A foolproof way to get around
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- Опубліковано 27 лют 2023
- Dani Siller and Bill Sunderland ('Escape This Podcast') and William Osman discuss a question about an ingenious alternative to North, East, South and West.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Dani Siller: @consumethismedia, / escthispodcast
Bill Sunderland: @consumethismedia, / escthispodcast
William Osman: @williamosman, / williamosman
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett at The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
QUESTION: Jake Ng.
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023. - Розваги
The cat appearing just shows how the whole show has to be a video and not an audio podcast.
The cat is clearly the star of the show
I believe the cat is named Jimmy Neutron.
@@jonshellmusic indeed he is
Best part is, the cat thought he knew the answer and remained smugly silent. Oh wait that was Tom....
wtb "attention seeking foreground cat" zoom filter
I feel really smart thinking "wait we can do this on our earth, making northpole as our mountain centre!" And then I realized, I just reinvented longitudinal and latitudinal coordinate
Because the earth is a sphere we can just center it at Manam Motu and get just as good results
thomasbelcher6921 Well sure. But it makes sense to use the poles, either on the axis of rotation or magnetic.
As an Aussie Anthropologist, the language Tom is referring to is the Indigenous Australian language Guugu Yimithirr whose speakers are in far North Queensland, near Cooktown, not too far north of Cairns.
I know some people will get curious and that might help find out a bit more for you folks.
+
Guy Deutscher's book on this is wonderful.
Ooh, an aussie anthropologist!
A totally irrelevant question, if you don't mind: How was the NT Aboriginals' cultures changed due to trade from Macassans?
Having watched Tom's video before, my mind went straight to absolute directions too, did not even realize it was the other way around
+1
My first thought was, "Wow, I've heard of the opposite, but apparently there's a Tom Scott video I missed!" XD
Shame he didn't mention that it was a specific aboriginal Australian language - Dani and Bill would've liked that
Same!
I did the same as Tom too, probably subconsciously remembering his video on it 😅
Love the kitty cameo at 4:40 🐈⬛
Yes, and he left it there so we could all look at it's amazing profile. My kind of human.
jimmy neutron my beloved
Jumpscare
*catmeo
*catmeow
I'm totally going to incorporate "mental cholesterol" into my vocabulary. Thanks, Tom!
isn't that also hov it is done i Discworld.
"Cardinal directions within the Discworld are not given as North, South, East and West, but rather as directions relating to the disc itself: Hubward (towards the centre), Rimward (away from the centre) and to a lesser extent, turnwise (direction of the disc's rotation) and widdershins (against the direction of the disc's rotation)."
This is what came to mind immediately on hearing the question. I wonder if Sir Terry heard of this as inspiration, or came up with it by himself. I guess the saying is true, no such thing as a new idea
@@circularrobert I mean, this just makes immediate sense when your world is a disc
Dibs on the bandname "Tom Scott and the Mental Cholesterols". Tom already knows how to sing, I'll gladly take up bass.
an AI sings "BRAINBLOCKAGE" by Tom Scott and the Mental Cholesterols
that'd be sweet
That's just The Technical Difficulties.
@@ArifRWinandar when are we going to see a return of The Technical Difficulties?
On Guam, where I'm from, the CHamoru language used to use four directions other than NSEW; they were lågu, håya, kåttan, and luchan, corresponding to "seaward", "inland", "right of seaward", and "left of seaward", respectively. I think it's an awesome linguistic feature
Nice! I thought of almost exactly that system when I heard the question. If I remember correctly, there is a (South American?) language using "seaward", "towards the mountains", "right of seaward", and "left of seaward". So I was only missing the polar component, I guess.
I made exactly the same mistake as Tom did when I heard the question, and then realized my mistake at pretty much the same time as him too.
I'm a little disappointed nobody mentioned that the Discworld novels use the same system of navigation as this island. I wonder if it's a coincidence or if this is where Pratchett got the idea?
Good point - Tom at least must have read Terry Pratchett.
Hubwards, rimwards, turnwise and widdershins.
I solved this way too quickly because of Terry Pratchetts discworld novels: hubward, rimward, turnwise and widdershins...
It's really educational once you find out how ludicrously many details are based on or inspired by real life stuff.
@@Call-me-Al In Pratchett, just think that everything is.
I wasnt sure but I immediately thought: is this a sort of Discworld situation?
I got this one right away because I used to navigate similarly. I grew up on the slope of one mountain range with another one visible off in the distance, big flat inland seabed in between, and my reference frame was in relation to the mountains because almost everything I did stayed between them. Really threw me for a while when I moved across the country and the mountains were in the wrong places, took ages to get my mental map oriented to the same language everyone else used.
2:16 Dani was on the right track! "But circles is another way that that could potentially be a thing, if everything is just built in circles. Then going in straight compass points, not particularly helpful."
All I can think about is the giant cat that's about to eat William as he's calmly describing polar coordinates.
Funny that, North-South-East-West are also Polar coordinates, it's just that when you're far away from the Poles they feel like Cartesian Coordinates, say you were standing a few metres from the North Pole, it would be obvious that North and South are simply further or closer to the pole, and East and West are Clockwise and Counterclockwise
You reminded me of the Czech play "Dobytí severního pólu" ("Conquer of the North Pole") which has the popular quote "I'm going north... aaand south!"
Will's cat in frame is hilarious
This may have been the inspiration for Terry Pratchett and his Discworld.
Right? First thing my mind went to when he mentioned small island was Hubward/Rimward & Turnwise/Widdershins!
It wasn't. Pratchett's Discworld is based on European and Hindu maps / myths depicting the world as a flat disc or hemisphere resting on the back of elephants standing on a turtle. Those were known in Europe more than 300 years before any Europeans made it to Papua New Guinea.
@@RFC-3514 yeah, but Pratchett describes the system of coordinates on the Discworld precisely like this. Either its obvious system for circular maps, or he might be inspired in this regard. Also Pratchett draws his inspiration for his books from many more cultures.
I thought of the answer immediately since I've heard Hawaiian uses something similar (at least toward the ocean and towards the center of the island / volcanic mountain; not sure about clockwise/counterclockwise). Presumably it's somewhat common on volcanic islands.
It's also fairly common around Washington D.C. . Interstate 495 ('The Beltway') forms a complete circle around D.C., and people often refer to 'inner loop' and 'outer loop' for clockwise and [counter/anti]clockwise, respectively.
"Small" and "volcanic" were the big clues. I came up with left/right (facing the ocean) and uphill/downhill.
I, too, had "Hawaiian has only two cardinal directions: towards the mountain and towards the sea" in my mental cholesterol.
@@JimC When they said 'small' I thought they just knew everywhere on the island. So like, instead of directions they just used positions for everything. 'I'm getting drunk on the big rock near John's house, then we're going to the mango trees, then we'll go to the bush that looks sort of like boobs.' and everyone would immediately know where you're headed anyway.
Yep! When I lived in Hawaii people often used "Mauka" and "Makai" in conjunction with well known landmarks or places and some amount of distance. E.g. "'Ey brah, where you live?" | "I stay about tree (3) blocks mauka of Liliha Bakery". It's very intuitive and makes sense when most cardinal directions are surrounded by impassible nature. That's contemporary local/pidgin usage though, not sure how actual Hawaiian language works out.
When I first visited Thessaloniki (a big Greek city built on hills surrounding a central bay) I was surprised to learn they have something similar going on. For them the two main directions were DOWN (towards the bay) and UP (away from the bay), which would also change in a polar way depending on where in the city you were. Only if UP and DOWN were not enough they would use left or right to give directions.
I guess the system is not that different from ours. Where we center it around the north pole, they center it around their volcano. Then their 'south pole' would be somewhere northeast of Brazil. Do they have something that's similar in function as our prime meridian?
Only in the sense that no radial coordinate systems are that different from each other. Their system doesn't match the movement of the Sun or stars, and stops working if they travel too far and lose sight of the volcano. Also, if their "outwards" word really means "towards the coastline" (as mentioned in the video) and not "away from the volcano" (which would make more sense), it becomes useless for sea travel, even _within_ sight of the volcano.
William finally using that engineering knowledge, bringing out "polar coordinates"
This is also used in Diskworld by Terry Pratchett. Because the world is a disk the directions are instead Hubward, Rimward, Turnwise and Widdershins.
Tom is the spirit animal of, like, half of all academicians.
Like Terry Pratchett's Discworld which uses rimward, hubward, turnwise and widdershins.
Also Black Rock City, Nevada where Burning man is held is laid out like a clock with concentric circle roads. The circular roads start at the Esplanade but then go outwards with words that follow some theme but first road starting with A, next starting with B, etc. The spokes of the clock are numbered like times every 15 minutes from 2:00 to 10:00. The whole thing is at an angle, so North is a meaningless direction. You navigate by street names when you're in the city and by landmarks on the playa.
I have seen the video Tom made about that. I immediately thought of that, but recognized it as the reverse. When Tom said he had done a video on this, I was very confused.
I'm so glad someone relates. I spent several minutes wondering if I didn't miss a follow-up on the original video, until Tom finally realized he got it wrong and I rolled my eyes really hard :D
Literally my first thought "I think I've seen the Tom Scott video in this, wait this is a Tom Scott channel"
_"Mental Cholesterols"_ I am *TOTALLY* stealing that one!!!
This is really interesting because it’s the same way bees communicate the locations of things in relation to their hive. Their “waggle dance” tells 2 things: distance from the hive and angle away from the sun!
Something similar on Oahu, Hawaii. We use Makai for closer to the ocean, Mauka for closer to the mountain, Diamond Head for things closer to Diamond Head volcano - typically cardinally East, and Ewa for things closer to Ewa Beach - typically cardinally West. But it is fairly relative.
this channel is so underrated, its great
Travel around the Milky Way should totally be in cylindrical coordinates: "toward/away from the galactic center", "in the direction of / against the average galactic rotation" and "right-/left-hand rule perpendicular to average galactic rotation".
Love William's cat!
Watching Tom Scott videos is a common source of mental cholesterol; I'm ok with that!
"Brain Clogged With Mental Cholesterol" is the best phrase I've heard this decade - You're legend Tom!!
In Hawai`i there's similar terminology since all the islands have tall volcanic peaks or ridgelines. "Mauka" means "towards the mountain(s)" and "makai" means "towards the water".
Similarly they also use "windward" and "leeward" pertaining to the prevailing winds so the north/eastern side of the island gets more rain versus the south/western side which tends to be more arid.
As soon as I heard the question I remember seeing a video about this, funny that it was a Tom Scott video
That was the only possible answer I could think of, but maybe that was just me?
Any time Dani and Bill are on it's an absolute treat. Love their sense of humor. Their podcast is great too, and I was only introduced to it because of Lateral, so thanks for that!
While navigating a spiral galaxy one can use coreward, rimward, spinward, and anti-spinward in a similar fashion. In orbit one would use prograde, retrograde, normal, antinormal, radial in, and radial out
The same directional system is used for giving directions to sheepdogs, using sheep as the 'volcano': Walk Up for approaching the herd, Get Back for stepping back from the herd, Come By for going clockwise around the herd (both start with C), and Away To Me for going anticlockwise around the herd (both start with A)
reminds me of the Diskworld by (Sir)Terry Pratchett : they have Hubward(towards the center), rimward(towards the edge), turnwise and Windershins(clockwise and counterclockwise)
Pratchett's Discworld uses this system as well.
In Hawaiʻi we often give local directions as “Mauka” (inland/upland), “Makai” (seaward/towards the sea), and Leeward-/Windward-side, referring to the typical trade wind direction sides of the island. It works fine until you get to the saddleback areas between mountain ranges in the middle of an island when multiple directions are simultaneously equally mauka or
makai.
See, I initially thought that this would be a variant on the Hawai'ian system of mauka and makai, that is to say when giving directions you tell someone whether they should be going "up the mountain" or "towards the sea," both terms which are used instead of (or in addition to...nowadays, anyway) N, S, E, W. But then I remembered that recent evidence shows that the Melanesians (inhabitants of PNG, among other places) and Polynesians (ancestors of Hawai'ians) actually are pretty different (genetically and culturally), tracing their origins to different places, so if this was the case, it would have to be because both cultures developed the same system separately (which is possible, but not so likely).
Manam Pile is, indeed, related to Polynesian langauges; they are both in the Oceanic branch of Austronesian. Ethnic grouping and linguistic grouping don't really care about each other. Malagasy, spoken on Madagascar, is Austronesian, too. And New Guinea is home to many, many unrelated language families, so it's not wild to think a nearby island might be home to a language from a family you know well :)
Hubwards, rimwards, turnwise and widdershins.
The directions on Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
come to think of it that's the same with NSEW directions, it's just that we picked the north pole a center instead of a volcano
I made the same mistake you did Tom! And didn't realize my mistake until you pointed it out. I can't beat the master. Also I love trying to figure these questions out with the contestants, the show is a really good concept.
I went through the exact same thought process as Tom in almost the same exact moments.😆
When Tom said he did a video on it I was surprised there was one of his linguistics videos I’ve not seen and literally thought of the video he was confused by and went oh no that’s the opposite and was so confused what he was thinking
But the center coordinate thing crops up in several island languages, so it was completely plausible he'd run across it doing the reading that went into making the absolute directions video.
So, basically, hubwards, rimwards, turnwise and widdershins? Got it!
In Hawai'i, the four directions are Mauka (away from the ocean), Makai (toward the ocean), Windward (toward the trade winds, NE in our case) and Leeward (away from the trade winds, SW). These term are still in common usage and used in current government documents.
I remember seeing this language on a NACLO puzzle so I knew it right away
I really thought more Tom Scott fans would be instantly familiar with the Discworld books!
I'm pretty sure that anyone who likes the Tech Diff humour will love Terry Pratchett's books.
Got this one after the volcano in the middle was mentioned, but it isn't so different to NSEW when you remember that's for sphere instead of their cone.
Hubwards, Rimwards, Turnwise and Widdershins
It’s like Discworld!
I've often thought it would be helpful if stations on the Circle Line labelled their platforms as "Clockwise" or "Anticlockwise" rather than "Eastbound" or "Westbound".
Got this immediately because it's how Discworld does it, too. Got your Hubwards, Rimwards, Turnwise, and Widdershins
Well, a lifelong interest in linguistics means that I know the answer to this one immediately. _Through the Language Glass_ is a book I strongly recommend.
NSWE system is also a polar coordinate system...
The other thing is, in that same video, Tom mentions that Hawaii I think(?) uses "towards the mountain" and "away from the mountain" as well. Or something like that. Volcano? Point is, kinda.
Just like Discworld's Hubwards, Rimwards, Turnwise, and Widdershins. I wonder if Terry Pratchett had heard of this, or if the idea is just so sensible when you live on a circle.
Don't worry Tom, I was thinking the same sort of thing.
🤔👍
You see something similar in some science fiction, with the directions rimward, coreward, spinward and trailing in reference to the center of the galaxy and its spin.
3:03
OOOOh i remeber this its was his video about language features and how some languages ONLY use NESW and not left or right.
That is similar to how many people will navigate Vienna, Austria...
I knew the answer immediately, and I'm pretty sure Tom mentioned it in one of his videos too (or I might bethinking of QI). Or Discworld, of course.
0:16 I don't think I've seen this video before... but I'm pretty sure a lot of island languages (particularly in languages used on a single large but very isolated island) use something that translates to upwards or inwards for towards the center of the island and outwards or downwards for away from the island; and with the wind or against the wind (because the general wind direction is rather stable).
Interestingly there's also also languages used on tiny archipelago nations that do not use relative directions like "left" and "right" but use only cardinal directions (NSEW) for everything. So they would say they have something in their west pocket or east pocket of they turn around; and because of this extensive use of cardinal directions in their language and culture the speakers have a very good sense of direction and will generally be able to point out any cardinal direction with less than 10 degrees error even when indoors. I'm pretty sure in many of these languages, the only relative directions they have are away from or towards the center of the island; which is only used when near or on an island.
4:00 I must have some of the same brain cholesterol as Tom 😅
Technically, north/south/east/west _are_ are form of polar coordinates, just for a globe shape. It's just angles, not linear distance. East-west are around the pole, and north-south are like the radius of PCS.
Discworld direction setting
Now unnecessarily wondering, if they refer to Cardinal Volcano versus True Volcano, LoL. But it is reminiscent of how they call out relative coordinates in Star Trek : TNG -- Bearing (i.e how far to turn your head) and Mark (tilt your gaze down or up)-- at least that's how i recall it. Please correct me if I am wrong.
a brain so full of information that it's actually become smooth
My first thought was "I know this", followed by "Wait, I know this from a Tom Scott video", followed by "wait that ain't right" at the same moment Tom realized
rimward, hubward, turnwise(deiseal) and widdershins per terry pratchett
The Discworld does this canonically
To be fair, north south east and west are almost polar coordinates as well. North and south give r, east and west corresponding to theta
Tom confused not only himself, but me as well.
I remembered his video about the languages that DOES ONLY the cardinal directions, and I understood the question correctly, so I was like... when did he make a video about this reverse thing??
My initial guess is that they use "to the volcano" and "to the sea" and CW/CCW around the volcano.
East = Spinward = Counter clockwise (on earth)
West = anti-spinward = clockwise (on earth)
North = right hand rule for the spin
South = opposite of north
Altitude = distance from center point of spin on planets or distance from axis of spin in other structures
North and south are totally useful and core to the most intuitive coordinate system in space.
I'm getting shades of Terry Pratchett & Discworld
Inland - north
Outland - south
Clockwise, counterclockwise - west and east
With the north pole being the top of the volcano.
5:55 that's funnier than it sounds cause if you go in space, the better navigational system would be Close to sun, Away from sun, Clockwise, and Anti-clockwise from the sun
Guys, it's like Discworld: there's hubwards, rimwards, turnwise and withershins
I am reminded of the late great Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld, in which the cardinal directions were (from memory) hubwards, rimwards, turn-wise and widdershins. I expect Pterry took inspiration from such a culture, rather than that they took it from him.
Sounds like the discworld novels
cat!
My first guess was "Because no one lives there." But I guess it wasn't a trick question after all! Hah.
4:55 - Cat!
I guessed that the island was both on the equator and the international date line, but after thinking about it, the cardinal directions would still work there, huh?
If you think about, our cardinal directions are exactly the same, but on a global scale.
I mean it's just discworld co-ordinates;
Hubward, rimward, turnwise and widdershins
I made the same mistake as tom, except I was reading the question at the same time as we both thought of his video, and I was like "Oh that's the wrong way around"
RIP tom
I’m officially letting Tom know that I Pam stealing “mental cholesterol,” thanks.✌️
I was like "oh I'm sure I've heard about this" then realised it was in a Tom scott video. Then he said he made a video about it and we all felt smug.... Until we didn't
Ok, now I'm trying to find Tom's video about these absolute directions to feed my mental cholesterol (did I use it correctly?)
It’s this one: ua-cam.com/video/QYlVJlmjLEc/v-deo.html
1:47 in his video "Fantastic Features We Don't Have in the English Language" from 10 years ago
@@andrew66862 wow, thanks for pointing me in the right direction
that's also how the words north south east west work if you're near the poles
WOOHOO!! Oh you two are in for a treat - the story just gets better and better. Peter Jackson did SUCH an amazing job as the director. This was first written as a book series in the 1950s and for A LONG time it was considered too long and complex with too many imaginary locations to make into a live action film, but Peter Jackson knocked it out of the park. Most of the gorgeous landscapes were filmed in New Zealand, and although they did use a lot of CGI of course - a surprising amount of things were done without CGI. They built TWO copies of the hobbit towns and buildings and furniture: one for "hobbit size" and one for "Gandalf size", and then were able to alternate which ones are used in which shots, which is why a lot of those scenes look so good and don't have that "obvious green screen" look to them like some movies have.
Can't wait for the next two movies! Cheers
Real life Discworld!
i yearn for the tom scott merch store, which will contain exactly one item.
So it's Discworld rules. Hubwards, Rimwards, Clockwise, and Widdershins.
Hubward, rimward, turnwise, withershins.