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> I also find it rather strangely fortuitous that our year is about 360 days, which makes the math for the calculating how much the night sky changes every nigh

> I also find it rather strangely fortuitous that our year is about 360 days, which makes the math for the calculating how much the night sky changes every night particularly easy. Can you elaborate? I guess you're referring to the fact that the number 360 happens to be highly divisible, but I'm not sure.

lovemenot 11y ago
I think javajosh's first two points were intentionally designed to be picked apart. Yes, 360 is a highly divisible number, but then current years are not actually 360 days. And anyway both apparent moon size and year length in days are not fixed, but variable. javajosh's point, I think, is that one can always make something appear to fit magically when your perspective is arbitrary.
- javajosh 11y ago
  Actually I was being serious. So, 360 degrees is useful for dividing a circle into pieces, because it's divisible in lots of ways (particularly fourths, thirds, and so on). It's small enough to be manageable but large enough to let builders, for example, speak in terms of "one degree". I bet that any intelligent, tool-using life would pick 360 for dividing circles. If you're doing astronomy, you'll notice that every night the stars "advance". That is, if you do your seeing at midnight every night, the stars will look slightly different each night. In fact, they'll look (roughly) 4 minutes older, corresponding to one degree of rotation. If you do this for a whole year you'll see the same sky at midnight again, a year later. (Another way to think of this is that there's a line passing through the sun and earth that, at midnight at any point on earth, points in a different direction every evening of the year. There are 365 of these lines, and they are (almost) exactly one degree apart.) I think that's really a pretty coincidence. (Now, it's true that it would also be remarkable if our year was 100 or 1000 days. That would be remarkable for a different reason of course.)
  - Retra 11y ago
    There aren't actually 365 days in a year, it's only approximate, and we force upon ourselves a ton of (highly inconvenient) work to make that approximation work day-to-day. >(Now, it's true that it would also be remarkable if our year was 100 or 1000 days. That would be remarkable for a different reason of course.) I think that's lovemenot's point: If you accept arbitrary reasons, everything will be remarkable. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox

lovemenot 11y ago

I think javajosh's first two points were intentionally designed to be picked apart. Yes, 360 is a highly divisible number, but then current years are not actually 360 days. And anyway both apparent moon size and year length in days are not fixed, but variable. javajosh's point, I think, is that one can always make something appear to fit magically when your perspective is arbitrary.

javajosh 11y ago
Actually I was being serious. So, 360 degrees is useful for dividing a circle into pieces, because it's divisible in lots of ways (particularly fourths, thirds, and so on). It's small enough to be manageable but large enough to let builders, for example, speak in terms of "one degree". I bet that any intelligent, tool-using life would pick 360 for dividing circles. If you're doing astronomy, you'll notice that every night the stars "advance". That is, if you do your seeing at midnight every night, the stars will look slightly different each night. In fact, they'll look (roughly) 4 minutes older, corresponding to one degree of rotation. If you do this for a whole year you'll see the same sky at midnight again, a year later. (Another way to think of this is that there's a line passing through the sun and earth that, at midnight at any point on earth, points in a different direction every evening of the year. There are 365 of these lines, and they are (almost) exactly one degree apart.) I think that's really a pretty coincidence. (Now, it's true that it would also be remarkable if our year was 100 or 1000 days. That would be remarkable for a different reason of course.)
- Retra 11y ago
  There aren't actually 365 days in a year, it's only approximate, and we force upon ourselves a ton of (highly inconvenient) work to make that approximation work day-to-day. >(Now, it's true that it would also be remarkable if our year was 100 or 1000 days. That would be remarkable for a different reason of course.) I think that's lovemenot's point: If you accept arbitrary reasons, everything will be remarkable. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox