What's the most basic thing you can't do?

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I have no sense of direction. None.
I work in construction. If I show up to a site that is completely built, I get lost. If the floor is symmetrical in layout, I am totally screwed. It took me two full days on site once to get adjusted.
When assigned to a new site, if there are more than a few turns in a commute, I'm using the GPS to get there for a couple of weeks.
Also, I had no idea half of the people on this planet couldn't whistle.
- I have no sense of direction. None.
  Sounds like you are a real-life Ryoga Hibiki.
  Just curious: do you also lack the ability to visualize things in your mind? For example, I am able to bring up a road map of my city in my mind, figure out the most effective route between two points, and rotate that map in all three dimensions to “look” at it from all angles. My familiarity with the city layout and geography is the determining factor on how easily I can visualize that map. I can also do the same thing with large buildings and their internal layouts.
  My wife, on the other hand, has a somewhat similar (but nowhere near as bad) sense of direction as you, and a commensurate inability to visualize objects in her mind. So while she can mentally visualize a soccer ball as a spherical object, she cannot even visualize the hexagonal pattern of pieces, much less (on a traditional soccer ball) how some are white and others black. She doesn’t technically have aphantasia, as she is still able to visualize to a small degree, but I have always suspected her inability to visualize effectively was directly connected to her inability to navigate effectively. She also relies heavily on GPS and maps when navigating anywhere else other than the town she was born in.
  
  For what it's worth, I can't visualize either, but have excellent directional sense.
  
  So maybe it is not related, then. Or maybe only causally related, or under certain more specific visualization deficits.
  ¯(ツ)_¯
  
  Not OP but I can visualize great, still have no sense of direction.
  
  You'll probably have your answer when I tell you that when you brought three dimensions into the map analogy, my brain kind of melted.
  
  Sounds like you're describing my wife for real
- My husband bought me a Garmin when they very first came out, not because we were flashy people, but he wanted to know I could get somewhere by myself if I needed to . You are not alone my friend

269 comments