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wedrifid comments on Boring Advice Repository - Less Wrong
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Related: buy a small and reliable compass. Not a compass app for your phone, but an actual compass. GPS, your own spatial awareness, and reasonable assumptions about geography can all let you down, but north is always north.
Edit: I will now ruin the punchiness of this comment with an explanatory edit. I do a lot of walking around a large city. Google Maps is fairly reliable but leaves much to be desired. Establishing GPS location, battery consumption and occasional out-and-out wrongness are common bugbears, so I started trying to navigate without it.
The biggest problem I found was orienting myself. Surfacing from a subway stop only to have no idea which direction was which, I'd sometimes fall back to GPS just to check what direction I was facing (which Google Maps is really bad at anyway. Anyone who's ever done that "let's walk ten metres in this direction to see what way I'm pointing" thing will know what I mean. I played around with some compass apps, which are just as much of a pain as Google Maps. Eventually I just gave in and bought a compass.
Almost equivalent: Buy a lightweight and reliable spear. Not a speargun or an effective modern weapon, but an actual pointy stick. Guns, the rule of law, supermarkets and the reasonable assumptions that your geographic location contains no dangerous predators can all let you down. But a pointy stick is always a pointy stick.
This is an unfair comparison, especially in light of the explanation given in the edit.
OP's point was that GPS can frequently be unreliable. In terms of navigating without it, basic orientation is typically enough to get you started, and "smart" substitutes for a compass are strictly inferior to an actual compass.
I know my city layout, so I always know where North is. It might require walking (gasp!) as much as a block, but even that is ridiculously rare. Trust me, this is superior to a compass.
The big problem with a compass is that it is Yet Another Thing I Must Remember To Carry. If I use it regularly, forgetting it will probably suck since I don't have a backup. If I use it infrequently, why bother with the hassle of one more thing cluttering my purse? And what makes you think I'll remember to pack it on the days I do end up needing it?
If you don't frequently experience navigational problems, clearly a compass is not a sensible investment.
I have to say, I've made questionable suggestions on LW in the past, but the tone of the responses to this one has been baffling.
People pattern-matched it to a curmudgeonly and irrational dislike for modern technology, because they have never tried actually using the magnetic sensor in a smartphone as a compass, so they aren't aware of just how unreliable those sensors are.
Apologies if my tone was overly critical or hostile. It was a cool suggestion, and I'm glad I heard it. I just don't think it's a practical suggestion for most people, given the other alternatives out there these days :)
The edit does indeed change things. If I was replying to the edited version rather than replying to the original version I would reply differently. But judging a reply because it does not apply to what is now a completely different comment is an error that I strongly discourage.
Almost all of the value of the advice comes from the two additional paragraphs. Even then I suggest it somewhat exaggerates the relative value of carrying a magnet. This distracts from the probably overall more valuable advice of doing an additional 15 minutes research when purchasing a GPS device in order to maximise reliability.
The edit came hot on the heels of the original comment. Based on comment timestamps it seemed likely that you'd read it.
Welcome to the joys of race conditions. Even when you click the edit button the instant after you comment, for all the time spent writing the additional paragraphs anyone who loads the recent comments page sees the original. Then, for all the time they spent replying to your comment---and sometimes even replying to other recent comments on the same page load---they are not notified of any changes to your comment. So if either the edit takes a long time or the reply takes time, synchronization errors will frequently occur.
I sometimes realize that a comment of mine needs elaboration, or perhaps needs to be tempered somewhat with substantial argument rather than mere dismissal. In those cases where I expect the difference between the edit and the original to matter I often use a work around. I copy the text of the original then delete it. I then write the new 'edited' version and submit it as a fresh comment. (Corollary: If I fail to take such precautions I blame only myself!)