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Let's stop counting centuries
231–240 of 449 posts
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#232Author 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".
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Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#233Immigrating from a country that uses "1700s", it probably took a decade before I had internalized to subtract 1 to get the real number. I will resent it till I die.
I find it weird when people take a long time for these little things. My wife still struggles with the German numbers (85 = fünfundachtzig) and the half thing with time (8:30 = halb neun) even though I managed to switch over to those very quickly. I think it depends on the person how hard it is
I think this one was hard for me because centuries don't come up that often.
If it was something I saw/heard every day, I would have adapted much faster.
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what most people think and the world keeps trucking along. It's the rare people that don't who actually change the world.
You can change the world if you make it easier to meet a need enough people have. Persuading everyone they're holding it wrong is not that.
"You can change the world if you make it easier to meet a need enough people have"
True and should not be forgotten in this debate.
But clear communication is a need many people have.
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#235Earlier 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).
In an indirect manner, we do mark having lived the 27th year in the following forms, we just don’t say it exactly the way you phrased it:
1. On your 26th Birthday, when you say you turned 26 what it means is that you have now lived 26 years. People generally understand this, even if they are going to be spending the next year saying they are 26.
2. It is not uncommon for people to demarcate their age on their birthday in revolutions around the Sun, as a kind of meme. “I’ve now traveled around the Sun twenty-six times.” or something like that, when reflecting on their lives on their Birthday.
The colloquial usage is our legally-defined age. A shortcut for our laws to take, the age-gating ones anyway. It hasn’t replaced our cultural understanding of what the first year of our life actually was.
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no "0" year, 1 is the 1st year, so 100th year is still the 1st century, therefore 2nd century starts in 101 and 20th in 1901.
I find this decree frustrating. Someone could have just as easily said "the 'first' century starts at 1 BC" to account for this.
Then what is the last year of the first century BC? 2 BC? Now there's an off-by-2!
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or better yet just year 0, why not? Do we say the 80s start in 1981?
The concept of zero was not popularized in 500s Europe, when the system was devised.
And also, the system is a direct descendant of regnal numbering, where zero wouldn’t have made sense even if invented (there is no zeroth year of Joe Biden’s term of office).
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no "0" year, 1 is the 1st year, so 100th year is still the 1st century, therefore 2nd century starts in 101 and 20th in 1901.
I find this decree frustrating. Someone could have just as easily said "the 'first' century starts at 1 BC" to account for this.
Do you also count the first decade of your life from January 1st of the year before you were born?
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#239> The issue, of course, is that “counted centuries” are off by one from how we normally interact with dates—the 13th century starts in AD 1201. There’s a simple solution. Avoid saying “the 18th century”, and say “the 1700s” instead. Besides being easier to understand, it’s also slightly shorter. The kind of person who cares and reads about "the Xth century" can also trivially understand the date range involved. The k…
I'm sorry, but that is just elitist bullshit. First, even if we accept your implicit premise, that it is a training hurdle only, there is enormous value in accessible science, literature and education. In our connected society and in a democracy everyone benefits from everybody else understanding more of our world. In software engineering we have a common understanding that accidental complexity reduces our ability t…
>I'm sorry, but that is just elitist bullshit.
That's fine, the thought-stopping accusation of "elitism" doesn't bother me. It's a preoccupation for people preferring equality based on dumbing things for the lowest common denominator, lest - god forbid - someone has to make an effort.
I don't think lowly and condescedingly of people like that, I think they're capable of learning and making the effort - they're just excused and encouraged not to.
People who actually have learning difficulties (because of medical conditions or other issues) or people from diffirent cultures accustomed to other systems, are obviously not the ones I'm talking about - and don't excuse the ones without such difficulties, and in countries that have used this convention for 1000+ years.
>Second, your implicit premise is likely wrong. Different people have different talents and different challenges
The huge majority that confuses this doesn't do it because they have a particular challenge or because their talents lie elsewhere. They do it because they never bothered, same way they don't know other basic knowledge, from naming the primary colors to pointing to a major country on the map. They also usually squander their talents in other areas as well.
Besides, if understanding that 18th century is the 1700th is "a challenge", then the rest of history study would be even more challenging. This is like asking to simplify basic math for people who can't be bothered to learn long division, thinking this will somehow allow them to do calculus.
Re: Let's stop counting centuries
#240Terms like the ‘long 18th century’ feel like they make less sense when talking about 1700s. Though that mightn’t outweigh the confusion from the ordinals.