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An analogy: there are multiple calendar systems in widespread use. Each one of those defines a different year 0. In fact, how I define time 0 is completely arbi
by codeflo 12y ago
An analogy: there are multiple calendar systems in widespread use. Each one of those defines a different year 0. In fact, how I define time 0 is completely arbitrary, so that for any given moment in time, I can define a calendar system that defines this moment to be exactly 00:00:00 on day 1 of year 0 in my new calendar system. From this fact, using the logic of the article, I can show that any moment is time 0 (in some calendar), and thus measuring time is completely pointless!
- Houshalter 12y agoIt's more like each calendar system maps the time to some completely arbitrary function. So in one calendar system, the number of years between 2000 and 2014 is 14 years, and the distance between 1990 and 1991 is 1,000 years. But at least with calendars it might be manageable. We want to do operations like find the lowest number of bits needed to represent some data, or to do comparisons between the complexity of different strings. If this varies based on the programming language you use, then it's problematic at the very least.