3 ms·

Haha no, I think you misunderstood. I meant the underlying reason for human to have a preferred "side" is probably the same reason that life has a preferred "si

Haha no, I think you misunderstood. I meant the underlying reason for human to have a preferred "side" is probably the same reason that life has a preferred "side" for chemicals. Both humans and enzymes can be chiral, i.e. asymmetrical so I think they might be connected. Don't worry, I am not an atom-ist or a chiral-ist. All sides are equal! (except the ambidextrous master race :D )

wpietri 4y ago
What is the reason you have in mind? I suspect it's different, in that I expect the reason for people is something like "handedness makes people better at violence". Whereas I suspect chirality is more like driving on the right/left side of the road. Which one you pick doesn't matter, but picking is less chaotic than not picking.
- tomohelix 4y ago
  I actually don't know. Like I mentioned above, there have been a few theories about how life is so strongly asymmetrical but nothing concrete or proven yet. In fact, it is a bit counterintuitive because all natural chemical reactions produces racemic mixtures and only life produces specific stereoisomers. It also means life has evolved to give up nearly half of the natural resources available, a very strange thing in terms of evolution. Not all enzymes are stereospecific though. Some of them can take any configuration of a chemical and convert them to other type of isomer. But these are rare and usually an exception, not the norm. Still, it makes it harder to figure out why chirality is so important in life and not so much in some other parts of life. Maybe your explanation about handedness makes sense. But then it would fail at explaining ambidextrous people since they are definitely better and yet still so rare. Life is really difficult to figure out.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Speaking as a nominal leftie who is effectively ambidextrous for everything but writing, I don't think we're better. I'm just not particularly good at sports. Body-things take more time to learn, and I have to practice with both sides if I want to be good at both sides. Maybe I'm an outlier, but your notion that being ambidextrous is better is a huge assumption. Having a dominant side could have the same sort of benefit that specialization usually does: better for the cases that really matter, worse for the cases that are less important.

wpietri 4y ago

What is the reason you have in mind? I suspect it's different, in that I expect the reason for people is something like "handedness makes people better at violence". Whereas I suspect chirality is more like driving on the right/left side of the road. Which one you pick doesn't matter, but picking is less chaotic than not picking.

tomohelix 4y ago
I actually don't know. Like I mentioned above, there have been a few theories about how life is so strongly asymmetrical but nothing concrete or proven yet. In fact, it is a bit counterintuitive because all natural chemical reactions produces racemic mixtures and only life produces specific stereoisomers. It also means life has evolved to give up nearly half of the natural resources available, a very strange thing in terms of evolution. Not all enzymes are stereospecific though. Some of them can take any configuration of a chemical and convert them to other type of isomer. But these are rare and usually an exception, not the norm. Still, it makes it harder to figure out why chirality is so important in life and not so much in some other parts of life. Maybe your explanation about handedness makes sense. But then it would fail at explaining ambidextrous people since they are definitely better and yet still so rare. Life is really difficult to figure out.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Speaking as a nominal leftie who is effectively ambidextrous for everything but writing, I don't think we're better. I'm just not particularly good at sports. Body-things take more time to learn, and I have to practice with both sides if I want to be good at both sides. Maybe I'm an outlier, but your notion that being ambidextrous is better is a huge assumption. Having a dominant side could have the same sort of benefit that specialization usually does: better for the cases that really matter, worse for the cases that are less important.