311–320 of 540 posts
> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ This, of course, is the point of the article. It was so predictable that it made me wonder: who is telling me that top is good and lower is bad? The articles themselves.
Really? Before you read this article you never associated being on top = good and being at the bottom = bad?
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Writing top to bottom, and even left to right has/had advantages for mostly right-handed writers to avoid moving your hand over and smudging previously written text.
Writing top-to-bottom has advantages for all writers whose eyes are above their hands. The bit of the writing surface that's blocked by your hand hasn't been written on yet.
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As someone from the southern hemisphere, the only thing more patronizing and infuriating than this is the insistence from the same moralizing group that my country isn’t part of “The West”, despite it being physically and culturally there.
The West only makes sense in the Northern Hemisphere. I’m in Peru right now, and people talk about the local cultures in comparison to Western culture and I find it kind of confusing. They’re certainly not Eastern here. It gets unconfusing if you realize it just means White.
It definitely does not. Russia, for example, would be considered "White", but is decidedly not part of "the West".
That said, it is pretty silly. And asserting it is meaningful philosophically reeks of agenda pushing.
It is also just going to be an outdated concern faster than makes sense. Most kids are growing up used to computer maps in navigation devices, and those, by far, default to "up" being "straight ahead." Because they can.
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Gravity is just a random natural process to pick for your point. You could just as easily say “bottom to top is natural because that’s the direction trees grow”. It’s all arbitrary.
yeah it's remarkable how many comments in this thread seem to be grasping onto random facts as if they represent a non-arbitrary justification. is this a contrarian impulse or an anti-contrarian impulse?
A green flag for me that someone might be an expert is when their attitude towards answering a questions has that “it depends” energy.
The thing I resent most is the terms Global North and Global South. It seems like an offensive classification no matter which side you are placed. China is an incredibly rich, highly developed industrial economy with a history that goes back thousands of years with massive cultural influence. They are firmly in the northern hemisphere. They have high speed electric trains and their cities look like something out of B…
How about East - West? https://m.xkcd.com/503/
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Gravity is just a random natural process to pick for your point. You could just as easily say “bottom to top is natural because that’s the direction trees grow”. It’s all arbitrary.
I don't think "natural" is used metaphorically. If you had an accurate simulation of the human hand you could show that one of the directions minimizes energy usage and damage to your hand, and I think it's the one we use. Starting high means gravity is helping you move down the page, and it's also easier to move your hand towards you than away from you, and the many small movements (rather than the one big one to th…
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Gravity is just a random natural process to pick for your point. You could just as easily say “bottom to top is natural because that’s the direction trees grow”. It’s all arbitrary.
I don't think it takes knowledge of gravity/energy/entropy to generalize that things more naturally "fall down" rather things naturally "rise up". But, it's probably a stretch to say that influenced writing direction. Others have made a possibly more relevant point - in one direction, your arm/hand will block what you have already written.
I agree human mechanics is likely the reason people tend to write down rather than up though. But I’d say it’s more about our muscles, we’re stronger pulling our arms in than pushing them out. But I’m no expert so would never claim confidence in my assumption there.
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If it’s at the bottom and you put it on a table, more of the land is closer to you and therefore easier to read. Its all arbitrary, and we can all make up random minor pro/cons all we like but it don’t change that.
> more of the land is closer to you and therefore easier to read. As most people age, that gets less true. The optimum placement ends up being around an arms length away, so being away from the edge could help. But if you're showing the whole world, typically the details aren't that important, so it's mostly arbitrary.
The thing I resent most is the terms Global North and Global South. It seems like an offensive classification no matter which side you are placed. China is an incredibly rich, highly developed industrial economy with a history that goes back thousands of years with massive cultural influence. They are firmly in the northern hemisphere. They have high speed electric trains and their cities look like something out of B…
How about East - West? https://m.xkcd.com/503/