Eli5: Why do people mix up left and right but not up and down?
In: Other
and why do mirrors reflect things left to right and not upside down
edit: I know the answer, but it’s fun to watch people’s reactions to this question
Because the stimulus is the same and therefore more difficult to differentiate -unlike up and down which with gravity provide distinct stimuli.
In situations like 6DOF (space, underwater) you can easily confuse *any* direction without a relative bearing
Because there’s a constant reference point for down. It’s where gravity pulls us 24 hours a day, every day of our lives.
[This person](https://www.wired.com/2007/04/esp/) built a belt with 12 motors that would vibrate whichever one was facing north and throughout the experiment he developed a much better sense of where he was and could navigate much better.
Up and down are very different. Left and right are pretty much the same, just mirrored. We even have a very common word for “either left or right”: it’s “side”.
People who confuse the two probably think about things more in terms of being to the side of something than specifically to the left or right of something. In many cases it doesn’t matter and is a more efficient way to remember concepts, but when it does matter it takes some effort to figure out which side is the correct one.
because reference you used when determining right/left is the direction you are facing, and therefore changable
whereas up/down is determined by gravity essentially
even if you are doing a headstand, the direction your sweat fall is down
if you are lying down, your front & up is the same direction
in short, reference axis for front/back/left/right is different from reference for up/down
Falling. I’ve never accidentally made a fall up. One remembers falling down, the stakes are higher than an accidental right turn.
My left likely to be different from your left but my up is probably the same as your up because both of us are probably not upside down
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