Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

901–910 of 1001 posts

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#901

Post by foobarian »

narag wrote: post #494
simonh wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of comical absurdities like this is precisely that they appear comical or absurd if you don’t know the reasons for them being the way they are. That doesn’t mean there are no reasons, it’s just that those reasons aren’t necessary or even relevant to appreciating the apparent absurdity.

FWIW, I wasn't trying to explain why it isn't funny, but why I don't find it funny. YMMV. Nobody needs to know all those annoying details, but once you know, the joke doesn't work so well, at least it didn't for me. Also I believe that the Moon deserves some respect. It makes nights less scary, inspires whimsical humans and provided a convenient way to measure middle-length periods of time when a precise calendar had…

I find it pretty juvenile. It's like when a rookie dev first faces some production codebase and starts wanting to rewrite everything.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#902

Post by anjbe »

SamBam wrote: post #890
mcv wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with that nursery rhyme, but it sounds like it's based on the same misunderstanding that lead to ISO 8601.

I think it's a bit simplistic to call it a "misunderstanding." There are large swaths of Christianity that refer to Sunday as the Sabbath. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath#Christianity

You’re not wrong that “the Sabbath day” has sometimes been used by Christians to refer to Sunday, but the context of this thread is that a comment claimed that calling Sunday the first day of the week is inconsistent with the Bible, and that’s plainly not true.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#903

Post by foobarian »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #892
narag wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in a way that doesn't work right. It works great for the purpose that it was used: counting groups of days when regular humans didn't have the luxury of more precise calendars. The part that doesn't "work right" is that the different natural cycles used to measure time are not multiples of others, so adjustements are always needed. That's why calendar is complex, it was fixed repeatedly until it doesn't drift. We…

> It works great for the purpose that it was used: counting groups of days when regular humans didn't have the luxury of more precise calendars. If you want a quarter month then have a quarter month. Having a set of days that pretends to be a quarter month but rapidly falls out of sync is worse than having no quarter month at all. If you gave any other reason for seven days, I wouldn't say it doesn't work right. But…

What will you suggest next, to fix the spelling of the English language? I'm all for it! But I don't have high hopes... [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#904

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

badcppdev wrote: post #845
beltsazar wrote: post #677

> "uh, it's supposed to be the birth of a religious leader, but they got the math wrong so it's off by 4 years, if he existed at all." > "if? You based your calendar off the birth date of someone you're not sure exists?" I find it quite offensive. Not all scholars agree that Jesus was raised from dead, but the existence of Jesus is accepted even by non-Christian scholars. > Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree t…

What do you mean you find it offensive? Are you offended at the assertion that people doubt that Jesus existed at all? As one data point I can assure you that I personally doubt that Jesus existed at all. Are you offended by people doubting that Jesus existed? If you are a Christian then you are a believer in one of the hundreds of religions from around the world. To be offended that someone doubts the existence of t…

It is convenient to ignore (historical) consensus here isn't it? I am sure you have a similar reaction when certain people disbelieve scientific consensus right? on topics such as vaccination or climate change?

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#905

Post by foobarian »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #814
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Moon is the closest celestial body to earth and we have historically been able to make very accurate observations and calculations based on its orbit and waxing and waning phases.

I need to know if it's day or night. for obvious reasons. I need to know if its summer or winter for temperature. When was the last time you planned a holiday for the waning phase of the moon?

I plan beach visits based on tides, does that count?

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#906

Post by Ensorceled »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #562
jeromegv wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Quebec. Never heard anywhere in canada that don’t have their calendar start on Sunday but I’d be curious to find out otherwise.

Walk into a stationery store in British Columbia and you'll find both options. Perhaps though that is due to the increasingly globalized world and stationery stores desire to have a lot of varied product from great product makers in Japan, USA and further afield. I grew up aware that some people considered Sunday the start and others Monday, but didn't seem like there were any real firm rules about it where it matter…

> Walk into a stationery store in British Columbia and you'll find both options.

Yeah, Staples or a high end paper craft store will have both.

But if you go into one of those popup calendar stores, all the calendars will be SMTWTFS.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#907

Post by foobarian »

marcosdumay wrote: post #514
cabaalis wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chesterton's fence seems to apply here.

Hum, no. There is no reason not to change it (except for inertia, what is a better reason than any you will see). It is logical (once you get over the fixation with 60), but none of that logic is a good reason to keep it.

This reminds me of the discussion the other day about how the A_n paper sizes are superior because you can fold them in half to get the next size down. Just like having a more logical calendar - it would be nice but not very useful. The value is in the network effect of everyone using the same system (so kind of like the "inertia" you mentioned).

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#908

Post by bipson »

dark-star wrote: post #856
bipson wrote: post #805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is used conversationally; For German speaking countries: rather always #. In fact, you don't even say 3 PM. Just "drei". I think everything from 8 AM to 7 PM is considered "business hours" - and everything else needs clarification ("4 in the morning"). And we call 0:00 "…

I live in Germany and I have the exact opposit experience from everything you just said. the only people that use "drei" or "halb fünf" etc. are those one generation older than me, and everyone says "null Uhr" or "vierundzwanzig Uhr" (depending on which day-crossing you're referring to), I have honestly never before heard the phrase "12 Uhr Mitternacht". "Die Party geht bis 24 Uhr" oder "..bis 0 Uhr". Nobody says "di…

I guess I am from (and work with) the previous generation.

I haven't used "Die Party geht bis..."# for almost a decade now, that might be a hint.

#and my "parties" never ended before midnight for more than 2 decades now.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#909

Post by dolmen »

buchoo wrote: post #830
fsckboy wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the calendar we live by today was personally designed by Julius Caesar Pope Gregory has entered the chat there have been some changes to the calendar since Caesar, especially when people went to bed Thursday 4 October 1582 and woke up on Friday 15 October 1582, and thereafter there were no more leap years on centuries except every 400 years. https://www.onthisday.com/articles/gregory-conquers-julius-c...

One fun historical tidbit is that St Teresa of Ávila died on the night of the 4th to the 15th of October, 1582.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila#Last_days

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#910

Post by syrrim »

avar wrote: post #847
origin_path wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a bunch of less subtle assumptions, like the obviousness of base 10. That comes from us having ten fingers, right? It's easy to imagine aliens having six fingers on each hand and then assuming that base 12 is the most obvious and logical base to use for everything.

There's no reason to suppose that an intelligent alien race would find it convenient to count things in base that matches the number of "fingers" they have, if they even have such a thing. Whales aren't far from being intelligent enough to form a technical civilization, but their body plan makes it unlikely that they'd use their "fingers" (or fins) to count, or to communicate with other whales. Even if you gave an al…

Without fingers to manipulate ones environment, it would be incredibly difficult to develop any sort of technology.
Post reply on HN