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Comment by ninetyninenine | Hacker News Reader

They should also correlate navigational ability with IQ.

If such a correlation exists or doesn’t exist says a lot about navigation.

An informal test:

Are there any really smart people here with credentials and credibility to prove it who are also complete garbage at navigation?

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Awesome and productive suggestion. :D It seems we already have one piece of evidence but I would add: Often the people who live in the middle of nowhere are not thought of as smart, but they can drive or walk 10s or 100s of km through the wilderness and get to their destination. While those working high paying jobs in a city often use a GPS to drive anywhere off their usual route and never use any roads outside the main roads that are familiar to their route. I for example, can completely avoid rush hour going with the direction of rush hour, by taking a different road. This wouldn't work if most people in the city were good navigators (assuming they cared of course, but I would argue good navigators way-find more creatively even when they don't care much).

I have a PhD in pure math yet rely on GPS for navigating all but the most familiar routes.

I also maintain a PhD, not in pure math, I know which direction I am facing at all times and can navigate without explicitly referencing a physical map.

How close are we to developing a representative sample?

My wife has very poor navigation skills, but is currently completing her second masters out of six degrees. So pretty smart, I guess.

But she's also really dyslexic, and we've wondered if that could have anything to do with it.

FWIW: Never met a dyslexic bad at navigation, your wife is the first I've heard of and I ask every other dyslexic I've met. I'm extremely dyslexic and extremely good at navigating. Look at Google maps once and generally don't need to again, I just keep the mental image of the map in my head. Can she hold the mental photo of the map? Does she mixes up her left and right? Does she also have dyscalculia?

I have a PhD and get lost all the time. GPS makes it a bit easier, although I always have to walk a few seconds to check my direction by looking at the movements of my GPS position.

Anecdotally speaking I see no pattern. I can't see IQ predicting whether one gets lost in a telephone box or not.

What I have noticed is that basement and lab dwellers are hopeless at navigating.

My partner is a medical doctor. She can't navigate around. I don't think there is any link. Navigation was something that I was taught early and is a skill like anything else.

> credentials

The more common stereotype is a negative correlation, nerdy smart people getting lost, unable to dress themselves, etc. I say 'stereotype' because that word very strongly correlates with BS.

Still, I expect a negative correlation to intellectual credentials: Those take a lot of work doing things that usually don't involve navigation. Anthropologists I expect to be pretty good at it, and archaelogists and architectural historians are probably awesome. MDs, mathematicians - sorry.

> Are there any really smart people here with credentials and credibility to prove it who are also complete garbage at navigation?

Anecdatum: I think I'm smarter than the average bear. I have an MS and work at a FAANG. However, I'm absolute shit at navigation. Last month, I hung out with a friend who is similarly bad at navigation and we lost the car for 15 minutes.

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