Comment by thr0w4w4y4g00d | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thr0w4w4y4g00d | Hacker News Reader

There is a thing called Topographical Disorientation [0].

Totally not saying you have it.

Could it be on the autism spectrum? I do not know.

I have always been very bad at navigating. Remembering a location takes others 1-3 visits, where it takes me 8-12. I have actually counted.

I am extremely bad at navigating to places and even at remembering the directions to previously visited locations.

I do not have ADHD, I can focus for long. I have always been seen as very smart. Good academic results, good pay, good at solving problems, working on the edge of things. Good at math, programming, writing, performing arts, and socialization.

I am saying these because I do not know if I have any deficits. But I always am bad at navigating.

There is one other things I am (very) bad at that other smart people are good at: chess. I have tried loosely, but any non-player 12 yo can beat me after playing chess for three months.

I am good at everything a smart person can be good at. Not at chess. I totally suck. I can learn new things bery quickly. Yet, chess and navigating beat my ass to a pulp.

I might have Asperger's, although never diagnosed. I have high empathy on the parallel.

I personally think these all are somehow related.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographical_disorientation

OP here. No matter how hard I try, I just can't get it until I make frequent visits from 'different sides' to a location. I didn't even know about Topographical Disorientation, but it really hits home. Anecdotally speaking, I always apologize to people around me saying that, "I think I don't have the location module in my brain".

Yes. Same goes with me.

My partner and parents know that I have this. I don't tell it to others.

I also go to the same location through many roads, but only once I have one etched into my mind.

I have to use G-Maps 7-8 times for visiting the same location if there are even days-wide gaps.

I am also bad at getting directions in maps. I have to orient and reorient one multiple times to figure out where I am, which way I am looking, amd which way I need to go.

I often just walk 10-20 meters to figure out which way I am looking or need to go.

Yeah, I am missing the "location module", too.

I have had this long before I had access to any sort of digital maps or GPS.

And, for me, Google Maps has been a lifesaver.

If I go with the help of it 8-10 times, I never ever forget the road again.

This is so weird for me given I have so good memory since my childhood. I could always memorize things real fast, without any superficial tools like mnemonics, flash cards, etc.

Thank-you, throwaway account and OP. It looks like "8" is a magic number--I tell others it takes me that many times of repeating to get around without GPS.

It's inconvenient for some things, like carpooling, and it can annoy close others to "never remember." Even if I try to focus on getting somewhere, attention never lasts for long.

I've tried heuristics and patterns, like "if I exited the highway and turned left, I need to turn right and merge to return home." But none seems to stick. I forget if I needed to turn left or right out of the retail place!

And this is a long way of saying I had to quit games like CounterStrike because of it, unable to really keep up with siblings and so on, so a part of my identity is wrapped up in this disorientation mode. I ask them how they "avoid getting lost," and to them it's second nature. They were already experts in it.

Maybe there is a better algorithm to orient oneself, something like when we need to print and "see all the env vars," to make it _so concrete_ (like Dr. Ng likes to say), that _now_ we can get to the heart of the problem we were working on.

Damn, I forgot about games, too.

I play only occasionally, and never the competitive sorts. I play CoD, Factorio, Age of Empires, etc. Played some Vice City, GTA-V back in the day.

In VC, GTA-V, I could never remember even the most common roads.

I always found myself looking at the map at the corner much more than the main screen when I needed to get anywhere.

If I played the competitive sorts, maybe I would discovered that I suck at those, too.

But when navigating IRL, I am a responsible driver, an alert "walker". Yet I never comprehend directions.

In the city, I always end up using the longer route than the shorter one, through more common and active places, because I know them more. I end up using the longer route most of the time. I have some "anchor points" in the city, and I always navigate through them, because I know those routes more. I don't risk other routes.

Today, I could not even recognize the route I just went through- when making the return trip (two hours stay). I had to ask around for directions. (Not my city)

Yet, besides this, my life is totally normal. Weird.

I think there was a HN post about a language of hunters. The writer learned to speak it, and because it embedded orientation they did not get lost.

It would be interesting to train our brains through some kind of mapping like that.

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