Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?

Comments

• calamityjanitor@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I think the idea of directions came before the idea of negative.

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  • warbond@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Walking backward is just walking negatively forward by another name

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• A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Why do we have 2 separate words for good and bad? Good and ungood are totally sufficient.

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  • dbx12@programming.dev ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Spin it further and get rid of “great” and “outstanding”. I suggest using plus good and double plus good.

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    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Doubleplusgood

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  • Infrapink@thebrainbin.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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).

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    • KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

      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”

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  • PlexSheep@infosec.pub ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The complement of good, u good, I cludes things that are neither good not bad (neutral)

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• droning_in_my_ears@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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

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  • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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 🤭

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• Hadriscus@jlai.lu ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I would not be surprised compasses were invented before negative numbers

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• EndOfLine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  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.

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• markz@suppo.fi ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Left and Minusleft

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  • colourlesspony@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Exactly, we don’t need to be right at all.

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    • 667@lemmy.radio ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Clockwise and anticounterclockwise

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  • Tujio@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I dunno. That seems double plus ungood to me.

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  • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Plus and minusplus

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• EponymousBosh@awful.systems ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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.”

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• SolidShake@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Negative north negative east airlines doesn’t have a good ring to it though.

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  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    How about 225° airlines?

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• leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If the four cardinal points bother you, better not look up wind roses or rhumbline networks…

  A rather simple one.

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  • thatradomguy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Mind officially blown. 🤯

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• Nora@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Why stop at two, when you could stop at just one? North Negative North = south Negative 90 North = west 90 North =east

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  • sznowicki@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    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!

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    • SendMePhotos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      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?

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  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    We could use one, and assume we’re operating in the field of complex numbers:

    North
    i North
    -North
    i^3^ North.

    And we could use the complex modulus to indicate distance… or we could map the Riemann sphere onto the surface of the earth and use a single complex number to indicate location.

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    • Agility0971@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Directions from maps: turn pi at the nearest i intersection

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  • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Why stop at one when you could stop at just zero?

    This reply was brought to you by The Lost MC.

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    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      In emergencies when you need to use a compass you can save time by using these maximally efficient cardinal names: , , , and .

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  • colourlesspony@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yes!, now we are getting somewhere.

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• _NetNomad@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  east and eastn't

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  • popekingjoe@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    East and weast.

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    • Blackfeathr@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Dammit Patrick…

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• mech@feddit.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  “negative Eastern countries” has a nice ring to it.

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• UnspecificGravity@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  How would that be any easier?

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• Veedem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  What goes up, must come negative-Up

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  • whaleross@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    One step forward and two steps un-forward.

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• zaphod@sopuli.xyz ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  And I say we don’t have enough names, we should have names for at least 30° and 45° increments.

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  • 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    We do, they’re just combinations of the 90 degree ones.

    Southwest. North-Northeast.

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    • Theatomictruth@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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

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  • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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 named winds / directions (might be a bit hard to read on dark backgrounds, here’s the original SVG):

    Image

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• fizzle@quokk.au ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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.

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  • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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:

    Image

    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…:

    Image

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    • DoomProphet@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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.

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• hperrin@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Better question is why don’t they have 8? I hate saying “north by north east”.

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  • karashta@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Northeast would be one of the 8 already. North by northeast is the direction between north and northeast

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    • hperrin@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      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”.

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  • Hegar@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    You gotta say "nor-nor-east" instead, that's a blast.

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• Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Do we really need West and South when we can use negative North and negative East?

  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

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  • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    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

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    • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      But that isn’t enough.

      Try all the 16 possibilities and then see how many “antis” you really need there.

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• Hoohoo@fedia.io ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  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.

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• MotoAsh@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  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.

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• Lladra@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Why don’t clocks have just 4 numbers?

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  • Buffalox@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    False equivalence.

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• DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  @NorthWestWind@lemmy.world

  Your new username is -South -East Wind lmao

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• Hegar@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  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.

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• litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  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?

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  • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Ah yes, our great 51st state, Folorado!

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    • palordrolap@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Right next to Clorida.

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    • litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I see my typo, and it’s too funny and I’m just going to roll with it haha

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• Klear@quokk.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Whatever, Nancy.

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• MumboJumbo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Other languages kinda do. In Spanish, east and west are este and oeste. Italian is est and ovest.

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• SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  180° of Arctica and then 180°of Antarctica. Reasonable.

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