Sailing boat with tiller.. you are at the stern so you push the stern to the right in order to turn left.
This I understand was the route cause of the collision by the Titanic. This was during the transition from tiller control to wheel control of the ship and the SOP steering commands. Hence, eventually, the command was not "right rudder" to turn left but "left hand down" to avoid confusion. In the case of Titanic the officer of the watch was of the old school and the wheel man of the new. They were at cross purposes in meaning & understanding. (sounds like marriage, but I stop right there).
One thing I've seen many times, especially from the students with more artistic than scientific leanings: the MCP V/S wheel. You want to go up so we rotate the wheel down, and visa versa. The artistic students moved the wheel in the opposite/incorrect direction: i.e. up for up & down for down. Now if this was an electric switch, similar to the electric flap switch on C150 etc. then the switch goes down and the flaps go down. If the V/S control was a toggle switch then I'm sure this would be the logic, but it's a wheel and for some reason it is in the opposite sense. For those of us who've been with this since the beginning we do it without thinking, but for the newbies they use intuition and realise their mistake, eventually. But is it really a mistake? Why did Airbus make all their overhead panel switch opposite to Boeing? Some ergonomic guru had a plan, I guess.
For those of us who venture into hang-gliding, beware. You do indeed pull back to go down and push to go up. Just got to learn new tricks with new toys.
No. 2. Why does PIC sit on left when standard circuit & hold is right? Who wants to sit on the outside of the turn?