5 ms·

How would you define left and right based on these words?

• naikrovek 7y ago
  Why don't you follow the link and find out?
  • raldi 7y ago
    I asked because I followed the link and couldn't figure it out. I couldn't even find the list of 60 words, and clearly I'm not alone as evidenced by the fact that the top of this thread is the top-ranked comment. Also, please reread https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • pushpop 7y ago
      That’s an about page. If you go to the home page then you can see those words: http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/ http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/ The site isn’t the prettiest nor most logically laid out but the link to the words themselves was pretty clearly labelled (in my opinion).
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• skeoh 7y ago
  From http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/Lesson-12F.html#12-21 http://learnthesewordsfirst.com/Lesson-12F.html#12-21 12-20. right. [X is on the right side of your body.] = X is on this side of your body: Most people write using the hand they have on this side of their body. [I use my right hand when I draw pictures.] 12-21. left. [X is on the left side of your body.] = X is on this side of your body: Most people do not write using the hand they have on this side of their body. They write using their other hand. [My child held my left hand.]
  • raldi 7y ago
    I would think a true minimum set of bootstrapping words would be enough to teach the language to hypothetical aliens who might not have access to a group of humans to poll about handedness.
    • ISL 7y ago
      To tell an alien about handedness definitively, without an artifact, may require that both parties are aware of the CP-violation present in the weak interaction. Put another way, how can we know that aliens won't reconstruct an electromagnetic message as a mirror image of what we sent?
      • raldi 7y ago
        Make use of the right-hand rule, which will suffice so long as they're not made of antimatter.
        • ISL 7y ago
          How will they know we're not made of antimatter?
          • benj111 7y ago
            Aren't matter and antimatter a matter of perspective? If so haven't we just reintroduced the left/right problem.
            • ISL 7y ago
              Precisely.
          • raldi 7y ago
            If we're not sure both sides of the conversation are made of the same particles, the situation is hopeless.
          • 7y ago
• freyr 7y ago
  The dictionary starts with those 60 words, like axioms in mathematics. Then it builds up a vocabulary on top of them. Left is defined this way: [X is on the right side of your body.] = X is on this side of your body: Most people write using the hand they have on this side of their body. So "on a side of", "people", "be/is", are included in those first 60 words. "body", "write", "hand", etc. are defined after the first 60 words, but before "right" and "left".
  • raldi 7y ago
    Sure, but "go ask a bunch of people which hand they write with" seems like a huge copout to me. It's like if prime numbers were defined as, "The numbers most mathematicians say are prime."
    • underyx 7y ago
      So how would you propose to explain which side is which?
      • tftplayer 7y ago
        Use an asymmetry of the human body. Left is on the same side as your heart.
        • Freak_NL 7y ago
          Which is again, only most of time (cf: dextrocardia). Not as common as left-handedness (one in ten), but still in the order of one in ten thousand people.
        • pmalynin 7y ago
          Your heart is squarely in the middle. You feel the heart beat on the left because the ventricle is larger.
      • 8bitsrule 7y ago
        Left: Face the noon sun. Lift one arm to point at where it was first seen this morning. Edit: works where I live. YMMV. Adapt as needed (which I thought about saying but decided wasn't needed here.)
• mirekrusin 7y ago
  lesson 12 covers left/right (360 words).
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]