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Metric Time

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Re: Metric Time

#331

Post by saalweachter »

PawgerZ wrote: post #304
Rayhem wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the physicist thing and just define all your constants to be one. "How long is a day? 1 day." "I slept for .37 days." This nicely unifies things with the tao manifesto[1] people since 1 day = 1 turn = 1 tau = 2 * pi radians and reinforces the periodic nature of these things. [1]: https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto

Yes, but in reality, you slept .37827387654329617345987613475130465019873458612386459012374587203475. . . days

Doesn't that depend on whether time is quantized?

Re: Metric Time

#333

Post by MagicMoonlight »

kybernetikos wrote: post #251
willis936 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less precision for a given number of symbols. Fewer usable factors mean you can only reasonably divide up segments of time into larger, less precise chunks.

This is far from the truth. The closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent in the current time system is 23:59:59 which is six symbols for a standard second before midnight. In decimal time the closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent would be .9:99:99 which is noticeably closer (0.163 of a second closer) to midnight and uses only 5 symbols. This should not be surprising - our curr…

You’ve picked the only time where the systems overlap.

Try converting something like 45 minutes into this convenient time system and let us know how efficient it is

Re: Metric Time

#334

Post by kybernetikos »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #333
kybernetikos wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is far from the truth. The closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent in the current time system is 23:59:59 which is six symbols for a standard second before midnight. In decimal time the closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent would be .9:99:99 which is noticeably closer (0.163 of a second closer) to midnight and uses only 5 symbols. This should not be surprising - our curr…

You’ve picked the only time where the systems overlap. Try converting something like 45 minutes into this convenient time system and let us know how efficient it is

45 minutes and 00 seconds is very close (less than a quarter of a second difference) to :23:33. But there's no magical or particular reason why 45 minutes is an important time period to make a nice round number. :24 is a very convenient number (so many factors!) that's very close to the same time duration. That's 46.2963 minutes.

Or maybe you are referring to three quarters of the way through the major division. That's actually pretty natural too :75 like a percentage. Now dividing the major division into thirds is a little less convenient but I do that far less than I need to add and subtract times which this system makes much more convenient.

Re: Metric Time

#335

Post by eadmund »

worthless-trash wrote: post #240
eadmund wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't we have the same basic criticism going from Fahrenheit to Celsius? Sure, and one shouldn’t do that either. Fahrenheit’s range (0 being the freezing point of brine, almost but not quite intolerable to a human, and 100 being roughly body temperate and also almost but not quite intolerable to a human) is far more human than Celsius’s freezing-to-boiling range.

Having never used Fahrenheit in any capacity, the math for it feels inhuman. Having grown up in metric, the values dont feel 'inhuman' just a scale that i'm familiar with. I know that my body is usually at 37, I know that water boils at 100, i know that I don't like anything below 8c or above 40c.

> i know that I don't like anything below 8c or above 40c

That’s a bit funny: 8° C is roughly 50° F (46.4), and 40° C is roughly 100° F (104). Almost like Fahrenheit might be scaled to a human!

Re: Metric Time

#336

Post by kzhe »

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…

It's been explicitly highlighted to me before that the calendar in the French Revolution is called the French Republican Clendar and not the French Revolutionary Calendar, so I'd assum the same is true and it would be French Republican Time

Re: Metric Time

#337

Post by worthless-trash »

eadmund wrote: post #335
worthless-trash wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having never used Fahrenheit in any capacity, the math for it feels inhuman. Having grown up in metric, the values dont feel 'inhuman' just a scale that i'm familiar with. I know that my body is usually at 37, I know that water boils at 100, i know that I don't like anything below 8c or above 40c.

> i know that I don't like anything below 8c or above 40c That’s a bit funny: 8° C is roughly 50° F (46.4), and 40° C is roughly 100° F (104). Almost like Fahrenheit might be scaled to a human!

Its all what we get used to !

Re: Metric Time

#338

Post by willis936 »

kybernetikos wrote: post #251
willis936 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less precision for a given number of symbols. Fewer usable factors mean you can only reasonably divide up segments of time into larger, less precise chunks.

This is far from the truth. The closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent in the current time system is 23:59:59 which is six symbols for a standard second before midnight. In decimal time the closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent would be .9:99:99 which is noticeably closer (0.163 of a second closer) to midnight and uses only 5 symbols. This should not be surprising - our curr…

How many decimal places does it take to represent a time close to 12:15? 12:05? 12:02?

Re: Metric Time

#339

Post by kybernetikos »

willis936 wrote: post #338
kybernetikos wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is far from the truth. The closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent in the current time system is 23:59:59 which is six symbols for a standard second before midnight. In decimal time the closest time before midnight you can conveniently represent would be .9:99:99 which is noticeably closer (0.163 of a second closer) to midnight and uses only 5 symbols. This should not be surprising - our curr…

How many decimal places does it take to represent a time close to 12:15? 12:05? 12:02?

How close do you want to get? For what purpose are you representing 12:15?

.5:10 is 12:14 and 24 seconds. That's pretty close and uses only 2 sig figs - even fewer than the four you needed to represent 12:15.

But also, why would you obsess about these specific times? If we were using the proposed system and someone made the argument to switch, you'd be saying 'How well does your system represent the time .5:1 ? It's only 2 sig figs, but you need to go down to seconds to accurately represent it - 12:14:24.

It can get worse too - .5:01 is 3 significant figures, but to represent that time in the current system requires that you go down to tenths of a second with 7 significant figures - 12:01:26.4. Or if I go down to second equivalents, you sometimes need to go down to milliseconds - .5:09:01 is 12:12:58.464

Re: Metric Time

#340

Post by peheje »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #301
peheje wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a huge fan of both, but you're not the first person I've heard who had problems with the writing style / dialogue / characterization of Fire. In that respect, I'm not sure Deepness will feel different. Vinge has a pretty consistent style and cultural stance, which IMO is an interesting balance of Heinlein-style techno-libertarianism and genuine "humanism" (which extends to dogs, plants, and other thinking creatur…

Thanks for your time in giving response. I'll give it a go!
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