If I understood you correctly, something similar happens with myself. Schematically, it goes as follows: if I have to go from A to F in the following diagram,
A B C D E F
and I cannot go directly through the rectangle’s diagonal but I can go on the squares’ diagonals, I will go A-E-F, and return F-B-A. Is this what happens with you?
The mechanism is probably that the brain at A, knowing it has to get to F, scans all immediately available directions to walk and determines that AE is the one closest to approaching F. That the path that starts going to B will have the same total length is a fact available in Far/analytic mode, but not in the mode that operates if one walks while thinking of something else.
Sane unless one of the paths is actually substantially shorter, in which case it’s a waste of time that feels efficient.
There are psychological aspects to all of this too. There are several routes from my bus stop to my house right now, and while they all have the same length (Manhattan distance = x+y, i.e. right angles) certain paths feel shorter… I think it’s mostly number-of-turns. When I walk straight down the street I live on, it seems really long, but when I walk partway down the adjacent street, then a block sideways, then the rest of the way, it seems somewhat shorter.
Well, imagine a planning algorithm that has no memory—then a heuristic like that (maybe with some amount of randomness to avoid cycles and such) might be your best bet.
If I understood you correctly, something similar happens with myself. Schematically, it goes as follows: if I have to go from A to F in the following diagram,
A B C
D E F
and I cannot go directly through the rectangle’s diagonal but I can go on the squares’ diagonals, I will go A-E-F, and return F-B-A. Is this what happens with you?
The mechanism is probably that the brain at A, knowing it has to get to F, scans all immediately available directions to walk and determines that AE is the one closest to approaching F. That the path that starts going to B will have the same total length is a fact available in Far/analytic mode, but not in the mode that operates if one walks while thinking of something else.
Wow, that actually describes a pretty sane heuristic.
Sane unless one of the paths is actually substantially shorter, in which case it’s a waste of time that feels efficient.
There are psychological aspects to all of this too. There are several routes from my bus stop to my house right now, and while they all have the same length (Manhattan distance = x+y, i.e. right angles) certain paths feel shorter… I think it’s mostly number-of-turns. When I walk straight down the street I live on, it seems really long, but when I walk partway down the adjacent street, then a block sideways, then the rest of the way, it seems somewhat shorter.
Well, imagine a planning algorithm that has no memory—then a heuristic like that (maybe with some amount of randomness to avoid cycles and such) might be your best bet.
Yes! That probably explains it better than mine.