Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 138 posts

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#81

Post by mb7733 »

skissane wrote: post #71
vba616 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say the US, Liberia, and Myanmar are the only countries to reject metric. If this wasn't bullshit, then people would be able to spontaneously state the criterion that produced this specific list. I mean, the criterion exists , and therefore the list is technically correct, but nobody researches it before repeating the meme, and it's not at all obvious without research. If the reasoning doesn't come to you natu…

> If this wasn't bullshit, then people would be able to spontaneously state the criterion that produced this specific list. Let's forget about Liberia and Myanmar and just focus on major economies. People can argue about the definition of "major", but for the purposes of this discussion, let's define it as G20 members. In how many G20 members does the average person make significant , regular use of non-metric measur…

> In how many G20 members does the average person make significant, regular use of non-metric measurements in their daily life? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is "only two" (US and UK), and for the US that usage is significantly more than the UK.

Canada as well. Usually I'd assume no one cares but you did say G20.

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#82

Post by bitcurious »

skissane wrote: post #64
chungy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative take: the US customary units have stuck around because SI has failed to present itself as better enough to switch. Grant that all base units are arbitrary[1], many of the customary units make easier logical sense in day-to-day life, or are designed to be divisible in easier units than SI units are designed to be. Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4).…

> Alternative take: the US customary units have stuck around because SI has failed to present itself as better enough to switch. The thing that doesn't make sense about this argument – the US and the UK are the only major economies which haven't adopted metric for 90%+ of use cases. (Everywhere retains non-metric units in certain exceptional cases – e.g. most countries use feet for altitude in aviation, although that…

To play along with the argument, prior to the metric system, units were very local. So it’s not like China and Ghana and Russia and France were all using inches and feet and cups and pints, rather they were all using their own little units of measure, which on the whole turned out to be less convenient than the metric system. The UK and US happened to be (mostly) aligned on a more convenient system that could outcompete the metric system.

That said, I think economic resiliency and early mover (did)advantage are the other parts of that story. Not many nations can handle the trade impediment of their own units of measure, but the UK and US were/are both large enough. And I think because we industrialized early, switching with the rest of the world was more expensive, so we stuck with it.

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#83

Post by wzdd »

skissane wrote: post #22
thelopa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Korean approach is still wrong, arguably. If you want to include the totality of the life of the baby, the next normal stopping point would be conception. That would make the child ~9 months old, not 1 year.

In practice, you normally don't know the exact date of conception, you can only roughly estimate, but any estimate is likely to be a few days out. There are exceptions – e.g. IVF, or the parents know they only did it once and remember the exact date they did it on (but their memories may be fallible, etc). Birth is better because (in developed countries where babies are normally born in hospital) the bureaucracy almo…

Conception as a result of sex can take place up to one week after the act, even if it only happened once.

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#84

Post by watwut »

Qem wrote: post #8

I actually wished a change in reverse direction, the world adopting the Korean standard of age accounting for full existence, not just postpartum existence. The later feels quite arbitrary, at least for me.

The birth is clear and defined day. Trying to guess when the fetus was conceived would be ridiculous.

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#85

Post by watwut »

Qem wrote: post #24
tekla wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think the moment of birth is more arbitrary than trying to figure out when a clump of cells/a fetus is viable?

Yes. I have a sister 15 years younger. My parents still keep her ultrasound plates around. Her ID states she is from this millennium. But yet the timestamps in the plates show she was already here with us in the end of the past millennium. Every time I see them, it gives me an uneasy feeling the way we're used to count our time is just wrong.

Her id states "birthday". It is quite literally called that and not just in English. The day she was born. Her id states the date she was born, stopped to nested inside another person, started to breath air and started to eat instead of getting oxygen and nutrition via placenta.

Her id does not state the day mom and dad had sex, nor the day the sperm joined the egg, nor the day she crossed the line from "few cells" to "something that resembles human in some sense".

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#86

Post by mrweasel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #39
crazygringo wrote: post #34

> South Koreans will become at least a year younger... "At least"? Who is becoming two years younger...?

Anyone with a birth day after the transition day will become two years younger when the change goes into effect, assuming the article’s description is correct (which it may not be.) Under the old system you were one year old at birth, and a year older at the beginning of the next year (not, as one might expect, at their next birth day.) That means at the beginning of the year on which under the more common system one…

Hold up... I don't mean to be critical of another countrys traditions and ways of counting, but WAT!. If you're born on say December 31st, then the very next day you're considered to be two years old?

I can't imaging that it's particular practical to think of some one who has only been alive for a few days as being two years old. It's not even useful if you think of it as the child being "in their second year". Technically true, but what are you trying to convey?

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#87

Post by middle_earth »

As a Korean who being confused by the age counting existed too many at the same time, I am so proud of being together within the international standard. But we will still keep 1 indexed age when it comes to calculating the age of compulsory military service. Anyway I hope it triggers loosening too stubborn age counting hierarchy inside us.

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#88

Post by skissane »

mb7733 wrote: post #81
skissane wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this wasn't bullshit, then people would be able to spontaneously state the criterion that produced this specific list. Let's forget about Liberia and Myanmar and just focus on major economies. People can argue about the definition of "major", but for the purposes of this discussion, let's define it as G20 members. In how many G20 members does the average person make significant , regular use of non-metric measur…

> In how many G20 members does the average person make significant, regular use of non-metric measurements in their daily life? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is "only two" (US and UK), and for the US that usage is significantly more than the UK. Canada as well. Usually I'd assume no one cares but you did say G20.

Yes, I forgot about Canada.

So I’d break it down like this: of the 19 countries directly in the G20 (so not counting those only indirectly in it via the EU’s membership) - 1 has high degree of everyday use of non-metric measurements (US), 16 have low, and the other two are in-between, we might say medium (UK and Canada). That leaves over 80% of the G20 in the “low everyday use of non-metric measurements category”.

Unlike the UK, Canada uses kilometres rather than miles for roads, so in that regard is more metric than the UK. Although I’ve also heard that some Canadians do crazy things like use Celsius to measure room temperatures but Fahrenheit to measure oven temperatures.

Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting

#90

Post by saiya-jin »

watwut wrote: post #84
Qem wrote: post #8

I actually wished a change in reverse direction, the world adopting the Korean standard of age accounting for full existence, not just postpartum existence. The later feels quite arbitrary, at least for me.

The birth is clear and defined day. Trying to guess when the fetus was conceived would be ridiculous.

Yeah, and why stop there - you need to combine dates of sperm creation and egg creation, in the end fertilized egg is just a result of those 2 combining. Since eggs are created somewhere around development of the fetus IIRC, welcome to madness
Post reply on HN