dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's a non zero continued disadvantage to using a non-ideal setup after all. And metric time was once attempted to be implemented as is, so it's really not that unthinkable. Just like the measurement systems for other things got changed in to metric ones to simplify things.
So while one could continue to debate what base is the best, there's definitely an argument to be made to pull everything in to that same base to make calculations easier and less error prone. Changing over is after all a one time cost, though admittedly a rather painful one time cost though.
Well obviously in the end no one has persisted in changing the time system yet though, so clearly so far the pain has been deemed to much. Or insufficient will exists to do something about it... for now.
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- US
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- He/Him
The metric system came into existence when there was a serious lack of international standardization. Not only would different nations (or regions) use different measurements, sometimes they used the same name for measurements with significantly different values. Traders could work out ad hoc conversions reasonably well, but it was a real pain for international science.
The great advantage of metric wasn't that it made math easy. That was just something they could work into the system as they were building it from the ground up. The real value was that it was defined in a reasonably consistent way and you could trust the value of a meter to be the same where ever you went.
The metric system didn't displace an existing standard measuring system. If the creators of the system had tried to do so, they would have failed (as every attempt at "metric time" has failed). The reason it succeeded was the that it filled an actual need, not because it produced some infinitesimal amount of improved efficiency.
Uprooting the globally agreed upon system of time telling, which has already eliminated all its competition, would be a huge waste of time and resources and just wouldn't work. Trying to teach everyone to do math in a different base is literally insane.
- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
In any case, regardless of whatever base it's in, for the foreseeable future, the most fundamental unit of the time system is going to be the day-night cycle (and/or the circadian rhythm, which comes out to effectively the same thing). In other words, we need to go upwards and downwards from the unit of 1 day.
Most metric time proposals I've heard of, this side of Unix time, do, in fact, involve subdividing the day into metric units (ultimately, into 100,000 "seconds" or whatever, or maybe 65,536 of them if you prefer binary, instead of the 86,400 seconds we have now).
And going upwards from a day, with no regard for years (which don't really divide evenly into days anyway), is of course pretty much just the modern equivalent of the Mesoamerican Long Count (though the actual Mesoamericans did stray from neat base 20 to make one of the units conveniently close to a year).
Now, if we're making up calendars for space-going vessels, or other planets or something, then, yes, we might need to ignore the Earth day, That's a long way off yet, however.
Most metric time proposals I've heard of, this side of Unix time, do, in fact, involve subdividing the day into metric units (ultimately, into 100,000 "seconds" or whatever, or maybe 65,536 of them if you prefer binary, instead of the 86,400 seconds we have now).
And going upwards from a day, with no regard for years (which don't really divide evenly into days anyway), is of course pretty much just the modern equivalent of the Mesoamerican Long Count (though the actual Mesoamericans did stray from neat base 20 to make one of the units conveniently close to a year).
Now, if we're making up calendars for space-going vessels, or other planets or something, then, yes, we might need to ignore the Earth day, That's a long way off yet, however.
I wouldn't put it quite so strongly as to say as changing the base is insane, but it would be a major problem.
As for the time matter, whether or not it's a waste of resources isn't so obvious I think. The drawback does cost resources every time after all, just a small amount, but it's there. So one could wonder if over sufficient time it wouldn't eventually be repaid.
Still, for now it's not going to happen, that's pretty obvious. Most don't care enough about it to make it a matter to be pursued. So most likely if it ever did happen, it would be combined with other major changes, in case it turns out eventually there's just a way better way to do many thing. And one just gets it all out of the way then.
dhasenan
always lowercase
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- She/Her
I think I might have been a bit hasty in my suggestions about a metric clock and calendar.
There's a feature of a number of calendars called intercalary days. We can make a metric calendar that has 100 days, and then just add 265 or 266 intercalary days. Similarly, we can make a day that's 10,000 seconds long, then add 76400 intercalary seconds. Then it fits perfectly!
There's a feature of a number of calendars called intercalary days. We can make a metric calendar that has 100 days, and then just add 265 or 266 intercalary days. Similarly, we can make a day that's 10,000 seconds long, then add 76400 intercalary seconds. Then it fits perfectly!
Vyslanté
The self is a prison
- Location
- European Union
They did, and they failed. The change of units of the Révolution did concern timekeeping too, after all. And while the Revolutionary Calendar is still remembered (and used in certain context that range from me making jokes to the Navy naming ships), including the 10-days weeks, few people also remember that it had 10 hours days of 100 minutes of 100 seconds.