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Metric Time

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Re: Metric Time

#301

Post by evrydayhustling »

peheje wrote: post #285
evrydayhustling wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metric time is about factors too, but it prioritizes the factors that simplify the comparison across (literally) many orders of magnitude. This is way less helpful for everyday life because we usually only reason within 2-3 orders of magnitude, but we deal with tons of harmonic subcycles that the 24h clock makes easy. For a fun, a more justified usage of metric time, check out Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" (…

Wasn't a big fan of "A Fire Upon the Deep", should I continue on and read "A Deepness in the Sky"? A while since I read it, but in short I disliked the characters which I could not symphatize with. The dog story (which started out great) and the humor wasn't me either.

I'm a huge fan of both, but you're not the first person I've heard who had problems with the writing style / dialogue / characterization of Fire. In that respect, I'm not sure Deepness will feel different. Vinge has a pretty consistent style and cultural stance, which IMO is an interesting balance of Heinlein-style techno-libertarianism and genuine "humanism" (which extends to dogs, plants, and other thinking creatures).

Structurally, though, it's pretty different. The characters have much more opportunity to develop, and it's purely hard sci-fi where Fire used its setting to veer into fantasy ideas. So my biased advice remains: give it a shot :)

Re: Metric Time

#302

Post by Polygator »

sdeframond wrote: post #171

While metric time has some appeal, I think it is not ambitious enough. Base 10 is not good. 10 just does not have enough factors, so we are left to deal with complex fractions. Let's instead use base-12 numerals and keep time unchanged! In base 12, 1 year is 10 months (or 265 days), 1 day is 20 hours, 1 hour is 50 minutes and a minute is 50 seconds. Easy enough! Edit: wait! I just realized this is still not ambitious…

Personally I think decimal time fails to recognize the cyclical nature of days. Decimal time is like switching from 360 degrees to gradians. A far superior better system would be to adopt radial time and have 2pi hours in a day. We could extend this to the whole year and have 2 pi months in a year, finally divorcing the counting of rotations from the counting of revolutions.

Re: Metric Time

#303

Post by funcDropShadow »

jader201 wrote: post #168
funcDropShadow wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No "metric" units means they are derived from the meter. Originally, most units in the SI systems were derived from the meter.

Technically, yes. But measurements of weight, volume, and temperature are also part of the metric system, and those didn’t derive from the meter. Seconds are also part of the metric system, but one of the few not based on decimal/base-10. Again, I’m just speculating that the author used “metric” because it often represents decimal/base-10 measurements. Not really arguing whether they were technically correct in doing…

Weight and volume were defined based on the meter. Volume is just expressed in m³ or litre, which is just 1/1000 of 1 m³. Mass was originally defined such that 1 kg of water is the mass of one litre of pure water at sea level.

Re: Metric Time

#304

Post by PawgerZ »

Rayhem wrote: post #294
red_trumpet wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole argument started when somebody above claimed that we probably do not sleep exactly 8 hours, but some weird irrational number. That problem persists even if you measure in radians...

Do the physicist thing and just define all your constants to be one. "How long is a day? 1 day." "I slept for .37 days." This nicely unifies things with the tao manifesto[1] people since 1 day = 1 turn = 1 tau = 2 * pi radians and reinforces the periodic nature of these things. [1]: https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto

Yes, but in reality, you slept .37827387654329617345987613475130465019873458612386459012374587203475. . . days

Re: Metric Time

#305

Post by clemiclemen »

kybernetikos wrote: post #151

I'm a big fan of decimal time (or French Revolutionary Time as it's sometimes called). I made my own version a few years back: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ My version also removes timezones. The numeric time is the same whereever you are in the world, but the display changes based on your location so that local solar midday is straight up on the clock face and local solar midnight is straight down on the clock…

Fairly good article as to why removing time zones is a bad idea: https://qntm.org/abolish

(The article is still relevant with metric time/weeks)

Re: Metric Time

#306

Post by anbende »

jader201 wrote: post #168
funcDropShadow wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No "metric" units means they are derived from the meter. Originally, most units in the SI systems were derived from the meter.

Technically, yes. But measurements of weight, volume, and temperature are also part of the metric system, and those didn’t derive from the meter. Seconds are also part of the metric system, but one of the few not based on decimal/base-10. Again, I’m just speculating that the author used “metric” because it often represents decimal/base-10 measurements. Not really arguing whether they were technically correct in doing…

This isn't totally true. Mass and volume measurements were indeed derived from the meter. A gram is a cubic centimeter of water. A liter is 1/1000 of a cubic meter. Apparently Celsius is derived from Kelvin (really just translated so 0 is the freezing point of water), which is derived using metric units in a formula that is a bit beyond me but available here:

https://www.bipm.org/en/si-base-units/kelvin

Anyway, TIL.

Re: Metric Time

#307

Post by anbende »

bmacho wrote: post #154
mongol wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely a better name

Metric time is a better name, since it states that this time comes naturally from our common metric system, and something is very very off that we don't use it.

As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, it's called the metric system because the values were derived from the meter. Decimal time has nothing to do with the meter, and "decimal" refers to it being base 10.

Re: Metric Time

#308

Post by downvotetruth »

reliablereason wrote: post #298
downvotetruth wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am not referring to that statement. > irrational numbers require definitions that contain or require recursion The computable reals are also known as the recursive reals, but almost every real number is not computable.

Which way was your comment suposed to be interpreted? Was it just a "out of context comment" on something that poped up in your mind as you read the text?

"There will be an exact point at which a certain molecule has interacted with another molecule" statement is contradictory with the uncertainty associated with time as described by quantum mechanics and molecular interactions due to Brownian motion. Material that is returned when searching for those topics will better answer your further questions about them and those above than I here.

Re: Metric Time

#309

Post by btbuildem »

grishka wrote: post #234

What I don't like about this is the redefinition of the second. The length of a second and its subdivisions is so fundamental to so much of everything in our society. Other physical quantities like speed or frequency or power all depend on it. You would have to redefine everything . Kilometers per "metric hour", "metric hertz", "metric watts-hours", you get the idea. > There is no AM or PM with metric time. It isn't…

That to me is the key point: measures of time are so intervowen with everything else, this would be an absolute nightmare to enact without seven years of fallout and random "bugs"
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