“The right socket” can only be implied one way when talking about a body just like you only have one right hand despite the fact that it is on my left when looking at you.

"Plug into right power socket"

Same language, opposite meaning because of a particular noun + context.

I think the only thing obvious here is that there is no obvious solution other than adding lots of clarification to your prompt.

I think you missed the entire point?

No, they just disagree with you.

How do you disagree with having a right and a left hand?

GP is using right as in “correct”, not directionality.

No, I don't think they are.

If you are facing a wall-plate with two power sockets on it side by side and you are telling someone to plug something in, which one would be "the right socket", and which would be "the left socket"?

If above the wall-plate is a photo of a person and you are someone to draw a tattoo on the photo, which is "the right arm" and which is "the left arm"?

Same wording, different expectation.

Power plugs are not people.

ETA: and if I were telling someone which socket to plug something into, it would absolutely be from the prospective of the person doing the plugging, not from inside the wall.

Neither are sculptures of skulls made of pancake batter.

> Power plugs are not people.

Agreed. So the "obvious" meaning of left and right differ depend on context, which is what pphysch was pointing out.

I think the fact that anyone in this thread thinks it's ambiguous is proof by definition that it's ambiguous.

"Right hand" is practically a bigram that has more meaning, since handedness is such a common topic.

Also context matters, if you're talking to someone you would say "right shoulder" for _their_ right since you know it's an observer with different vantage point. Talking about a scene in a photo "the right shoulder" to me would more often mean right portion of the photo even if it was the person's left shoulder.

Having one person in the frame isn't enough to unambiguously put us into the "talking about a body" context.

“Eye on the left” is different from “the left eye”. First can be ambiguous, second really isn’t.

I think "the left eye" in this particular case (a photo of a skull made of pancake batter) is still very slightly ambiguous. "The skull's left eye" would not be.

I guess there's some ambiguity regarding whether or not this can be ambiguous. Because it seems like it can to me.

Interesting, because I would say the opposite. "On the left" suggests left of image, "the left eye" could be any version of left.