[f42z]

A substantial group that memorizes a foreign-language (to many) text are Muslim huffaz, who commit the entire Koran to memory. They'd make a good comparison group, given their large numbers, ethnic heterogeneity and worldwide distribution.

[ketralnis]

Or The Knowledge, where London cab drivers have to memorise the whole of London’s streets

[gumby]

It is well attested that licensed London taxicab drivers (those with “the knowledge”) do in fact end up with different brain structure.

I haven’t seen any studies of what they might give up in the process, though it does involve a lot of sitting.

Example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memor...

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Wow. I didn't know about that.

Kind of casts the whole dispute with Uber thing into a whole different light, doesn't it?

[gumby]

Does it? A machine can indeed do a better job (in the sense of requiring negligible training) of knowing all the streets and democratized “the knowledge” which previously was the purview of a small guild.

I am sorry for their sunk cost, but really minicabs+gps and now uber/Lyft et al are as good, or would be if taxis didn’t have a pick up monopoly.

[Pamar]

From previous articles on "the knowledge" I believe that no, a machine cannot really do "better" or not yet, at least.

IIRC at the exam you could get questions like "The passenger tells you that his cousin mentioned a building with a bas-relief of Holy Mary holding Jesus, it was right around the angle from his hotel, but he does not remember the hotel's name".

You are supposed to know the place and the best way to get there, based on just this (also, a good number of "knowledgeable" taxi drivers go for an official London Tour Guide exam soon after, with relatively little effort, considering they have already memorized thousands of places, monuments and architectural details).

[eru]

Untrained driver + Google Maps sits on a different point on the cost / benefit curve than Driver-with-the-Knowledge.

Different customers might prefer different total packages on different occasions.

I for one rarely need the more expensive Driver-with-the-Knowledge option, especially when I can ask Google many of the same questions.

[jdietrich]

The Knowledge has a very important secondary effect - it creates a huge sunk cost, vastly increasing the downside of losing your license. Getting a green badge takes three to four years of full-time study. You can lose it for relatively minor offences like short-changing a passenger or taking a tourist on the scenic route. Hackney cab drivers with a green badge have a far stronger incentive to do business honestly than a minicab or Uber driver.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Does it? A machine can indeed do a better job (in the sense of requiring negligible training) of knowing all the streets and democratized “the knowledge” which previously was the purview of a small guild.

A theoretical machine could do a better job. In practice, we can't build anything that can reason about routes anywhere near as well as London cabbies do. And I'd say that even without knowing about The Knowledge.

Pamar's comment above has a very good example of the kind of thing "a machine" is still very, very far from achieving.

[jacobush]

It certainly CAN but a regular GPS just sucks compared to the Knowledge.

[carlmr]

With enough driving experience even with GPS you'll learn enough about some of the cases where you can know better.

[afsina]

When I was young I had a chance to meet two very young huffaz (we say hafız) candidate. They were probably around 10 to 12 years old. What fascinating was, they did not know any Arabic and memorize almost more than a full page a day continuously. I remember them as very calm and nice kids. Also for the context, there are around 77.000 words in Koran.