Comment by fercircularbuf
7 months ago
As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places. It's no surprise that a tool like this, used for the purpose of outsourcing a task that our own brains would otherwise do, would result in a decline in the skills that would be trained if we were performing that task ourselves.
The only two times I have made bad navigation mistakes in mountains were in the weeks after I started using my phone and a mapping app - the realisation that using my phone was making me worse at navigation was quite a shock at the time.
But you didn't become worse at navigation. Sounds like you trusted a tool, and it failed you.
This is splitting hair, at the end his navigation skills (him + whatever tool he used) were NOK and could result in dangerous situations (been there so many times in the mountains, although it was mostly about "went too far in a bit wrong direction and don't want to backtrack that far, I am sure I will find a way to that already close point..." and 10 mins later scrambling on all 4 on some slippery wet rock with no room for error)
No - on both occasions it was the same scenario - descending from a peak in bad weather and picking the wrong ridge to descend - I was confident I "knew" which was the right ridge and with the app I use bearings for the right route are pretty difficult to distinguish - so completely my fault.
I'm now aware of that problem and haven't had that problem since but I was pretty shocked in retrospect that I confidently headed off in the wrong direction when the tool I was using was by any objective measure much better.
I agree with this:
"the key to navigating successfully is being able to read and understand a map and how it relates to your surroundings"
https://www.mountaineering.scot/safety-and-skills/essential-...
> As the proliferation of the smart phone eroded our ability to locate and orient ourselves and remember routes to places
Can you point to a study to back this up? Otherwise, it's anecdata.
i really tire of people always asking for studies for obvious things.
have sword skills declined since the introduction of guns? surely people still have hands and understand how to move swords, and they use knives to cut food for consumption. the skill level is the same..
but we know on aggregate most people have switched to relying on a technological advancement. there's not the same culture for swords as in the past by sheer numbers despite there being more self proclaimed 'experts'.
100 genz vs. 100 genx you'll likely find a smidgen more of one group than the other finding a location without a phone.
> i really tire of people always asking for studies for obvious things.
I actually agree with you on this!
But... I have very very good directional sense, and as far as I can tell it's innate. My whole life I've been able to remember pathing and maintain proper orientation. I don't think this has anything to do with lack of navigation aids (online or otherwise) during formative years.
But I'm talking about geospatial sense within the brain. If your point is that people no longer learn and improve the skill of map-reading then yes that should be self-evident.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027249442...
The first paragraph of the conclusions section is also stimulating and I think aptly applies to this discussion of using AI as a tool.
> it is important to mention the bidirectionality of the relationship between GPS use and navigation abilities: Individuals with poorer ability to learn spatial information and form environmental knowledge tend to use assisted navigation systems more frequently in daily life, thus weakening their navigation abilities. This intriguing link might suggest that individuals who have a weaker “internal” ability to use spatial knowledge to navigate their surroundings are also more prone to rely on “external” devices or systems to navigate successfully. Therefore, other psychological factors (e.g., self-efficacy; Miola et al., 2023) might moderate this bidirectional relationship, and researchers need to further elucidate it.
Navigation is a narrow task. For many intents and purposes, LLMs are generally intelligent.