5 ms·

Very interested in your year notation. This is the first I’ve seen of it before. Is this to inspire readers to take a more long-term view?

mbil 5y ago
Yes, The Long Now Foundation[0] uses the same notation. [0] https://longnow.org/ https://longnow.org/
- bombcar 5y ago
  I will start the Long Long Now Foundation and support years with fifteen leading zeros. Much better.
  - shagie 5y ago
    That's already part of a proposed "standard" - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      The whole idea is bonkers and self-contradictory. If NLP hasn't advanced to understand the context of shorthand dates in old texts in 10,000 years time, I'd say thats a pretty pessimistic view on long term progress. Yet the idea is to add 0s because of a long term view on human progress? Doesn't make sense to me.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        It's a weird form of advertising/virtue signaling, really. "I use an extra zero on my dates to show I know and care about the future."
        msrenee 5y ago
        I had a professor who was very excited about their work. Coming from an environmental and ecological point of view with a decent amount of idealism, I thought the whole thing was a little pie-in-the-sky wackadoodle. I feel like they do have some projects that made some sense and had some promise, but I sure can't find them to cite now. The idea of planning for further out is not a bad one. I'm not sure how a giant clock inside a mountain helps with that.
        bombcar 5y ago
        It’s pretty obviously a Bezos pyramid
        shagie 5y ago
        So here's a question to think about... how do you tell a culture 5000 years from now of an arbitrary technology that the nuclear waste dumps that we have are "bad"? The Clock of the Long Now is an artifact from thinking about that and other questions. I'll certainly grant that many times the art or artifact that comes from that idea may become more visible than the idea itself... but for people who are inspired by the artifact and go on to disover the idea behind it, it can be, well, inspirational - and a way of doing something today that will have repercussions centuries and millennia from now.
        msrenee 5y ago
        I've read an article about the project that's in the works to discourage future humans from digging up nuclear waste. It's a heck of a conundrum. Not that we shouldn't try, but I've got the feeling that no matter how we go about indicating that these sites are dangerous and that there is nothing to be gained by digging there, it's almost human nature to dig it back up. A primitive culture is probably the only kind that would heed the warnings laid down. Can you imagine modern humans stumbling upon something like the site that's being proposed? The only thing that might stop us before it's too late is if someone was smart enough to bring a Geiger counter. It's obviously a place that the people who built it didn't want dug up. Just like all the ancient places that the people who built them didn't want dug up. Like the pyramids. We knew they were supposed to be dangerous and cursed and booby-trapped and whatnot. Didn't stop modern humans for a second. I do really like the thought process, and again, I really want this to be a neat organization pushing people to think long-term. Unfortunately, when every project has the vast majority of people scratching their heads and trying to figure out what kind of drugs these folks are on, they're not really accomplishing much on that front.
      - shagie 5y ago
        Regarding the RFC - check out the publication date. From my impressions on the Long Now (and I found Deep Time a rather interesting read) the issue is not just sticking a zero on to say "think about the future" but rather that our current culture doesn't think about the future beyond the next news cycle, quarterly report, or election. I'd contend that The Clock of the Long Now (and the intended level of technology to repair it) and the Rosetta Project are very pessimistic about the future of humanity. ( https://rosettaproject.org/about/ https://rosettaproject.org/about/ ) The recent HN post about the oak grove for repairing the USS Constitution reminds me of https://blog.longnow.org/02014/12/31/humans-and-trees-in-long-term-partnership/ https://blog.longnow.org/02014/12/31/humans-and-trees-in-lon... > Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years saying “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.” That a several hundred year old grove was planted because the builders, being familiar with wood construction, knew that in a few hundred years that it would need to be repaired and they'd need the materials to do the repair. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-ox... > The answer to the question, have new oaks been planted, is probably. Somewhere on the land owned by the New College are oaks that are, or will one day, be worthy of use in the great hall, assuming that they are managed in the same way they were before. It is in this management by the Forester in which lies the point. Ultimately, while the story is perhaps apocryphal, the idea of replacing and managing resources for the future, and the lesson in long term thinking is not.
- adolph 5y ago
  So long now uses strings instead of integers for year? That seems shortsighted.
carapace 5y ago
I'm not the person you're asking, but FWIW I first heard of it in connection with the Long Now Foundation > The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years. https://longnow.org/about/ https://longnow.org/about/
bqmjjx0kac 5y ago
An unintended consequence is that it confuses C programmers, who expect an octal literal to follow the leading 0.
metagame 5y ago
I just saw an e-fluencer use it, so I decided I might as well also. No hidden agenda here. But yes, that's the intention behind the action here: https://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-dig...
- msrenee 5y ago
  So 10,000 years ago is approximately the start of the agricultural revolution. So the start of cities and I believe I can get away with saying the beginning of modern civilization. So 8000 years in the future is when they expect to encounter these issues with 4-digit dates. 8000 years in the past, no one had invented the alphabet. Someone double check me, but I believe that's before proto-Indo-European is believed to have developed. So the language that became the languages that became the languages that we speak today in Europe and various parts of the world isn't believed to have become distinct from its own progenitor yet. It just seems kind of cocky to think that we can forsee what sorts of problems are going to need to be solved in the year 10k. At least as far as technology is concerned. I can see arguing for a long-term outlook on social issues. Of course we need to be looking well down the road on environmental issues. But technology? They really think that we're going to have a problem with the number of digits in the date in the year 10k? It wasn't even really a problem in 2000. Thinking about the future is important. I have the feeling they're not literally worried about the number of digits in the date. I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to get you thinking. But nothing they're doing makes logical sense. Yes we should be thinking about the future, but trying to shoehorn it into our modern framework is misguided in my opinion. The idea itself isn't bad, but I'm not sure they actually understand how to use it constructively. I haven't read much about this group in 10 years. If someone has more recent experience with the concepts, please let me know where I'm wrong here. I honestly want this to be a useful group, but nothing I've seen them do actually helps accomplish anything useful.

mbil 5y ago

Yes, The Long Now Foundation[0] uses the same notation. [0] https://longnow.org/ https://longnow.org/

bombcar 5y ago
I will start the Long Long Now Foundation and support years with fifteen leading zeros. Much better.
- shagie 5y ago
  That's already part of a proposed "standard" - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    The whole idea is bonkers and self-contradictory. If NLP hasn't advanced to understand the context of shorthand dates in old texts in 10,000 years time, I'd say thats a pretty pessimistic view on long term progress. Yet the idea is to add 0s because of a long term view on human progress? Doesn't make sense to me.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      It's a weird form of advertising/virtue signaling, really. "I use an extra zero on my dates to show I know and care about the future."
      - msrenee 5y ago
        I had a professor who was very excited about their work. Coming from an environmental and ecological point of view with a decent amount of idealism, I thought the whole thing was a little pie-in-the-sky wackadoodle. I feel like they do have some projects that made some sense and had some promise, but I sure can't find them to cite now. The idea of planning for further out is not a bad one. I'm not sure how a giant clock inside a mountain helps with that.
        bombcar 5y ago
        It’s pretty obviously a Bezos pyramid
        shagie 5y ago
        So here's a question to think about... how do you tell a culture 5000 years from now of an arbitrary technology that the nuclear waste dumps that we have are "bad"? The Clock of the Long Now is an artifact from thinking about that and other questions. I'll certainly grant that many times the art or artifact that comes from that idea may become more visible than the idea itself... but for people who are inspired by the artifact and go on to disover the idea behind it, it can be, well, inspirational - and a way of doing something today that will have repercussions centuries and millennia from now.
        msrenee 5y ago
        I've read an article about the project that's in the works to discourage future humans from digging up nuclear waste. It's a heck of a conundrum. Not that we shouldn't try, but I've got the feeling that no matter how we go about indicating that these sites are dangerous and that there is nothing to be gained by digging there, it's almost human nature to dig it back up. A primitive culture is probably the only kind that would heed the warnings laid down. Can you imagine modern humans stumbling upon something like the site that's being proposed? The only thing that might stop us before it's too late is if someone was smart enough to bring a Geiger counter. It's obviously a place that the people who built it didn't want dug up. Just like all the ancient places that the people who built them didn't want dug up. Like the pyramids. We knew they were supposed to be dangerous and cursed and booby-trapped and whatnot. Didn't stop modern humans for a second. I do really like the thought process, and again, I really want this to be a neat organization pushing people to think long-term. Unfortunately, when every project has the vast majority of people scratching their heads and trying to figure out what kind of drugs these folks are on, they're not really accomplishing much on that front.
    - shagie 5y ago
      Regarding the RFC - check out the publication date. From my impressions on the Long Now (and I found Deep Time a rather interesting read) the issue is not just sticking a zero on to say "think about the future" but rather that our current culture doesn't think about the future beyond the next news cycle, quarterly report, or election. I'd contend that The Clock of the Long Now (and the intended level of technology to repair it) and the Rosetta Project are very pessimistic about the future of humanity. ( https://rosettaproject.org/about/ https://rosettaproject.org/about/ ) The recent HN post about the oak grove for repairing the USS Constitution reminds me of https://blog.longnow.org/02014/12/31/humans-and-trees-in-long-term-partnership/ https://blog.longnow.org/02014/12/31/humans-and-trees-in-lon... > Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years saying “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.” That a several hundred year old grove was planted because the builders, being familiar with wood construction, knew that in a few hundred years that it would need to be repaired and they'd need the materials to do the repair. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-ox... > The answer to the question, have new oaks been planted, is probably. Somewhere on the land owned by the New College are oaks that are, or will one day, be worthy of use in the great hall, assuming that they are managed in the same way they were before. It is in this management by the Forester in which lies the point. Ultimately, while the story is perhaps apocryphal, the idea of replacing and managing resources for the future, and the lesson in long term thinking is not.
adolph 5y ago
So long now uses strings instead of integers for year? That seems shortsighted.

carapace 5y ago

I'm not the person you're asking, but FWIW I first heard of it in connection with the Long Now Foundation > The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years. https://longnow.org/about/ https://longnow.org/about/

bqmjjx0kac 5y ago

An unintended consequence is that it confuses C programmers, who expect an octal literal to follow the leading 0.

metagame 5y ago

I just saw an e-fluencer use it, so I decided I might as well also. No hidden agenda here. But yes, that's the intention behind the action here: https://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-and-10k-compliance-at-home/ https://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-dig...

msrenee 5y ago
So 10,000 years ago is approximately the start of the agricultural revolution. So the start of cities and I believe I can get away with saying the beginning of modern civilization. So 8000 years in the future is when they expect to encounter these issues with 4-digit dates. 8000 years in the past, no one had invented the alphabet. Someone double check me, but I believe that's before proto-Indo-European is believed to have developed. So the language that became the languages that became the languages that we speak today in Europe and various parts of the world isn't believed to have become distinct from its own progenitor yet. It just seems kind of cocky to think that we can forsee what sorts of problems are going to need to be solved in the year 10k. At least as far as technology is concerned. I can see arguing for a long-term outlook on social issues. Of course we need to be looking well down the road on environmental issues. But technology? They really think that we're going to have a problem with the number of digits in the date in the year 10k? It wasn't even really a problem in 2000. Thinking about the future is important. I have the feeling they're not literally worried about the number of digits in the date. I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to get you thinking. But nothing they're doing makes logical sense. Yes we should be thinking about the future, but trying to shoehorn it into our modern framework is misguided in my opinion. The idea itself isn't bad, but I'm not sure they actually understand how to use it constructively. I haven't read much about this group in 10 years. If someone has more recent experience with the concepts, please let me know where I'm wrong here. I honestly want this to be a useful group, but nothing I've seen them do actually helps accomplish anything useful.