Let's stop counting centuries • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#341

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 3:40 PM UTC

jhbadger wrote: post #134

arp242 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. Historians often talk about things like "the long 18th century" running from 1688 (Britian's "Glorious Revolution") to 1815 (the defeat of Napoleon) because it makes sense culturally to have periods that don't exactly fit 100-year chunks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_eighteenth_century

[deleted]

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#342

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 3:47 PM UTC

ysofunny wrote: post #339

articlepan wrote: post #337

Solution for 2000-2010: "the first decade of the 2000s". I realize this is counting by decades/centuries again, but if we just do it for the first decade/century under a larger span it's easy to read.

nonetheless, typing out, and even saying "the first decade of the 2000s" takes too long we need something shorter, like the double-ohs "00s"

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Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#343

Post by wasmitnetzen » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 3:51 PM UTC

linearrust wrote: post #328

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck that. It's "the 2000s".

That only works for now because we are so close to 2000. So there is little ambiguity whether "the 2000s" refer to the century or the decade. But in the future, "the 2000s" will refer to the century. Just like the 1900s refer to the 20th century rather than the decade (1900-1909).

Not my problem, that can be fixed by a future generation of pedants. It'll be good enough for 50 years or so.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#344

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 3:57 PM UTC

avidphantasm wrote: post #276

We should also stop talking about decades for the purposes of periodization. For example, the “‘80s” arguably ran from the election of Reagan in 1980 to the appointment of Bush W. by the supreme court in 2000. Politically, economically, and culturally, the “90’s” were an elaboration on the “80’s” (e.g. the deregulation and market reforms of Clintonism just being a whitewashed expansion of what Reagan did).

[deleted]

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#345

Post by zarzavat » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 3:59 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #75

hgomersall wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said twice, whether that date actually existed or not is irrelevant.

> whether that date actually existed or not is irrelevant. No, it isn't, since you explicitly said to start the first century on the date that doesn't exist. What does that even mean?

0 CE = 1 BCE

10 C = 50 F = 283.15 K

1 = 0.999…

Things can have more than one name. The existence of the year 0 CE is not in question. What’s in question is whether that’s a good name for it or not.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#346

Post by dboreham » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 4:02 PM UTC

prerok wrote: post #335

beachy wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Celsius is nearly useless. That's like ... your opinion man. Personally I like knowing that water boils at exactly 100 degrees.

At sea level, yes :) I do agree, though I live in Europe and C is the norm. I could never wrap my head around F. That said, I think 0 is more important in daily life, below or above freezing. How much is that in F again?

As a dweller of a cold place in the USA, F is pretty handy because "freezing" isn't terribly cold. Having 0F be "actually quite seriously cold" is useful.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#347

Post by runarberg » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 4:05 PM UTC

beachy wrote: post #324

jonathan_landy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

> Celsius is nearly useless. That's like ... your opinion man. Personally I like knowing that water boils at exactly 100 degrees.

You just use one thing and you’ll learn it. When I was a kid my country changed from archaic 12 point “wind levels” to m/s. It took everybody a few weeks to adjust but it wasn’t hard. It was a bit harder for me after moving to America to adjust to Fahrenheit, but as you experience a temperature, and are told it is so many Fahrenheit, you’ll just learn it. I have no idea at what temperature water boils in F simply because I never experience that temperature (and my kettle doesn’t have a thermometer).

That said I wished USA would move over to the unit everyone else is using, but only for the reason that everyone else is using it, that is the only thing that makes it superior, and it would take Americans at worst a couple of months to adjust.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#348

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

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.

1700s means 1700–1709, i.e. roughly the first decade in the 18th century. Just like '2000s'. The OP acknowledges this issue and then just ignores it.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#349

Post by tyg13 » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

istrice wrote: post #321

There is no such thing as a word for "1700s" in most European languages. Also in English it sounds weird, as you have to pronounce it "seventeen-hundreds" whereas the correct pronunciation is "one-thousand-seven-hundred". So 1700s is unsuitable for formal writing or speaking and doesn't map naturally to most languages of Western civilization. But yeah, I guess the author finds it hard to subtract 1 in his mind :) I c…

Seventeen-hundreds doesn't sound stilted at all, to this native English speaker. I would use this even in a very formal context, and certainly no one would bat an eye. One-thousand-seven-hundreds is almost certainly incorrect in English -- I would actually find this to be a very clear marker of not speaking English very well. Are you a native speaker? I find your claims rather bold and quite frankly incorrect.

Also, curious to find out (from elsewhere in this thread) is that Finnish does not typically use centuries. Rather, they use a construction that maps directly to 1700s (1700-luku). I would be careful in accidentally applying your own cultural bias when accusing others of the same ;)

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#350

Post by dboreham » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #193

mixmastamyk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American and French Revolutions are a pretty big deal on the road to modern democracy, as well as being tied to 1700s Enlightenment ideals. Everyone educated should know this.

No one that I know of in Europe gets taught this

I grew up in Scotland. We studied American History in school. In fact we didn't study English History, except as it pertained to Scottish History, so to this day I'm hazy on Magna Carta, turbulent priests and so on.