Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?
I think the idea of directions came before the idea of negative.
Walking backward is just walking negatively forward by another name
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.
Left and Minusleft
Exactly, we don’t need to be right at all.
Clockwise and anticounterclockwise
Double plus ungood
I dunno. That seems double plus ungood to me.
Plus and minusplus
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
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
…(🤷♂️)
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
east and eastn’t
East and weast.
Dammit Patrick…
Negative north negative east airlines doesn’t have a good ring to it though.
What goes up, must come negative-Up
One step forward and two steps un-forward.
Why do we have down when we can just use negative up?
Better question is why don’t they have 8? I hate saying “north by north east”.
You gotta say “nor-nor-east” instead, that’s a blast.
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”.
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)
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.”
And I say we don’t have enough names, we should have names for at least 30° and 45° increments.
We do, they’re just combinations of the 90 degree ones.
Southwest. North-Northeast.
How would that be any easier?
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.
