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Has anyone ever thought about, of all the amazing things, the whole world basis's their time off of a man's birth year who could possibly never have existed?
I see this as a mass hysteria bigger than the scale of thinking the world is flat. Is there nothing this species can do to break out of it's backwards mind track?
Of course there is but at what expense? You want to change the date convention? That'll make KY2 hysteria look like a hiccup.
As far as computers go it wouldn't be much of a problem. Almost all stored numbers are actually in unix time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time
Which is time since Jan 1, 1970.
Has anyone ever thought about, of all the amazing things, the whole world basis's their time off of a man's birth year who could possibly never have existed?
I see this as a mass hysteria bigger than the scale of thinking the world is flat. Is there nothing this species can do to break out of it's backwards mind track?
It's no more 'mass hysteria' than referring (for example) to the fourth day of the western work-week as Thursday (or, Thor's Day), as is done by hundreds of millions of people who don't hold one iota to the idea that Thor might have existed.
You mean like in African countries, where every time there is a revolution, the dictator changes the names of all the cities? How does that make anything better? Places in India, China, Russia, South Africa have been changed to suit people who felt that the old days were politi8cally incorrect. How are you doing on keeping up with all of them?
What would you propose as the starting date for the calendar, and what measures put in place to make sure nobody comes along with a better idea than yours (or just different) and changes it again?
However, I can see some justification for making it a linear scale with zero at one end, instead of in the middle, like the Kelvin thermometer. That could be done fairly easily by adding 3000 to the current date, making this 5013, with zero being some arbitrary point in antiquity at what is generally thought of as the end of Pre-history in Egypt, and the conversion to the new scale would be super simple. In that way, all positive numbered dates would be within the frame of human civilization, and negative numbers for prior historical events. Or, just to be on the safe side, go immediately to 5-digit numbers, call this 12013, and reckon the starting time as the first semblance of settled agriculture around the year zero in the Fertile Crescent.
You mean like in African countries, where every time there is a revolution, the dictator changes the names of all the cities? How does that make anything better? Places in India, China, Russia, South Africa have been changed to suit people who felt that the old days were politi8cally incorrect. How are you doing on keeping up with all of them?
What would you propose as the starting date for the calendar, and what measures put in place to make sure nobody comes along with a better idea than yours (or just different) and changes it again?
However, I can see some justification for making it a linear scale with zero at one end, instead of in the middle, like the Kelvin thermometer. That could be done fairly easily by adding 5000 to the current date, making this 7013, with zero being some arbitrary point in antiquity prior to human civilization, and the conversion to the new scale would be super simple. In that way, all positive numbered dates would be within the frame of human civilization, and negative numbers for prior non-civilization events. Or, just to be on the safe side, go immediately to 5-digit numbers, call this 12013, and reckon the starting time as the first semblance of settled agriculture around the year zero in the Fertile Crescent.
We'd still have the same problem of either negative numbers or a BC type thing when referring to pre human time such as geological events.
While we're at it, let's go from base ten to base 13.
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