An older female family member uses one of those GPS navigation tools. She loves the thing, and I don't blame her for that. It is very convenient (though the voice annoys me so I call it "The Harpy").

The problem is that she has completely outsourced all normal internal mental navigation to it. She literally has no idea where she is or where she is going when using it. (except daily stuff like work).

To me this is astounding. Even using the gps as a support tool, I would take the time to create a rough mental image of the route and turns. Those things aren't right 100% of the time. Sometimes you need to cross lanes for the next turn. etc.

I have talked to her about this, and she seems to have an active disgust of performing any mental effort in this regard. She does not want to do any thinking, even slightly, for navigation. She will often make a number of wrong turns as a result, and actively prefers a few wrong turns over mental effort as long as the harpy gets her there eventually.

Funny enough, on the last trip, she made a number of wrong turns which led to a rarer drive down a non-highway. She started complaining with salient frustration about how she much preferred driving on side roads to the highway. I took this opportunity to revisit the internal versus outsourced navigation dilemma. I pointed out that the harpy will go to large highways by default and that taking the side roads is very possible if she planned her own route. She then backtracked and claimed she wasn't complaining, I was the one complaing (harpy+relative = wrong turns and wasted time). No, she was just complaining 3 seconds ago and I was pointing out the solution. 10 more seconds of hamstering before changing the subject entirely.