Lefties would do it the opposite way righties would. We’d hold the handle with our right hand and turn the key with our left. This means that in order to use a normal can opener, we’d either have to cross our arms or hold the can opener upside-down and open the bottom of the can.
A left-handed can opener essentially is the mirror image of a right-handed can opener.
WTF? Your proof fell flat, so now you’re just gonna say “Nyah, nyah! I don’t have to prove it”? :rolleyes:
I see no proof either way, blowero.
Not to mention, I provided extensive COMMON SENSE, which you can’t find “juried scientific proof” of. It’s common sense that handedness is mostly a matter of using tools, and that we aren’t born using those tools, and that we learn how to use them. It’s also common knowledge that people learn how to use those tools. If you put your hands over your ears and go NA NA NA NA, what can I do? The articles cited earlier from genetics.org (not by me) and the article I did cite fo have bibliographies, and state that the theories are all over the place with no real conclusions. So if you want proof, go find it. Scientists haven’t proved anything. There’s nothing to cite. But I stand by my common sensical position. I will find no “juried scientific journal articals” proving that children can’t use either hand to use tools at birth, because this is too obvious for anyone to prove. If you refuse to engage in even a little bit of debate based on reason, and just want to go “cite cite cite,” at least do it for both sides. Prove that babies CAN use tools.
Your abject surrender is accepted. Whenever somebody resorts to the above non-argument, it is obvious that we are dealing with National Enquirer levels of “science”. I prefer real science to “common sense” driven quackery.
Yeah right! Babies ARE born able to do anything with their “strong” hand, and my post is the proof. This is not a “great debate,” it’s a pile on.
Millions of left-handed people drive stickshift. I simply do not believe you can’t do it. Unless you’ve had your right hand in a sling all your life.
Some people would like to think that pregnancy is a disability, too (check out Walmart’s special “parking for pregnant women” spots).
If a person has always been left-handed, it isn’t a disability. It’s what you know. It’s what you do.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Handedness is a matter of using your hands. I most often scratch with my left hand, I pet animals, with my left hand, I’ll reach out to accept something someone hands me with my left hand. Tool use with my left hand is a product of my left-hand dominance; I’d still be left-handed if we didn’t use tools, however. You’ve got nothing like common sense on your side.
Of course not. That’s not what’s under debate.
You’re correct, but the fault for this lies with you.
Look, if I came into a debate thread about whether English should be our country’s official language and said, “What language you speak is genetically determined,” and refused to offer any cites whatsoever for the claim, and then suggested later on that it was simply “common sense” and challenged my opponents to prove that Chinese toddlers spoke English just as often as British toddlers, I’d get myself a pile-on too.
Your argument is nonsensical, wholly unsupported by any evidence, and contradicted by NIH studies and personal experiences. When confronted with this, you’ve resorted to rhetorical tricks, twists of your opponent’s arguments, and the beginnings of a martyrdom syndrome.
At this point, unless you’re able to pull the mother of all cites out of your butt, the graceful thing to do is to admit you’d not thought your original argument through very carefully, apologize, and retract it.
Daniel
Skutir, why don’t you start learning to do everything you do with your right hand with your left hand until you can do it as good as you do it now?
Then come back to use to tell us that we were “teached” to give preference to our left hand and that it has nothing to do with being inborn.
You are stubbornly holding to a point that you have no experience with at all, talking against those who have all the needed experience with it since birth.
And as I said: I was teached to use my right hand since childhood yet I still give preference to the use of my left hand. Even for those skills I learned to do with my right hand as well because to do them with my left hand is for me the natural way to do them.
I’m also rather convinced that the fact that I am much more hindered by my dyslexia when using my right hand to write has a direct connection with that. Dyslexia affects among others also your capability to concentrate. It seems to me that the concentration I need to use my right hand with the needed skill to write, adds an additional burden to my concentration problem.
See you when you can do with your left hand all you do now with your right hand as good and without any concentration/skill problems.
In my opinion that means : Bye skutir.
Salaam. A
Most people don’t have such difficulties relating to people they work with. I mean, you can pull any wild-ass thing out of the air and call it a reasonable scenario, but that doesn’t mean it is.
I admit I overstated my original remark. I don’t think I twisted anyone’s words around, at least not intentionally, but I am frustrated because I can’t make my point. Often, the obvious lack cites… you can not find scientific cites for things like “we learn to speak languages,” or “we learn to use tools”. I did post a link to an article that says babies don’t show their preferred hands until age 1, with a bib. Also, most of the articles cited do illustrate that scientists are exploring this hand-preference thing and mention that the theory of learned hands exists. That should be enough for a friendly discussion.
Like many discussions, this is less about the topic and more about dopers piling on some hapless asshat. That asshat is me this time. I find it much more fun to be on the other side.
You’re not claiming anything so obvious; rather, you’re changing the argument from “is handedness inherited?” to “handedness expresses itself primarily in the use of tools. Do people learn to use tools?” The second statement contains a false assumption: handedness expresses itself in the use of tools only because humans use tools a lot, but handedness expresses itself in many other ways, too.
Except I don’t think you read Who_Me’s cite from the NIH, which contains the following statements:
And this is a problem: throughout this discussion, you’ve not been paying attention to the specifics that some people are citing. Admittedly, stories about someone’s experience in raising their own kid don’t trump scientific data, but you didn’t offer any scientific data at all.
Indeed, the only cite I’ve seen you make is to an Ask Dr. Universe column. I’m sure you’d understand if I didn’t think Dr. Universe as strong a cite as a peer-reviewed article in a NIH journal – but that’s unnecessary. Dr. Universe doesn’t mention bibs or one-year-olds in that article; in fact, the closest he comes to contradicting the genetics theory is to say that:
In other words, he’s not sure whether or not it’s genetic (it is), but he doesn’t even entertain the possibility that it’s a learned behavior.
I may have missed another cite you offered – I scanned the whole thread for posts by you, but maybe I overlooked a stronger cite.
In any case, the question looks well settled now.
Daniel
My parents are both right handed, as is my sister (my only sibling).
My grandparents were all right handed. I have one left handed uncle and one left handed great aunt. All other relatives I’ve known were righties. Where would I have learned to be left handed, other than those two relatives, prior to school?
There may be non-genetic factors involved in handedness, but it seems to me we’re either born with a predetermined preference, or it develops soon after birth, but isn’t learned.
I have absolutly NO left handed relatives. And to give an idea as to the size of my family, my dad has 7 sisters. All apart from 1, have their own children, some of which have THEIR own children.
I’d really like to know how I “learned” to be left handed!
Well then stop making the POSITIVE assertion that handedness is “learned”. Not only is it not proven, it’s not even common sense.
You have done nothing of the sort. What “common sense” tell us is that a preference for one hand over the other is somehow innate. Were it not, then society’s preference for right-handedness would result in EVERYONE being right-handed. Again I ask, if people learn to be left-handed, where exactly are they learning it? In the cases where parents correct their children, they do so in favor of RIGHT-handedness, not left-handedness. There are simply no environmental pressures towards left-handedness that I am aware of. Common sense tells us that left-handedness is not learned; therefore, to make the counter-claim that it is learned ought to require some evidence.
Besides which, you originally claimed that your assertion was well-documented by the scientific community. You seem to be backpedaling now.
Nonsense.
Um, no - that’s what I said YOU are doing. Your argument is the equivalent of “I’m rubber and you’re glue”.
But YOU are the one who made the assertion. If you have no evidence, don’t make assertions.
It’s really not common sense at all; it’s contrary to common sense.
Thank you - that was pretty much my point.
[QUOTE=skutir.
Like many discussions, this is less about the topic and more about dopers piling on some hapless asshat. That asshat is me this time. I find it much more fun to be on the other side.[/QUOTE]
How did I become a doper. If you feel your a hapless asshat that is fine, but don’t start slinging slurs around, because of something you started.
“Doper” is slang for “straight dope message board user.” You’ll see it used here and there to mean, basically, “us.”
I do not engage in personal attacks in Great Debates.