132
|
| - Teach yourself to echolocate - 106 comments
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18208334
| koinedad wrote:
| I'm wondering if we use it more than we think. When I have my
| headphones in with noise cancelling on I'm more inclined to bump
| something in my house I normally wouldn't or misjudge a distance
| etc. Pretty crazy to think about forming a subconscious, audio-
| based world
| alentred wrote:
| A few years ago, I was a frequent visitor to a public swimming
| pool, same day, same time. Apparently with similar swimming
| habits, there was an elderly person who was humming all the time.
| In the pool, in the shower, in the lobby, rather loud but not too
| much. I initially attributed it to elderly quirkiness. It was
| only after several encounters that I realized he was blind. The
| point is, I only figured that out when I saw him with a white
| cane outside, not at all by the way he moved inside or used the
| objects - he was navigating the space just like anyone else, and
| it was a rather crowded place. That was the day I learned that
| echolocation in humans is a thing.
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