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.
Ah... I love airplanes... To be clear, the issue with this is that magnetic 0 is not the same as true 0. There's a slight offset that can cause issues. So why not have like... True 0 and magnetic 0. T0 and m0?
Fun fact... there is an ICAO effort to "get rid" of magnetic headings for runway numbers. I listened to a presentation they did last year, and as much as I went into it thinking it wasn't needed, I was a convert listening to them.
Btw, magnetic variation is pretty significant in some places. It's 13 degrees where I am.
I suppose it makes sense but it feels wrong. I'm so used to having and using magnetic but that isn't a reason to continue doing less efficient things.
The redundancy aspect is there as when systems would fail (GPS for true), the magnetic redundancy would still come into okay and still work enough to get by.
Because what happens when your referent changes? Which direction is Mars from Earth? We obviously need a single navigational system that works anywhere in the universe.
Easy! Assuming the earth is the center of the universe, coordinates are 360,360
+- the current position of the Earth in the solar system
+- the current position of the solar system in the Milky Way.
In the Local Cluster, in the Local Group, in the Virgo Supercluster, in the Local Mesh
We could use one, and assume we’re operating in the field of complex numbers:
1 N = North i N = West i^2^ N = South i^3^ N = East.
And we could use the complex modulus to indicate distance or speed... or we could map the Riemann sphere onto the surface of the earth and use a single complex number to indicate location.
You probably already know this, but for others' amusement... Southwest's Pilot Training pathway program is called Destination 225, and I doub't that many prople even in the airline business get the reference. So if nothing else, they've got a branding headstart.
An even funner Southwest PR story is the Malice in Dallas. I don't have a good resource to point you to, but you can google it. it was an armwrestling match between CEOs to settle a corporate dispute. The two companies holstered their lawyers and settled the grudge with a big PR event.
Most Mediterranean cultures used to have names for at least eight winds, each at 45 degrees from each other. Greeks (and therefore Romans) used twelve, at 30 degrees.
Here's a classic navigator's wind rose, for instance, with 32 different directions based on eight named winds (might be a bit hard to read on dark backgrounds, here's the original SVG):
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”.
This is basic coordinate usage. Negative latitudes are South. And 180 or -180 is half a planet away from the prime meridien. West of England are negative longitudes.
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.
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..:
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.
North
North-north-east
North-east
North-east-east
East
Anti-north-east-east
Anti-north-east
Anti-north-north-east (south-north-east is impossible so the second anti would be redundant)
Anti-north
Anti-east-anti-north-north (reversed word order to distinguish it further)
Anti-east-anti-north
Anti-east-east-anti-north
Anti-east
Anti-east-east-north
Anti-east-north
Anti-east-north-north
I was assuming a conlang situation where "north" referred more to the axis, rather than the direction.
Anti-north-north would be more "reversed-vertical-vertical" meaning it's reversed vertical (south), and closer to the vertical axis than the horizontal axis. North would just be "vertical" without being reversed.
I don't know what you are even talking about (and too lazy to put it into a translator now).
But I know that North and South are terms that must be usable for everybody. So, especially for such people who don't know what you are even talking about.
Essentially: it's not designed as a change from North/East/South/West, it's designed as a from-scratch way to refer to those directions.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, so let's say East is "Sun" and West is "Setting-Sun."
Polaris/The North Star is in the North, so let's call that direction "Star" and the other direction "No-Star."
When you say "Setting-Sun-Sun-Star," you're saying the direction is more similar to the path the sun takes through the sky than it is to the North Star, and in the direction the sun sets.
16 directions is pretty arbitrary anyway though, usually 8 is enough and then you don't have the confusion of repeated words.
North and south are fundementally different, climate and biosphere -wise, so i don't think it would ever make sense to people to modify the same word to describe two very different things. East and west maybe less so, but dawn and dusk are pretty important differences.
Some polynesian cultures use two main direction words, which usually translate as something like mountain-ward and beach-ward.
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?
96 Comments
calamityjanitor@lemmy.world · 113 pts · 267d
I think the idea of directions came before the idea of negative.
warbond@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 267d
Walking backward is just walking negatively forward by another name
EndOfLine@lemmy.world · 53 pts · 267d
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.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 48 pts · 267d
Why do we have 2 separate words for good and bad? Good and ungood are totally sufficient.
(reference)
dbx12@programming.dev · 25 pts · 267d
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 5 pts · 267d
Doubleplusgood
Infrapink@thebrainbin.org · 6 pts · 267d
That's actually how it works in Irish. The word for good is deas, while the word for bad is deas prefixed with the negating particle mí, so mídheas.
(There are still separate words for tge cardinal directions).
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 266d
Is it? I tried checking in a dictionary but it didn't list mídheas as a word and "deas" was defined as right/nice/honest, not just "good"
PlexSheep@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 267d
The complement of good, u good, I cludes things that are neither good not bad (neutral)
markz@suppo.fi · 47 pts · 267d
Left and Minusleft
colourlesspony@pawb.social · 20 pts · 267d
Exactly, we don't need to be right at all.
667@lemmy.radio · 15 pts · 267d
Clockwise and anticounterclockwise
Hackworth@piefed.ca · 13 pts · 267d
Double plus ungood
Tujio@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 267d
I dunno. That seems double plus ungood to me.
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br · 1 pts · 267d
Plus and minusplus
droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 267d
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
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 266d
On the other hand, 8000+ characters seems kinda fun...
握草泥马币
::: spoiler hint The joke is "wo cao ni ma bi", change the tones and you got 我操你妈逼 🤭 :::
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 266d
oh you salty dog you
...(🤷♂️)
mlg@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 266d
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
Hupf@feddit.org · 1 pts · 266d
Nora@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 27 pts · 267d
Why stop at two, when you could stop at just one?
North
Negative North = south
Negative 90 North = west
90 North =east
sznowicki@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 267d
Better idea! What if we use 0 for North and then divide the circle around by exactly 360 points? That way we don't need NSEW, we have 0, 90, 180, 270!
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 267d
Ah... I love airplanes... To be clear, the issue with this is that magnetic 0 is not the same as true 0. There's a slight offset that can cause issues. So why not have like... True 0 and magnetic 0. T0 and m0?
chillpanzee@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 267d
Fun fact... there is an ICAO effort to "get rid" of magnetic headings for runway numbers. I listened to a presentation they did last year, and as much as I went into it thinking it wasn't needed, I was a convert listening to them.
Btw, magnetic variation is pretty significant in some places. It's 13 degrees where I am.
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 267d
What's the new one? I must have missed the presentation. Probably because I wasn't invited.
chillpanzee@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 267d
I don't remember where I watched the presentation. I think it might have been one of Brian Schiff's videos, but I don't remember. Here's a link to it I found online. https://www2023.icao.int/safety/OPS/OPS-Section/Pages/Truenorth.aspx
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 267d
I suppose it makes sense but it feels wrong. I'm so used to having and using magnetic but that isn't a reason to continue doing less efficient things.
The redundancy aspect is there as when systems would fail (GPS for true), the magnetic redundancy would still come into okay and still work enough to get by.
adespoton@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 267d
Why not?
Because what happens when your referent changes? Which direction is Mars from Earth? We obviously need a single navigational system that works anywhere in the universe.
SpikesOtherDog@ani.social · 4 pts · 267d
Easy! Assuming the earth is the center of the universe, coordinates are 360,360
+- the current position of the Earth in the solar system +- the current position of the solar system in the Milky Way. In the Local Cluster, in the Local Group, in the Virgo Supercluster, in the Local Mesh
In order to return, we just go that way:
LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 267d
There is no center of the universe.
SpikesOtherDog@ani.social · 1 pts · 267d
Huh, guess you are right
guy@piefed.social · 1 pts · 267d
Mars would be that way I assume
adespoton@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 267d
Plus or minus?
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 267d
We could use one, and assume we’re operating in the field of complex numbers:
1 N = North
i N = West
i^2^ N = South
i^3^ N = East.
And we could use the complex modulus to indicate distance or speed... or we could map the Riemann sphere onto the surface of the earth and use a single complex number to indicate location.
Agility0971@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
Directions from maps: turn pi at the nearest i intersection
Trigger2_2000@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 266d
Now you're talking!
PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org · 7 pts · 267d
Why stop at one when you could stop at just zero and not use a compass?
This reply was brought to you by The Lost MC.
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 267d
In emergencies when you need to use a compass you can save time by using these maximally efficient cardinal names:
colourlesspony@pawb.social · 4 pts · 267d
Yes! Now we are getting somewhere.
_NetNomad@fedia.io · 22 pts · 267d
east and eastn't
popekingjoe@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 267d
East and weast.
Blackfeathr@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
Dammit Patrick...
SolidShake@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 267d
Negative north negative east airlines doesn't have a good ring to it though.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 5 pts · 267d
How about 225° airlines?
chillpanzee@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 265d
You probably already know this, but for others' amusement... Southwest's Pilot Training pathway program is called Destination 225, and I doub't that many prople even in the airline business get the reference. So if nothing else, they've got a branding headstart.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 2 pts · 265d
I didn't! Had to look up online compass that had degrees on it.
But it doesn't surprise me that any company's PR guys would come up with things like that.
chillpanzee@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 264d
An even funner Southwest PR story is the Malice in Dallas. I don't have a good resource to point you to, but you can google it. it was an armwrestling match between CEOs to settle a corporate dispute. The two companies holstered their lawyers and settled the grudge with a big PR event.
vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 18 pts · 266d
Why do we have subtraction when we can just add a negative number?
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 263d
Isn't that exactly how computers work?
Rhoeri@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 266d
Why do we have down when we can just use negative up?
Veedem@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 267d
What goes up, must come negative-Up
whaleross@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 267d
One step forward and two steps un-forward.
zaphod@sopuli.xyz · 13 pts · 267d
And I say we don't have enough names, we should have names for at least 30° and 45° increments.
4am@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 267d
We do, they’re just combinations of the 90 degree ones.
Southwest. North-Northeast.
Theatomictruth@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 267d
Yeah, there are 32 named points on a compass, one every 11.25 degrees, you can even fractionalize it to get even more granular
Southwest by west half west for example is 242 degrees
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 267d
Most Mediterranean cultures used to have names for at least eight winds, each at 45 degrees from each other. Greeks (and therefore Romans) used twelve, at 30 degrees.
Here's a classic navigator's wind rose, for instance, with 32 different directions based on eight named winds (might be a bit hard to read on dark backgrounds, here's the original SVG):
mech@feddit.org · 12 pts · 267d
"negative Eastern countries" has a nice ring to it.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social · 12 pts · 267d
How would that be any easier?
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 12 pts · 266d
So you'd have states like North Dakota and Negative North Dakota?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 264d
The Negative shall rise again!
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 267d
Better question is why don’t they have 8? I hate saying “north by north east”.
Hegar@fedia.io · 4 pts · 267d
You gotta say "nor-nor-east" instead, that's a blast.
karashta@piefed.social · 3 pts · 267d
Northeast would be one of the 8 already. North by northeast is the direction between north and northeast
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 267d
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”.
Hadriscus@jlai.lu · 11 pts · 267d
I would not be surprised compasses were invented before negative numbers
edit
negative numbers : 200 BCE
compasses : as early as 202 BCE
(these are just from a cursory search, I am not a specialist)
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 267d
If the four cardinal points bother you, better not look up wind roses or rhumbline networks...
thatradomguy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 267d
Mind officially blown. 🤯
EponymousBosh@awful.systems · 10 pts · 267d
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."
Hoohoo@fedia.io · 8 pts · 267d
This is basic coordinate usage. Negative latitudes are South. And 180 or -180 is half a planet away from the prime meridien. West of England are negative longitudes.
MotoAsh@piefed.social · 7 pts · 267d
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.
fizzle@quokk.au · 6 pts · 267d
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.
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 267d
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..:
fizzle@quokk.au · 1 pts · 266d
Sure, but 4 is easier to remember?
DoomProphet@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 267d
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.
leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 267d
Sure, but that's usually much less poetic, North by Northwest notwithstanding.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 266d
We used to say Boreas, Auster, Zephyr and Eurus
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org · 6 pts · 267d
Yes of course.
Otherwise I couldn't say anymore: "I am looking North and my butt is looking South".
And how would you even pronounce south-Southwest then? Impossible unless you are quite drunk!
/s
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 267d
anti-north-northeast doesn't sound unreasonable, but that's being logical instead of just thinking about two directions, as written in text, as OP is
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org · 1 pts · 267d
Try all the 16 possibilities and then see how many "antis" you really need there.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 267d
In all cases, 2 at most.
North
North-north-east
North-east
North-east-east
East
Anti-north-east-east
Anti-north-east
Anti-north-north-east (south-north-east is impossible so the second anti would be redundant)
Anti-north
Anti-east-anti-north-north (reversed word order to distinguish it further)
Anti-east-anti-north
Anti-east-east-anti-north
Anti-east
Anti-east-east-north
Anti-east-north
Anti-east-north-north
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org · 1 pts · 266d
These extra complications make it even more unusable that the anti thing itself LOL
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 266d
I was assuming a conlang situation where "north" referred more to the axis, rather than the direction.
Anti-north-north would be more "reversed-vertical-vertical" meaning it's reversed vertical (south), and closer to the vertical axis than the horizontal axis. North would just be "vertical" without being reversed.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org · 1 pts · 266d
I don't know what you are even talking about (and too lazy to put it into a translator now).
But I know that North and South are terms that must be usable for everybody. So, especially for such people who don't know what you are even talking about.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de · 0 pts · 266d
Essentially: it's not designed as a change from North/East/South/West, it's designed as a from-scratch way to refer to those directions.
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, so let's say East is "Sun" and West is "Setting-Sun."
Polaris/The North Star is in the North, so let's call that direction "Star" and the other direction "No-Star."
When you say "Setting-Sun-Sun-Star," you're saying the direction is more similar to the path the sun takes through the sky than it is to the North Star, and in the direction the sun sets.
16 directions is pretty arbitrary anyway though, usually 8 is enough and then you don't have the confusion of repeated words.
Klear@quokk.au · 5 pts · 267d
Whatever, Nancy.
Hegar@fedia.io · 5 pts · 267d
North and south are fundementally different, climate and biosphere -wise, so i don't think it would ever make sense to people to modify the same word to describe two very different things. East and west maybe less so, but dawn and dusk are pretty important differences.
Some polynesian cultures use two main direction words, which usually translate as something like mountain-ward and beach-ward.
Pamasich@kbin.earth · 3 pts · 267d
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 267d
@NorthWestWind@lemmy.world
Your new username is -South -East Wind lmao
MumboJumbo@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
Other languages kinda do. In Spanish, east and west are este and oeste. Italian is est and ovest.
litchralee@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 267d
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?
over_clox@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 267d
Ah yes, our great 51st state, Folorado!
palordrolap@fedia.io · 3 pts · 267d
Right next to Clorida.
over_clox@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 267d
But is that Wast or Eest of the Missipissi River?
litchralee@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 267d
I see my typo, and it's too funny and I'm just going to roll with it haha
over_clox@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 267d
Fine choice my friend, I'd leave it too haha! 😂
Lladra@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
Why don't clocks have just 4 numbers?
Buffalox@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 267d
False equivalence.
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social · 2 pts · 267d
180° of Arctica and then 180°of Antarctica. Reasonable.