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Metric Time

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Re: Metric Time

#281

Post by downvotetruth »

reliablereason wrote: post #273
downvotetruth wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will be an exact point at which a certain molecule has interacted with another molecule marking the exact point of perfect sleep Just because the best current theory suggests a smallest observable time span does not mean as a consequence that time is discrete.

"If the physical property that time meassuring devices meassure is continuous, it must also contain irrational numbers?" Is that what you are refering to? Mabye... To me it seams like nothing is truly continuous i nature. But mabye there is such a thing somewere out there somewere. But irrational numbers require definitions that contain or require recursion. Mabye physical time is built with such a recursive definiti…

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.

Re: Metric Time

#282

Post by Enginerrrd »

prometheus76 wrote: post #177
eps wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to think of it, being able to cleanly divide a minute or an hour into 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 equal parts is pretty damn handy.

Now apply the same logic to measurement, and you'll see why it's so handy to use a dozenal foot for fabricating things.

Best of all worlds would have been if we used base 60 numbers like the Sumerians/Babylonians did. Very smart way to do things for 3000 BC.

Re: Metric Time

#283

Post by bena »

toxik wrote: post #74

I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…

You know what other measuring system is based around highly composable numbers?

It's not metric. It's the imperial system. Halves, thirds, quarters are all neat numbers. It does get a little weird because we only use feet, yards, and miles today, but there is a progression from inch to mile that all make sense to some degree.

Similarly with volumes. You can get from teaspoon to gallon without having to worry about any weird decimals.

The only thing metric really has going for it is uniformity of conversion.

People shit on it, but the imperial system is not actually that horrible.

Re: Metric Time

#285

Post by peheje »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #183
toxik wrote: post #74

I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…

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.

Re: Metric Time

#286

Post by ianburrell »

pmontra wrote: post #97
toxik wrote: post #74

I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…

I didn't check the details of that metric time system but there would be no problem living a 10 hours day with 100 minutes hours and 100 seconds minutes. The second would be defined with a different number of "cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium-133 atom" and that's all. Instead of rounding our lives at "our" quarters of hours or ten minutes, five minutes marks we would…

Instead of changing the definition of second, it might make sense to separate day-time from scientific time. Decimal hours and minutes would be normal time keeping. If needed more accuracy, then would switch use centi-minute for casual use or second for scientific use.

One nice feature is that the day-time would be different on other planets. There would Mars-day and Mars-hour. But the second would be the same.

Re: Metric Time

#287

Post by nyrikki »

xigoi wrote: post #260
nyrikki wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base 12 being 3-smooth, any number with 2 or 3 as a factor has a reciprocal with a terminating expansion. base 60 is 5-smooth, so any number with 2,3,5 as a factor has a terminating expansion. Just as SI has to add in deg min sec for fields like astronomy. As the practical numbers are quite dense up to 60, they could divide by multiplication of the reciprocal for many more numbers. Floating point is more complicated…

Base 6 is better than base 12. https://www.seximal.net/

Pretty light on details, but if it works for you that is great.

Quartiles and hand counting would be my argument for 12 but am probably biased based on familiarity.

Re: Metric Time

#288

Post by rhinoceraptor »

prometheus76 wrote: post #177
eps wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to think of it, being able to cleanly divide a minute or an hour into 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 equal parts is pretty damn handy.

Now apply the same logic to measurement, and you'll see why it's so handy to use a dozenal foot for fabricating things.

Now apply the same logic to currency. What is the combined value of thirteen shillings and ten farthings? Simple, it's 317 halfpennies, or £317/480. It's much easier to deal with than a more difficult calculation like $0.25 + $0.37 = $0.62.

Re: Metric Time

#289

Post by levzettelin »

levzettelin wrote: post #284

If this is called "decimal time", what about "binary time"? You could convert between days and seconds using bit-shift, haha.

16 hours in a day

64 minutes in an hour

64 seconds in a minute

This would make seconds 1.31835 times longer then what they are now.

Re: Metric Time

#290

Post by [deleted] »

eps wrote: post #108
toxik wrote: post #74

I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…

Come to think of it, being able to cleanly divide a minute or an hour into 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 equal parts is pretty damn handy.

[deleted]
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