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Metric Time

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Re: Metric Time

#321

Post by kybernetikos »

clemiclemen wrote: post #305
kybernetikos wrote: post #151

I'm a big fan of decimal time (or French Revolutionary Time as it's sometimes called). I made my own version a few years back: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ My version also removes timezones. The numeric time is the same whereever you are in the world, but the display changes based on your location so that local solar midday is straight up on the clock face and local solar midnight is straight down on the clock…

Fairly good article as to why removing time zones is a bad idea: https://qntm.org/abolish (The article is still relevant with metric time/weeks)

What's strange is that he says

> Does that mean I can call him? I don't know.

About the non timezone version but skates over the fact that he doesn't know the answer in the timezone version either. He says "Google tells me..." well sure, if you're allowed to use Google you could just have easily have asked "what are typical daylight/waking hours in x location?" This is much better anyway since in some countries culturally you siesta in the early afternoon (don't call please) and stay up later.

Anyway there is something of a genuine problem here (although I don't consider it serious) and I'd solve it by drawing the world on the side of the clock and allowing you to rotate the face by selecting a place on the map.

Re: Metric Time

#322

Post by kybernetikos »

ChilledTonic wrote: post #247
kybernetikos wrote: post #151

I'm a big fan of decimal time (or French Revolutionary Time as it's sometimes called). I made my own version a few years back: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ My version also removes timezones. The numeric time is the same whereever you are in the world, but the display changes based on your location so that local solar midday is straight up on the clock face and local solar midnight is straight down on the clock…

I also use Decimal Time and the French Republican Calendar as my default calendar and time method. The mental math to convert back to "standard" time and date is very easy once you get the hang of it, and I think it's good practice to not take for granted systems we consider "standard" such as time. For more on the philosophy of this, I highly recommend Jenny Odell's Book, Saving Time. Note that she doesn't talk abou…

If only they'd had the sense to zero index their days instead of 1 indexing them!

Re: Metric Time

#323

Post by [deleted] »

kybernetikos wrote: post #245
xattt wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … but in this system the hours are defined to be 10ths of a solar day so they vary as the day varies. This is reasonable and not unsafe at all, particularly when it comes to timing things like exposure time with patients receiving radiation therapy. However, we will be left wondering why treatment in the summer is more effective that treatment in the winter. Must be the nice weather.

Firstly the time variance we're talking about is small and will only matter when milliseconds matter, secondly I addressed this - for scientific measures and scenarios where milliseconds matter a different time unit should be used. If you want to prioritise ease of moving between the two systems, I'd suggest a normalised version of the new second. If you want to prioritise science, then something that makes a nice ro…

[deleted]

Re: Metric Time

#324

Post by quantum5 »

ChilledTonic wrote: post #247
kybernetikos wrote: post #151

I'm a big fan of decimal time (or French Revolutionary Time as it's sometimes called). I made my own version a few years back: https://kybernetikos.github.io/UIT/ My version also removes timezones. The numeric time is the same whereever you are in the world, but the display changes based on your location so that local solar midday is straight up on the clock face and local solar midnight is straight down on the clock…

I also use Decimal Time and the French Republican Calendar as my default calendar and time method. The mental math to convert back to "standard" time and date is very easy once you get the hang of it, and I think it's good practice to not take for granted systems we consider "standard" such as time. For more on the philosophy of this, I highly recommend Jenny Odell's Book, Saving Time. Note that she doesn't talk abou…

I am curious which leap day system you use for the French Republican calendar. Most popular versions of the calendar I see floating around just use the Gregorian leap year system, which I don't like because it yields the wrong results in the year the calendar was in use. Yet, I don't see mental math as a viable option when using the original date-of-equinox method used during the revolution.

Re: Metric Time

#326

Post by SUPERCILEX »

I made something similar a while back where you can set your own start and end time for the "day": https://alexsaveau.dev/10hrday

The point was to be able to divide the day into nicely sized bites for getting stuff done. I chose 10 minutes in an hour for that reason: you can get a small task done in one "minute."

Re: Metric Time

#327

Post by ChilledTonic »

quantum5 wrote: post #324
ChilledTonic wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also use Decimal Time and the French Republican Calendar as my default calendar and time method. The mental math to convert back to "standard" time and date is very easy once you get the hang of it, and I think it's good practice to not take for granted systems we consider "standard" such as time. For more on the philosophy of this, I highly recommend Jenny Odell's Book, Saving Time. Note that she doesn't talk abou…

I am curious which leap day system you use for the French Republican calendar. Most popular versions of the calendar I see floating around just use the Gregorian leap year system, which I don't like because it yields the wrong results in the year the calendar was in use. Yet, I don't see mental math as a viable option when using the original date-of-equinox method used during the revolution.

It's not an easy thing; frankly, if I have to back convert to prior times when the Calendar was still in use, you have to just swallow the pill

However, if using the calendar in day to day life, the Revised System is much easier.

To quote Wikipedia:

leap years being every year divisible by 4, except years divisible by 100 and not by 400. Years divisible by 4000 would also be ordinary years. This calendar also has the benefit that every year in the third century of the Republican Era (1992–2091) begins on 22 September.

Re: Metric Time

#328

Post by _nalply »

Measuring time is simple. It is just a linearly increasing number, right?

No. We humans have additional demands.

1. We want a part of the number to be the same for the time of day.

2. We want a part of the number to be the same for the day of year.

This is fundamentally impossible, because:

1. The year does not have an integer number of days, so we use lap years.

2. The day is the duration of a complete turn of Earth around itself, but the duration is slowly changing, this means the duration of the day won't stay the same, so we use lap seconds.

3. Year and day lose their meaning if we leave the Earth.

4. The time of the day is different for different parts of the Earth (solved by timezones).

We should use an epoch-based time for points in time, i. e. just a number, and convert it to the date-time whenever neccessary. The exact form of the date-time is not important, only that we already understand it.

Switching to decimal time does not help: it does not solve the fundamental problem, however we would need to relearn the time of day. It is similar to switching to Dvorak.

Re: Metric Time

#329

Post by pyinstallwoes »

reliablereason wrote: post #315
downvotetruth wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There will be an exact point at which a certain molecule has interacted with another molecule" statement is contradictory with the uncertainty associated with time as described by quantum mechanics and molecular interactions due to Brownian motion. Material that is returned when searching for those topics will better answer your further questions about them and those above than I here.

The uncertainty principle is about unavoidable measurement "errors" (measurements that can’t be done). If you are going to measure the time (or anything) you will always get finite values. Finite values are not irrational. Either one talks about the underlying physics or about the measurements of it. If one talks about the underlying physics all bets are of, it is unmeasurable by definition. Anything is possible bell…

I applaud your ontological reasoning and understanding of _things_.

Re: Metric Time

#330

Post by ithkuil »

downvotetruth wrote: post #243
ithkuil wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is no multiple definitions going on: what happened is an _elision_. The actual word is "second minute" (as opposed to the "first minute"). Most languages have by now elided "first" from "first minute" resulting in the "minute" as we know it today, and elided "minute" from "second minute" resulting in the "second" as we know it today. i.e. "second" literally means "the one that comes after the first", but is imp…

> subdivision of the small unit of time Part of the point is the "second" definition based on a subdivision is no longer the SI second. You are right about the elision, but in the context of the time most people are now eliding System International ("SI") from the beginning rather than "minute" at the end. "Seconds were once derived by dividing astronomical events into smaller parts, with the International System of…

true true.

A while "prime minute" generally contains "61" "second minutes" it sometimes can contain 61 "second minutes"; so clearly the "second minute" is the true unit here :-)

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