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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

#681

Post by Joeri »

int_19h wrote: post #239
timbit42 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Who thought using decimal was a good idea? We should be using dozenal. At least 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5 so doing thirds and quarters is messy. Being able to do fifths isn't as useful as thirds and quarters and you can multiply 12 by 5 and use 60 if you want to divide by fifths, like clocks do.

Decimal is a natural convention once you're using fingers to count, which humans usually do while they're figuring it all out.

Not true. You can count knuckles on one hand up to 12, two hands up to 144, or 60 if you’re using fingers of one hand and knuckles of the other. Societies used to count knuckles, which is why duodecimal systems were a lot more popular back then. Way easier for doing fractions and divisions in your head as well.

Decimal is a system best suited for written math.

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

#682

Post by robbrown451 »

Weeks aren't subdivisions of months, they are completely independent of months and years. There is good reason for this.

Having months alternate between long and short (as they typically do) is a lot better than just having one short month. It would get weird with things like rent payments if you have one month that is way shorter than the others. (although I do wish they chose a 30 day month to occasionally add a 31st day for leap year)

And I'm not sure we'd be better off with time done with multiples of ten rather than highly composite numbers like 24 and 60.

Obviously our system is far from perfect, but it's not all that surprising it is the way it is.

Except for leap seconds. Leap seconds are just stupid. Far better to make adjustments like that much more rarely.

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

#683

Post by eyelidlessness »

the_af wrote: post #617
hunter2_ wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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...

Tell me about it. My wife and I cannot agree on the meaning of "next" for almost anything, and we are Spanish speakers. For example, when driving, to her "turn at the next corner" means "the corner after the next", while to me it means "the corner the car is about to cross". What I call "the next corner" to her is " this corner". Same with days, of course. It drives me crazy!

I don’t know if it would translate, but I’ve had good outcomes navigating with my brother by saying “following” instead of “next”. As in “okay we’re coming to Delaware street and we’ll take a left at the following intersection”. It’s not even language my brother uses but he immediately understood “next next not this next” and so I stuck with it.

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

#684

Post by srcreigh »

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…

I picked 3 random countries and 2/3 of them had calendars starting with Sunday.

Calendars starting with Sunday: Nambia, Trinidad and Tobago. Calendars starting with Monday: Benin.

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

#685

Post by sgjohnson »

db48x wrote: post #665
mattigames wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I vote for a new unity as a measure of time, the 10+e7 part of the speed of light, so the equivalent to 2.99792458 seconds, it's a sensible default in my opinion, perhaps also another new unity that is the third of that one, it would be very close to a second (in case the space travelers have practical applications to have such measure of time)

Or we could just redefine c to be 300,000m/s.

that would require redefining of the metre.

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

#686

Post by Void_ »

ursusmaritimus wrote: post #482
tasuki wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "second day" Wtorek? That... does not appear to have "dwa" or anything similar in it. Please ELIC (explain like I'm Czech (actually am, tho lived in Poland for a bit))

There is an old Slavic word "vtorý" for "second" (not sure about spelling, but it is documented for example in old church Slavonic). Russian still uses "vtoroj" for "second". Several other Slavic languages have a word for Tuesday based on this root, even though their usual word for "second" follows a systematic derivation based on "dva" (two). Examples includes Czech and Slovak ("úterý" for Tuesday in both) and Polis…

You’d think old Church Slavonic to be an obscure language, but in my local church (in eastern Slovakia) you can attend a liturgy in this language twice a week.

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

#688

Post by origin_path »

haswell wrote: post #511
_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…

The thing that would've brought it around for me is a punchline where the alien says something like "wow, your system is so clean and simple compared to ours". I do think there's a certain degree of humor when looking back at history. There are plenty of things to laugh at in hindsight. But the thing that rubs me wrong is the undertone that this is somehow a distinctly human trait or inherently a bad thing. That some…

There's also a bunch of less subtle assumptions, like the obviousness of base 10. That comes from us having ten fingers, right? It's easy to imagine aliens having six fingers on each hand and then assuming that base 12 is the most obvious and logical base to use for everything.

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

#689

Post by quickthrower2 »

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…

Perhaps you mean 24h _sometimes_ is used conversationally!

My devices all show 12h too.

The thing is most people know if it means the evening or morning.

But when programming, and dealing with times from all over the shop - please show me 24h clocks!

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