Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?
Why do we have down when we can just use negative up?
For most of human history people who couldn’t do math, or read, or understand a map, have been communicating directions to each other.
4 directions is just enough to tell someone which way to face, without being too many to remember.
without being too many to remember
People used to have no problem remembering the names of at least eight winds, depending on the direction…
Here are the ones used in Catalonia, for instance; we were taught them at school:
Though, to be fair, llevant means where the sun rises and ponent where it sets, migjorn means midday, which makes sense given the other two, and everyone already knew tramuntana, cause it’s a headache when it blows, so it’s mostly the other four we have to remember… the Greek one seems quite harder, though, then again, I’m not Greek…:
Sure, but 4 is easier to remember?
We just say “North-East” for gregal or “North, North-East” if it’s half between North and gregal. Other would be North-West, South-West, and South-East.
Sure, but that’s usually much less poetic, North by Northwest notwithstanding.
We used to say Boreas, Auster, Zephyr and Eurus
Negative north negative east airlines doesn’t have a good ring to it though.
180° of Arctica and then 180°of Antarctica. Reasonable.
Why don’t clocks have just 4 numbers?
False equivalence.
Just guessing here, but I would think it’s for for clarity and brevity. West and South are shorter to say and distinct enough to avoid being easily misheard causing somebody to go in the opposite direction than intended.
This is just the Minecraft coordinates system and it sucks. “OK I’m at the coords, where’s the–oh fuck, it was -3002, 108 not 3002, 108.”
Why do we have 26 letters? Why not just communicate in binary!
01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101110 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100001 01101100 00100001
55 73 65 20 68 65 78 20 66 6f 72 20 74 65 72 73 65 6e 65 73 73 20 62 72 75 68 0a 0a 41 6c 73 6f 20 74 68 69 73 20 69 73 20 73 74 69 6c 6c 20 61 73 73 75 6d 69 6e 67 20 55 54 46 2d 38 20 6f 72 20 61 74 20 6c 65 61 73 74 20 41 53 43 49 49 2c 20 73 6f 20 77 74 68 20 6c 6d 61 6f
On the other hand, 8000+ characters seems kinda fun…
握草泥马币
hint
The joke is “wo cao ni ma bi”, change the tones and you got 我操你妈逼 🤭
oh you salty dog you
…(🤷♂️)
In addition to what others have already said, it’d be really silly to make one a negative of the other in the most basic sense, too.
There have been so many issues with electrons having a “negative” charge, and that’s a binary situation! It would be so much worse to introduce implied favoritism with basic directions.
How would that be any easier?
Left and Minusleft
I dunno. That seems double plus ungood to me.
Exactly, we don’t need to be right at all.
Clockwise and anticounterclockwise
Double plus ungood
Plus and minusplus
Why do we have subtraction when we can just add a negative number?
Isn’t that exactly how computers work?
As a practical matter, relative directions are already hard enough, where I might say that Colorado is east of California, and California is west of Colorado.
To use +/- East would mean there’s now just a single symbol difference between relative directions. California bring -East of Folorado, and Colorado being +East of California.
Also, we need not forget that the conventional meridian used for Earth navigation is centered on Greenwich in the UK, and is a holdover from the colonial era where Europe is put front-and-center on a map and everything else is “free real estate”. Perhaps if the New World didn’t exist, we would have right-ascension based system where Greenwich is still 0-deg East and Asia is almost 160-deg East. Why would colonialists center the maps on anywhere but themselves?
Ah yes, our great 51st state, Folorado!
I see my typo, and it’s too funny and I’m just going to roll with it haha
Fine choice my friend, I’d leave it too haha! 😂
Right next to Clorida.
But is that Wast or Eest of the Missipissi River?
Better question is why don’t they have 8? I hate saying “north by north east”.
Northeast would be one of the 8 already. North by northeast is the direction between north and northeast
I understand that. If we had a word for north east, let’s say “yest”, then I wouldn’t have to say “north by north east”, I could just say “north yest”.
You gotta say “nor-nor-east” instead, that’s a blast.
Your new username is -South -East Wind lmao
