
Teach Yourself to Echolocate: A beginner’s guide to navigating with sound - zebraman
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-echolocate
======
tw1010
This article reminds me of how it felt to be on the internet as a child. It
seemed like this magical place where around every corner there was hidden an
alchemic recipe to achieve something magical, if only you knew how to search
in the right places.

~~~
Waterluvian
Well said. For me the 90s and early 2000s internet was completely magical. My
fondest memories of my teens was finally having a computer in my room and the
freedom to stay up late and explore the online universe. I met a lot of people
and saw the advent of a lot of new things.

I wonder if that's going to happen for my kids. Today's internet feels so
highly commercialized. All the new exciting discoveries are in the form of
profit-driven silicon valley products with no humanity or soul.

I may very well be wrong. This is all emotion based and I really don't have
concrete evidence. I'm probably falling into a fit of nostalgia.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
The sad thing for me is that a lot of those strange, eclectic sites are still
there, only they became really hard to find. Thanks to Google and other search
engines prioritising recency and Brands (with a capital) in all results, the
eclectic is penalised to the point of near invisibility.

There was never a point to them, but they were hugely interesting. Today
there's no point bothering as it would be gone forever a month after posted to
twitter or a Facebook group now bloody _everything_ has to have a stream or
timeline. So akin to a chilling effect it invisibly promotes things that have
releases. Products.

Nostalgia is some of it I'm sure, but I really do think there's something more
concrete there too.

~~~
mycall
Which are your favorites?

~~~
skykooler
I like this page, on creating 3d 'holograms' by hand:

[http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html](http://amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html)

~~~
MrEldritch
Oh man, amasci.com was one of my favorite Magical Internet Places back in the
day; I can't believe I'd totally forgotten about it.

~~~
wbeaty
"the time for jacking around with Tesla coils and ball lightning in the garage
is over." -Abe, PRIMER

Few additions [http://amasci.com/news.html](http://amasci.com/news.html) The
Trafficwaves article made the WSJ, even with video. And Crown Flash (leaping
sundogs) is now all over the place (see my upcoming bit on TV show Strange
Evidence.) Magnetic analogy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH-
CAhtXBfQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH-CAhtXBfQ)

Fortunately (unfortunately?) I only posted examples of my somewhat-kid-
friendly magic. Nobody died in microwave oven accidents. That plus a couple of
minor inventions (made public as a test to see how fast the idea-thieves would
pounce on them.) None of my frightening demos using vacuum pumps and Spellman
supplies. Well, I guess I did write about our hypergun which fired a small
plastic slug through a clay block twelve inches thick (a spinoff of the very
first quarter-shrinker capacitor bank,) and no little kids yet tried building
one:
[http://amasci.com/amateur/capexpt.html#shrink](http://amasci.com/amateur/capexpt.html#shrink)

An unexamined backwater is at
[http://amasci.com/weird/wtext.html](http://amasci.com/weird/wtext.html)

I still haven't tried out the giant version of Lord Armstrong's water-bridge,
from an eyewitness report where a liquid "snake" several feet thick was
extending itself thousands of feet across desert land during a thunderstorm.
If such things are possible, then an HV supply of a few hundred watts and a
couple hundred kilovolts should produce something similar (the recent water-
bridge experiments use 10 to 20KV supplies at under ten watts, a 2cm bridge, a
mm or two in diameter.) Rainwater or ddw on very clean sand? Needs a big
Cockroft-Walton diode stack
[http://amasci.com/freenrg/wasser.html](http://amasci.com/freenrg/wasser.html)

And the infamous invisible wall at the 3M factory, recently someone claims to
have seen an example caused by electrodes connected to a reversed pole-pig
transformer, where coins would bounce off the empty space. This is silghtly
conceivable: a corona in air may develop a stable annular double-layer with a
significant space-charge and pressure-gradient of air. But would a metal
object bounce off? Or just short it out? Plasmas do tend to avoid cold bulk
metal surfaces (Tesla managed to make an opaque "neon sign" with a metal tube
rather than glass, but skeptics refused to believe it was real. The plasma in
near-vacuum can travel many inches through thin metal tubes without leaping to
the metal! Try it, it's really weird: pipes full of glowing "electricity"
rather than water.)

Speaking of PRIMER, did they actually base the plot on meissner maglev "null
coils," placed in a circle rather than parallel rows? Then, put it all inside
a "One Atmosphere Plasma Globe" full of argon? But then, where do platinum
catalytic converters figure in that? Or maybe they were just huddling inside a
styrofoam version of the USS Eldridge hull, covered with active magnetic
shielding coils, but not turning invisible.

:)

------
givinguflac
I’ve been practicing this for years and it’s quite useful. It’s not like
seeing of course, but I’m able to get an idea of a room size and material
hard/softness. Useful for not walking into walls in the dark or finding
something when I don’t want to wake my SO.

In general I’ve always been into sound and I think a lot of people have better
hearing than they think, but never learned to hear well. I find it odd that we
have such prominent childhood learning focused around sight (shapes, colors,
etc) but barely teach children anything about hearing beyond animal sounds.
I’m not advocating golden ears courses for kindergartens, but listening skills
can be quite useful in lots of situations, not the least of which is
situational awareness.

~~~
jfries
What do you consider good hearing skills to practice, except echolocating?

~~~
Rumudiez
As one example, I’ve seen kids develop perfect pitch growing up in highly
musical environments. I think it’s easier for them to learn it than adults,
but it becomes a lifelong skill.

~~~
acjohnson55
I think relative pitch is much more useful (e.g. identifying harmonies and
notes relative to a tonic center).

~~~
yesenadam
(Perfect pitch here) Hehe how is it "much more useful"? When I hear music, I
simultaneously know what all the notes and chords are. That's what hearing
music is for me. I can't imagine not having it, as an improvising musician.
Hearing a note or chord without knowing exactly what is is?! People without it
somehow manage, but it is like flying blind.

~~~
DenisM
Bats fly blind tho.

~~~
arthurcolle
This is false. Bats are not blind.

No bat species are blind. Microbats have poor visual acuity but their vision
is on par with a human's.

Reference: Tuttle's work

~~~
DenisM
And that's what I get for relying on "blind as a bat" folklore without
checking it.

Thank you.

I must now ascertain the veracity of the “as poor as a church mouse” trope.

~~~
arthurcolle
You should now go donate some bucks to Merlin Tuttle's Bat Conservation for
your sins
([https://merlintuttlesbatconservation.kindful.com/](https://merlintuttlesbatconservation.kindful.com/))
;) since they are by far the coolest mammal. Humans are OK too I guess... I
have a really hard time believing any of these echolocation claims by
individuals. I can see it maybe coming about if you're visually disabled and
over a very long period of time it comes about as your visual cortex atrophies
with no stimulation, but otherwise, even if you close your eyes and deeply
focus, there are just so many extraneous noises in daily life that would be
hard to integrate into a single synthesized whole that is actually meaningful
in any kind of physical displacement decisions.

I didn't even know about that trope? Is that even a real expression or did you
just make it up? Makes zero sense.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
"Blind as a bat" is a common expression in English. Free Dictionary says it's
been around since the 1500s, and theorizes that people thought their erratic
flight was due to poor eyesight.
[https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/blind+as+a+bat](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/blind+as+a+bat)

~~~
arthurcolle
I was referring to the "poor as a church mouse" expression actually but thanks
for the etymology regarding the other expression - sounds plausible.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Ah, yeah. It's not so common these days. I associate it with the 19th/early
20th century, I guess? Not sure exactly, though.

------
deckarep
For anyone wanting to see a master example of echolocation see this short
video: [https://youtu.be/TeFRkAYb1uk](https://youtu.be/TeFRkAYb1uk)

~~~
anonytrary
I remembering learning about this boy in high school. In the posted article,
he suggests that non-blind humans can simulate the handicap by wearing a
blindfold.

For someone who isn't blind, learning how to do this is very difficult. This
is the kind of skill that rewires your brain and comes out of necessity rather
than desire. By actually being blind, you get 10,000 hours of practice in
around two years. Even if you practiced this an hour a day blindfolded, it
would take decades to get 10,000 hours of practice.

~~~
glenneroo
Have you ever tried? I find the article's description a bit too advanced for a
first try. I have personally had success finding walls or large furniture
after only a couple minutes of very slowly walking around a room and clicking
my tongue (higher pitched) with my eyes closed. True, I probably won't ever be
able to ride a bike, but it's sufficient to quickly test out basic
echolocation. I have done many trials with friends and everyone is able to
hear at least a subtle difference when standing directly in front of a wall as
opposed to a few feet away.

~~~
justinclift
Agreed. I taught myself basic echo location several months back after reading
about Daniel Kish and being curious.

It doesn't need any external equipment to get the basics. To start out simply,
just close your eyes in a (very) dark room and get the hang of the different
sounds when a wall is close in front of you (couple inches) vs not.

Once you can clearly detect that difference, start extending from there. It
definitely works ok.

------
pjmorris
My technique is caveman compared to the article, but I habitually roll down
the windows before I back out of a parking spot, so I can listen for as well
as look for anything that might be in the way. I think I started this after
our son was born, born of an increasing mindfulness of kids and their
associates (balls, toys, pets.)

~~~
godot
Very good point! I happen to roll down windows every time I start up my car
for another reason (the air trapped inside the car while it's parked, probably
under sunshine, doesn't feel great to breathe in), but you're totally right
that the sound gives a lot more clues than just seeing, when backing out of a
spot.

~~~
riledhel
Also helpful in really foggy roads, slow down and roll down windows a little
to pick up other vehicles

------
arthurofbabylon
Most of us echolocate already, oftentimes without even knowing it.

An exercise to test/prove existing echolocation abilities: Stand 10 meters
from a wall. Close your eyes and walk towards it. Try to stop right in front
of the wall without opening the eyes. The majority of participants will stop
when the wall is 1/5 meter in front of the face. Participants report “hearing”
the wall.

Broadly speaking, listening is the human means for becoming aware of physical
threats. Even unconsciously heard sounds will trigger stress hormones.

------
pessimizer
The fact that blind people make decisions based on active echolocation without
realizing that's what they're doing is IMO one of the great arguments against
the idea that we're particularly knowledgeable about our own conscious thought
processes.

 _How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Human
Echolocation_ by Eric Schwitzgebel and Michael S. Gordon

[http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Echo.htm](http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Echo.htm)

been obsessed with this paper since it came out.

~~~
azeirah
The book "Phi" might interest you, it's written by an influential
consciousness researcher, Giulio Tononi.

There is one example in the book, I believe, where a person is consciously
blind, and is _completely_ convinced they're blind, but when asked to walk
through a hallway filled with junk and obstacles, the person passes through
the hallway without a problem. When asked, "how did you avoid those
obstacles?", they answered "luck", "small obstacles", etc...

It almost seems to me as if consciousness serves a social function. The mind's
eye is blind, but the unconscious eye isn't. Yet, they communicate as if they
were blind.

I wonder if there are more cases like this one, whether they lose their
ability to communicate in all/most similar cases.

~~~
jholman
The blindness/sightedness phenomenon you're describing is called
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight)
.

There's a controversial opposite, called
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrome)

(Semi-relatedly, plug for Peter Watt's book
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_\(Watts_novel\))
)

Your sentence about "It almost seems to me as if..." seems to be hinting at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism)
/
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/)
. This is a theory/proposal that consciousness does not actually cause
behaviour, but is simply a subject experience caused by the physical processes
that do cause behaviour (how's THAT for a gross oversimplification, fite me
bro). I suggest that this is both an interesting theory in its own right, but
also an interesting mental exercise to limber up how one thinks about things
like volition/free-will and responsibility.

------
znpy
This reminds me of a ted talk I had the pleasure to enjoy watching with a good
friend while "intoxicated".

The talk's title is "Can we create new senses for humans?" by David Eagleman
and is available at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1lqFXHvqI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1lqFXHvqI)

~~~
erikig
Not sure how "intoxicated" is different from intoxicated but this was a great
TED talk, thnx.

~~~
acct1771
He should have used "inebriated", technically cannabis does act as a toxin to
you, but, I find it misleading to categorize it like that =]

------
acjohnson55
This reminds me of an incredible episode of the podcast Invisibilia:
[https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-
be...](https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-
batman?t=1539454445607)

------
happy-go-lucky
Here's an inspiring talk by Daniel Kish who has been blind since he was 13
months old and relies on echolocation.

> Daniel Kish: How I use sonar to navigate the world

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0aihGWB8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0aihGWB8U)

------
Nasrudith
I managed to discover that on my own when bored and walking around both in the
dark and while waiting for a ride to arrive. Although it was a different
technique.

I noticed that I could make a continuous sound and it would correspond roughly
with the distance and gave me a one-dimensional relative distance detection
from my head. A 'hissing' sound worked best for continuous reading while being
subtle. It was pretty easy for me but it might have to do with being on the
autistic spectrum and hypersensitivity.

------
sehugg
I usually sleep with a white noise app running, and I can always hear when the
cat is crawling around nearby. (Free app idea, Sonic Cat Detector -- you're
welcome :) )

------
drakonka
This is so cool, reminds me of a documentary I saw about people who do this
(it may have even featured the same guy, I can't remember). After seeing the
documentary I spent the next weekend trying to get around my apartment
blindfolded, clicking. This article inspires me to try again.

------
nik61
In the Dark Universe novel by Daniel F Galouye, a section of humanity has
hidden themselves for generations in lightless caverns below a poisoned Earth.
They have become functionally blind, and find their way about by knocking
stones together for echo location.

------
mitchtbaum
anyone else read the title as e-chocolate?

The capital E makes it look like a proper noun, like Email.

Crazy thing how these letters in our alphabet work.

We need a better alphabet! Ya?

~~~
m-i-l
Yes. Better still, I skim read "Teach Yourself to Echolocate" as "Treat
Yourself to E-chocolate". Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me
something. Did a bit of an internet search and, unlike e-cigarettes, it seems
like e-chocolate doesn't exist, yet.

------
G4BB3R
This gave me an idea, I will try to learn this for night vision :D

------
d6e
Do loud noises or loud music interfere with it?

~~~
lucb1e
I would imagine it does, but I'm also curious how quiet it had to be for this
to work.

~~~
ChrisFoster
It definitely does. I've practiced this a little myself and in louder
environments you need a louder click. On the other hand, ambient noise can
give rich information about close obstacles without yourself or that object
needing to actively make any noise.

------
mycall
There should be an app for this.

~~~
lucb1e
Most phones have stereo microphones and they're individually accessible by
apps. Combined with the accelerometer for rough position change tracking, it
must be possible to build. Would be super cool to see in the dark like that.

Edit: wait, we don't just have two mics in our head, we also have our outer
ear that's required for this. I guess the phone would need physical addons for
this to work.

