![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Handedness
Jul. 18th, 2006 08:50 amSo I was pondering handedness, because I'm working on Ice and this is the sort of thing I start thinking about.
My first thought was that being left or right handed might be an artifact of the way our brains are set up, since it doesn't seem there's much advantage to needing to use one hand to do tasks. In fact, there are a few problems that arise with it - left handed people are slightly more likely to die, as shown by the fact there are proportionately fewer of them in each age group. It's guessed this is because most machinery is made for right-handed people and such things. Then there are the problems that arise from damage to your favored hand, compounded by the fact that because it's used so much, it'll be damaged more often. And of what value is it to have one arm stronger than the other?
But then I thought more. Maybe there is a value. If you use one hand more often, it's stronger. Stronger than it needs to be for your ordinary tasks, and if you then encounter a new, harder situation, like, say, having to turn something stuck, that extra strength can be used. While if you used both hands evenly, you probably wouldn't have that much of a bonus strength in either, and a lot of what we do is one-handed anyway, although that might just as well be because we have handedness like this. But then, bashing something with a rock, or throwing a spear, also require one hand.
Then I thought, huh, that was a total waste of time, because the child still shouldn't favor one hand. Even if there is some advantage for people in some situations, it's more advantageous to her to be able to use either since her environment is unusually hostile.
So anyway, does this make sense? Did I miss some really obvious advantage to handedness? Am I totally off because there was some study that proved handedness was just an artifact?
My first thought was that being left or right handed might be an artifact of the way our brains are set up, since it doesn't seem there's much advantage to needing to use one hand to do tasks. In fact, there are a few problems that arise with it - left handed people are slightly more likely to die, as shown by the fact there are proportionately fewer of them in each age group. It's guessed this is because most machinery is made for right-handed people and such things. Then there are the problems that arise from damage to your favored hand, compounded by the fact that because it's used so much, it'll be damaged more often. And of what value is it to have one arm stronger than the other?
But then I thought more. Maybe there is a value. If you use one hand more often, it's stronger. Stronger than it needs to be for your ordinary tasks, and if you then encounter a new, harder situation, like, say, having to turn something stuck, that extra strength can be used. While if you used both hands evenly, you probably wouldn't have that much of a bonus strength in either, and a lot of what we do is one-handed anyway, although that might just as well be because we have handedness like this. But then, bashing something with a rock, or throwing a spear, also require one hand.
Then I thought, huh, that was a total waste of time, because the child still shouldn't favor one hand. Even if there is some advantage for people in some situations, it's more advantageous to her to be able to use either since her environment is unusually hostile.
So anyway, does this make sense? Did I miss some really obvious advantage to handedness? Am I totally off because there was some study that proved handedness was just an artifact?
