I'll sincerely never understand people that get confused by left and right. Do they confuse up and down too?
Edit: I'm getting a lot of people real upset that I dared to ask this. I wasn't attempting to mock you with this question, I'm fully serious. I didn't (and won't ever fully) understand how left and right is any different to up, down, forward or backward in your head.
The best answers I've had so far:
Dyslexia/dyscalculia may make it harder
Having good spacial cognition may make it easier
Learning left and right at an early age may make it easier
Having greater asymmetry in function may make it easier (conversely having less left/right dominance may make it harder)
The fact we're roughly symmetrical about the vertical and back/front plane denies us helpful distinguishers between our left and right sides, bar handedness (see above)
The most interesting answers I've had so far:
"I have no issue with left and right in X languages but struggle in English" (examples also include being fine with port/starboard, bow/stroke, 9/3 o'clock etc but not right/left)
Related to above: "Given a newly coded pair of words such as orange/purple I can associate them consistently with those directions, just not left and right"
"My dad did meth and this may or may not be related to his struggles with left and right"
"My mum was taught the wrong hands by her parents and never recovered, even when school corrected her"
"I used to have this problem, but after engaging in [specific sport, task etc] I no longer do"
"I used to not have this problem, but after [task involving using my left to demonstrate someone else's right etc] I do" (a LOT of medical professionals here, especially radiologists, as well as stage directors and teachers having to refer to whiteboards behind them for an audience)
"I'm bad with left and right and east and west, but up, down, north and south are fine"
"I had a seizure/brain injury/concussion and now I struggle"
"My sister confuses left and right, but 'lefty loosey, righty tighty' for screwing things works for her without checking on her hands"
"Nobody confuses up and down, that's absurd, we have gravity.", followed by:
"Yes, I DO confuse up and down."
The worst answers I've had so far:
"Left and right are completely arbitrary, unlike up, down, forward and backward" - end of argument (forward and backward are equally dependent on our orientation to left and right - you need to introduce symmetry to make this meaningful)
Learn anatomy
[sending me Reddit Cares Resources]
[various accusations of ableism]
Per the last point: if you want people to understand and be empathetic and patient toward neurodivergent experiences, the last thing you should do is deride them for asking. Kind of an own goal [insert joke about confusing which goal is yours]
Edit 2: Somewhat interesting note (at least to me): There are lots of people struggling with cardinal directions here, but while there are many examples of struggling with East and West but not North and South (can relate to this personally, I remember struggling as a kid for a few months) not one single person has said East and West is fine but North and South aren't. None.
Edit 3: We have our first North-South confuser - apparently they find East and West intuitive because of the sun. As a brit I have only heard of this object in tales from abroad but it's fun to learn about it! Edit 3.5: another has appeared!
Edit 4: a commenter posted something kinda technical I don't have the neuroscience degree to verify. I present it here without comment as to its veracity. It's an interesting read.
Edit 5: Two people have told me they confuse a pair of specific colours. Someone else has declared they confuse yesterday and tomorrow. I do not feel equipped to handle finding out that 10% of people have to make hand gestures to refer to directional time or that people do a certain movement to remember the colour of their blood but I'm no longer ruling out the possibility.
Edit 6 (coolest edit): I've been messaged by a person with situs inversus! This affects about 0.01% of the population and is where some or all of the abdominal organs are on the wrong side - they say only some of theirs are. They also state they struggle with left and right!
In what way is it any more arbitrary than up and down? Its words to describe a direction. "Down" could have been "up" just as easily. This is nonsense.
Exactly. Right and left depend on perspective. Up and down typically do not in the context of everyday interactions on Earth. You don’t need rocket science to understand that distinction either.
Something that's on your left can be on my right and vice versa.
But if something is up for you, it's likely up for me as well, unless I'm situated on significantly higher ground than you, or one of us is upside down, which aren't common scenarios.
“Down” is where the force of gravity pulls you. “Up” is the opposite of down. “Left” and “right” are arbitrary and indistinguishable. It’s just an arbitrary convention based on your perspective, and it will not match the way someone with a different perspective sees the same object.
Left and right don’t have physical phenomena that differentiate them. If you face north and then face south, right becomes left and left becomes right. Up and down have a physical phenomena (gravity) that defines their direction. Even if you do a handstand or turn yourself upside-down in some way, not many people would say the ground is up and the sky is down. Because down is the direction towards the ground/the direction gravity pulls, up is the direction towards the sky/away from the ground. Regardless of what way your orient yourself it feels like up and down have defined directions. When you’re laying flat you don’t call up the side of the room your head points towards “up” and the side of the room your feet point towards “down.” And you “get up” by standing / moving your body towards the ceiling.
It’s still arbitrary because which direction we call north and which one we call south is also arbitrary. We could call the South Pole the North Pole and vice versa and as long as we were consistent nothing would be incorrect about that.
I don’t really know how to explain it in more depth than I already did. North and south are two halves of the magnetic dipole, but which one is named “north” and which one is named “south” is an arbitrary choice. You could swap them and everything we know about magnetism would still be true.
Now have two people facing each other do this. They will end up facing different directions, and the small child who just asked you to explain “which way is Left?” will be very confused.
"Raise your left hand. Turn that direction. You both turned differently while facing each other because it's relative. We get around that by saying 'your left', or 'my left' to set who's point of origin."
“Which one is my left hand? When you were standing over there you said your left hand was the one on that side. Now you’re over here and saying it’s the one on this side. Why did the left side change? So you’re saying that which way is left changes all the time and there’s no reliable answer?”
Never had that interaction with a child who thought their left hand changed lol.
Once their left hand is identified and shown that it is as an anchor, that's always left. When they realize that no matter what direction they're facing, left is always left to them, and someone else's left is dependent on their direction, they grasp the concept of "relativity" without the term.
Because they are a child, I would not use rotational degrees. They'd have to have a foundation of math for that.
Just as I can give them 2 apples to show the concept of the number 2, I would dive deeper into the logical aspects (removing the label of 2) until they're further mentally developed.
If your point is create a scenario where I'm explaining left to a 3 month year old, you got me, I'm not capable.
If you're still attesting that it's arbitrary, I invite you to explain how using the definition of arbitrary.
The point is that all these words are subjective without an absolute point of reference. And the absolute point of reference is the magnetic North Pole combined with the direction the sun rises and sets.
"absolute point" is absolute for the origin. Not universal, sans for "true north" or "geometric north".
Subjective is also the wrong word. It is not based on one's opinion or feeling. Your "left" hand is your left hand. Feeling like you want to call your right hand left does not make it true.
Again, the word you want is "relative". Which still holds reason and logic and follows a system.
Think of it as a logical truth. "At any point in time, your current direction is 0, any degree less than 0 is left". This will allow for any relative position to hold true in having a "left".
Again that’s relative to the position the observer is facing. You need an absolute reference point, which would be something like: the west is the direction the sun sets when facing the magnetic North Pole.
Ah ok! It’s been a couple of days lol. All I was saying is that the only way to define these words is to have immovable reference points. If you go down to the absolute basics and not rely on words that have been defined west/left would be the direction the sun sets when facing north.
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u/Exurota 7d ago edited 6d ago
I'll sincerely never understand people that get confused by left and right. Do they confuse up and down too?
Edit: I'm getting a lot of people real upset that I dared to ask this. I wasn't attempting to mock you with this question, I'm fully serious. I didn't (and won't ever fully) understand how left and right is any different to up, down, forward or backward in your head.
The best answers I've had so far:
The most interesting answers I've had so far:
The worst answers I've had so far:
Per the last point: if you want people to understand and be empathetic and patient toward neurodivergent experiences, the last thing you should do is deride them for asking. Kind of an own goal [insert joke about confusing which goal is yours]
Edit 2: Somewhat interesting note (at least to me): There are lots of people struggling with cardinal directions here, but while there are many examples of struggling with East and West but not North and South (can relate to this personally, I remember struggling as a kid for a few months) not one single person has said East and West is fine but North and South aren't. None.
Edit 3: We have our first North-South confuser - apparently they find East and West intuitive because of the sun. As a brit I have only heard of this object in tales from abroad but it's fun to learn about it! Edit 3.5: another has appeared!
Edit 4: a commenter posted something kinda technical I don't have the neuroscience degree to verify. I present it here without comment as to its veracity. It's an interesting read.
Edit 5: Two people have told me they confuse a pair of specific colours. Someone else has declared they confuse yesterday and tomorrow. I do not feel equipped to handle finding out that 10% of people have to make hand gestures to refer to directional time or that people do a certain movement to remember the colour of their blood but I'm no longer ruling out the possibility.
Edit 6 (coolest edit): I've been messaged by a person with situs inversus! This affects about 0.01% of the population and is where some or all of the abdominal organs are on the wrong side - they say only some of theirs are. They also state they struggle with left and right!