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Comment by Vachyas | Hacker News Reader

An interesting anecdote that comes to mind is playing old computer games with arrow keys, which used my right hand. I got pretty proficient with this.

Over the years, I (and I imagine many others) switched over to WASD to play newer games with mouse + keyboard, but this meant using the left hand for "arrow keys"

Now I can directly compare how proficient I am with WASD vs Arrow Keys and the result surprised me. I was way worse with arrow keys (right hand) even though back when WASD was becoming a thing I'd rebind WASD to arrow keys because it felt too weird! I would've never imagined back then that WASD could ever feel as natural as arrow keys.

Makes me wonder how much of handedness is truly innate vs learned.

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Left-handed individuals living in a predominantly right-handed world possess the capacity to adapt and utilize their right hand effectively. While most right-handed individuals do not exhibit this ability unless they experience an extraordinary event, such as an injury to their right hand, left-handed individuals are compelled to learn how to use their right hand in a right-handed world.

As a left-handed individual who employs a trackpad or mouse with their right hand, stick shifts are also possible, at least in the United States. Furthermore, left-handed individuals can switch-handed, bat from either side, and use both hands equally in a fight. This adaptability may be the reason why left-handedness remains prevalent in combat sports, including swordplay, tennis, boxing, and even wrestling. In certain combat situations, the initial blows are crucial for survival, especially in the past.

In fencing at least left handed fighters tend to get a bit further because there are so few of them they are a lot harder to play against. On a training night a left handed fencer might match up with 10 right handers while a right handed might only see one left hander!

It’s similar in other sports. Around 30% of top cricketers are left handed. It’s 40% for some leading countries.

The “hypothesis presumes that athletes in interactive sports are much more likely to play and practice against right-handed opponents. As a result, these athletes develop both greater familiarity and highly specific skills to anticipate the action outcomes of their right-handed opponents via attunement to crucial perceptual information”

Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7424046/

> stick shifts are also possible

Ah, let me add on to this from the other perspective.

I live in a country where cars are driven on the left side of the road. ie., the steering wheel’s on the right side, and the gear shifter is operated by the left hand.

And until about 5 years ago stick shifts were very common (automatic transmission was considered a luxury feature only available in higher variants).

I’m right handed. I have no trouble at all shifting gears with my left hand. Feels very natural to me.

I have never driven a left-hand-drive vehicle and in my imagination it feels weird. Like, operating the clutch with the left leg, and the gear with the right hand feels weird. In RHD cars the gear is in the same side as the clutch.

But anyway I know lots of people who drive LHD cars when aboard, and they have never complained.

So I think at least for driving it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

I'm right handed, but have a weird mix of "handedness" when it comes to sports: righty for lacrosse but lefty for hockey; higher batting avg righty but more power swinging for the fences lefty. I can balance much more easily on my left leg than my right - maybe partly due to muscle memory from soccer (righty to a fault, though scored plenty of goals and assists lefty, albeit ~always reactive / in the moment, vs free kicks w/ time to think) and skateboarding (stand w left, push w right).

it may surprise you to learn that the stick shift is on the other side in countries that drive on the left. Entire generations, regardless of handedness grow up using the other hand to operate it and thats kinda just normal, like with the wasd example from earlier

(although of course unlike your example it doesn't involve reaching across one's body to use it)

I'm a righty but managed to drive a stick-shift in Ireland without too much difficulty. I wonder if it actually helped that everything was on the "wrong" side (driver's seat and steering wheel, stick shift, traffic direction) -- bc I was forced to remain focused and deliberate about everything at all times. That said, navigating my first few roundabouts I found myself verbalizing the flow and my intentions, to suppress my instincts and merge smoothly. (Tangent: speaking thoughts out loud is a useful hack in many situations!)

> While most right-handed individuals do not exhibit this ability unless they experience an extraordinary event, such as an injury to their right hand, left-handed individuals are compelled to learn how to use their right hand in a right-handed world.

As a person with severe hemophilia in the third world, where the condition is very under-treated (no prophylaxis, very little clotting factor and sometimes none), I've grown up facing this issue with the dominant arm being out of commission due to a bleed for days at a time. I gradually learned to do almost everything with the left hand: brush my teeth, shave, eat, shower, type with one hand (autocompleting IDEs help), even drive a stick shift (using the right hand to hold the wheel briefly while shifting, technically illegal I'll admit).

It's not that difficult to adapt. The barriers are mostly mental because it feels awkward at first. There are some dexterity issues but if you don't mind going slowly, you can get by.

Just sharing my experience, not meant to undermine the challenges faced by left-handed individuals in a right-handed world.

I'm left handed but so used to switching I'll e.g. often get partway through a meal before suddenly realising I have the cutlery in the "wrong" hand. Except for writing - writing with my right hand is pretty much write only...

Very true, see my comment playing piano as a left-hander.

I remember in elementary school being amused by the idea of handedness so I decided to practice writing with my left hand as well. I'm not great at it but even to this day I can write legibly with my left hand from that little bit of practice as a child.

Anyone can get much better at using their non-dominant hand (if they have one) with just a bit of practice. The effect is much much stronger when you do so as a child.

Children have better neuroplasticity but worse persistence than adults.

As an adult I just practiced writing with my left hand loads for basically no reason, it's not that useful, but I still did it for some reason. Now I can write illegibly with either hand :)

Generally agreed, except for the "Anyone" - because people really are different. I'm familiar with a few people (from very young to adults) who are extremely one-handed. The other hand is nearly useless, except for holding and supporting. Those individuals will typically turn newspaper pages or book pages using their right hand (if they're right-handed, and one guy told me that he didn't trust his left hand with a fork to actually hit his mouth, so he used a knife+fork the opposite way of most right-handed people. These people are in a minority, but they exist.

Then there's guitar.. some, or actually most left-handed people can learn to play a right-handed guitar if they simply start with a right-handed guitar. But there are also some people (some of them very well known) who tried learning the guitar for a very long time, and couldn't. Until they switched to a left-handed guitar. (Why it's natural to actually use the left hand for something which looks complicated - fingering, and the right hand for something simple - strumming - has been discussed forever. Apparently that's because a right-handed person typically has better timing in their right hand, and that's why it matters).

I realized at some point as a leftie I could trivially learn to write a mirror image of what everyone else was writing so learned to write backwards. Since the motions are exactly what others do it’s actually easier in a lot of ways for me. Left handed writing is all scrunched up and annoying, and I got constant smudges on my hand. Frixion ink pens are the only pen I’ll buy because they don’t smudge at all. My guess is it’s actually because it’s heat reactive so it just vanishes on skin, but that works for me! (It doesn’t disappear on the page except the time I put a hot bowl of oatmeal on my hand written deployment reminder notes, which was a bit of a surprise. Took me about an hour to recover gathering data, haha).

FWIW, you can also put the paper in the freezer and it will become visible again, though usually not as strong as it was originally.

I also discovered the mirrored writing thing lol and it made me wonder what ambidexterity is since if ambidextrous people could presumably write non-mirrored with the other hand, aren't those completely different motions that neither hand has had any practice with?

As a kid I found it interesting that people pretty much always crossed their arms and/or their legs when sitting on the ground in the same pattern.

After that re-trained myself a few times out of interest to do it the other way around, and one goes through the four odd phases of having to focus on it vs it just happening correctly without thinking about it.

From what I remember it could take 2-4 weeks before you would just do it both without thinking and correctly.

I've been playing guitar since I was a little kid. I wonder how learning "two-handed" skills such as playing music impacts how "handy" or "polydextrous" one is.

There are left-handed guitar players that play right-handed, such as Nick Johnston, who claim the gaps in their technique or preference for certain left-hand-only techniques are informed by being left-handed; so it seems that a life-long of an insane amount of practice does not necessary change how comfortable one is using either hand for a given task.

I write with my left hand but play guitar right-handed. I don't think it had any effect on my playing, because I think I'm a naturally right-handed guitar player. Here's a list of things and whether I do them right- or left-handed:

  ┌───────────────────────────┬───────────┐
  │ Activity                  │ Hand      │
  ├───────────────────────────┼───────────┤
  │ Baseball (Bat/Catch)      │ Left      │
  │ Hold Spoon                │ Left      │
  │ Soccer                    │ Left      │
  │ Tennis                    │ Left      │
  │ Throw Ball                │ Left      │
  │ Darts                     │ Left      │
  │ Write                     │ Left      │
  ├───────────────────────────┼───────────┤
  │ Bow and Arrow             │ Right     │
  │ Hold Fork/Knife           │ Right     │
  │ Play Drums                │ Right     │
  │ Scissor                   │ Right     │
  │ Shoot Rifle (Nerf Gun)    │ Right     │
  │ Skateboard/Snowboard      │ Right     │
  │ Use Mouse                 │ Right     │
  └───────────────────────────┴───────────┘

Basically, the only reason I call myself left-handed is because I write with my left hand. All in all, I have no idea if I do more things left handed or right handed.

I'm similar. I do very little with both hands, but I'm split between left and right on individual things. Throw is right, write is left. Where I especially get hung up is learning something to do with feet - surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, etc... I struggle to figure out which one is my preference. I usually find that I'm equally bad at both.

Our sports teacher in high-school would tell us to stand straight. Then he would shove us from the back a few times. The foot we would stop ourselves from falling would be our leading foot (for snowboarding). So if you catch your fall with your left foot, you're regular. Otherwise goofy. Don't know if that's a safe bet, but it seemed to work out for us back then.

OTOH: I am convinced I can't snap my fingers with my right hand and never will because my specific mix of handed-ness makes it impossible for me to do so, no matter how hard I try and practice. No problem at all with my left hand.

Our track coach would do the same thing! And he got really frustrated with me because the foot that I led with seemed to vary by day. I'd be fairly consistent on any given day, but another day I'd be consistently the other foot.

Some of the best guitarists I have met are left-handed playing right-handed guitar ones. Which also makes sense - The more difficult part of playing the guitar is not fingering/picking, it's the fretboard. By using their dominant hand on the fretboard they have a genuine advantage. I've never understood why we formed the right handed guitar to have the dominant hand on the body. There must be a reason.

> The more difficult part of playing the guitar is not fingering/picking, it's the fretboard.

I would have said the opposite. The fretting hand only needs to press onto the strings in the correct places whereas the picking hand is responsible for all the subtlety of expression in terms of how you attack the string.

Saying this as a professional mandolin player fwiw.

While true - left hand changes position all the time and has to go on the correct frets all the time - right hand is gentle and subtler, I agree, but is also a lot more forgiving.

I think this reason is dependency. Anything I'm doing where the action of one hand depends on the other has to go left-to-right. I can only finger frets with the left and then pick with the right. Can't go the other way, can't have the right hand act before the left, even if the left has the more complex task.

It's like Super Mario Bros. With a 4-way d-pad and 2 action buttons, why is the more complex 4-way on the left? Because most of the time you're holding a direction first with less requirement for precise timing, and then pressing the button at the correct instant depending on the movement. (We're talking general platformer play, not hyper precise d-pad moves for something like Super Metroid speedrunning.)

Even typing on a keyboard, I never hold a right-side shift or other modifier key, it's always left-shift then the target key.

See my comment, I'm much better at playing with my less dominant hand (even after many years).

From my experiences, I think it's mainly learned.

I'm right-handed, but I trained myself to use a mouse/trackball left-handed due to better ergonomics. I was getting back/shoulder pain and thought that it was related to computer use and realised that with the typical keyboard with numeric pad and a mouse setup, that my body was twisting more due to the mouse being more to the right than it needed to be. Using my left hand instead means less twisting as there's no numeric keypad on the left.

It took probably a couple of weeks to get comfortable with left-handed mouse use and these days, I am fairly ambidextrous on a computer.

The other thing that makes me think that handedness can be learned is learning to juggle. I found that it's easier to start doing a new movement (i.e. a trick) with my right hand, but once I learn it with my left hand, the left hand becomes more accurate than my right.

I’m a leftie and I don’t think I learnt it. My mother said as a very young child she noticed I’d mainly used my left hand to take things - probably food :) These days the only real problem for me is scissors, especially the ones with moulded plastic handles.

I didn't mean that most people don't have an innate handedness, but that it's quite possible to learn to do tasks with your non-favoured hand - it just takes a period of adjustment during which it feels incredibly clumsy to use that hand.

I’m left handed and never understood left handed mice at all. I write with my left and swing and kick left handed, but all gaming stuff has always been the same way anyone else does. I’m pretty sure up down left right switching to wasd is a function of that setup being more comfortable with the mouse to the right of the keyboard, correct?

correct, and I think games which needed action keys in addition to arrow keys (but no mouse) preferred arrow keys on the right so the left hand could handle the other moves and stuff.

I write with my left too but using right handed peripherals feels natural. I also use my phone right handed.

I’m left handed and can use a mouse with either hand. It’s just a matter of habit.

I'm left-handed too and frankly a left-handed mouse is a nuisance and awkward to use (I never use one), same with other peripherals.

Still I prefer to use scissors with the left hand and most are right-handed. It's a damn nuisance as the loop handles are the wrong way around/wrong size for a leftie.

I'm right-handed, I'm pretty sure of that. But it's also an observed fact that if there's something I'm not used to to yet then it doesn't really matter which hand I start doing whatever it is with, if it's the right hand that'll be the preferred hand for that activity in the future, or if it's the left hand then that'll be the one. Things I do "both ways" I can do.. both ways.

I've found the same thing. I'm quite left handed for most things, including writing and throwing. But when I learned to shoot rifles, I learned right handed because 1) otherwise the ejected brass can hit you, and 2) I'm right eye dominant and its easier to shoot without crossed hand and eye. So now it feels very strange to shoot any gun left handed. But things like using a mouse or a stick shift car RHD vs LHD, I can use either hand and it doesn't much matter.

It's interesting that the piano is essentially a right handed instrument in that melody/the main theme is mostly played by the right hand.

As a left-hander, it's very obvious to me. That said—because of the above point—my right hand is much stronger and more adept at playing. In short, I'm right handed when playing the piano.

No sarcastic comments please, I well know more practice and playing those damn Czerny scales ad nauseam would have restored proper balance. :-)

Can I recommend playing Bach?

The specialization goes both ways, though, I'm much better playing Alberti bass with my left hand compared to the right.

I can play Bach to some extent with practice. I'd qualify that though by saying a multi-part fugue from say The Musical Offering would be a tall order.

I've never had any pretense at being good enough to entertain people with those works as everyone knows them so well (from professional recordings). Even Mozart's a problem here. For example the Romance in the D Minor Concerto, K.466 looks deceptively simple (at least in parts) but it's anything but after hearing someone like Brendel play it. Everyone knows it so well it's not worth the embarrassment of even trying (except perhaps in secret).

(Mozart has a habit of looking simple until one tries to play it, Bach is none of that—one knows what one's in for at pretty much first glance.)

For this sort of motor skill, it’s definitely learned. For stringed instruments, for example, it’s the left hand which has the more finely managed manipulation than the right (it’s interesting to note that only guitar-family instruments are commonly made in left-handed versions, although some of that may come down to logistics of string ensembles where having one left-handed violin in the violin section would cause a bit of chaos with colliding bows that is less of an issue with guitar ensembles where there are fewer musicians and they’re less tightly packed in the performance space). Likewise, the fingering on woodwind instruments doesn’t really favor one hand over the other. In contrast, brass instruments are decidedly right-handed (I suppose one might be able to manage a trumpet left-handed, but I’ve never tried. I don’t think other brass instruments could be fingered with the left hand at all.

This left-hander did, guitars can be used/adapted too if you’re left-handed, you might have to adapt like a certain well known person named Jimi Hendrix…

The French Horn is played left-handed.

Something super simple and revealing is try pressing on the brakes with your left foot.

That's because after you've learned to drive, everything the feet do is muscle memory. You don't consciously adjust the pressure (you just believe you do..), so switching around the pedals will need re-learning. And indeed it's common among rally cross drivers to learn to use the left foot with the brake pedal as well.

I do this once or twice a year in a borrowed/hired auto car. Usually about 10 minutes into the drive when I've got used to it, and started to drive more naturally. Approach junction, throttle back, stamp full uncoordinate force of left foot on to 'clutch' pedal, send passengers through the windscreen.

If you usually drive a manual transmission you might have a bad time if you try to brake with your left foot

Yeah it’s a big contrast, I guess that’s why I mentioned it. I forgot it would be easier to learn with an automatic, or at least the difference wouldn’t be so obvious with it.

A few of my relatives who grew up on a farm drives that way (right for gas, left for brakes)

Useful for controlling a car at speed through tight turns though

IMO heel-and-toe is harder than left foot braking.

you get used to it within a couple of hours

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