4 ms·
9350 ± 200 year B.P. B.P. == Before Present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
by ftcHn 11y ago
9350 ± 200 year B.P.
B.P. == Before Present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present
- javert 11y agoJust what we need, yet another time scale that is totally arbitrary. How utterly worthless. Amplified by the fact that the word "present" refers to a shifting moment in time, so it's an abuse of English to use it this way.
- whyenot 11y agoIt's the standard dating scheme used in archaeology and some areas of geology for material that is carbon dated. As mentioned on the wikipedia page that OP linked to, "present" is actually a standard date: January 1, 1950; chosen because material from later dates can not be reliably measured [using carbon dating] due to nuclear testing.
- javert 11y agoI'm aware of that. > "present" is actually a standard date: January 1, 1950 which is an abuse of the English langauge, since "present" actually means "now." Scientists should not overload pre-existing English words to mean other things.
- EdwardDiego 11y ago> Scientists should not overload pre-existing English words to mean other things Why not? Because it confuses the overly-pedantic?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Trombone12 11y agoBah! I say that the plebs outside the ivory towers should stop using overloading __scientific__ terminology! Have you ever used "dynamic" while not talking about physical forces? BOOM: you are an abuser! Repent! Repent!
- carbocation 11y agoI would state the argument as follows: We should use the term "before nuclear testing", abbreviated as BNT. It is more precise than "before present", which will become more inaccurate over time, whereas "before nuclear testing" will always have the same meaning.
- javert 11y agoThere is no need for a new time reference at all. That's the point. If someone actually needs to say "before nuclear testing," which is very rare, they should say "before nuclear testing."
- lotsofcows 11y agoComputer scientists should stop overloading phrases like "over load" to mean other things. Dark ages Europeans should stop overloading Latin words like "lingua" to mean other things. Modern humans should stop overloading words like "existing" to mean exactly the same thing...
- javert 11y agoYou are attacking a straw man.
- saalweachter 11y agoSo the present is January 1, 1950, and we're living in the future?
- k8tte 11y agowhat about BCE (as in "Before Common Era"), i thought this was the pc way of expressing this in our post-religious world of tomorrow!? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_era
- gnoway 11y agoWhat would you suggest as an alternative?
- javert 11y agoNo alternative needs to be suggested. There is a common time scale we all already agree on and use every day.
- Crito 11y agoYou criticized it for being arbitrary. I assert that any system would be arbitrary, because we can't we can't count years either from the beginning of the universe, from the beginning of the Earth, or the beginning of life, because none of those dates are known with adequate precision. Furthermore we can't use "years since the date this text was written" because that would make reading any such text an absolute chore. If there isn't an alternative, then complaining that about that arbitrariness is a worthless contribution to this discussion. Do you think that less arbitrary alternatives exist? Forget suggesting an alternative... are there alternatives at all?
- javert 11y agoI was complaining that it is "yet another time scale," which is not something we need. That it's arbitrary is also true, but not the thrust of the criticism. I realize it may not have been obvious that that was the thurst of my criticism, but "yet another X" is a common phrase in the hacker community. Looking at the wikipedia article for "Yet another," the very first sentence is this: > Among programmers, yet another (often abbreviated ya, Ya or YA in the initial part of an acronym) is an idiomatic qualifier in the name of a computer program, organisation, or event that is confessedly unoriginal. The point is, there is already a widely used system for dating years. Coming up with a new one adds nothing (except confusion). Coming up with a new one that also overloads pre-existing English words is even worse.
- Asbostos 11y agoI agree that it mostly causes unneeded confusion to have another arbitrary standard. I think usually they are created or perpetuated to give a minor convenience to a minority of specialists using it every day, but then they become popular and are constant obstacle for non-specialists. Other examples are the mole, angstrom, electron-volt, decibel and light year. It looks like the usefulness of BP to specialists is because the carbon dating is done in reference to a sample which was prepared at that time. I don't know why they don't convert to BC or BCE for an article that non-carbon-daters are going to read though.
- Trombone12 11y agoA warning then: don't read too much about abstract algebra, or the word re-use abuse will make you sick.