I just use Google Maps as actual map, not as navigation. That means I use it to find where I am, look at the roads, and look at where I want to go, and plan the route on the map myself.
This helps me to stay oriented when I'm not using a maps app as well, because I already know which roads intersect with which, where, and how to take them to get from A to B.
Sadly, Google Maps does everything they can to prevent you from doing this, e.g. not showing street names at all unless you zoom in to ridiculous levels (and often not even then) as well as not showing you which roads are one-way, which roads allow bicycles, etc.
That's why I mostly rely on Open Street Map and similar actual maps.
Also, if I've got additional time to get somewhere, I'll get lost on purpose, taking roads I don't know yet, then looking at the maps to figure out where I am (which is super useful to discover hidden paths and shortcuts).
I use Google maps in exactly the same way and have the same complaint about street names not being visible. Sometimes I'll drop in to street view at an important intersection to see what landmarks pop out, like a certain gas station or business on the corner where I need to turn.
It's so funny when I'm with someone and navigating, they see me using Google maps and then are bewildered when I don't turn on the turn by turn yet still get where we're going. They almost can't believe it's possible.
my peeve is that if you bring up the terrain map, you see topo lines, but they disappear the moment you get close enough to actually read the elevation of the lines.
This has literally been a bug in google maps for going on 10 years and I'm amazed nothing has been done about it. Terrain could be SO MUCH more useful!
I’m “map only” too. Thanks for the suggestion re OSM. I’m trying Maps.Me and first thing I did was set the labels to larger. Interestingly, when I went back to Google map to compare, those labels are now larger too! I don’t see anywhere to set that in Google maps, and no other apps appear to have changed scale. That’s kind of creepy.
My habit is to look at a map days or weeks before going somewhere unfamiliar, usually that’s plenty. If I get turned around on the day, I pull over and have a look at the map again for 30 seconds, done. My family has gotten used to it, agree it’s a valuable skill requiring maintenance, tolerate my occasional mistakes as an opportunity to see something unexpected, and even brag about me to their friends.
We do use Google maps when traveling for the local restaurant recommendations, though. That’s a value it really does add.
> Sadly, Google Maps does everything they can to prevent you from doing this, e.g. not showing street names at all unless you zoom in to ridiculous levels
This has been my pet peeve as well. I do use Gmaps to show me the route and then I ride it on my bike without looking at the phone but if it is a route that I don't know yet I would like which street to turn at, all the while Gmaps refusing to be a map and telling me what the name of the street is.
Gmaps seems to be less of a map, more of a directory of locations and instructions how to get to those, so the actual streets on which the locations are is not interesting to GMaps at all and it doesn't put any effort into that usecase.
I do this also, as a compromise. I still pre-learn routes to new locations and try to get as close as possible before resorting to gmaps directions.
Using a map app as an app(vs for directions) doesnt have the same deteriorating effect on your spatial navigation, because you are still conceptionalising your position as moving
Our brains are wired to wayfind by landmarks and understanding our location relative to them.
Navigation mode in the app flips this on its head - your position is always center of the screen and the map context moves around you, so it is harder build that landmark association on a trip because you dont get a sense of how far you are through your journey relative to landmarks.
It's tough in urban cities that have one-way streets and relevant traffic patterns that are dynamic. If anything it's more dangerous to drive without GPS than with, given your attention is divided.
GPS is not a primary means of navigation (except under certain circumstances in the air and at sea, but that's an entirely different story). The rules of the road are the relevant ones, not what some computer without any formal authority may tell the driver. No automatic guidance is better than incorrect guidance.
I’m primarily using a bicycle, so I'm riding at much lower speeds than someone driving in a car would. I also have the luxury of being able to stop at the side of the road to take a look at the map if I get lost.
And one-way streets almost always allow cyclists to take them in both directions, so that's not an issue either :)
As someone who moves frequently, GPS navigation is life-changing. You can snap into the local opportunities with incredible speed and virtually no stress. My wife needed to reroute while driving. Neither of us had ever been to the new destination before. I just shared the new destination to her car's nav system. She never took her hands off the wheel, and we could all plan our arrival to within a minute from 30 miles out.
I know land nav, celestial navigation, LORAN, at one point I knew the math for GPS. yada yada. As a practical matter, GPS is magic. It's the reduction of stress in new places that is such a game changer.
“The individual is in a dilemma: either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses to use traditional , personal, moral, or empirical means, thereby entering into competition with a power against which there is no efficacious defense and before which he must suffer defeat; or he decides to accept technical necessity, in which case he will himself by the victor, but only by submitting irreparably to technical slavery. In effect he has no freedom of choice.”
(W)e have been rather slow in recognizing that in solving the information problem, we created a new problem never experienced before: information glut, incoherence, and meaninglessness. … Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we are awash in information, without even a broom to help us get rid of it. The tie between information and human purpose has been severed. … it comes indiscriminately, whether asked for or not, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume, at high speeds, disconnected from meaning and import. It comes unquestioned and uncombined, and we do not have, as (poet Edna St. Vincent) Millay said, a loom to weave it all into fabric.
- Neil Postman, Science and the Story that We Need, 1997
In the Hayden War Cycle / On Silver Wings series by Evan Currie humanity is looked at with some concern for being heavy "tool users" who augment themselves. I don't think that in this case they specifically had GPS in mind, but rather the reliance on cybernetic implants, powered exoskeletons, and other more advanced technology.
One of the advantages of aliens in Sci-Fi is that they can provide such an outside perspective of humanity. I wish it was utilized more and to greater effect. It's rather interesting. Sadly most Sci-Fi either is so out there that humanity seems to dull in comparison and you'd not waste a thought reflecting on it, or it lacks peaceful interactions and alien perspectives.
One should note that there may be significant negative impact on local communities when GPS systems re-route drivers off major routes onto local/minor roads when there are accidents or delays on the major route.
If people have to really use them all the time, then the street network is badly designed because it has too many single points of failure. Also, locals and regular commuters likely already know about these alternative routes.
Edit: I used to live in a small city where traffic used to grind to a halt on rainy days or if there were delays or construction works at certain locations.
Or when some city planners neuter a main thoroughfare by redesigning it to "current best practices" making the minor roads relatively more competitive.
If you care about a route, you can have the GPS calculate a path and you memorize the closest part of it. Once you’re out of the memorized part you either continuously look at the GPS or stop and memorize the next bit, and so on.
I personally find it more secure and also more engaging towards the path I’m taking.
Also Google Maps often spouts partly weird routes for no reason, and checking+correcting them mentally helps a lot.
I’ve been able to discover new routes in my area using navigation after a decade.
Case in point: 9 times out of 10 Google Maps will navigate me out of my neighbourhood via a backstreet that crosses a main road.
The suggestion saves a minute or two because you are able to avoid two sets of lights. This route doesn’t seem obvious, because intuition dictates waiting to cross a main road at an uncontrolled intersection will take longer. Miraculously, it doesn’t.
Very believable, I've noticed this effect myself. When I've moved to a new area, if I use GPS
exclusively to get around it takes me months to learn the names of roads and do "route planning" in my head. Versus very quickly, within a few days/weeks if I only refer to GPS when legitimately lost or unsure.
The thing is, why bother? I always have my phone. If I'm within a few miles of my house, I can figure out where I'm going, but maybe it takes me a little longer, and I don't come up with the optimal route, and now I and have the risk of getting caught in unexpected change in traffic patterns. If I'm somewhere unfamiliar, spatial memory is irrelevant and I have to rely on it regardless.
Actually I feel like GPS makes me a better than navigator. Having the "top down" view makes it feel like a video game, and that's one area where I have a ton of practice looking at a 2D map, relating it to 3D environment, and so on.
> The thing is, why bother? I always have my phone.
Relying exclusively on the phone's turn-by-turn directions without having any spatial awareness of your own or knowledge about the planned routes has a strong tendency to make you do stupid, dangerous stuff in traffic any time there's the slightest ambiguity or delay in the phone's instructions to you. This is mitigated somewhat by newer cars that can show you the map on a display that's not too small or too far out of the way of where your eyes should be pointing. But the responsible way to prevent those problems is to pull up the directions and study them for a minute before releasing the parking brake—that way, the phone is more reminding you than controlling you.
> has a strong tendency to make you do stupid, dangerous stuff in traffic
This makes sense intuitively. But I’d like to see evidence. I’ve often been in a car with someone navigating from memory behaving erratically (or taking a route that made sense twenty years ago) than someone taking turn by turn directions from a map.
That's just people being stubborn or bad drivers. But it's hard to be a good driver when you don't really know which turn you have to take next. Traffic can be congested or streets can be laid out in a weird way. Navigating these situations is easier when I know ahead of time which turn I have to take.
For example, if I find out too late that I have to go left, I might already be stuck in a lane where I'm only supposed to go straight or right. In this situation, I can only take a detour (can be long if I get on a highway!), block the lane until it's safe to switch or try a dangerous maneuver.
These kinds of discussions always remind me of a friend who swears by GPS and seems to always choose it even if the route is simple and easy to navigate. Once when travelling with him, we'd have ended up going north instead of south on a motorway if I hadn't told him to switch lanes because the navigation software failed to give the instructions.
Nothing dangerous happened -- we'd just have wasted time having to turn back at the next intersection -- so it wasn't really serious. It still baffles me how or why someone would literally become so reliant on mechanical instructions that they neither see the clear direction signs nor seem to pay any other attention to directional clues or the fact that the southward branch was approaching. (It's often hard to tell in a complex intersection where you need to turn in order to get into a particular direction, but this case was fairly obvious.)
I can also see how a sudden reaction to a late navigational instruction could cause dangerous situations.
I understand the convenience when travelling to unfamiliar places but I'm not really that keen on having GPS entirely replace directional awareness of one's surroundings.
I'm surprised when I take a day trip with someone (e.g. hiking somewhere), and after using the GPS to get there, they also use it to get back.
Personally, I can remember the last bit of the car journey and it's easily reversed. Then I just follow the "Copenhagen" signs until I'm near enough the city that I know my own way home. It's nicer than having a robot voice interrupt us every few minutes with "Take the left two lanes to continue on the motorway to Copenhagen".
>It still baffles me how or why someone would literally become so reliant on mechanical instructions
The challenge is that it can be hard to simultaneously navigate by some combination of signs, instinct, and memorized route and follow directions being fed to you (whether by a computer or a person). This is not always the case of course but often there is some ambiguity so you just do what you're "told" if you don't know the area.
> [..] a strong tendency to make you do stupid, dangerous stuff in traffic any time there's the slightest ambiguity or delay in the phone's instructions to you.
This is why in the Netherlands you are tought to drive using a satnav, and it can even be required to navigate using one during your driving exam.
I think a lot of this ends up behind how you learn navigation. I love GPS as a way to build up heuristics of how to get places in a new city/from a new location. I find I mostly learn routes by visual memory and not by street names/distances/number of blocks. I know to turn at a specific building/business, and not because it's 5th street or a specific train station.
If you're someone who learns your routes in terms of facts/numbers, then I can see GPS hurting your memory, but in my case, the GPS won't tell me to turn at the Walmart, or get off at the train station with the green tile. So after a few GPS trips, I've learned the route in the way my brain will remember. This especially helps when I don't know the traffic patterns or alternate routes that a navigation app does.
These days, for routes I don't know really well, or have high traffic variance, I'll check GPS to verify a route, and then use the route without using the app directly.
Why bother? One practical reason is that I can make spatial decisions about my plans that my wife, a GPS adherent, cannot. Frequently I'll suggest going somewhere because it is close to where we are or suggest we delay a trip because we plan to go out that way next week anyway.
Until you don't. It's probably a generational thing but I tend to have non-electronic backups when it's relatively cheap and easy to do so. And for relatively routine places I walk/drive, I much prefer to have the route in my head.
My GPS does dumb stuff all the time though. In the city it will route me on a lot of gambles that don't always work out. And there's something to be said about knowing the quality of a neighborhood. On long distance routes Google will heavily push fuel efficient routes that utilize back roads and even roads that are barely paved.
There's an option to avoid highways, but not one to prioritize them. I would much prefer to spend an extra 10 minutes on my 6 hour drive to the beach if that means I can stay on a 4 lane divided highway the entire time.
Why bother? Because Google Maps shows you the most efficient route. Not the most pleasant, just the fastest. It won't tell you that you're walking parallel to a nice back alley lined with cute shops, or that the route through the park is much quieter.
I find that if I don't use my phone, I'm more likely to look around and try new routes.
Not always. I live a little bit northeast of a city, and when I have to work south of the city, Google always gives me a route through town on lower speed roads with traffic lights. I usually take a different route with no stops and higher speeds and save about 10 minutes and a splash of fuel.
A few weeks ago I was fooling around to see if my phone's navigation could adjust if I decided on a different route. I didn't even get that far: it usually placed me several streets over and gave wrong directions.
I spend a lot of time outdoors / hillwalking / mountain climbing in Scotland and it is quite fustrating and in my opinion quite dangerous how technophobic the standard advice given is.
Almost universally guides and mountain rescue people will advise that people should carry and have knowledge of how to use a map and compass, inform that a phone with GPS is to be used as a backup with no advice given on how to use it.
Navigating with a map and compass is a difficult skill that takes a lot of practise, Scottish munros are very regularly subject to almost zero visibility where even the most advanced navigator would have difficulty. Almost none of the receipients of this advice actually want to navigate, they want to be able to follow a route for duration of their journey. A task that is very simply done with a phone if someone has been given the correct instruction.
When people have an appropriate route downloaded on their phone to work offline ensuring they have enough charge and suitable backup devices alongside told someone their route and expected time of return they have covered most of the situations that get people in trouble in terms of navigation.
Instead they are routinely told to bring a map and compass by people who generally seem to be enthusiastic volunteers who have a deep interest specifically around navigation.
> Navigating with a map and compass is a difficult skill that takes a lot of practise
That's a serious exaggeration. Navigating with a map and compass was taught to 10-year-old kids in elementary school when I was that age, and then it was practiced a few times every year. Probably to ensure that men didn't waste too much time learning basic skills in mandatory military service.
Navigating with a map and compass on a well worn, maintained trail is one thing. Using a map and compass in an area with numerous social trails, unofficial/unmarked trails, animal paths, etc is a different beast. Especially if you're in an area where it is either difficult to see landmarks, such as in a heavily forested gorge area, or there are minimal landmarks.
Last month I took a trip to the swiss alps, and planned out a route with a topo map to try and link up some minor peaks off trail. Got to the first peak and realized the section I thought was a fairly steep, maybe tricky 3rd class, was actually well in to 4th class terrain and I had no chance. All because I misread the map!
> Using a map and compass in an area with numerous social trails, unofficial/unmarked trails, animal paths, etc is a different beast
Sure, it's different, but it's hardly difficult. I was a boy scout and was doing it regularly at 10 years old. The scoutmasters would hide caches of things (candy/toys/etc) in the woods somewhere and we were given compasses + paper maps only, not that there was anything else we would have reasonably had back in those days.
I'm pretty experienced and if you lose track of where you are it can be very difficult to find yourself with a map and compass, often requiring significant moving around. This is particularly true in poor visibility or when everything is covered in snow. If you keep your bearings and know where you are (which you really need to when relying on a map and compass) then I agree its not terrible to navigate.
100% yup, it's surprisingly easy to not know where you are.
I was never much of a scout, but the best advice I ever got was go downhill. If you find water, follow the water down. People live downhill. people use water. Finding somebody, anybody, means food and shelter. There are a handful of box canons in the world where this doesn't work, but like, you should know that there is one nearby before the outset. And even if you fall into the box canyon trap, you know where you are.
Yeah, for any casual hiker that goes way off into the woods, first, you're and idiot. Second, why are you wearing cotton? Third, go downhill.
That's a great point. I was working on the assumption that you had a map and a compass. When you get to dangerous terrain, hopefully you can pin down that you're on one of two or three possible spots - so maybe you can figure out where you are.
Regardless, yeah, wandering off in the woods unprepared is dangerous. and it's easy to get hurt and have worse things happen.
A simple scenario to test your idea out: you're hiking lower on a mountain and not 100% confident exactly where you are on a trail. An unexpected thunderstorm appears and you want to bail ASAP.
Do you climb up to an exposed area in the mountains to figure out where you are? While a storm rolls in?
Or, do you stay roughly where you are, lower down, and try to use map to locate yourself?
It really isn't. I did all that as a kid and still get hopelessly lost. Source: Experienced hiker, backpacker and mountain runner, over several continents.
The trouble here is that now we have two opposing anecdotes.
Makes me think there is more to this. I suspect there are other major variables in play. I get hopelessly lost. My brother is exactly the opposite. He has special awareness and a sense of direction that is natural and innate. I think my issue is Aphantasia.
This makes me think the training is both reasonable and natural for some, and extremely difficult for others.
Pre-technology, tracking/navigation was a highly valued skillset, and seemingly evidence that some people were just much better at it than others if accounts of famous trackers/navigators are to be believed.
We’re on an international board with people doing vastly different things.
I do a lot of casual hiking, and can see places that have basically no affordance and no permanent paths for kilometers. I would be completely lost without GPS giving me my current position, and can’t see what I would use to derive that just from a map and a compass. People doing it the old fashion way probably keep track of the sun position as they walk and somewhat have a sense of the distance they moved, but that’s way beyond “just use a map and a compass” territory.
Then a lot of people hike in the mountains with named paths and a clear view of the other peaks, which makes it a lot more trivial than other situations, for instance.
I’ve never met a single hiker who could easily navigate with map and compass in low visibility. I mean, how do you think you’re doing to do it if you can barely see your hand in front of your face? Navigating via map is ok if you have good visibility and can pick out landmarks. If you have a compass and can at least see some of the surrounding terrain a short distance away, you can maybe do it. But, as others pointed out, stick yourself on a mountain with no well worn tourist trail and low visibility and a compass won’t save you. It’s mostly trial and error at that point.
As my partner put it when discussing a group of fell runners - they all talk about navigating via compass, but in reality they just use gps all the time.
Until fairly recently I navigated entirely by map. The maps in the U.K. are slightly inaccurate despite their reputation, so even on a good day I’d make small mistakes. I switched to a phone map so I didn’t have to carry a big cumbersome physical map with me, and then I realised the value of gps. I’ve hiked in low visibility since when I would have definitely have gotten lost without gps - a gazillion criss crossing trails, high erosion, long flat featureless moorland with no landmarks whatsoever… challenging on a good day.
I've done a sport which is like orienteering in rougher terrain and generally for a longer period (24 hour events). You're navigating by moonlight or with headlamps for a reasonable portion of the event. I've never felt that the compass and map aspect is the difficult bit that defines the top competitors - they win because they run for longer, pick a better overall route strategy, can freelance by reading contours in rugged terrain, etc. You usually get lost because you make personal interpretations of landscape (is this the fourth watercourse since the knoll, or the fifth?) rather than mess up with the compass.
You compete as pairs or more, so you always confirm compass bearings with each other, then confirm a target on the landscape.
Up thread, someone talks about low visibility in fog, but it's probably not too different from using a headlamp. You pick a bush or a stick if you have to, and try not to take your eyes off it.
Rogaining. Invented in Australia, popular in a few countries in Europe, and does exist in the US too. This is my local organisation: https://sarogaining.com.au/
The 24-hour events are the majors (state/national/international championships) but they also have 6-15 hour events plus 3-hour urban events for newcomers/families. Plus a cycling version. The 6 hour events are usually in pine forests with logging/walking trails so can suit rookies as well.
Two of my kids (9yo and 6yo) and I won the family category last year (no other family entered the 24 hour event! ;)) in our state championships. 40km in 24 hours. I let them sleep from 11pm until 6am, though to be honest my ankles needed the rest too.
It's not all brawn either. People stay competitive into their 70s. Mixed or female teams are always at or near the top. Some 13yo girls came second in one 6hr event a few years back (they just ran the entire time but got beaten by semi-pro marathon runners). You can finish near the top by walking quickly or trotting, but picking a good route, being careful with map and compass, etc - no one characteristic wins the 24 hour events.
Riding bicycles is also a sport, but children learn how to do it well enough. Orienteering as a sport is done for speed, precision, or optimal route planning. The basics of knowing how to use a map and compass and figuring out roughly where you are can be (and is) taught to children.
The tricky part of orienteering as a sport is doing it very rapidly, wasting zero time while running, but all competitive folks manage do it roughly equally (there is some advantage in being able to accurately predict which of two routes will be slightly faster due to terrain) and the actual competition is mostly about running speed, not about map reading.
> I get hopelessly lost. My brother is exactly the opposite.
That's definitely an interesting anecdote. Just to double check - I assume this is when you're on the same trail, right? So the terrain/trail difficulty isn't a factor here?
I dont think they are opposing anecdotes. One of them is about 10 years old kids having a lesson in terrain and situation picked by teachers. The kid succeed and then conclude they are super smart navigators able to get out of any situation with compass.
And the other one is adults getting lost while hiking in difficult terrain/weather.
Teachers have genuine interest in all kids getting back reasonably fast and all kids learning something. Teachers try to pick terrain with just right difficulty for kids. The kids get to exercise a bit of navigation, learn something in safe setup. That is not the same as adult hiker in random place.
But I'll also note that I only know a handful of people that drive around without putting on their GPS. The people that use GPS tend to be bad at navigating without it. The people that don't use GPS tend to be better.
I'm not sure why this is controversial, given that we could rewrite the headline as "Study shows that those that practice spacial skills are better at spacial skills." The fact that everyone is arguing here seems a bit silly to me.
The argument is not about the article, it is about whether "primarily rely on a map and compass, your GPS is only backup at best" is good advice for amateur hikers.
Which I still personally agree with. Until recently GPS has been a pretty expensive tool. Even now, a dedicated device costs hundreds of dollars and typically require subscriptions. Your phone also isn't going to be reliable since its battery life is extremely limited (especially when people forget to turn off their data and so their battery drains even faster than expected). This is probably the dominating factor in that recommendation. If you are going to rely on your phone for navigation you BETTER have a backup. If you are going to rely on a map, you SHOULD have a backup, but it isn't necessary. They are going with the safest option because they recognize that people will typically bring only one form of navigation. The only thing I'd change is removing the "only" and "at best" part from your quote. "Primarily rely on a map and compass, your GPS is a backup."
Well, at least primarily rely on a map. I do tend to carry a compass in less familiar/more challenging situations but for hiking on trails a map by itself will generally do the job.
Some people are talking about situations that would be very challenging without GPS--low visibility/no trails--and I'd just say that I'd definitely want backup in those conditions. I wouldn't want to depend on a single phone.
I definitely agree with this. If you're in a situation where a map is failing, you probably have bigger problems than what the GPS would help with. It is also a situation where I don't think anyone but advanced hikers/backpackers should be in. Edge cases shouldn't set the standards.
>Navigating with a map and compass was taught to 10-year-old kids in elementary school when I was that age, and then it was practiced a few times every year.
When I was in school, in the 90s and 00s, in Australia, we did this maybe a handful of times throughout my entire education. Not a single time that I can recall we actually managed to navigate correctly.
Theoretically navigating with a map and compass is not hard, but I sure as shit would not want my life depending on my ability to do so.
Navigating with a low resolution map without a good view of peaks/valleys is hard enough... but if you don't realize magnetic north is off (or correct the wrong direction), it's easy to end up lost.
When I was in the military they would drop us off by vehicle or helicopter at some unknown spot in the woods, give us a map and compass, not tell us where we were starting, and tell us to collect stamps at certain waypoints within a given amount of time. It's much harder than you think if you start out lost.
I wasn't talking about how to orient a map, I was speaking about traversing mountains where being metres off route is potentially fatal with little to no visibility. Saying that is difficult is not exagerating.
that seems like it's outside of the scope of "extremely incapable hikers who just want to go 1 route from A to B with no danger" unless there's a super chill trail or something
It depends on terrain. I hiked/climber in BC for a decade pre-gps. We carried maps but rarely ever used them for navigation, as opposed to planning. Mountain peaks on the horizon (real mountains, not UK hills) made navigation very intuitive. Even in zero visibility, the slope of the terrain keeps you orientated. Sound is also a huge aspect. One can "feel" a forrest through the fog because it sucks up sound, as opposed to rock mountains that echo.
Def learned this skill in the army. Still count my steps as a habit. I can tell you how many kilometers I walk, and it is usually almost what my watch says I walked.
lol i did geology for my undergrad which required making geologic maps of areas by map and compass. My 2 cents is that knowing generally where you are when it's good visibility and there are clear dinstinct landmarks is easy peasy (eg there is a road that generally goes east west, and I know it's south of me, there is a single hill that is generally in that direction and a lake I can see in that direction means I'm probably in this area). Knowing exactly where you are when there is not good visibility is significantly more challenging because you need to keep accurate track of exactly what direction and how far you have gone (with some adjustment for elevation) because your current location is constantly being calculated relative to your previous location. The math is easy peasy, it's just a lot to mentally track for a sustained period of time especially if you've been out all day and conditions arent great. As soon as you lose track of your paces, you just gotta hope someone in the group remembers or hope that there is some reference point that you can see otherwise that map is gonna be looking pretty wonky lol.
> Navigating with a map and compass was taught to 10-year-old kids in elementary school
Yeah, but most of them still consistently sucked at it. The elementary school terrain was picked so that it is as easy as possible, with zero possibility to get lost or confused.
First of all, I wonder how many people actually have suitable backup devices.
Secondly, stuff does happen. There are a lot of circumstances where a very simple compass and map--and knowledge that doesn't require elite M&C navigation skills can be the difference between "Um, I have no idea where I am and how to get home" and "Damn, I guess I need to do this the old fashioned way." Yes, there are conditions and locations where the "old fashioned way" is really difficult to do. But often there are trails and some visibility and you just need some basic ability to read a map and know what direction you're headed in.
Do I bother when I know an area and the weather is good? Nope. But for anything more advanced, I carry a map and compass as pretty cheap and easy insurance.
> First of all, I wonder how many people actually have suitable backup devices.
Virtually every group of people will have multiple backup devices, for people going solo it something that should (but isn't) recommended.
> Secondly, stuff does happen.
Stuff does and in every case if you want to follow a route having a little dot that shows you exactly where you are in relation to that route is better than having a map and compass. I am not sure why you are replying to my point as if it is not a choice for people to carry a phone with them but somewhat makes the point.
A properly prepared phone is a map and compass, it does everything a map and compass can do and then adds an extra useful feature of "and this is exactly where you are"
I often hike by myself and, in general, try not to depend on other people having things unless pre-arranged.
I certainly use phone apps--including the Ordinance Survey app in the UK, which is very good. But if I'm hiking in an unfamiliar area, yes, I also do carry a map and compass because that seems like a low cost and effort backup. I'm absolutely not arguing against using a smartphone app as primary navigation. But I do also encourage having backup.
Yeh I often go solo and after a few experiences, particularly if its unfamiliar, I try to make sure to have a charged backup device with routes etc loaded.
Similiarly I am not arguing against people using a map and compass, but I think the current advice which is entirely focused on map and compass with little guidance for phone users (which if it exists, is always caveated) has a lot more to do with outdoors peoples notions of technological purity and less to do with public health
I think we're actually in mostly violent agreement,
The ten essentials or whatever you want to call them are probably rather outdated.
I still think throwing a map and compass in your pack and having at least a bare minimum knowledge of how to use them is useful insurance in an unfamiliar area. But understanding mostly simple processes/backups for GPS is quite important as well. Details vary by circumstance/weather/etc. but simple steps in terms of downloading maps/having backup chargers/even a backup device/etc. are useful and I don't think have generally made it into basic hiking safety advice.
It's really hard at this point to credibly argue that "the ten essentials" don't include a smartphone.
Maybe Scottish hikers are more prepared, but probably 90% of people I see hiking would be screwed without cell service. The SPOT trackers are pretty rare, outside of the backpacking crowd
You can get offline maps with AlpineQuest, OS Maps, mapy.cz and others. You do not need cell service. I recommend using airplane mode to preserve battery.
If you’re lost in the woods you’re not orienteering. You’ll know your general location and you can see things on the maps like rivers relative to where you think you are. “If I walk west from here, I’ll hit a river and then I can follow that river to town.” It’s not that complicated unless you’re hopelessly lost.
Yeah I think that is the big conceptual failure of beginners: inability to scale their perception, and "think big" when navigating.
You can still get a little lost if you happen to find a road that's not on the map on your way to the road that is or something of the sort, but usually it's pretty obvious.
> inability to scale their perception, and "think big" when navigating.
This indeed, when navigating a city I always found that I understood 'distances'.
When navigating in nature I tend to really overestimate how much ground I have covered. You are usually moving at snail speed on the typical scale of a topo map.
Getting some intuition on distance covered per unit of time is in my view the missing skill to have when orientering. You need to have a good estimate of casual hike velocity and fast hike velocity to better not underestimate distances.
'enough charge and adequate backup devices' are very moveable feasts. I'm experienced on field trips and I still screw up or encounter unexpected power issues.
If your devices become available or unusable, a map and compass are way more likely to get you home safe. Also, it's not that hard to read a map.
Yes, maps can blow away or you can simply be in conditions where it's difficult to read them. But there's a lot of casualness in this thread about how "I'll always have my phone" that seems unwise for anything that's not very casual.
For the vast majority of situations we're not talking GPS vs. Olympic level orienteering. We're talking about whether you should take trail A or B and whether you're headed approximately N or S.
I'm sure that the advice from mountain rescue comes from many many instances where they have to save someone who brought no backup, paper or otherwise. Yeah, I'm sure YOU will bring a powerbank, and an extra device or a paper backup, but too many people wouldn't.
>Navigating with a map and compass is a difficult skill that takes a lot of practise,
no one seems to realize now-a-days that using devices has that same skill window.
my father would be useless with a phone and gps app, but with the right charts and a sextant he can find his way around the sea.
in other words : navigating is difficult, and the tools you choose to use, be it GPS and electronics or the sun/compass/sextant require practice regardless.
Noone realises that because it is clearly not true.
There is a huge difference in how hard it is to look at map and figure out where you are with a compass than it is to look and a map and figure out where you are because there is a big dot exactly where you are.
I do it all the time and never met anybody else do it. Rather everybody happily relies on online maps.
Do you think widespread offline use is the case?
I agree that to most map and compass are rather useless, but still slightly more useful compared to a phone with drained battery or no network coverage.
Specifically for Munros which is what I do network coverage can be pretty bad and at least a few people I have talked to have done the same as me and got caught out depending on the internet then in future downloaded the route. The main website everyone uses here has a .gpx for every walk (https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fortwilliam/buachailleetivem... for example)
I think drained batteries and no network coverages are problems that can and should be addressed by advising people properly. Instead I think some people end up over prepared and most people go in with a map and a compass but still completely underprepared.
>I do it all the time and never met anybody else do it. Rather everybody happily relies on online maps.
That's a good example of one way to reduce a pretty common failure mode.Lack of cell phone service is probably a lot more common than a dead phone especially if you carry a backup external battery. (Outside of extreme conditions but that's a separate matter.)
This for sure is an interesting anecdote, but doesn't seem to directly relate to the contents of the article, which refers to urban driving.
Navigating an urban area with named streets doesn't even need a map and compass, just a map is fine, and it is something most people in developed countries did up until about two decades ago when car GPS units began to roll out.
It should not be either a map or a phone (with GSP). One can use map when everything OK to develop/maintain the skill and look at phone when feels lost. Relying on a phone alone is especially problematic in rainy weather - capacitive touch screen doesn't really work when there are rain drops on it.
> Navigating with a map and compass is a difficult skill that takes a lot of practise, Scottish munros are very regularly subject to almost zero visibility where even the most advanced navigator would have difficulty. Almost none of the receipients of this advice actually want to navigate, they want to be able to follow a route for duration of their journey. A task that is very simply done with a phone if someone has been given the correct instruction.
I've walked in Scotland, including in low cloud/fog/torrential rain, and would suggest that to be following a phone screen's "directions" while walking in almost zero visibility would be foolhardy in the extreme.
> ...to be following a phone screen's "directions" while walking in almost zero visibility would be foolhardy in the extreme.
Can you expand on that? I have done this using mapy.cz and AlpineQuest dozens of times in the last ten years. The only exceptions for me has been in sub zero conditions where I want to keep my phone battery warm and on mountain tops, so I take compass bearings from the phone app and follow the bearing. I have found following anything on a phone sketchy on mountain summits in the past because you will have turned around and lost your orientation. A bearing resolves that.
All other times though, I find it incredibly useful. Also, I like to use AlpineQuest to track where I have been in a low power way by recording my location once a minute - this helps me to keep a mental picture of where I am on the map should the phone die. I also have a paper map which fortunatelly I've only needed a couple of times when the temperature is too low for the phone.
> Can you expand on that? I have done this using mapy.cz and AlpineQuest dozens of times in the last ten years.
I've just pulled up the summit of Snowdon on mapy.cz[0] to find something we can compared with a traditional 1:25000 walking map of the same area, an extract from the OS Explorer map can be found on page 5 of this PDF[1]
To my mind, the difference is very striking.
If you are stuck in the outdoors in poor visibility, every feature on the map can be useful. mapy.cz gives a good overview of the summit and the routes to and from it, but compared with the OS map there is a lot of detail missing. Not least contour lines!
Sorry, I meant the mapy.cz app. I agree that the website does look poor especially the lack of contours. The app gives you these, hill shading and more importantly offline maps in a very efficient way - the whole of Wales is only 175.16 MB.
Heres a screenshot from the app [0]. I wouldn't normally have it in landscape, but I've tried to make it as similar as possible to the Ordnance Survey example you gave.
In my opinion, the only downside is that mapy.cz uses the local place names, so you get Yr Wyddfa instead of Snowdon. Fortunatelly, you can still search for Snowdon and get taken there. But the local names can be confusing - I wish they had the option to have English names.
I also should add that mapy.cz doesn't give you bearings so I still have AlpineQuest for that.
I’d say it’s both: GPS are great but you should be well practiced in wayfinding with a compass in case the GPS fails. I’ve never taken a GPS on long hikes anyhow seems overkill as long as you have a good topo.
I agree in general: I am someone who can and does use map and compass, but I routinely use GPS for convenience and verification (except when orienteering.) In so doing, I have noticed that my phone apps can fail to update to the relevant part of the map in areas of weak signal. Anyone relying on GPS should be familiar enough with their equipment to ensure it has the necessary maps available before departure.
I would like to add something to this. My Android phone refuses to use the GPS only navigation with the default Google Maps app. Even when AGPS is enabled and possible, the almanac downloaded beyond reasonable doubt and my last location known down to a meter. That's just google doing their thing.
Expanding, most navigation apps in the name of preserving "user experience" will actively hide when they fail to work. They won't mention that signal is lost and instead they'll dead recon you within the confines of the road or path you were last in. GMaps will go a step further and simply guess where you just turned at a junction... which is extremely confusing when wrong and the main reason I'm no longer using Gmaps for my car.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: do not, under any circumstances, mistake your consumer smartphone with stock navigation apps as a reliable navigation device. Especially when getting lost might cost you your life.
Following a trail means you have some reference of a foot path to stay on and follow. Navigating could mean anything--it might be reading a vague description like "follow the trail to a cairn at mile 5, then bushwhack up hill 1500 vertical feet to a ridge, follow the ridge as it ascends the mountain choosing an obvious class 3 scramble on the east side that avoids serious exposure (if you encounter class 5 terrain you are off route)". With navigation you have to use a lot more senses and tools and knowledge, the path isn't immediately obvious.
Navigating is looking and matching up landmarks to a map to identify your current position, and then determining the route you will follow. (Orientation) From there, you use a compass to follow that route, counting your steps. You have to know how many steps it takes you to walk a km/mile, then you can reorient every so often to adjust your route based on your real position.
Independent of GPS I think people are built differently and can understand 3D (first person) vs 2D (top down) worlds in different ways.
I know someone who can go anywhere once without GPS and recall directions 10 years later even if they never drove near that area again. It's like their memory can recall it the same as the first time they went there. At the same time watching them type on a keyboard is about the same as what it must have been like to witness humans using basic tools for the first time.
I've always been bad with driving directions, the idea of navigating in 3D from the first person doesn't mesh with how I think for recalling directions but if I look at a top down 2D map and split things into a grid then it's not too bad. I only just started using GPS the other week but I feel like it has helped me retain information a lot better, I can visualize the route in my mind and trace the turns with street names in a way that I could never do before.
Interestingly enough I don't think it's necessarily first person vs top down on its own too. I've played a lot of FPS games in the past with games that never had a top down map and I can still run through them mentally like 15-20 years later. I don't know what it is, it doesn't make sense to be tuned for navigating a virtual world vs physical world but I do think GPS clicks some checkbox in my brain that makes it be perceived as virtualized even though it's mapping the physical world.
Anecdotally, if I'm walking or taking the train, I like to use top-down, north-oriented GPS. If I'm driving, I like the first person view with turn-by-turn directions. But I don't drive often.
"Every extension of mankind, especially technological extensions, has the effect of amputating or modifying some other extension[…]
The extension of a technology like the automobile “amputates” the need for a highly developed walking culture, which in turn causes cities and countries to develop in different ways. The telephone extends the voice, but also amputates the art of penmanship gained through regular correspondence.
ways.”
— Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Love this quote, and many others by MM.
Utterly blows my mind how we seem to be failing to apply and extend his teachings to help understand this modernity beta test we're participating in.
...and the pen/quill/cuneiform killed the saga since people could now write it down, so why bother remembering to tell a story around a campfire at a certain time a week? (sound familiar today?)
I get the point, but I think "amputates" is the wrong word, like user "tootie" below who said "obviates" is the right word, but was downvoted into greyville. Tootie is right: it alleviates the need for something. It doesn't kill it entirely.
When the technology breaks, we still need to communicate. So yes, teach people how to write their language (or more!) But cursive writing has always been notoriously riddled difficulties due to individual hiccups in style. I agree everyone should know how to write in the simplest form: printing English/European languages, simplified Chinese, etc. But flourishy cursive is only readable by people who wrote it with artistic skills, or kids that were drilled for hours and hours on end, when there is plenty of other more important stuff for them to learn, IMHO.
Ellul, Mumford, McLuhan, Postman and Illich constitute (accessible
[1]) Technological Critique 101. I think they are essential reading
for anyone who claims to be a "technologist" and wants to deeply
understand the anthropological relations of humans and our technology.
[1] Without digging into Heidegger and more difficult stuff.
While I empathise with your position I can totally see how others might not. Letter writing is a specific skill to provide a dense and clear message. You have to prepare this message in your head first as you cannot (attractively) eliminate what you wrote already unless you redo the whole letter. Im sure many people today would have benefitted from more occasions to hone thinking and preparation ahead of expressing views or opinions.
Similarly you could say remembering phone numbers is a useless skill that many had pre smartphones - you just knew your 30 or so most used numbers. Now we all depend on our phones and once the battery is dead many people don't seem to know any number by heart.
If I handwrite a letter, I'm filtering before and while I write to reduce all the nonsense that might pass through my head down to something I hope will be of interest to the recipient.
If I tweet, I can shoot out all of that nonsense to the world, secure in the knowledge that the filtering labor will be done in combination by some subset of potential recipients (whose choices to engage or not will provide the fodder that the Twitter feed-building algorithm can use to determine whether it's passed the filter).
This might then indicate that a skill that might be atrophying is the ability to filter one's own writing for relevance/value, not just to produce it in cursive.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine what other signs they would look for to confirm or disconfirm this hypothetical atrophy.
Haha you were never passed notes in high school. My most embarrassingly awful messages were all hand written. I am very careful with my emails because editing is so easy.
I passed notes extensively in high school – it's a lot of them I'm thinking of! A friend has saved a box of the ones I wrote her and it's fun to revisit.
Email's interesting because there's traditionally been very little of that social-media-feed-style automatic sorting / filtering outside of spam (not that the "priority inbox" concept isn't trying) so the weight still properly lies on the sender to make the missive easy to handle. I too edit the bejesus out of all my work emails, but it's a different skill than having to compose a coherent first draft without easy edits.
Because it's a metaphor. "Extension of mankind" implies, poetically, a physical connection between mankind and technology. Physical connections are amputated, not obviated. A withered limb isn't obviated, it's cut off. So, amputated.
I would recommend (the now outdated) The Brain that Changes Itself. All about nueroplasticiy. The brain will literally prune what you don’t use, and certain skills, such as the fine motor skills required by developing penmanship, can plausibly have wide reaching impact one way or the other.
I got an incredible amount of pushback on twitter when I posted that I think we should ditch handwriting in schools in favor of accelerating typing skills earlier.
My kids are in school right now in the US. They teach cursive for a few days just so kids recognize it but there's no penmanship. They also don't teach spelling because it's not at all useful for developing critical thinking and spelling will evolve on it's own just with reading. COVID definitely accelerated things but lots of homework assignments are done in Google Classroom.
The actual hardest thing to go paperless is math. When they teach strategies and ask to "show your work" there's no easy way to type it.
I'm just over here wondering how they would control for that fact that people who can't self-navigate are more likely to habitually use GPS (rather than cause and effect being the other way around, habitually using GPS leading to an inability to self-navigate, as they posit)?
Personally, I use GPS almost every time I drive, so that I get advance notice of slowdowns and congestion. And yet I know the region I live in better than most other drivers I know.
Strange that this isn’t higher up in the comments. I just moved to a new area, used my maps for the first few times and now know the local area better than the back of my hand. People just really seem to want to bash map tech for some reason.
I enjoy navigating without gps. I can always memorize most of the way there as it is usually just following main roads. It is the last portion that can be hardest. I like to think of directions in terms of "topological complexity". If it is just off a highway or off of a road off the highway it is easy to navigate to. Has nothing to do with how far away it is or how familiar I am with the area.
Similar to this is the fact that it is always easier to navigate home than to a new place. In the former, you are aiming for the web of roads that you recognize. In the latter, it is a specific point.
I’m more the opposite - I spent decades driving without GPS, and I got to see very little of where I went because I’m trying to read a map or atlas, not crash into anyone, and cross six lanes of traffic because the exit is on the opposite side of the highway. I drove the equivalent of twelve times around the equator and it was all a blur. With GPS I can actually look beyond the car in front of me and enjoy seeing what I am driving through. In recent years I’ve started setting the Avoid Highways feature and taking back roads everywhere - no traffic, no cops, no people driving crazy, lots of wildlife, lots of sights, cheap gas, etc. generally only adds an hour to my travel time.
I agree on all points. I remember driving from Paris to Epinal using printed out directions. At some point after the 15 roundabout we had no idea where we were. Luckily we were are to speak with some nice people to help guide us the rest of the way, but we almost missed the time we had to be at our destination.
To be fair French deep-country roundabouts are the work of the devil. Me and my SO did a cross-European car-journey a few years ago and we managed to get all the way from Bucharest to France just fine without using any GPS.
And then we got into the French roundabouts. I gave up close to Orleans. We wanted to get off the highway and use a smaller road, for sightseeing, it's only that I literally re-created this infamous scene [1] with the only difference that there were 3 or 4 roundabouts in quick succession involved, not a big one. I almost had tears of frustration, I'm not exaggerating, but thanks to my SO who started co-piloting me with "take the second exit in the next roundabout" and stuff like that we managed to get out of it all. After a few days driving through France I think I managed to get the hang of those roundabouts without using GPS, but it wasn't easy.
Another fun one from a different trip. We were in a French town that had an underground parking garage. We enter the garage, it's packed with cars and we think 'great, we'll be here a few days and won't need the car'. A few days later is a Sunday and we head over to the garage to leave and...the whole garage is sealed up like a bomb shelter. It's closed on Sundays. I had never seen this in a US garage b/c normally if they closed at all they would just open the gates.
After walking around a bit, I was able to translate enough French to find a call button. 20 minutes later I managed to get an attendant to come let me out. The garage looked like something from a zombie movie - pitch black dark and 1 or 2 cars left.
Related: I believe my ability to retain an “internal map” of an area was ripped to shreds by non-euclidian games.
The first time I turned three corners and ended up in a different place it feels like my brain threw the desk up at the idea that 3D space had euclidean rules, and I’ve been struggling ever since.
Of course I still continue to enjoy those types of games, so it’s not like a single game did all the damage.
Antichamber [0] is a masterclass in this type of spatial disorientation. I really enjoyed the way this game approached puzzle design and how it constantly subverted expectations.
Another great one is The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. [1] Initially, the game doesn't play around with spatial disorientation much, but certain branches of the narrative really lean into it in a delightfully satirical way.
Finally, Superliminal [2] explores some similar concepts to Antichamber but with a very different approach.
There a plenty more examples, but hopefully that gives you a jumping off point to see that gameplay in action. I thoroughly enjoyed all three!
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don't struggle to maintain internal maps in real life or in games that are intentionally disorienting, so your mileage may vary!
I also have aphantasia, so perhaps that's somehow related? I don't physically create a map in my head, I just have an innate sense of where things should be after familiarizing myself with a particular area.
Perhaps since I don't physically create a map in my head, the disassociation between what is expected and what is actually happening in front of me for games like that doesn't create the same level of cognitive dissonance? Just spitballing here haha.
I am excited for a time when we have easier language for talking about those nuances. Aphantasia may indeed be related! It may be the direct reason, or it may be one small piece of a larger puzzle that we’re barely scratching the surface of!
I mean.. In the world of GPS’s and always-available internet, do you really need the ability to accurately map spaces in your head?
Personally, if I could go back and change it I’d still play them knowing what I know now. I would probably also keep a better eye on my brain and try to teach it to play games and trust euclidean space, but besides getting lost “in the old days” it hasn’t hurt me that bad
There are some of the great non-euclidean games listed by the other repliers so I’ll jump to the first one:
Unfortunately I looked and can’t figure out it’s name or even which system it was on (hopefully others can help), but here are the details that I still have:
It had blocky graphics but decent for the time. 3rd person over the shoulder. For some reason the image of a Roman helmet comes to mind but was the character wearing it? Was it a prop?...
You were in (a house?) and it seemed normal for most of the game. But then bit by bit your character went insane and you saw the world the way they were. It genuinely caught me off-guard when a bust on a shelf suddenly moved enough to be noticeable. Then other things changed, and paths didn’t lead where they were supposed to. I don’t know if I even passed that game, but it sticks out as possibly the first time my internal “rules of available directions” were broken.
Since then I’ve played with all sorts of non-euclidean things. From 4D Rubik’s cubes to VR environments that are nothing like the real world. Great fun, fascinating, and at times an enjoyable kind of confusing.
The earliest one I can think of is the multiplayer Marathon map 5-d space[1][2]. I'm virtually certain it's not actually the first, but if you were a Mac gamer in the 90s it's the most memorable.
One recent one that threw me sideways a little extra: Tea for God (Quest).
“..allow players infinite movement within their own place.“
You have to play roomscale and with only walking (+ elevators) for movement you explore huge procedurally-generated structures. It even adapts to the size of your play space.
Yes! This! I boycott step-by-step GPS navigation, and encourage everyone else to do so too. I enjoy navigating road networks, and don't want that skill of mine eroded. When going somewhere I know, I just go. When going somewhere I don't know, I plan the route in Google Maps prior to setting out, and try to memorise most of it, and stop and check the map now and then when my memory fails me. I refuse to be a mindless spatial robot.
I have been wondering recently whether this is a bad thing. Because having the right ideas in memory is often required for making creative leaps. Relying too much on google can actually inhibit creativity.
Do I remember a lower percentage of the facts I have encountered in life than others? Almost certainly. But I also bet that I have encountered vastly more as a result.
> Google lets you actually find information rather than just wishing
you had it.
Correct. And that's a problem.
The "wishing you had it" part is actually really important.
Creativity and understanding isn't just assembling a jigsaw puzzle of
discrete information facts. Holding together a mental model, including
many partial and missing pieces of information, is how innovative
leaps occur.
A Google driven life, treading over popular, permitted pathways is
comfortable and convenient but requires only some small fraction of
the adult human brain. More is not necessarily more when it comes to
information.
I don't think it's bad overall. Web search has essentially extended our recall abilities to everything that's easily searchable if you have a device on hand.
Usage of digital clocks and particularly smartphones leads to degeneration in analog time telling ability. News at whenever the notification shows up on your cell phone.
Anecdotally speaking, I had to stop depending so much on GPS when I started riding motorcycles. I was surprised at how easily I was able to get around North Carolina, USA using road numbers, signage, and intuition (i.e., I'm going east, so somewhere this small road should intersect 15/501).
So, I don't think that "kids these days" negativity towards GPS is entirely justified. Navigating by compass and map isn't trivial, but you can learn it if you need to.
I've long thought this must be the case. On a regular basis, I fish at a lake in a town 15 minutes from my home, and do not know how to get there without GPS or a friend in the car.
Without GPS, I can navigate to places several hours from where I live currently, that I would go frequently in high school, before I had a smart phone or standalone GPS. I kept a printed set of MapQuest directions to popular destinations under my passenger seat in those days.
I recently purchased a bare bones GPS for my motorcycle [0] that only displays the direction of the next turn, how far away it is, and roughly how far along the trip I am. I've found that after going to a destination once or twice with that method, it's much more committed to memory.
"It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments." -- Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics
Anecdotal, but as soon as someone starts giving me directions my brain taps out of the responsibility. I have great spatial awareness, and a decent memory for spatial landmarks. But even if you are giving me directions to somewhere I always go, I will miss turns I know to take because I have subconciously disengaged from the task of pathfinding.
I am reminded of the pilot control handover procedure, where you exchange control explicitly by saying "Your airplane", "my airplane". If you were giving me directions and then assume I have got the rest if the way, you have hand the task back over!
That’s interesting. I always use the GPS for going to destinations I’m unfamiliar with, but I don’t notice this effect at all personally. Perhaps it’s because I tend to intentionally try to navigate without GPS once I have done a route two to four times with the GPS. I guess knowing I want to do that probably puts me in a completely different mindset of actually needing to try to learn the route while the GPS is on (more subconsciously, I don’t tend to make much particular effort), whereas you probably aren’t bothering to do that if you’re expecting to just always use GPS navigation.
After buying our new home I made maybe a dozen journeys back and forth using the GPS and realised I actually didn't know the way here yet from our place which isn't even that far away in reality.
As soon as I forced myself to find the way without using the GPS it was completely different, I actually figured out the landmarks in my head.
We still use the GPS a lot but it's always worth knowing that you don't really know where something is until you can drive there without the GPS.
On a related note, playing far cry 2 without using the handheld map and walking everywhere did wonders for my spatial memory. The game is gorgeous and full of tiny details so it isn't as boring as it might sound.
Each mission starts with an npc giving you the location of your target (safehouse 2 miles east of shanty town, outpost south of lumber yard). Sun can be used as a compass (when it's not raining). After a while you start to recognize the landmarks and don't need the map anymore.
Yeah no kidding. I've met some people who even use their GPS to get to their local grocery store. I wouldn't trust them to self-navigate out of a cul-de-sac.
If you're in your own neighborhood then you should be able to re-route yourself once you see traffic ahead.
Personally, I don't ever use GPS unless I'm lost. When I'm going someplace new I plan the route using mapping software before I get in the car. I sketch a quick map of the important parts of the routes (particularly street names, major intersections, exit numbers, etc.) Sketching this map commits the major details to memory, then I put the map in my pocket. If I need to refresh my memory then I'll pull over to check my sketched map. I only need to use GPS if I find myself outside of my map. In these cases I'll pull over to use the GPS to locate myself and plot a route back to my planned route. I never use turn-by-turn directions, because I think driving like that is unsafe.
I know this is unusual. Somebody once called me a psychopath because I don't listen to music or the radio while driving either. I don't want to zone out while driving, mindlessly following turn-by-turn directions or listening to some song. I think everybody else is just too cavalier about distractions while driving.
>If you're in your own neighborhood then you should be able to re-route yourself once you see traffic ahead.
How does this answer the other commenter's point?
If the grocery store is 2 miles away, wouldn't you rather be routed an alternative route at one mile distance away by GPS that "knows" there's terrible traffic congestion the remaining two blocks of the current route? Especially if those two blocks are after a couple of turns which block your view of them?
If I don't see the traffic, then the traffic isn't affecting me. If I see the traffic ahead, in my own neighborhood, I reroute myself.
Anyway, I think you probably burn more time dicking around with your phone than you could ever save by avoiding traffic on the way to a grocery store that, if you're in a city, is probably within walking distance anyway.
The way you describe it, I would think your "route" is just one long stretch on a single street. In almost every normal case, I may not know there's an accident at one intersection until I turn onto the street two blocks away.
Also, opening Google or Apple maps with traffic mode turned on takes maybe half a minute at most, which is about the amount of time it takes my car to finish its cold start warm-up before I can start driving.
This reminds me of a time when I was driving a familiar route home. I put on Google maps just in case and it showed a ridiculous route with a total trip time of 10-15 minutes longer than the typical 45 minutes I was expecting.
I decided to try my luck with the regular route, thinking it couldn't possibly be that bad. Every exit, the map tried to get me off the highway but I just kept on driving the normal route, nervously hoping that I wasn't dooming myself to a 20-minute traffic jam.
I made it home in the normal amount of time without encountering any unusual traffic and only then did I realize I had accidentally enabled "no highways."
A typesystem is also much better than me at figuring out what could go wrong with some code. I used to be better at spotting mistakes and writing dynamic code, but ever since I started relying on typesystems I think I got a little worse at it. At least I definitely don't have as much patience dealing with dynamic code anymore.
Maybe typesystems negatively impacted my ability to reason about dynamic code? (I'm actually a bit torn on this)
> Maybe typesystems negatively impacted my ability to reason about dynamic code?
I think type systems definitely make your brain less paranoid about doing all the manual checking that you'd need to do with dynamic code. Whether that's a net positive / negative depends on the overall results: Can / will the mental effort you would have spent being paranoid about dynamic code be usefully spent somewhere else? Are there other side benefits to the effort you have to make with dynamic code that you're losing when you used a type system? Are you less thorough about testing, for instance? Does keeping the entire system in your head mean you are more aware of the overall architecture? Does it help encourage you to keep the architecture simple? Or does the that fact that you have to keep it simple limit the possibilities?
Exactly, so when replacing type systems with GPS, dynamic code with manual navigation, testing with checking if you're on the right track and architecture with city/land this becomes interesting.
In programming I prefer the most sound route to get to my destination. I think typesystems greatly help me with that by giving me warnings and errors when I take the wrong path.
In real life I usually only prefer to get to a destination so I use the GPS as I know it can get the fastest route better than me most of the time.
If I want to explore a city to find interesting places I don't use a GPS and resort to walking around. When I found an interesting place I will mark it down in google maps and maybe use a GPS next time I go there.
If I want to explore an idea with programming the code I write tends to be less sound and more dynamic, when I know what I want I'd refactor the code to be more sound and less dynamic.
Dynamic typing makes it too easy to be clever. Which is usually bad all things considered. It makes code harder to understand, and when you want to extend it, or integrate it somewhere else, there might be tons of footguns. In short, unless extraordinary discipline is maintained, dynamic code can quickly turn into legacy code.
One of the things I like to do when I go somewhere new is try to drive (or often cycle) back home without using my phone. I get lost sometimes, but I feel a silly sense of achievement when I make it back home without checking my phone. I enjoy the challange and I also learn a lot about my local area. There are many businesses in my city that I discovered only because I was trying to memorise a route.
> When he first moved to Ann Arbor, he found himself unequipped for the brutal winter. He had few belongings, and he needed a blanket. But when he looked up how to get to the local mall, he found it too logistically difficult. “It was just beyond my level of tolerance,” he said. “I did not want to waste my mental energy on figuring out how to go from here to there.” Instead, he walked to a nearby CVS drugstore, bought 10 squares of fabric and a giant stapler, and stapled the squares together to make a blanket.
I used routing on my phone, but without the instructions, just the map, route and the GPS position marker—plus I had the map always with north on top, no rotation and no ‘3d’. This arrangement actually taught me about what is where in this city and how that looks from above. Otherwise I would be practically like a recent city-immigrant who knows the route from home to the subway and from the subway to work, with mysterious void in the middle.
Still, idk how people were driving here before gps maps, what with five-road crossings, and six-lane ‘guess your lane’ junctions with exits in non-obvious directions, and the old districts with streets packed tighter than GPS accuracy (of yesteryear), and the one-way streets going whatever which way.
The "north up" tip I heard from Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, it makes a lot of sense, if you're going south and the road ahead is closed, and you go for a detour, you know you need to be going south, but if the map keeps spinning around, after several turns you'd (or I would) lose track which direction you're going and which direction the navigation system is trying to take you (in a lot of cases it would be trying to take you back to the original route, although it's closed).
I mostly use GPS as a way of locating myself on the Google map or another map app. This is mostly because I usually bike or walk, and having a voice telling you things is not really the best way to navigate in that case.
However, even so I find it very amusing that the literal only place where I'm very confused by the map is the town where I grew up. I'm very not-used to seeing it from above, can't find the landmarks on the map, and usually I'm not sure where north is exactly. I can't recognize it. Any other place where I lived I have learned on the map first, so it's fine. But not my hometown.
Well duh, there was a study on London cabbies who had to take a test known as "the knowledge", and it was found that they had significantly more growth in their hippocampus.
So obviously the reverse would probably be true.
I remember I used to chunk numbers in 3 to 4 digit groupings because back in the day that was how I naturally memorized phone numbers, successive generations probably can't rely on that tactic as much simply because there's so little need to retain the phone numbers in memory with the invention of smart phones.
Sure, but that feels like an equivalence of just saying "people without a college degree are less mentally developed than those who do." Memorizing the street system of a city the size of London is obviously hard. But is it important to actually do so in a world where it's not essential?
I feel like the implication of a lot of these articles is "people aren't learning X thing that's not essential now, and instead are learning TikTok Memes." Which may not be wrong, but how much of a problem actually is that? Obviously, a century ago, there was no slack for almost anyone to not carry their weight in society. Everyone needed to know how to farm and start a fire, and plenty of other things most people don't know any more. Pre-teens had to work important jobs because otherwise people didn't eat. Obviously things have swung away from that, but the question is how far away from that is a good thing vs. just allowing people to indulge in vices.
My partner and I always argue about the map orientation. I prefer to have north on top while driving, to know more or less 'where I am in the world'. For her it is impossible to use like this, map needs to be oriented in the driving direction.
Makes sense. I can’t navigate for shit. Though I never have. As a scout I didn’t have intuition about north and south etc. Now whenever I need to go somewhere unless I know the route relative to where I start by heart I must use GPS/maps.
Same goes for LastPass. Sure, I can see a need to remember those numbers/passwords, maybe 2-3 tops, but hundreds? Not until we have some kind of brain-enhancing memory pill.
In the city (by foot, on bike) I tend to look up the map and then memorize it. If I forget I look again and memorize again. But I do not tend to switch on navigation and follow, because it distracts me from seeing the places I pass by.
I only use gps to get places where I don’t know where to go but after that I stop using it .
But this begs the question why is losing this is bad when we can use our brains for something completely different or make peoples jobs more productive
A nice compromise is to remember the computer works for you, and to take the turns that seem right to you and require the GPS to reroute accordingly to help you. Augmented Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence.
One trick that I use to mitigate it is to not rotate the map during the navigation, i.e. always have North on top. This ensures that I keep a basic sense of directions even when following navigation.
Well, you have to prep. And, to be honest, if you're by yourself you're probably going to be balancing a map on your lap someplace if it's not straightforward.
There's also the old movie/TV trope where, typically, the guy refuses to stop at a gas station to ask for directions if they're lost. Which has now (mostly) joined the trope of not being able to reach someone just because they're not in the physical location you expect them to be.
Easy: use GPS less. Maybe rely on it for your first trip somewhere new, but after that, try to navigate by memory. And even when you've gone somewhere new, try to find your way back home without the GPS. For locations that you frequent, don't use the GPS at all. Often I'll do a quick GPS check for places like that just to see if my normal route is clear of bad traffic, and then travel without it running.
Yes, you'll get lost occasionally, but that's ok. You'll still have the GPS if you get hopelessly lost and give up.
Yes but a major part of wayfinding now is to route around traffic. I know my way to work every day but still turn on GPS because I don't know where accident and detours might be happening.
I’m sure most of us have noticed it and commented on it but proving it is different. Like the difference between postulating the Higgs boson and provings its existence.
I think the poster is interested in this case as an example of how delegating a task to technology leads to skill atrophy. We do it more and more every year. Technology may be making us stupid. It all leads to WALL-Eesque retardation and decadence.
I absolutely agree and confirm that too but then... so what?
Myself, I don't feel need to remember a route I'm going to take once or twice in a lifetime. Also in Europe cities aren't easily navigable and one actually has to spend a lot of effort to navigate big city without nav.
It doesn't make a lot of sense, especially if city is constantly changing either. If you visit some place every 3 months you're mostly guaranteed that you're going to have to take other route to the destination (construction work, film crew locking roads, infrastructure changes etc.)
Nowadays GPS providers react much faster to the changes in infrastructures than city does, too (re-routing due to blockage is good example).
Anecdotally - if I drive somewhere as passenger I have no memory of the route neither. In order to get to know place I need to drive there by myself (without GPS) or, best, walk around or study map.
This helps me to stay oriented when I'm not using a maps app as well, because I already know which roads intersect with which, where, and how to take them to get from A to B.
Sadly, Google Maps does everything they can to prevent you from doing this, e.g. not showing street names at all unless you zoom in to ridiculous levels (and often not even then) as well as not showing you which roads are one-way, which roads allow bicycles, etc.
That's why I mostly rely on Open Street Map and similar actual maps.
Also, if I've got additional time to get somewhere, I'll get lost on purpose, taking roads I don't know yet, then looking at the maps to figure out where I am (which is super useful to discover hidden paths and shortcuts).