My physics book states that by convention a clockwise moment is said to be negative and an anti-clockwise moment is said to be positive. I'm curious about the origin of this convention.
My thoughts:
It doesn't matter which -wise you assign $+$ or $-$ as long as you are consistent.
In science being consistent with yourself is all well and good but for the purpose of communication it is convenient for everyone to be consistent with each other and hence to agree upon a convention.
Sometimes the reason why the convention was assigned as such is purely arbitrary and deserves no further discussion.
I have seen videos on YouTube where clockwise has been assigned positive and this seems more natural to me.
My question:
Is the above convention completely arbitrary or was there a reason for this assignment? If so what was the reason?
I have looked and could not find a satisfactory answer to my question anywhere.