The Secrets of the Wave Pilots | Hacker News Reader

The Secrets of the Wave Pilots

nytimes.com

89 pointsbatguano14 comments

This story is remarkable and deserves not to have been buried :(

"But recent studies have shown that people who use GPS, when given a pen and paper, draw less-precise maps of the areas they travel through and remember fewer details about the landmarks they pass; paradoxically, this seems to be because they make fewer mistakes getting to where they’re going. Being lost — assuming, of course, that you are eventually found — has one obvious benefit: the chance to learn about the wider world and reframe your perspective."

If you found this interesting and want a fascinating book on the subject I recommend We, the Navigators.

http://www.amazon.com/We-Navigators-Ancient-Landfinding-Paci... It documents a study done of other Pacific Islanders who use waves to navigate. Hawaii was discovered because islanders observed swells from storms in the North Pacific being attenuated as the storm passed 'behind' the island chain.

Islanders also used a completely different form of celestial navigation that involved following series of stars as they rose and set on the horizon. I.e., follow Antares while it is < 10° over the horizon, then follow Pollox, etc until you reach Papeete.

When I moved to Southern California I had GPS nav in my car. Being new to the area I used it on every trip. After a year or so I realized I still had no idea how to get to anywhere.

I like to use the GPS to get my current position on the map but not have it spit out turn by turn directions.

If you set your GPS to be always oriented north like a paper map despite your own changing orientation as you drive, you will maintain a better spatial awareness as you travel about the city. This way the GPS becomes a learning aid instead of a crutch.

I did it the worst way possible and didn't use either of your suggestions. I just used turn-by-turn voice and didn't look at any map.

For clarity to others before clicking: this is NOT about Pilot Wave theory. It is about seafaring pilots, so don't expect theoretical physics being discussed in the comments.

This is a fairly long article, and if you're inclined to start skimming part way through then you should make it a point to read the last two paragraphs in full.

Could someone repost the last two paragraphs here? The page somehow resets whenever I try to scroll all the way to the bottom.

"Until November, when van Vledder visited Cambridge, Mass., where he and Huth sequestered themselves in Huth’s office. As they mapped the coordinates Huth had recorded atop van Vledder’s model of sea conditions, they found that the path they had taken was exactly perpendicular to a dominant eastern swell flowing between Majuro and Aur. And at places where the swell, influenced by the surrounding atolls, turned slightly northeast or southeast, the path bent to match. It was a curve. Everyone had assumed that a wave called ‘‘backbone’’ would look like one. ‘‘But nobody said the di lep is a straight line,’’ van Vledder said.

What if, they conjectured, the ‘‘road’’ isn’t a single wave reflecting back and forth between every possible combination of atolls and islands; what if it is the path you take if you keep your vessel at 90 degrees to the strongest swell flowing between neighboring bodies of land? Position your broadside correctly, smack in the di lep’s path, and your hull would rock symmetrically, side to side — in a manner that would turn a loose cabbage into a pendulum and teach an anthropologist, a physicist and an oceanographer a hard lesson about the human gastrointestinal system’s adaptation to life at sea. In other words, it was as Joel’s uncle had, it turned out, told them: The di lep feels like pidodo, diarrhea. We might have been riding it all along."

> the most puzzling detail of Genz’s translation of Joel’s description was his claim that the di lep connected each atoll and island to all 33 others. That would yield a trillion trillion paths, far too many for even the most adept wave pilot to memorize.

I don't follow the math if there are 34 atolls, wouldn't there be just 527 paths between them?

I count 561.

If you want the number of unique trips that visit each island once, thats 34!, or 2.95e38. If you want the number of edges in a complete undirected graph, that's (34*(34-1))/2, or 561.

Maybe when you account for currents the route from one atoll to another might be different than the same trip in reverse. If so there could be 1122 paths.

Psychogeography

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

Very long, but also very well written and worth the read

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