7 ms·

The Qeng Ho in Deepness in the Sky had the right idea. They traveled from planet to planet in STL ships, and counted time purely in seconds. They had to account

by db48x 4y ago

The Qeng Ho in Deepness in the Sky had the right idea. They traveled from planet to planet in STL ships, and counted time purely in seconds. They had to account for relativity, but nothing else. A short task might take a kilosecond (about 16 minutes), a watch schedule might plan for activities covering a megasecond (close enough to a month for you and me), while a gigasecond is a good chunk of your life (32 years). "Calendar frippery" was left entirely to the civilations they visited. Since individual civilizations rarely lasted long enough to see repeat visits from the same ship, it wasn't important for the traders to learn the local calendar in any detail. One of the characters opines that you know you have stayed in port too long when your crew start using the local calendar.

jes5199 4y ago
ah yes, "seconds", the "second minúte part of an hour", i.e. 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of the average time it takes the Earth to rotate towards Sol. very sensible default.
- db48x 4y ago
  No, they obviously use the modern definition based on cesium clocks, or some equivalent. In fact, they set up long–term interplanetary communication systems so that any civilization which had fallen and rediscovered radio could learn their language and units, so customer civilizations mostly used the same definition of a second even though their day/night cycle might be completely different.
- mattigames 4y ago
  Personally I vote for a new unity as a measure of time, the 10+e7 part of the speed of light, so the equivalent to 2.99792458 seconds, it's a sensible default in my opinion, perhaps also another new unity that is the third of that one, it would be very close to a second (in case the space travelers have practical applications to have such measure of time)
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    How does this work? To get duration from speed, you also need to designate a distance, don't you? What is special about 898,755 km?
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      At this point I'll note the watering hole frequency is about 20 cm, giving a conveniently big distance unit without additional parameters. If other, alien species aren't using it already, they'll be jealous enough to switch.
  - db48x 4y ago
    Or we could just redefine c to be 300,000m/s.
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
      that would require redefining of the metre.
      - db48x 4y ago
        Only by a little bit. Most people wouldn’t notice.
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, 100 seconds in a minute. With that division, seconds would be 0.84 the length of current seconds. But, one second is exactly 10 alpha cycles in the brain (10 hz), which is the most dominant electrical cycle. So, maybe seconds are biologically sensible. In that case, we need to build a system that connects the rhythms of our biology to the rhythms of our planetary motion. Oh…
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Don’t forget to point out the absurd arbitrariness the kilo part. Base ten number systems are just as arbitrary as the rest of this stuff we’re mocking.
  - arrrg 4y ago
    "Kilo-" as a prefix just means thousand, derived from Greek. Doesn’t seem arbitrary to me. Can you explain what you mean by that? Of course, all number systems are arbitrary in a sense.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      One thousand is an arbitrary number, and apart from its special place in our base 10 number system is no more special than, say, nine hundred ninety-nine.
      - mattigames 4y ago
        I bet that humans at some point will discover thats actually false in the sense that the base 10 system is not completely arbitrary, and brains had an easier time evolving using the base 10 number systems (than say, base 7), and just like electricity flows through the path of least resistence even in other galaxies the same happens with how some areas of the brain evolve, that regardless of their origin they tend to use the base 10 system as well, with some minor differences.
        db48x 4y ago
        I would be willing to bet that some bases are easier than others, with primes being basically impossible, but not that 10 is inherently easier than 8 or 12.
        mattigames 4y ago
        I bet having 10 fingers makes base 10 slightly easier to understand at early ages than 8 or 12 (specially 12 and anything else greater than 10)
krick 4y ago
Except it would be absolutely impractical to actually use in practice by any species/societies that have to sleep on a regular basis and in general need cycles. If all your "natural cycles" happen to fit well into base-10, well, that's great. Otherwise, you need to base your cycles on something else, which is exactly what calendars do. And, just by the way, the Gregorian calendar is bad and messy, but the ideas it's built upon are absolutely great and are not results of shower-thinking and twitter-shitposting, but arise from pure practicality. They suit Earth, and humans are earthlings, their cycles are defined by the Earth. A year is a crucial cycle, because it defines weather so much. A day is a crucial cycle, because it defines when it's dark outside. A lunar month is a natural and pretty good cycle, because Moon cycles do actually affect life on Earth, but it isn't crucial, which is exactly the reason, why Gregorian calendar happens to get away with pretty much ignoring this one, unlike a day and a year. Still, it explains why most calendars through history prefer months being close to 27.3 days, and why weeks are 7 days (a quarter of 28). Both cycles also are both long enough and short enough to be useful for practical reasons, like organizing work schedules even without relying on celestial bodies. Furthermore, it even appears they are not enough, which is why the year is divided into "quarters" for business purposes like accounting. And these happen to be fairly close to 30 days, which happens to be a very neat divider of 360, which is close enough to a year on the one side, and a very neat number that naturally divides all small numbers up to 6 on the other side, which makes it easy to work with (unlike base-10, BTW, since that cannot be divided by 3). All of which explains, why French Republican calendar is actually a great idea and unfortunately failed (for a fairly stupid reason, IMO), and base-10 day is not so great (although it has merit, since modern digits are base-10) and naturally failed. Now, these totally imaginary and having nothing to do with reality aliens of yours may not have earth-like and human-like cycles, but they surely have cycles of their own. So it is unlikely that magnitude-1000 time measurement with no cycles in-between can work for them either.
- db48x 4y ago
  > So it is unlikely that magnitude-1000 time measurement with no cycles in-between can work for them either. Oh, maybe I didn’t describe it very well. They use precise scheduling whenever possible, and use kiloseconds and megaseconds in casual conversation. For example, you might be scheduled to go on–shift at 1664204400, and every shift is 30 kiloseconds, meaning you go off–shift at 1664234400. Of course the book never gave exact timestamps like that, it only discussed shifts and watches in general terms. In casual conversation they use “kiloseconds” or “thousand seconds” the same way we use phrases like “half an hour”. For example: “We got the same scut-work shift starting in two thousand seconds. I thought we could go down to the bactry together, trade gossip.” They also use shorter approximations, like “hundred seconds” the way we might use minutes: ‘In his huds, he could see his ships climbing slowly up the sky, still hidden from the naked eye by the nearest tenement. “Another four hundred seconds sir, and you’ll see them come out past the roof just about there.” He pointed at the spot.’ They just don’t have a calendar based on astronomical cycles. When your STL ship needs 400 years to complete a single journey, and each crewmember spends a very small percentage of that time awake and on watch, you don’t need to care about cycles or calendars. And since each of the hundreds of star system that humans have colonized has a completely different calendar based on whatever astronomical cycles are available locally, so Earth’s calendar just doesn’t matter very much.

by db48x 4y ago

jes5199 4y ago

ah yes, "seconds", the "second minúte part of an hour", i.e. 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of the average time it takes the Earth to rotate towards Sol. very sensible default.

db48x 4y ago
No, they obviously use the modern definition based on cesium clocks, or some equivalent. In fact, they set up long–term interplanetary communication systems so that any civilization which had fallen and rediscovered radio could learn their language and units, so customer civilizations mostly used the same definition of a second even though their day/night cycle might be completely different.
mattigames 4y ago
Personally I vote for a new unity as a measure of time, the 10+e7 part of the speed of light, so the equivalent to 2.99792458 seconds, it's a sensible default in my opinion, perhaps also another new unity that is the third of that one, it would be very close to a second (in case the space travelers have practical applications to have such measure of time)
- jessaustin 4y ago
  How does this work? To get duration from speed, you also need to designate a distance, don't you? What is special about 898,755 km?
  - saalweachter 4y ago
    At this point I'll note the watering hole frequency is about 20 cm, giving a conveniently big distance unit without additional parameters. If other, alien species aren't using it already, they'll be jealous enough to switch.
- db48x 4y ago
  Or we could just redefine c to be 300,000m/s.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    that would require redefining of the metre.
    - db48x 4y ago
      Only by a little bit. Most people wouldn’t notice.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, 100 seconds in a minute. With that division, seconds would be 0.84 the length of current seconds. But, one second is exactly 10 alpha cycles in the brain (10 hz), which is the most dominant electrical cycle. So, maybe seconds are biologically sensible. In that case, we need to build a system that connects the rhythms of our biology to the rhythms of our planetary motion. Oh…
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tshaddox 4y ago
Don’t forget to point out the absurd arbitrariness the kilo part. Base ten number systems are just as arbitrary as the rest of this stuff we’re mocking.
- arrrg 4y ago
  "Kilo-" as a prefix just means thousand, derived from Greek. Doesn’t seem arbitrary to me. Can you explain what you mean by that? Of course, all number systems are arbitrary in a sense.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    One thousand is an arbitrary number, and apart from its special place in our base 10 number system is no more special than, say, nine hundred ninety-nine.
    - mattigames 4y ago
      I bet that humans at some point will discover thats actually false in the sense that the base 10 system is not completely arbitrary, and brains had an easier time evolving using the base 10 number systems (than say, base 7), and just like electricity flows through the path of least resistence even in other galaxies the same happens with how some areas of the brain evolve, that regardless of their origin they tend to use the base 10 system as well, with some minor differences.
      - db48x 4y ago
        I would be willing to bet that some bases are easier than others, with primes being basically impossible, but not that 10 is inherently easier than 8 or 12.
        mattigames 4y ago
        I bet having 10 fingers makes base 10 slightly easier to understand at early ages than 8 or 12 (specially 12 and anything else greater than 10)

krick 4y ago

Except it would be absolutely impractical to actually use in practice by any species/societies that have to sleep on a regular basis and in general need cycles. If all your "natural cycles" happen to fit well into base-10, well, that's great. Otherwise, you need to base your cycles on something else, which is exactly what calendars do. And, just by the way, the Gregorian calendar is bad and messy, but the ideas it's built upon are absolutely great and are not results of shower-thinking and twitter-shitposting, but arise from pure practicality. They suit Earth, and humans are earthlings, their cycles are defined by the Earth. A year is a crucial cycle, because it defines weather so much. A day is a crucial cycle, because it defines when it's dark outside. A lunar month is a natural and pretty good cycle, because Moon cycles do actually affect life on Earth, but it isn't crucial, which is exactly the reason, why Gregorian calendar happens to get away with pretty much ignoring this one, unlike a day and a year. Still, it explains why most calendars through history prefer months being close to 27.3 days, and why weeks are 7 days (a quarter of 28). Both cycles also are both long enough and short enough to be useful for practical reasons, like organizing work schedules even without relying on celestial bodies. Furthermore, it even appears they are not enough, which is why the year is divided into "quarters" for business purposes like accounting. And these happen to be fairly close to 30 days, which happens to be a very neat divider of 360, which is close enough to a year on the one side, and a very neat number that naturally divides all small numbers up to 6 on the other side, which makes it easy to work with (unlike base-10, BTW, since that cannot be divided by 3). All of which explains, why French Republican calendar is actually a great idea and unfortunately failed (for a fairly stupid reason, IMO), and base-10 day is not so great (although it has merit, since modern digits are base-10) and naturally failed. Now, these totally imaginary and having nothing to do with reality aliens of yours may not have earth-like and human-like cycles, but they surely have cycles of their own. So it is unlikely that magnitude-1000 time measurement with no cycles in-between can work for them either.

db48x 4y ago
> So it is unlikely that magnitude-1000 time measurement with no cycles in-between can work for them either. Oh, maybe I didn’t describe it very well. They use precise scheduling whenever possible, and use kiloseconds and megaseconds in casual conversation. For example, you might be scheduled to go on–shift at 1664204400, and every shift is 30 kiloseconds, meaning you go off–shift at 1664234400. Of course the book never gave exact timestamps like that, it only discussed shifts and watches in general terms. In casual conversation they use “kiloseconds” or “thousand seconds” the same way we use phrases like “half an hour”. For example: “We got the same scut-work shift starting in two thousand seconds. I thought we could go down to the bactry together, trade gossip.” They also use shorter approximations, like “hundred seconds” the way we might use minutes: ‘In his huds, he could see his ships climbing slowly up the sky, still hidden from the naked eye by the nearest tenement. “Another four hundred seconds sir, and you’ll see them come out past the roof just about there.” He pointed at the spot.’ They just don’t have a calendar based on astronomical cycles. When your STL ship needs 400 years to complete a single journey, and each crewmember spends a very small percentage of that time awake and on watch, you don’t need to care about cycles or calendars. And since each of the hundreds of star system that humans have colonized has a completely different calendar based on whatever astronomical cycles are available locally, so Earth’s calendar just doesn’t matter very much.