Partial explanation: we interpret these scales as going from worst possible to best possible, and
One reason why this is only a partial explanation is that "possible" obviously really means something like "at least semi-plausible" and what's at least semi-plausible depends on context and whim. But, e.g., suppose we take it to mean something like: take past history, discard outliers at both ends, and expand the range slightly. Then I bet what you find is that
so that in order for a scale to be able to cover (say) 99% of cases it needs to extend quite a bit further downward than upward relative to the median case.
a typical day is actually quite a bit closer to best possible than worst possible, because there are so many at-least-kinda-plausible ways for it to go badly
Think about it in therms of probability space. If somthign is basically functional, then there are a near- infinite number of ways for it to be worse, but a finite number of ways for it to get better.
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