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Logic is in short supply and off-by-one errors are everywhere. Most people don't care. I think it's more doable to learn to just live with that than to reprog
by tempodox 2y ago
Logic is in short supply and off-by-one errors are everywhere. Most people don't care. I think it's more doable to learn to just live with that than to reprogram mankind.
- zepolen 2y agoThat's what most people think and the world keeps trucking along. It's the rare people that don't who actually change the world.
- tempodox 2y agoYou can change the world if you make it easier to meet a need enough people have. Persuading everyone they're holding it wrong is not that.
- zepolen 2y agoThose are exactly the same thing if you convince everyone they are holding it wrong by holding it right.
- jdhzzz 2y agoe.g. Fosbury flop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_flop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosbury_flop)
- lukan 2y ago"You can change the world if you make it easier to meet a need enough people have" True and should not be forgotten in this debate. But clear communication is a need many people have.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoPersuasion by argument, maybe not. But if you simply ask for clarification when you hear "nth century" but not when you hear "n-hundreds" then you've effectively made it easier for the speaker to meet their need one way over the other way. Same thing for "this weekend" when. Not spoken during a weekend.
- leereeves 2y ago> I think it's more doable to learn to just live with that than to reprogram mankind. Why not just fix the calendar to match what people expect? There was no time when people said "this is year 1 AD". That numbering was created retroactively hundreds of years later. So we can also add year 0 retroactively.
- dgb23 2y agoSpecifically I agree, but generally I disagree. I’m very glad we got the metric system, standards for commonly used protocols and so on.
- swyx 2y agooooor we can slowly migrate towards sensibility as we did celsius and centimeters
- jonathan_landy 2y agoRe temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.
- LocalH 2y agoAt least conversion between Celsius degrees and Kelvin is easy and lossless
- beachy 2y ago> Celsius is nearly useless. That's like ... your opinion man. Personally I like knowing that water boils at exactly 100 degrees.
- prerok 2y agoAt sea level, yes :) I do agree, though I live in Europe and C is the norm. I could never wrap my head around F. That said, I think 0 is more important in daily life, below or above freezing. How much is that in F again?
- jodrellblank 2y agoWhat's "more logical" about "the seventeenth century" compared to "the sixteen hundreds"?
- hombre_fatal 2y agoI’d say more sensible. It’s always weird to me to use the number 17 to talk about years that start with 16. Makes more sense to just say the 1600s.
- dantyti 2y agoAfter their 16th birthday, the person is going through their 17th year. Just like 11:45 can be told as "a quarter to 12"
- rootusrootus 2y ago> After their 16th birthday, the person is going through their 17th year. While that is true, does it not illustrate exactly the problem? Nobody ever says someone is in their 17th year when they are 16. That would be very confusing.
- dantyti 2y agoPeople in my country sometimes do. As well as uni students, who always say which year they’re in, not how many years they’d finished.
- phkahler 2y agoNobody's asking to reprogram anyone. Just stop using one of two conventions. The reason to do it is simple and obvious. I'm really baffled at the responses here advocating strongly for the current way. But I guess that's just a "people thing"
- 1over137 2y agoAsking me to stop using my preferred convention is tantamount to 'reprogramming' me.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoReprogramming mankind is unreasonable. Reprogramming you may not be.
- BobaFloutist 2y agoI'm amazed you didn't even hedge by saying "telling me to", claiming that a request to shift convention is tantamount to a reprogramming is certainly a bold, provocative claim.
- ryukoposting 2y agoThe publishing industry already has style guides for large swaths of the industry. Imagine, for a moment, that AP adopted the OP's "don't count centuries" guidance. An enormous share of English-language publishing outfits would conform to the new rule in all future publications. Within a couple months, a large share of written media consumption would adopt this improved way of talking about historical time frames. The best part? Absolutely no effort on the part of the general public. It's not like the OP is inventing new words or sentence structures. There's zero cognitive overhead for anyone, except for a handful of journalists and copywriters who are already used to that kind of thing. It's part of their job. I think a lot of people take these sorts of ideas to mean "thou shalt consciously change the way you speak." In reality, we have the systems in place to make these changes gradually, without causing trouble for anyone. If you don't like it, nobody's trying to police your ability to say it some other way - even if that way is objectively stupid, as is the case with counting centuries.
- adamomada 2y agoYou just made me realize that the common saying “the eleventh hour” isn’t what anyone thinks it is