Can humans learn a new sense?
Some Australian tribes use cardinal directions in their speech: they talk about east and south instead of relative left or righ. They constantly track the directions.
There have been projects that gave people elsewhere the sense of cardinal directions: belts and ankle bracelets that vibrated from the direction of north. That worked well. As a side effect, that made it easier to know where places are relative to each other and improved the ability to navigate. But you had to constantly wear them; the moment you took them off, you lost the sense. You didn’t really acquire it, you just had it temporarily.
I decided to fix this.
Last year, I made an app that uses headphones to make the user hear a sound that comes from the direction of north. That alone did what wearable devices can do. You specify [1..300] seconds and become continuously aware of cardinal directions.
But then I did something better, that made the sense persist even when the app is off.
Instead of hearing a sound that appears to come from the direction of north, you hear a non-directional cue sound every [2.300] seconds; and then, one second later, a directional sound that comes from north.
So rather then constantly feeding the brain with answers — which create the feeling of north, but don’t persist — the app feeds it a question and then the answer immediately afterwards.
I originally made it for iOS, now it’s also available for Android.
contact.ms/compass/
(And it’s open-source, feel free to contribute!)
Link
Sonic Compass — Feel Where North Is
Sonic Compass plays sound from the direction of North. Your brain learns to predict it, building a lasting sense of direction — even with the app off.
contact.ms
Manifold (@ManifoldMarkets)
like what the hell. how even
— https://nitter.net/ManifoldMarkets/status/1935812804117971050#m