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handoflixue comments on Boring Advice Repository - Less Wrong Discussion

56 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 07 March 2013 04:33AM

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Comment author: handoflixue 08 March 2013 11:18:02PM 0 points [-]

north is always north.

Most areas of most cities have fairly intuitive street layouts, if you learn them. If I'm in Northeast Portland, and I am on a numbered street, then I am either heading east (number gets bigger) or west (number gets smaller). If it is a named street, then I am either heading north (number gets bigger), or south (number gets smaller).

Most named streets do have numbers, but you can also go off the building numbers.

I don't know why it took me 25 years to really accept this, since I grew up being told about this, but most cities genuinely DO use a coordinate system, and learning it makes that sort of thing trivial :)

Comment author: Larks 09 March 2013 12:39:57PM *  6 points [-]

Most areas of most cities have fairly intuitive street layouts, if you learn them.

... in the US.

In Europe, they're intuitive only if you were born there or know a lot of history. (Of course South Parade is further north than North Parade!)

Comment author: handoflixue 11 March 2013 06:19:15PM 1 point [-]

Fair, and thank you for calling me on it.

I get the impression that a majority of LessWrong readers are in major US cities, so I'm leaving it up as useful to them :)