(Perfect pitch here) Hehe how is it "much more useful"? When I hear music, I simultaneously know what all the notes and chords are. That's what hearing music is for me. I can't imagine not having it, as an improvising musician. Hearing a note or chord without knowing exactly what is is?! People without it somehow manage, but it is like flying blind.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that for folks who process in absolute pitch, it can be harder to think in terms of function, to deal with things that are out of tune, and to transpose. Like, for me, I barely care what key something is in other than to get started playing.
I love music, and the best I can do pitchwise is remember a few references. So, it is like one or two perfect pitches. I worked at recall on those... hard. It takes an immersive memory to do, and it is like a little movie of that time and place. When I do that, I can get a note from a song I know well.
And I know what that note is on the scale. Good as it gets. Strange, I can often tell same or different too, even whem some time has passed, but mapping notes to pitches heard is hard.
The other one, btw, is 1khz. The Apple 2 beep. Similar memory. And both are fond ones.
Otherwise, I have great discrimination. Can pluck parts out a total mess, usually no problem. And I hear technical details well. Production, essentially, or signals in the noise.
I knew a girl with perfect pitch. Her recall of things and a conversation encouraged me to try, and it worked, but so much effort! And only for a couple, and those are shaky at best!
But, I have just a taste, and that is enough to validate what you put here. No way can I just pluck chords out of something without first getting some references. It's a sort of build up. Do a listen, tag some notes, do it again, tag some more, and over some iterations note values, chords become clear. And that sticks while I have the head space. Let it slip, and a lot slips. In that space, I could play, improvise then.
She could often just listen and write down whole phrases! Of course it was pretty great having her around. I could just ask for one, and she would nail it. Thanks!
A lot of how people manage is by feel and other cues. Or, they just do not improvise to the degree possible. Or, they do not care, instead just working from where things are at. Say, a fifth up would be good... doing that only needs a sense of the scale in play.
In any case, I do not agree relative pitch is intrinsically more useful. I would not value it that way.
What is generally more useful is being able to really listen. I do that and it comes in very handy for testing, various electromechanical tasks. Over time, I have gotten really good at being able to play sound back in my head that I have heard in the past.
On odd artifact is playing that radio snippet game. If I have heard the tune, I can often get it in very short, sometimes sub second bits of audio. All comes down to what is in that snip. Vocals are easiest. Even a bit, and the map to the person lights right up.
Or, a mechanism. If it is doing anything odd, I hear that and know what normal is to good precision.
Discrimination is broadly useful, maybe most useful in the broadest sense, I would argue. At least there is a strong case for it.
You should now go donate some bucks to Merlin Tuttle's Bat Conservation for your sins (https://merlintuttlesbatconservation.kindful.com/) ;) since they are by far the coolest mammal. Humans are OK too I guess... I have a really hard time believing any of these echolocation claims by individuals. I can see it maybe coming about if you're visually disabled and over a very long period of time it comes about as your visual cortex atrophies with no stimulation, but otherwise, even if you close your eyes and deeply focus, there are just so many extraneous noises in daily life that would be hard to integrate into a single synthesized whole that is actually meaningful in any kind of physical displacement decisions.
I didn't even know about that trope? Is that even a real expression or did you just make it up? Makes zero sense.
"Blind as a bat" is a common expression in English. Free Dictionary says it's been around since the 1500s, and theorizes that people thought their erratic flight was due to poor eyesight. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/blind+as+a+bat