system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do we easily confuse (left/right) and (east/west) but we easily distinguish (up/down) and (north/south) ?
gpt
There is a psychological disorder called "left right discrimination", which is a very complex neuro-psychological process involving a the use of sensory and visual information, language function, and even memory. There is no corresponding disorder with up/down/north/south, though.
The reasons for the latter are probably that our basic sense of balance and direction directly involve our sense of up and down (things fall down, gravity pulls us down, etc). It's even in our language, we get up from bed, the thing is up there, it's down there... whereas with left/right it's over there, or by the bed, or on the desk, not "to your left" most of the time.