When the touchpad is set to emulate a mouse scroll wheel while using a circular gesture, swiping clockwise is scroll down and swiping counter clockwise is scroll up. Of course, you can change this if you want:
Steam>Settings>Controller>Pair and Manage>Desktop Layout>Edit>Edit Layout>Trackpads>Left Trackpad Behaviour>[gear icon]>Invert Swipe Direction
Or just swap the "Clockwise Command" and the "Counter Clockwise Command" under Steam>Settings>Controller>Pair and Manage>Desktop Layout>Edit>Edit Layout>Trackpads>Left Trackpad Behaviour
But regardless of the fact that it can be changed, there must be some logic to why the Steam Deck touchpad behaves that way by default, right? Help me make sense of why some dev team at Valve decided that the default should be "clockwise=down" despite these other common scenarios in which "clockwise=up".
The only problem that I have with that is when Y is inverted, but X is not. It's simple to wrap my head around "up actually means down", but to simultaneously have to think "left still means left" is confusing.
In the image if you wanted to turn the character's head to the left you point your fingers to the left.
You're not wrapping your head around it correctly
"Up actually means down" is not what people that think with inverted Y-axis. It's if I pull back the mouse/joystick it's going to tilt the character's eyes up.
Image you are flying a plane and you have a single control stick in front of you.
Which way do you move the stick to climb higher in the air?
Which way do you move the stick to turn left?