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Let's stop counting centuries

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Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#51

Post by Sardtok »

jcelerier wrote: post #36
mmmmmbop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do the same with people's ages. No, we don't. When we refer to 'the first year of life', we mean the time from birth until you turn 1. Similarly, you'd say something like 'you're a child in the first decade of your life and slowly start to mature into a young adult by the end of the second decade', referring to 0-9 and 10-19, respectively.

The first year of life is the year indexed with zero, just like the first centimeter/inch in a ruler is the centimeter/inch indexed with zero

And so is the first century of the zero-indexed calendar.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#52

Post by card_zero »

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #30

A lot of this runaround is happening because people get hung up on the fact that the "AD" era began as AD 1. But that year is not magic--it didn't even correlate with the year of Jesus's birth or death. So let's just start the AD era a year before, and call that year "AD 0". It can even overlap with BC 1. BC 1 is the same as AD 0. Fine, we can handle that, right? Then the 00s are [0, 100), 100s are [100, 200), etc. Z…

This reminds me that centuries such as "the third century BC" are even harder to translate into date ranges. That one's 201 BC to 300 BC, inclusive, backward. Or you might see "the last quarter of the second millennium BC", which means minus 2000 to about minus 1750. [Edit: no it doesn't.]

In fact archeologists have adapted to writing "CE" and "BCE" these days, but despite that flexibility I've never seen somebody write a date range like "the 1200s BCE". But they should.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#53

Post by arp242 »

I've always written it like "1900s", and always considered "20th century" to be confusing. Having to mentally do c-- or c++ is confusing and annoying.

I deal with the "2000s-problem" by using "00s" to refer to the decade, which everyone seems to understand. Sometimes I also use "21st century"; I agree with the author that it's okay in that case, because no one is confused by it. For historical 00s I'd probably use "first decade of the 1700s" or something along those lines. But I'm not a historian and this hasn't really come up.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#54

Post by mjmahone17 »

Uehreka wrote: post #32
mmmmmbop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do the same with people's ages. No, we don't. When we refer to 'the first year of life', we mean the time from birth until you turn 1. Similarly, you'd say something like 'you're a child in the first decade of your life and slowly start to mature into a young adult by the end of the second decade', referring to 0-9 and 10-19, respectively.

> No, we don't. But practically speaking we usually do. I always hear people refer to events in their life happening “when I was 26” and never “in the 27th year of my life”. Sure you could say the latter, but practically speaking people don’t (at least in English).

“Half one” is archaic English, and common German, for 12:30. Similarly “my 27th year” just sounds archaic to me: I wonder if you went through a bunch of 19th century writing if you’d see ages more often be “Xth year” vs “X-1 years old”.

There may be something cultural that caused such a shift, like a change in how math or reading is taught (or even that it’s nearly universally taught, which changes how we think and speak because now a sizeable chunk of the population thinks in visually written words rather than sounds).

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#55

Post by card_zero »

Kwpolska wrote: post #24
gcp123 wrote: post #2

Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century". The very first episode of Alex Trebeck's Jeopardy in 1984 illustrates how confusing this can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTxS9_CwZA The "Final Jeopardy" question simply asked on what date did the 20th century begin, and all three contestants got it wrong, leading to a 3-way tie.

> very first It’s actually the second. > Trebeck's Trebek's*

Let's reform Alex Trebek's name, it's difficult.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#56

Post by arp242 »

card_zero wrote: post #52
MarkLowenstein wrote: post #30

A lot of this runaround is happening because people get hung up on the fact that the "AD" era began as AD 1. But that year is not magic--it didn't even correlate with the year of Jesus's birth or death. So let's just start the AD era a year before, and call that year "AD 0". It can even overlap with BC 1. BC 1 is the same as AD 0. Fine, we can handle that, right? Then the 00s are [0, 100), 100s are [100, 200), etc. Z…

This reminds me that centuries such as "the third century BC" are even harder to translate into date ranges. That one's 201 BC to 300 BC, inclusive, backward. Or you might see "the last quarter of the second millennium BC", which means minus 2000 to about minus 1750. [Edit: no it doesn't.] In fact archeologists have adapted to writing "CE" and "BCE" these days, but despite that flexibility I've never seen somebody wr…

Some people have proposed resetting year 1 to 10,000 years earlier. The current year would be 12024. This way you can have pretty much all of recoded human history in positive dates, while still remaining mostly compatible with the current system. It would certainly be convenient, but I don't expect significant uptick any time soon.

For earlier dates "n years ago" is usually easier, e.g. "The first humans migrated to Australia approximately 50,000 years ago".

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#57

Post by arp242 »

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #30

A lot of this runaround is happening because people get hung up on the fact that the "AD" era began as AD 1. But that year is not magic--it didn't even correlate with the year of Jesus's birth or death. So let's just start the AD era a year before, and call that year "AD 0". It can even overlap with BC 1. BC 1 is the same as AD 0. Fine, we can handle that, right? Then the 00s are [0, 100), 100s are [100, 200), etc. Z…

Things like "17th century", "1600s", or "1990s" are rarely exact dates, and almost always fuzzy. It really doesn't matter what the exact start and end day is. If you need exact dates then use exact dates.

A calendar change like this is a non-starter. A lot of disruption for no real purpose other than pleasing some pedantics.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#58

Post by jrockway »

gcp123 wrote: post #2

Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century". The very first episode of Alex Trebeck's Jeopardy in 1984 illustrates how confusing this can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTxS9_CwZA The "Final Jeopardy" question simply asked on what date did the 20th century begin, and all three contestants got it wrong, leading to a 3-way tie.

On the other hand "1700s art" sounds like trash compared to "18th century art".

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#59

Post by [deleted] »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #54
Uehreka wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, we don't. But practically speaking we usually do. I always hear people refer to events in their life happening “when I was 26” and never “in the 27th year of my life”. Sure you could say the latter, but practically speaking people don’t (at least in English).

“Half one” is archaic English, and common German, for 12:30. Similarly “my 27th year” just sounds archaic to me: I wonder if you went through a bunch of 19th century writing if you’d see ages more often be “Xth year” vs “X-1 years old”. There may be something cultural that caused such a shift, like a change in how math or reading is taught (or even that it’s nearly universally taught, which changes how we think and s…

[deleted]

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#60

Post by jrockway »

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #30

A lot of this runaround is happening because people get hung up on the fact that the "AD" era began as AD 1. But that year is not magic--it didn't even correlate with the year of Jesus's birth or death. So let's just start the AD era a year before, and call that year "AD 0". It can even overlap with BC 1. BC 1 is the same as AD 0. Fine, we can handle that, right? Then the 00s are [0, 100), 100s are [100, 200), etc. Z…

I would also accept that the 1st century has one less year than future centuries. Everyone said Jan 1, 2000 was "the new millenium" and "the 21st century". It didn't bother anyone except Lua programmers, I'm pretty sure.
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