Ask Lemmy

You don't understand what the word "arbitrary" means, lol.

Well, if you said it, it must be true.

With your imagined system of "if everyone had always lived with random ass times they would feel as normal as they do now".

So wait, is this a pivot, or are you still trying to claim that I'm advocating for this? I have completely lost track of what you're framing your abusive posts on now.

Anyway, your imagined system of "somehow the fact that the time when people wake up is called 0600 is inherent to our biology or orbital dynamics or whatever" is absolutely not more logical than the system that the OP has asked about. It's just as arbitrary (hey, yeah, look, I still know what that means!).

You don't understand the basic history of timekeeping

Once again proving that you haven't read the previous posts I've made. Come on, dude. Simple reading. That's all I'm asking for.

and you have an utterly childish point, which is also wrong.

You have yet to actually prove this. Made lots of assertions, but you're just screaming "nuh-uh! YOU are!" over and over at this point and then spiking the conversational football as if it does anything.

You're just backing up on everything you've said after I rub your face in how stupid it's been, then you pretend you don't have a face full of poo.

Finally discovering what I was actually saying because you actually decided to go back and read it this time doesn't count as "backing up." I've been saying the same thing this whole time.

I speak 2 languages on a native level, one or two more fluently and a half a dozen in a "I could order in a restaurant" level. I'm pretty sure I know more expressions about time in more languages than you. How many languages do you speak?

...congratulations? I'm not sure how that's relevant in any way to anything. If it's really important to you: you're very smart and special. I bet you make your parents proud.

It doesn't matter if you don't know the local language or "what time local noon is" or even if they're using the same alphabet, you'll still recognise a number like 14:00 - 03:00 and then look up at the sky and it's not yet noon and you'll know you'll have to wait several hours at least.

Maybe. Or you'll walk up to the door of a veterinarian and wait around for five hours before you realize that people are bringing animals into the place, not walking out with food. There's also the problem of not knowing whether it's before noon or after noon (so a sign that says they're open for lunch from 1000-1800 would be useless if the sun is in a position where it could easily be 0700 or 1900). Or not being able to see the sun due to clouds or night or being inside. What I'm saying is that there are bigger problems involved in the situation you brought up, which is why I doubt anyone would care to solve the time problem. In this fictional, made-up world where the history of timekeeping went a little bit differently. Which you've somehow decided merits insulting me, despite you not actually having an argument that makes any logical sense. (Or at least not one you're willing to share with the class)

But you'll not admit that laughable. Which in itself amuses me.

I admit it's absolutely laughable! You know what else is absolutely laughable? The idea that the current system makes any more sense! If you're trying to coordinate an event with someone just a few miles away but across a time zone boundary in our current system, you have to go to great pains to sort everything out and make sure nobody arrives an hour early or an hour late. Or, even worse, two hours early (which happened once to a friend of mine when he did the time zone math backwards). Despite being just miles apart, and not being able to see any appreciable visible difference between the sun. That's laughable, too.

"Oh, but we have tools to deal with it" or "oh, but we can figure it out" or "oh, git gud, noob"--and yeah, we're used to it because we grew up with it and our parents grew up with it and our teachers grew up with it for generations and generations. If it had gone the other way, we would've developed different tools to deal with it, different ways of figuring it out, and we would've gotten good at other ways of keeping time. That's literally my entire point.

All of this is laughable. It's all arbitrary (yep, still got it) and hilarious because we made it all up. All models are wrong (including timekeeping). Some are useful.

You're pretending like "noon" means nine because of its etymology, as in you're pretending as if you understand linguistics, when you don't understand that ignoring it's actual descriptive meaning of "mid-day" (which is why it's "high noon, because that's describing the position of the sun) is something even a first year linguist would never do.

Your refusal to read in favor of just assuming what I mean is showing again.

But you're not about learning, you're about pretending you know things.

Aw, buddy. You think you're teaching me anything? If you had anything to teach me, that would be a welcome change. I love learning things. But you seem to be in "dunk mode" and absolutely furious that I keep refusing to let you dunk on me.

And I'm saying you are wrong in that. Because you are. You are wrong in saying that. Do you understand? You are incorrect. It is not arbitrary. Even the number 12 isn't arbitrary, neither is 24 or 100. That's not what the word means, sweetums. <3

You seriously think that assigning 12 to "noon" is inherent, babycakes? You literally believe that there's no other way that we could've matched up numbers to the time of day, pumpkin? Like there's not other ways of keeping time that used different numbers or even words instead of the digits you're familiar with on the clocks you own, honeybunch?

We agreed on 1200 as noon. That's why it works, and that's the only reason it works. If we had decided that noon would be 0000 or 1800 or "the sixth hour" or whatever, you'd be screaming your pretty little head off that I'm ridiculous for suggesting that 1200 makes as much sense as anything else. The decision has historical precedent, but it's scientifically arbitrary (boom, still know that word). The planet doesn't care whether we call it 1200 or d3:12:1h::23 or Xylophone, it'll still rotate to put us under the sun at that time.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware. Watching you prance around pretending to be smart is like watching toddlers bake mud cakes. It's cute how they think they're doing a credible job and you just have to act along so they can enjoy themselves. :)

Having been a parent of a toddler, I can tell you it's definitely nothing like that. For one thing, toddlers baking mud cakes is adorable, and I definitely am not adorable.

Oh I'm not going anywhere, hunny. You're better entertainment than this show I'm watching.

I'm so happy to be of service, sweetie-pie. You have a great day now, 'k?