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Teach Yourself to Echolocate: A beginner’s guide to navigating with sound
- pjmorris 8y agoMy 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.)
- omginternets 8y agoIn the military, I at some point learned that listening was at least as important as looking. A lot of the senior guys on their 3rd or 4th tour would patrol without a helmet -- it messed with their hearing.
- Wingman4l7 8y agoOpening the window a crack is instinctual for me now whenever I first hear a siren on the road, so I can better figure out where it's coming from -- it can give me several extra seconds to plan if and how I need to get out of the way of emergency services. I highly recommend it!
- godot 8y agoVery 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 8y agoAlso helpful in really foggy roads, slow down and roll down windows a little to pick up other vehicles
- kfarr 8y agoIt sounds crazy but I crack the driver side window anytime I'm not going highway speeds. So much more info about what's going on than being hermetically sealed in a steel tube.
- givinguflac 8y agoI’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 8y agoWhat do you consider good hearing skills to practice, except echolocating?
- Rumudiez 8y agoAs 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 8y agoI think relative pitch is much more useful (e.g. identifying harmonies and notes relative to a tonic center).
- yesenadam 8y ago(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.
- deckarep 8y agoFor anyone wanting to see a master example of echolocation see this short video: https://youtu.be/TeFRkAYb1uk https://youtu.be/TeFRkAYb1uk
- atentaten 8y agoCoincidentally, I watched this last week and found it highly informative, entertaining.
- cududa 8y agoThis is incredible. Know if any research that’s booked farther in here?
- the21st 8y agoI recommend this excellent podcast on the same topic https://www.thisamericanlife.org/544/batman https://www.thisamericanlife.org/544/batman
- anonytrary 8y agoI 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 8y agoHave 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.
- acjohnson55 8y agoThis reminds me of an incredible episode of the podcast Invisibilia: https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-batman?t=1539454445607 https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-be...
- tw1010 8y agoThis 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.
- closed 8y agoSo true! This reminded me of the first time I came upon Conway's Doomsday Algorithm for telling what day of the week a certain date is. http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html
- FigmentEngine 8y agoor Zeller's congruence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeller%27s_congruence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeller%27s_congruence
- closed 8y agoAh, I had no idea about this one! Bonus: I just learned the word proleptic...
- tzs 8y agoThe method given on that site for computing the component that comes from the last 2 digits of the year can be made a lot easier for mental calculation. I'll give some known improvements below, and then offer one of my own that is noticeably simpler. In the following, let Y = the last two digits of the year (e.g., 18 for 2018), and let N be the value we are trying to be compute. We only actually need N mod 7, but I'm going to leave out the reduction mod 7 in the equations to reduce clutter. The simplest way to compute N is simply: N = Y + Y//4 I'll use Python3-like arithmetic and pseudocode in this comment, so "//" is integer division (with x for times to avoid accidental italics). To keep the numbers smaller during mental calculation, people have developed alternatives. The one given in that link is this: N = Y // 12 N += Y % 12 N += (Y % 12) // 4 An interesting alternative, called the "odd+11" method, is given on the Wikipedia article [1]: if odd(Y): Y += 11 Y = Y // 2 if odd(Y): Y += 11 N = -Y For the last step there, N = -Y, it will usually be easier and clearer to reduce Y mod 7 before doing that N = -Y. Also, given Y, sometimes the simplest way to get -Y mod 7 is to just note what you have to add to Y to get to a multiple of 7. For example, if when you get to that step Y = 20, note that adding 1 to Y gives a multiple of 7, so -20 mod 7 = 1. Anyway, here's my method. It keeps the numbers smaller--if you reduce mod 7 aggressively never more than 12--at the cost of slightly more branches in the logic. Let the last two digits of the year be T and U, so Y = 10 T + U. N = 2 x T if odd(T): N += 3 N += U if odd(T): N += (U+2)//4 else: N += U//4 That if...else is taking into account the number of leap years that have occurred in the current decade (not including the year T0). When doing mental calculation, it is probably easier just to remember that if T is odd, at 1 if U >= 2 and add another 1 if U >= 6, and if T is even same except at 4 and 8. Here are examples, using some years from the link, with parenthetical explanations for some of the numbers: 2018: T=1, U=8. 2x1(T) + 3(T is odd) + 8(U) + 2(U>=2,6) = 1 mod 7. 1929: T=2, U=9. 2x2(T) + 9(U) + 2(U>=4,8) = 1 mod 7. 1999: T=9, U=9. 2x2(T%7) + 3(T is odd) + 2(U%7) + 2(U>=2,6) = 4 mod 7. Note that I reduced U and T mod 7 inline when using them. You can do this as long as when checking odd/even you use the original T, and when adding in the leap year correction you use the original U. E.g., for 99, you could compute it like it was 22, except you have to add the 3 for odd T, and use 9 for the U>=2,6 check. 1982: T=8, U=2. 2x1(T%7) + 2(U) = 4 mod 7. 1969: T=6, U=9. 2x(-1)(T%7) + 2(U%7) + 2(U>=4,8) = 2 mod 7. Some might find changing the leap year handling to this a little easier instead of just remembering the 2,6 or 4,8 +1 points. Change the if...else to this: N += U//4 if odd(T) and N%4 >= 2: N += 1 E.g., compute the leap year adjustment with U//4 regardless of whether T is odd or even, and if U is in {2, 3, 6, 7} and T is odd, add one more. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule#The_%22odd_+_11%22_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule#The_%22odd_+_11%...
- arthurofbabylon 8y agoMost 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.
- sehugg 8y agoI 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 :) )
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- happy-go-lucky 8y agoHere'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
- d6e 8y agoDo loud noises or loud music interfere with it?
- lucb1e 8y agoI would imagine it does, but I'm also curious how quiet it had to be for this to work.
- ChrisFoster 8y agoIt 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.
- znpy 8y agoThis 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
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mycall 8y agoThere should be an app for this.
- lucb1e 8y agoMost 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.
- pessimizer 8y agoThe 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 8y agoThe 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 8y agoThe 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_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrom... (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.
- Nasrudith 8y agoI 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.
- G4BB3R 8y agoThis gave me an idea, I will try to learn this for night vision :D
- mitchtbaum 8y agoanyone 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?
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoI didn't, but I can't stop doing it now.
- m-i-l 8y agoYes. 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.
- drakonka 8y agoThis 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 8y agoIn 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.