Celestial Navigation, GPS and the Risk of Outsourcing Your Thinking to AI

A couple months ago, I skippered a 37-foot sailboat for a week of island hopping in the San Juan Islands. As a relatively new skipper, I was, shall we say, “glued” to the chart plotter and the Navionics app on my phone.

Due to the marvels of modern technology, the screens showed me everything I needed to know to safely navigate the submerged rocks, the sneaky tides and currents, and to efficiently make my way toward the next anchorage.

Upon reflection after the trip, something hit me.

I realized my dependence on the technology wasn’t just helping me, it was also numbing me. What surprised me wasn’t what the tech allowed me to do, but what it prevented me from noticing.

Outsourcing Attention and Thinking

Sailing, in its purest form, is not about pressing buttons and tapping screens, it’s about awareness.

It’s about being fully in tune with all the signals Mother Nature emits. From the clouds, the water, the wind, the waves, the colors, the birds, the sounds, they all tell a story waiting to be interpreted by the mariner.

By relying on GPS and the chart plotter in my recent adventure, I essentially outsourced my attention and my thinking. Long-term, that’s a huge mistake.

And this isn’t just a sailing problem.

As advisors, if we let technology take top billing and stop thinking about the client’s story, their fears, and their real goals, then we become operators of software rather than trusted advisors.

Sure, tools can model a future, but they can’t sense when a couple is not on the same page about retirement. That gap is where mistakes—and regret—creep in. And it’s where your human advice earns its 1% fee.

Losing the Signal

In sailing, what happens if your GPS signal goes down and you have to navigate by what you see outside the boat rather than what’s on your screen?

That’s not hypothetical.

GPS signal jamming is happening now in the Baltic due to the Russia-Ukraine situation and around Venezuela due to the U.S. military buildup. But my point goes beyond GPS.

It’s about recognizing the subtle trade we make when we outsource awareness to automation.

As legendary sailor John Kretschmer recently said in a workshop I attended, “Technology makes us less human.”

If we take technology to an extreme, we could end up like the three hyper-advanced beings—Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch—from the original Star Trek episode, Edge of Tomorrow.

These three “beings” evolved so far beyond the bodily world that they existed only as pure intellect wrapped in glowing orbs. They gained infinite knowledge but lost the fullness of being alive.

Likewise, every time we press a button, flip a switch, or tilt our head toward a screen, we give up, bit by bit, a piece of our humanity.

Losing Our Humanity

As we lose what makes us human, we lose deep connection to each other, to nature, and to the mystical conversation that translates and connects us.

Fortunately, technology versus humanity is not a binary choice. It’s a “Yes and …”

With that thought in mind, a few weeks ago, I jumped on a plane and flew nearly 3,000 miles to spend 4 days learning natural and celestial navigation with John Kretschmer.

What transpired was learning how to have a conversation with the earth and sky using a sextant, compass, pencil and plotting paper, a nautical almanac, and sight reduction tables.

Beyond the math, it was a reorienting of how to think about navigation in an age when our phone can tell us where we are anywhere in the world to within 10 feet or less.

My fascination with natural navigation is not fueled by a kicking and screaming reaction to modern technology. Far from it. I’m an avid early adopter of tech and have been for decades.

But what I’ve come to greatly appreciate, particularly since the advent of smartphones, social media, and AI, is the high correlation between the rising ubiquitousness of technology and the need to stay true to our innate humanness.

If we let the pendulum swing too far and end up like Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch, we will have lost much more than our human bodies and the delicacy of human touch.

We will have lost the ability to think for ourselves. To dance with nature. To converse, interpret, and peacefully coexist with our environment and with each other.

The Map vs. the Territory

Natural and celestial navigation versus GPS and chart plotters is a metaphor for the larger issue of technology’s role in human society.

The techno-utopians will lead you to believe that advances in science and technology will lead humanity to a nearly perfect society of abundance, transhumanism, and the singularity.

While it may be comforting to some to think that technology will solve all our problems, I think we should remember that “the map is not the territory.”

Coined by Alfred Korzybski, it means any model, description, belief, or representation of reality is not reality itself.

Think of technology as the map in this analogy.

A map is always a simplification, an abstraction of the world. It highlights certain features and leaves others out. But the territory—the real world—is infinitely more complex, dynamic, and nuanced than any map we can create.

We humans are the territory. Through our five senses, our thinking ability, our compassion, our meaning-making, our ability to love, and our ability to be aware, attentive, and intuitive, we can do what the map (technology) can’t.

Balancing Technology and Humanness

So, what can you do to ensure you strike the right balance between technology and humanness?

Consider these thoughts.

1. What celestial navigation is to sailors, a yellow pad and Excel spreadsheet is to advisors.

You don’t need to build every financial plan with old school technology—but you should know how to do it! The more you know how to put the pieces together, the more effectively you can use the technology that does those steps for you (this is especially important when training new team members).

2. Technology removes friction, which is good, but don’t let it remove your awareness.

Imagine trying to balance on one foot with your eyes closed. The moment you stop feeling for adjustments, boom, you tip. Likewise, if you stop questioning, interpreting, and validating what your software tells you, the smallest error can knock a financial plan off course.

3. Your job isn’t to process information; it’s to be the human interpreter of your client’s uncertain world.

In navigation, GPS gives you a fix. But it takes a navigator to interpret wind, waves, currents, and changing conditions. Likewise, AI can give clients a financial “fix.” But you help them gain orientation of: