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So you'd have states like North Dakota and Negative North Dakota?
The Negative shall rise again!
Why do we have subtraction when we can just add a negative number?
I think the idea of directions came before the idea of negative.
Walking backward is just walking negatively forward by another name
Why do we have 2 separate words for good and bad? Good and ungood are totally sufficient.
Spin it further and get rid of "great" and "outstanding". I suggest using plus good and double plus good.
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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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
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.
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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."
Why stop at two, when you could stop at just one?
North
Negative North = south
Negative 90 North = west
90 North =east
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!
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?
Fun fact... there is an ICAO effort to "get rid" of magnetic headings for runway numbers. I listened to a presentation they did last year, and as much as I went into it thinking it wasn't needed, I was a convert listening to them.
Btw, magnetic variation is pretty significant in some places. It's 13 degrees where I am.
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We could use one, and assume we’re operating in the field of complex numbers:
1 N = North
i N = West
i^2^ N = South
i^3^ N = East.
And we could use the complex modulus to indicate distance or speed... or we could map the Riemann sphere onto the surface of the earth and use a single complex number to indicate location.
Now you're talking!
Directions from maps: turn pi at the nearest i intersection
Why stop at one when you could stop at just zero and not use a compass?
This reply was brought to you by The Lost MC.
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If the four cardinal points bother you, better not look up wind roses or rhumbline networks...
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"negative Eastern countries" has a nice ring to it.
How would that be any easier?
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.
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
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 directions based on eight named winds (might be a bit hard to read on dark backgrounds, here's the original SVG):
.svg){kind=link}
What goes up, must come negative-Up
One step forward and two steps un-forward.
Better question is why don’t they have 8? I hate saying “north by north east”.
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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.
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:
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..:
Sure, but 4 is easier to remember?
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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.
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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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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this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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