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Let's stop counting centuries

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Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#401

Post by rootusrootus »

inglor_cz wrote: post #368
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." http://i.imgur.com/3ZidINK.png?1 For anyone not living in the US or Jamaica or Belize, it is Fahrenheit that is completely useless. Which is something like 7,7 billion people. 0 = water freezing temp is hugely useful heuristics for anyone living in moderate climate.

> For anyone not living in the US

So what I am hearing is that sure, it makes perfect sense for US citizens to continue using Fahrenheit.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#402

Post by rootusrootus »

lye wrote: post #371
zdragnar wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll want winter tires on well before the air temperature hits freezing for water. Forecasts aren't that predictable, and bridges (no earth heat sink underneath) will ice over before roads do. 40 F is a good time for getting winter tires on. As someone who lives in a humid, wet area that goes from -40 at night in winter to 100+ F in summer, I also vastly prefer Fahrenheit. The difference between 60, 70, 80 and 90 i…

Well, it's been working fine for me for about 15 years, let's agree to disagree here. I would still find it easier to remember to change the tires at +1°C than whatever the hell it comes down to in Fahrenheit. I too live in a region with 80 (Celsius) degree yearly variation (sometimes more; the maximum yearly difference I've lived through is about 90 degrees IIRC: -45 in January to +43 in July), and Fahrenheit makes…

> Well, it's been working fine for me for about 15 years, let's agree to disagree here.

If you want to convince yourself, go out on the road in non-winter tires when it is sub-40F, find an open space where you can experiment, and then do a panic stop. Like you might have to do if someone jumps out in front of you.

That is what convinced me to not wait until it was freezing before I put on cold weather tires.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#403

Post by rootusrootus »

dantyti wrote: post #336
hombre_fatal wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say more sensible. It’s always weird to me to use the number 17 to talk about years that start with 16. Makes more sense to just say the 1600s.

After their 16th birthday, the person is going through their 17th year. Just like 11:45 can be told as "a quarter to 12"

> After their 16th birthday, the person is going through their 17th year.

While that is true, does it not illustrate exactly the problem? Nobody ever says someone is in their 17th year when they are 16. That would be very confusing.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#404

Post by rootusrootus »

kelnos wrote: post #170
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.

> When we refer to 'the first year of life', we mean the time from birth until you turn 1. Sure, but no one ever uses that phrasing after you turn one. Then it's just "when they were one", "when they were five", whatever. So sure, maybe we can continue to say "the 1st century", but for dates 100 and later, no more.

> Sure, but no one ever uses that phrasing after you turn one.

Heck, few people say anything about 'the first year of life' even when talking about someone that young. It is too imprecise, because things change so rapidly. In my experience the most common convention is to use months to describe age before someone turns 2.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#405

Post by rootusrootus »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #319

Another example of confusing numeric systems emerges from 12-hour clocks. For many people, asking them to specify which one is 12AM and which one is 12PM is likely to cause confusion. This confusion is immediately cleared up if you just adopt a 24-hour clock. This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

> just adopt a 24-hour clock. This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

I don't know if I feel that strongly about it but I tend to agree. I see more value in adopting a 24 hour clock than making SI mandatory. AM/PM is silly.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#406

Post by runarberg »

rootusrootus wrote: post #400
runarberg wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bec…

> only for the reason that everyone else is using it That is an honest answer, which is refreshing. Beside that, there is not really any particular reason that the US has to make SI mandatory. We adopted SI nearly 50 years ago, we just did not make it mandatory . The US has a bit of national identity which leans towards rebelling, so making SI mandatory would probably be contentions anyway. And it's just not worth th…

Temperature is easy, probably the easiest unit to convert... Everyone would get used to it pretty soon after they started using it regularly. There would be some legacy systems out there which would annoying to convert (which is already the case) but within a generation nobody would bother with Fahrenheit at all.

I think the hardest unit to convert is probably length as there is not only a bunch of legacy systems and equipment out there, but Americans are very accustomed to fractional sub-units as opposed to the decimal cm, mm, etc. I’m not sure e.g. the building industry would ever stop saying e.g. four and five eighths. Personally I hate fractional lengths when using american tools. E.g. I’m used to a 11 mm wrench being smaller than a 13 mm wrench. I need to stop and think before I know which is smaller a five eights or a three quarters.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#407

Post by runarberg »

ryukoposting wrote: post #384
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.

I don't see enough love for feet and inches. A foot can be divided cleanly into 2, 3, 4, and 6. Ten is a really sucky number to base your lengths on. It only divides nicely into 2 and 5.

People normally just use the subunit which doesn’t divide. E.g. height is usually referred to in cm. If accuracy is important they use millimeters. Roadsigns for cars use km but downtown wayfinding signs for pedastrians use meters.

I agree it is really nice to use base-12 until it brakes, but it brakes much worse then metric. If you have to divide into 32nds everything about feet and inches is much worse (in metrics we would just use millimeters). The worst offender are wrenches which don’t order intuitively. In metric, if you 13 mm wrench is too big, you just grab an 11 mm wrench. In inches if your 13/16th inch wrench is too big, do you grab the 5/8th? or three-quarters next?

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#408

Post by OmarShehata »

kleiba wrote: post #296
OmarShehata wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

small issues are easy to solve! I think it isn't as sexy/interesting as what I thought the article was going to be about (about a different way of talking about our history, in eras maybe vs centuries or something). this strikes me as kind of like a small PR to our language that makes an incremental improvement to a clearly confusing thing. Should be easy to merge :)

Maybe not easy to solve, but not of enough importance/impact that would justify spending an extended amount of time changing the current practice. My original post got downvoted, but I stand by it because empirically, it seems to be clear: the current practice may not be perfect but has obviously stood the test of time. So let's move on, there's more important things to worry about.

"the current practice may not be perfect but has obviously stood the test of time"

has it stood the test of time? or is just an arbitrary choice that no one has bothered to change?

I'm sorry, it just seems like we're looking at spilled milk in the middle of the room saying, "well, it's been here since I walked into the room, obviously it's supposed to be here?" no we can just clean it up, no one's going to stop you

it's actually super, super easy to change this: you just starting using the new term. You don't even need to get anyone else on board, everyone understands what the new term means (this isn't even like inventing a new word, it's just a rephrasing that's just easier for the speaker & listener).

The goal isn't to get everyone to switch overnight. That's not how conventions are created nor how they spread. You just start doing the thing if it's useful to you. Whether it spreads beyond that is not up to you.

My takeaway from the post is simply: hey, if you find this confusing, here's a much simpler way you can talk about it! I am personally going to start using this, and I am going to get immediate benefits from this, and so are my readers. That's it, that's all it takes.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#409

Post by OmarShehata »

bowsamic wrote: post #189
OmarShehata wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

small issues are easy to solve! I think it isn't as sexy/interesting as what I thought the article was going to be about (about a different way of talking about our history, in eras maybe vs centuries or something). this strikes me as kind of like a small PR to our language that makes an incremental improvement to a clearly confusing thing. Should be easy to merge :)

> small issues are easy to solve! Citation heavily needed

> Citation heavily needed

I'm not going to give you any proof of this, because I know you've seen it, but I think I just wasn't very clear on what I meant here.

I'm talking about PRs that fix a typo in the docs, or tweak confusing wording. You know the ones I'm talking about, the ones that get merged immediately because it's clearly just better

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#410

Post by inglor_cz »

rootusrootus wrote: post #401
inglor_cz wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Celsius is nearly useless." http://i.imgur.com/3ZidINK.png?1 For anyone not living in the US or Jamaica or Belize, it is Fahrenheit that is completely useless. Which is something like 7,7 billion people. 0 = water freezing temp is hugely useful heuristics for anyone living in moderate climate.

> For anyone not living in the US So what I am hearing is that sure, it makes perfect sense for US citizens to continue using Fahrenheit.

US residents...

If you, as a US citizen, settle abroad, be prepared to run into a wall with Fahrenheits. People in the rest of the world don't have the intuitive grasp whether 50 degrees Fahrenheit is warm or cold.

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