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Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

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Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#381

Post by psnehanshu »

mcv wrote: post #369
octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…

This is incorrect. The US is hardly the only country where people consider Sunday to be the first day of the week. Anyone with some understanding of the history of our weekdays does so, and that historical understanding is not limited to Americans. It's also not true that the US is the only country to use 12h time; many countries do. Including mine. If you need to write time without ambiguity, you use the 24h format,…

Yeah I agree. 12h time is the natural consequence of using analog clocks where one rotation of the hour hand on the dial represents 12 hours. But I guess it won't be hard to represent 24h if the speed of the hour hand is halved, although I have never seen such clocks.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#382

Post by typetheorist »

octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…

A lot of people have already commented on how Israel and the Middle East consider Sunday to be the first day of the week, but I'd like to add that the week itself seems to originate in Judaism (Wikipedia, "Week"):

"A continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history without reference to the phases of the moon was first practiced in Judaism, dated to the 6th century BC at the latest."

In Judaism the week starts from Sunday, so you could argue that it's not completely illogical for it to be the case in the US.

Changing the rest day of the week to Sunday was a change made in Christianity by the Council of Laodicea:

"Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ".

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#383

Post by chungy »

Ekaros wrote: post #82
rocqua wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one defining difference between us, and aliens that visit earth. They managed interstellar travel, we did not. That inherently puts them at an advantage to us. Definitely a technological advantage. Hence it makes sense to assume (with medium confidence) that such aliens will be better at science than us. Assuming that they will therefore be more rational than us is not much of a leap.

I don't want to actually even imagine what sort of hell an proper interstellar empire timekeeping is. Just ignore different planets having different orbital and rotational characteristic. Just the basic relativistic effects even with some type of instant transfers would make most communication and so on massively painful mess.

At least, we have a well-defined second. Assuming that humans make interstellar travel and/or colonization happen before being visited first, it's not entirely unreasonable that space-borne vessels will maintain the time and calendar system developed on Earth. It's convention, after all (we fudge it _just a bit_ here on Earth, too).

Perhaps extrasolar colonies will have to develop a system that makes sense for whatever planet or moon they settle on, at which point they'd be converting between Earth time and local time for correspondence.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#384

Post by mcv »

octobus2021 wrote: post #205
NorwegianDude wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legit question. What is a weekend in the US? Is a weekend in the US Friday - Saturday? Most places consider the week to end with Sunday and the weekend is usually considered to be from after work on Friday(or technically Saturday) until Monday starts. But when an American says "right over the weekend", do they mean Sunday, since the US week starts on Sunday? Or does the week actually start on Monday as in most places…

That was my point, if the workweek in US is Monday through Friday, and US weekend is Saturday and Sunday, there's NO REASON WHATSOEVER to call Sunday "the first day of the week"...

There are many reasons to call Sunday the first say of the week. Mostly historical ones. Weeks have existed for far longer than the US or in fact any modern country has. Or the concept of a 5-day work week, in fact. The Monday as the first day of the week is modern revisionism.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#385

Post by hsn915 »

Thorentis wrote: post #366
_k9eq wrote: post #154

I find the implication that aliens are rational and have no subrational concepts due to tradition and habit interesting, as it sort of implies that these kinds of outgrowths are not necessary and can just be done away with. The narrator starts from a position of not wanting to legitimize or historicize beyond reductive statements like "some ancient civilization did XYZ". I'll admit that I skimmed through the last par…

Yeah, often people leap to "aliens" being some higher intelligence than us who will judge our poor sub-optimal decisions. Though to me it seems more likely that any life we encounter is more likely to be less intelligent, if intelligent at all.

It's worse. "Aliens have the same taste in things as me". With the implications being something like "Aliens are super intelligent" and "I am super intelligent".

IAmVerySmart vibes

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#386

Post by mynameisvlad »

pitaj wrote: post #357
pantojax45 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s still ambiguity in verbal language. On Sunday, if someone messages you “let’s do this next week” - do they mean “in the next 6 days” or “after 7 days from now”?

That kind of ambiguity is everywhere, though. If it's Friday, and I say "next Monday", those two days are close enough that you may need clarification - do I mean "this coming Monday" or "the Monday after that". Or another example for day 1 = Monday, if on Sunday I said "let's do that next week", you may need the same form of clarification.

I don’t see any ambiguity in “next Monday”. It literally is saying the next day which is Monday.

“Next week” on a Sunday is ambiguous because some people consider the new week to have started while others consider it to start the next day.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#387

Post by allenu »

butwhywhyoh wrote: post #374
113 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be significantly less funny and interesting.

It would be exactly as funny and exactly as interesting, which is to say: not very. This is right up there with noticing that sometimes the "b" in certain English words is completely silent! Haha isn't that totally irrational and crazy you guys??

I didn't find it particularly funny either. It's mostly predicated on this belief that somehow we "should" have optimized our date and time system and that it's silly that we're using an inconsistent, legacy system formed for many cultural reasons.

My analogy is that it's like writing a tweetstorm about how aliens landed on Earth to find that humans use different languages! And different writing systems! How quaint!

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#388

Post by mynameisvlad »

hunter2_ wrote: post #336
pantojax45 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s still ambiguity in verbal language. On Sunday, if someone messages you “let’s do this next week” - do they mean “in the next 6 days” or “after 7 days from now”?

"Next" has terrible ambiguity, beyond the phrase "next week." If it's Monday and someone says "next Thursday" do they mean the coming Thursday (+3) or the one after that (+10)? I assume the latter, except when it's said by people who I know disagree! But even with people I don't put in that category, I'd hesitate to assume +13 days if they said "next Sunday" on Monday. More likely they mean +6 when it's so far out...

“Next Thursday” vs “next week Thursday”. The former, for me, means +3 and the latter +10. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when someone I know has said the former but implied +10.

Interesting to see so many people here who do interpret it that way.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#389

Post by chrisweekly »

retrac wrote: post #110
octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-speaking world. A quick check of Wikipedia suggests…

"Sat and Sun constitute the weekEND, right?"

"Of course."

"And Sunday is the 7th day, the day of rest?"

"Yeah, that's what they preach at my church."

"What about your workplace?"

"Everybody knows the standard workweek is Mon-Fri. What's your point?"

"Ok, so we're agreed the weekends include Sunday, your Bible says Sunday is the 7th day, and the workweek starts on Monday."

"Yep."

"So printed calendars and day-planners and calendar software should treat weeks as starting on Monday, right?"

"..."

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#390

Post by lotu »

113 wrote: post #315
leto_ii wrote: post #122

Couldn't this whole thread just be condensed to: we have a thing called culture which is not completely rational or efficient? I'm sure the aliens would get that - they would probably have something similar, albeit with different irrationalities and inefficiencies.

That would be significantly less funny and interesting.

How I would have ended would be with the aliens saying we should just adopt galactic standard time because it is so much easier, but in fact it is twice as complicated and confusing, but they are used to it so it appears simple. Still funny better message.
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