6 ms·

This effect is obvious for anyone who navigated before and after the age of personal GPS. When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn. When you

by crusso 6y ago

This effect is obvious for anyone who navigated before and after the age of personal GPS. When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn. When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn.

warent 6y ago
This is very relevant to my personal experience. I've always had a very, very poor sense of direction. Even if I I've been down a road countless times, if I approach it from a different direction I can easily become lost and turned around, so I've just relied on my gps to get me anywhere. This is something I always figured must be due to something with how my brain is structured. Just a reality of how I've developed. Then one day I travelled to cuba on a whim. Spent a week there with no phone service. Within just a few days, I had most of Havana memorized and could easily navigate it without a map, even intuit where I was by the position of the sun. It's like I unlocked a new super power I never had. Then it hit me... the reason my sense of direction has always been so poor is because I offload that part of my brain onto machines.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  This particular GPS example is slightly flawed. If you MRI cab drivers their brains are slightly different. Evolutionarily it makes sense why direction would be particularly important. My dad drove a cab in grad school to pay the bills, and even now his sense of direction (which should be relatively close since we share genetics) is relatively absurd; stuff like “I drove past this place 7 years ago I remembered it was a left turn here”. So we might be slightly off track with the GPS example.
  - godelski 6y ago
    Do we have MRIs of cab drivers before they became a driver? We need to decouple if that's a learned skill or not. Certainly there is some spectrum in native ability but it would make sense for the vast majority of people to have the basic ability but that they never hone the skill. There are people that are never about to write, but for practical purposes we expect everyone to be able to do it (after being taught). I think a lot of people attribute to "natural ability" what is often learned because many times it isn't obvious how those skills were learned. It's obvious everyone went to school to learn to read and write, it's not obvious a child learned navigation because their favorite game growing up was hide and seek.
    - kiba 6y ago
      It's a learned skill. London cab drivers are famed for "The Knowledge". You can see the physical change in the hippocampus from the MRIs. However, the physical changes also seems to negatively impact some of their cognitive skills, so there's tradeoff.
      - ford_o 6y ago
        Source? What cognitive skills are impacted?
        texasbigdata 6y ago
        The first result on google for “London cab mri” is a paper with 922 citations....this is not witchcraft.
        kyuudou 6y ago
        On top of what texasbigdata said, try searching for "london" "the knowledge". The non-linear way London's street system has evolved over the centuries has lent to some very unusual ways of getting around town that Uber/Lyft/GPS haven't really been able to supplant yet. The guys who test for "The Knowledge" have to do years of research, physically driving the best routes from major locations in great detail. This research, whether they pass or not, results in marked growth in temporal and visuo-spatial parts of the brain. It's one of my favorite subjects being a bit of a geography geek myself.
    - chewxy 6y ago
      https://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398 https://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398 I think they also studied former cab drivers and found the structures to have shrunken compared to current cab drivers but still more pronounced vs non can drivers. I can't seem to find the source but I seem to recall this from a Stan Dehaene book
- spdionis 6y ago
  Similarly, if I go to some new place with a friend or a group where I'm not the one leading, I would never remember the road. Even after multiple trips. If I go by myself even once, I will always remember how to get there. This phenomen is quite common and pretty straightforward if you think about it.
josefresco 6y ago
When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn, and sometimes get completely lost. When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn but you are never lost. I'm not disagreeing, just wondering which outcome people prefer.
- irishsultan 6y ago
  > When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn but you are never lost. Unless of course suddenly whatever you're relying on turns out to be unreliable.
- reificator 6y ago
  > When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn but you are never lost. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS * https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/12/another_apple_maps_mess_in_mount_isa/ https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/12/another_apple_maps_me... Following the GPS will not get you lost in the vast majority of situations, unless you then lose signal or your GPS encounters a technical problem. However if it does get you lost, you will be substantially more lost than if you had not relied on it. N.B. I'm only objecting to the finality of the statement, I don't think you're going to get lost in most cases with a GPS.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  I'm not entirely sure if having something or someone else manage the decision making process avoids getting lost. You may pass some responsibility for your journey (literally or metaphorically) off to something/someone else (the decision maker), but you absolutely can still get lost. For the GPS example, it's completely possible depending on the system to drift into an area without data access or precached maps. Your device you're reliant on could break. Addresses could be correct or mapping could be incorrect. Your device could lose power. You followed the directions from the decision and its "not your fault" but you are none-the-less, lost. Often in our society, when the decision maker is at fault, its those executing the decision who still takes responsibility and ultimately have to fix or deal with the decision, regardless of the quality of the decision. I conclude, it's far better to be part of the decision making process, even if you're just executing the result. Not only do you often have more context to better inform the decision making process, as the one executing the decision, you also have some say in the direction of your future.
emteycz 6y ago
I disagree. I can generally drive a moderately long route (100 km) by myself after 3-5 times with GPS. I might never learn it without a GPS that I can see during the way.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  How many turns / complexity is there’s though? Arguably 2 miles in London is harder than 100 miles in Arkansas due to the sheer cognitive load.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    That's true. I am talking about routes with around 20-30 turns (based on Gmaps report).
- astura 6y ago
  Agreed, I can navigate to anywhere in my town without an issue, I haven't used a GPS to navigate within town in years (basically, since I moved here). When I first moved here I used GPS to get around because I moved here by myself and had never been here before. If I "wasn't learning" when using the GPS then I'd still need it to get around, but I found I only really needed it for a week or so. Of course, many people use GPS when they don't care about learning how to get somewhere, they just wanna get there, thus the use case is different.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  To play devils advocate, have you ever tried pulling out a map, planning your route, and then driving it? I'm going to assume not based on your response since you'd likely learn the route after 1 or occasionally 2 times of doing that. I say that because I work in an area where GPS directions are usually useless and often have to find my way to a new location based on directions, or by planning my route ahead of time. It works really well.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    I didn't really, because I can't remember half the route that way. Usually not even a few turns, and I frequently zone out with no idea where I am. Google Maps were a lifesaver for me.
atak1 6y ago
Totally agree with the premise, but to be specific: you don't learn about navigation. This does mean you have headspace to perhaps enjoy the scenery, or learn about other subjects via audiobook. IMO it winds up being a trade-off instead of a net loss.
- reactor4 6y ago
  Not really because what you would have learned is that it's better to plot your route beforehand thus freeing your mind to listen to your audiobook.
Brajeshwar 6y ago
This is very true and now I sometimes force myself to do things manually just so I can learn. I lived in Bombay for 10 years and I know the nook and corners, all the way from the sub-urban to the tip of the city. I'm super comfortable at anywhere in that city and know my bearing, stores, etc. Unfortunately, even thought I have been in Bangalore for an equal amount of time, I'm lost beyond my periphery. Even in places I know, I rely on the GPS just so I don't have to take judgement on the better route.
crazygringo 6y ago
I'm really tired of people who claim the result of a psychological study is "obvious". No, it isn't obvious at all and your example doesn't even correspond to the paper in any way. [1] With GPS, it's easy to simply not pay attention. And if you're not even paying equal attention, then you're not even trying to learn. But that's not even what the study's about. The study is about people actively trying to learn, first of all. It's about the rates of people who are trying to solve something from trial and error, not people trying to memorize a route they research or look up or are told. But the study is specifically about discovering that choice confirmation bias appears to lead to higher learning rates, which is entirely non-obvious. In layman's terms, why would "assuming I'm right" lead to better learning outcomes? Traditionally, common sense tells us that prejudice or bias leads to worse learning outcomes. So this is actually a quite interesting, non-obvious result. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0919-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0919-5
- drzaiusapelord 6y ago
  Thank you for this comment. I see "its obvious" here and on reddit all the time with scientific papers and you eloquently addressed why its so wrong to say.
- jonnycomputer 6y ago
  Haven't finished reading the paper yet, but it is not entirely obvious that when participants are being directed on how to choose, they are paying as much attention as when they have to choose for themselves. That seems like a possible confound. And the GPS analogy also suggested itself to me. In fact, when the GPS gives me bad advice and I turn the wrong way, I seemed to have learned more from that too...
- thrav 6y ago
  At the same time, in a big enough forum, there will always be many people who have already intuited what most psychological scientific studies are about, and had it confirmed by their own experience many times over. I’m equally irritated when people label an idea invalid until it’s been scientifically confirmed and peer reviewed. Science is often about confirmation, not about creation. Many people are likely to have realized something long before a team of scientists got funded, figured out how to test the idea, analyzed results, wrote papers, published, and officially confirmed it.
gopalv 6y ago
This isn't obvious for those of us from a pre-device era. Particularly the device isn't something you bought, but instead built a "device internally", whether that's a fast-lookup or a turn by turn reckoning. > When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn. My entire history with Calculus is basically "Here's a bunch of random formulae to memorize" and I could do that very very efficiently. The goal was speed of solving a problem when learning Mathematics, but then you get to Physics classes full of problems without actual equations provided and then your memory just gives up throwing possibilities. But once a crutch works, it works again. Unfortunately, the crutch only takes you to the bottom of the hill, no more. And then suddenly, you're in a crowd of people who have made mistakes, recognize mistakes made and correct mistakes instead without an instructor. Sort of like swimming out to the ocean with water wings on and suddenly they start to deflate. That's when this starts to look like a fatal error rather than an easily recoverable one & even if you survive it, you're stuck with a permanent impostor syndrome.
xondono 6y ago
A lot of “obvious” psychological results have proven very hard to replicate.
jandrese 6y ago
However, it's important to remember just how often people got lost in the age before Satellite Navigation. All the damn time they got turned around and lost. Even people who should have been professional navigators got lost. Kids today don't get the experience of missing the exit or making a wrong turn and discovering that your directions are suddenly useless. Are they dumber because they don't learn how to navigate by the seat of their pants? Maybe, but it's kind of like asking if they're dumber because they don't learn how to saddle their horse. The skillset is semi-obsolete in the modern world. They can save that space in their brain for something novel to the modern era, like which Roblox maps are the best or something.
EVdotIO 6y ago
One better, autocorrect.
PascLeRasc 6y ago
I've been driving for around 2.5 years now, and whether I'm using GPS or not I could never tell you a single road I drove on or even the general direction I'm going. I just turn the wheel some number of times. If I've driven the same route a hundred times and today one road is closed, I'm totally lost and need to pull over. But when I bike or walk somewhere it makes so much more sense, I can actually navigate in real time and think about shortcuts or plan a route without having done it before. It's one of many, many reasons why I hate driving.

by crusso 6y ago

warent 6y ago

This is very relevant to my personal experience. I've always had a very, very poor sense of direction. Even if I I've been down a road countless times, if I approach it from a different direction I can easily become lost and turned around, so I've just relied on my gps to get me anywhere. This is something I always figured must be due to something with how my brain is structured. Just a reality of how I've developed. Then one day I travelled to cuba on a whim. Spent a week there with no phone service. Within just a few days, I had most of Havana memorized and could easily navigate it without a map, even intuit where I was by the position of the sun. It's like I unlocked a new super power I never had. Then it hit me... the reason my sense of direction has always been so poor is because I offload that part of my brain onto machines.

texasbigdata 6y ago
This particular GPS example is slightly flawed. If you MRI cab drivers their brains are slightly different. Evolutionarily it makes sense why direction would be particularly important. My dad drove a cab in grad school to pay the bills, and even now his sense of direction (which should be relatively close since we share genetics) is relatively absurd; stuff like “I drove past this place 7 years ago I remembered it was a left turn here”. So we might be slightly off track with the GPS example.
- godelski 6y ago
  Do we have MRIs of cab drivers before they became a driver? We need to decouple if that's a learned skill or not. Certainly there is some spectrum in native ability but it would make sense for the vast majority of people to have the basic ability but that they never hone the skill. There are people that are never about to write, but for practical purposes we expect everyone to be able to do it (after being taught). I think a lot of people attribute to "natural ability" what is often learned because many times it isn't obvious how those skills were learned. It's obvious everyone went to school to learn to read and write, it's not obvious a child learned navigation because their favorite game growing up was hide and seek.
  - kiba 6y ago
    It's a learned skill. London cab drivers are famed for "The Knowledge". You can see the physical change in the hippocampus from the MRIs. However, the physical changes also seems to negatively impact some of their cognitive skills, so there's tradeoff.
    - ford_o 6y ago
      Source? What cognitive skills are impacted?
      - texasbigdata 6y ago
        The first result on google for “London cab mri” is a paper with 922 citations....this is not witchcraft.
      - kyuudou 6y ago
        On top of what texasbigdata said, try searching for "london" "the knowledge". The non-linear way London's street system has evolved over the centuries has lent to some very unusual ways of getting around town that Uber/Lyft/GPS haven't really been able to supplant yet. The guys who test for "The Knowledge" have to do years of research, physically driving the best routes from major locations in great detail. This research, whether they pass or not, results in marked growth in temporal and visuo-spatial parts of the brain. It's one of my favorite subjects being a bit of a geography geek myself.
  - chewxy 6y ago
    https://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398 https://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/4398 I think they also studied former cab drivers and found the structures to have shrunken compared to current cab drivers but still more pronounced vs non can drivers. I can't seem to find the source but I seem to recall this from a Stan Dehaene book
spdionis 6y ago
Similarly, if I go to some new place with a friend or a group where I'm not the one leading, I would never remember the road. Even after multiple trips. If I go by myself even once, I will always remember how to get there. This phenomen is quite common and pretty straightforward if you think about it.

josefresco 6y ago

When you engage in the decision-making process, you learn, and sometimes get completely lost. When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn but you are never lost. I'm not disagreeing, just wondering which outcome people prefer.

irishsultan 6y ago
> When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn but you are never lost. Unless of course suddenly whatever you're relying on turns out to be unreliable.
reificator 6y ago
> When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn but you are never lost. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_GPS * https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/12/another_apple_maps_mess_in_mount_isa/ https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/12/another_apple_maps_me... Following the GPS will not get you lost in the vast majority of situations, unless you then lose signal or your GPS encounters a technical problem. However if it does get you lost, you will be substantially more lost than if you had not relied on it. N.B. I'm only objecting to the finality of the statement, I don't think you're going to get lost in most cases with a GPS.
Frost1x 6y ago
I'm not entirely sure if having something or someone else manage the decision making process avoids getting lost. You may pass some responsibility for your journey (literally or metaphorically) off to something/someone else (the decision maker), but you absolutely can still get lost. For the GPS example, it's completely possible depending on the system to drift into an area without data access or precached maps. Your device you're reliant on could break. Addresses could be correct or mapping could be incorrect. Your device could lose power. You followed the directions from the decision and its "not your fault" but you are none-the-less, lost. Often in our society, when the decision maker is at fault, its those executing the decision who still takes responsibility and ultimately have to fix or deal with the decision, regardless of the quality of the decision. I conclude, it's far better to be part of the decision making process, even if you're just executing the result. Not only do you often have more context to better inform the decision making process, as the one executing the decision, you also have some say in the direction of your future.

emteycz 6y ago

I disagree. I can generally drive a moderately long route (100 km) by myself after 3-5 times with GPS. I might never learn it without a GPS that I can see during the way.

texasbigdata 6y ago
How many turns / complexity is there’s though? Arguably 2 miles in London is harder than 100 miles in Arkansas due to the sheer cognitive load.
- emteycz 6y ago
  That's true. I am talking about routes with around 20-30 turns (based on Gmaps report).
astura 6y ago
Agreed, I can navigate to anywhere in my town without an issue, I haven't used a GPS to navigate within town in years (basically, since I moved here). When I first moved here I used GPS to get around because I moved here by myself and had never been here before. If I "wasn't learning" when using the GPS then I'd still need it to get around, but I found I only really needed it for a week or so. Of course, many people use GPS when they don't care about learning how to get somewhere, they just wanna get there, thus the use case is different.
Enginerrrd 6y ago
To play devils advocate, have you ever tried pulling out a map, planning your route, and then driving it? I'm going to assume not based on your response since you'd likely learn the route after 1 or occasionally 2 times of doing that. I say that because I work in an area where GPS directions are usually useless and often have to find my way to a new location based on directions, or by planning my route ahead of time. It works really well.
- emteycz 6y ago
  I didn't really, because I can't remember half the route that way. Usually not even a few turns, and I frequently zone out with no idea where I am. Google Maps were a lifesaver for me.

atak1 6y ago

Totally agree with the premise, but to be specific: you don't learn about navigation. This does mean you have headspace to perhaps enjoy the scenery, or learn about other subjects via audiobook. IMO it winds up being a trade-off instead of a net loss.

reactor4 6y ago
Not really because what you would have learned is that it's better to plot your route beforehand thus freeing your mind to listen to your audiobook.

Brajeshwar 6y ago

This is very true and now I sometimes force myself to do things manually just so I can learn. I lived in Bombay for 10 years and I know the nook and corners, all the way from the sub-urban to the tip of the city. I'm super comfortable at anywhere in that city and know my bearing, stores, etc. Unfortunately, even thought I have been in Bangalore for an equal amount of time, I'm lost beyond my periphery. Even in places I know, I rely on the GPS just so I don't have to take judgement on the better route.

crazygringo 6y ago

I'm really tired of people who claim the result of a psychological study is "obvious". No, it isn't obvious at all and your example doesn't even correspond to the paper in any way. [1] With GPS, it's easy to simply not pay attention. And if you're not even paying equal attention, then you're not even trying to learn. But that's not even what the study's about. The study is about people actively trying to learn, first of all. It's about the rates of people who are trying to solve something from trial and error, not people trying to memorize a route they research or look up or are told. But the study is specifically about discovering that choice confirmation bias appears to lead to higher learning rates, which is entirely non-obvious. In layman's terms, why would "assuming I'm right" lead to better learning outcomes? Traditionally, common sense tells us that prejudice or bias leads to worse learning outcomes. So this is actually a quite interesting, non-obvious result. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0919-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0919-5

drzaiusapelord 6y ago
Thank you for this comment. I see "its obvious" here and on reddit all the time with scientific papers and you eloquently addressed why its so wrong to say.
jonnycomputer 6y ago
Haven't finished reading the paper yet, but it is not entirely obvious that when participants are being directed on how to choose, they are paying as much attention as when they have to choose for themselves. That seems like a possible confound. And the GPS analogy also suggested itself to me. In fact, when the GPS gives me bad advice and I turn the wrong way, I seemed to have learned more from that too...
thrav 6y ago
At the same time, in a big enough forum, there will always be many people who have already intuited what most psychological scientific studies are about, and had it confirmed by their own experience many times over. I’m equally irritated when people label an idea invalid until it’s been scientifically confirmed and peer reviewed. Science is often about confirmation, not about creation. Many people are likely to have realized something long before a team of scientists got funded, figured out how to test the idea, analyzed results, wrote papers, published, and officially confirmed it.

gopalv 6y ago

This isn't obvious for those of us from a pre-device era. Particularly the device isn't something you bought, but instead built a "device internally", whether that's a fast-lookup or a turn by turn reckoning. > When you rely on something to make choices for you, you don't learn. My entire history with Calculus is basically "Here's a bunch of random formulae to memorize" and I could do that very very efficiently. The goal was speed of solving a problem when learning Mathematics, but then you get to Physics classes full of problems without actual equations provided and then your memory just gives up throwing possibilities. But once a crutch works, it works again. Unfortunately, the crutch only takes you to the bottom of the hill, no more. And then suddenly, you're in a crowd of people who have made mistakes, recognize mistakes made and correct mistakes instead without an instructor. Sort of like swimming out to the ocean with water wings on and suddenly they start to deflate. That's when this starts to look like a fatal error rather than an easily recoverable one & even if you survive it, you're stuck with a permanent impostor syndrome.

xondono 6y ago

A lot of “obvious” psychological results have proven very hard to replicate.

jandrese 6y ago

However, it's important to remember just how often people got lost in the age before Satellite Navigation. All the damn time they got turned around and lost. Even people who should have been professional navigators got lost. Kids today don't get the experience of missing the exit or making a wrong turn and discovering that your directions are suddenly useless. Are they dumber because they don't learn how to navigate by the seat of their pants? Maybe, but it's kind of like asking if they're dumber because they don't learn how to saddle their horse. The skillset is semi-obsolete in the modern world. They can save that space in their brain for something novel to the modern era, like which Roblox maps are the best or something.

EVdotIO 6y ago

One better, autocorrect.

PascLeRasc 6y ago

I've been driving for around 2.5 years now, and whether I'm using GPS or not I could never tell you a single road I drove on or even the general direction I'm going. I just turn the wheel some number of times. If I've driven the same route a hundred times and today one road is closed, I'm totally lost and need to pull over. But when I bike or walk somewhere it makes so much more sense, I can actually navigate in real time and think about shortcuts or plan a route without having done it before. It's one of many, many reasons why I hate driving.