Post by goldensandslash on Jun 17, 2021 3:50:44 GMT
Most people count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and so on. But there are people out there who count differently. For example, base-12 is somewhat-common. I mean, not really. But some people have heard of it. And they count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and so on. If you use computers a lot, you may also be familiar with hexadecimal, base-16: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 1A, 1B, and so on. Heck, Plato advocated for base-5040 at one point (to be fair to him, Arabic numerals had not yet been invented, so he didn't understand the difficulty of coming up with 5040 unique symbols. Nevertheless, it would have been remarkably efficient, since you could write a million with just two digits: the 198th digit followed by the 2080th digit).
Now, obviously, changing the way we count is simply not going to happen. Period. Any benefits that we would gain from switching is outweighed by the detriment of making the switch itself. So I think we're past the point of no return here and we are stuck with decimal.
I mean, so many things simply wouldn't work anymore. Take, for example, the metric system. There are 100 centimeters in a meter, there are 1000 grams in a kilogram, and so on. If we switched to, say, dozenal, this becomes a lot less elegant. Now all of a sudden there are 84 centimeters in a meter and 6B4 grams in a kilogram, which is much less elegant.
The metric system revolves around base-10 numbers.
That is... with one exception.
Time.
There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 12 hours in a meridiem (that's the AM/PM thing, for "ante meridiem" and "post meridiem"), 2 meridiums in a day, 7 days in a week, 4 weeks in a month, 12 months in a year, and then years just count up indefinitely.
This is ridiculous. Could you imagine if we counted anything else the way we counted time?
Well, I can. Let's imagine it together!
Full disclosure before we get started: THIS IS A JOKE. I do not want nor expect base-clock to actually take off. It's absolutely absurd, and I'm only presenting it here because it's funny.
So we'll start with the beginning. The first number is 1. So far, so good. The second number is 2. The third number is 3. And, in fact, we can keep going pretty far and not run into any issues at all. It's just like decimal.
Then we get to 59. This is where base-clock diverges from base-10. So... at this point, we run out of "seconds" and move on to "minutes". The number after 59 is 1:00. We'll pronounce this as "sixty" for the sake of convenience.
If we keep going, then we get 1:01, which is "sixty one". Then we get "sixty two", "sixty three", and so on. Once we hit 1:10, then we have a problem. We can't just call this "seventy", because it's not a new digit. Instead, this is just "sixty ten". And we can count all the way up to "sixty fifty nine" this way. 1:59. When we get to 2:00... I guess that's "twelfty". I mean, given that the way we named the numbers 20, 30, 40, 50, and so on in decimal... that's kinda the trend we have to follow here.
So 1:00 is sixty, 2:00 is twelfty, 3:00 is thirsenty, 4:00 is foursenty, 5:00 is fifsenty, and 6:00 is sixsenty. Actually, we can probably just turn "senty" into its own word for the sake of convenience, so we could then get "seven senty", "eight senty", "nine senty" and so on. This would continue until we reach 59:59, which is "fifty nine senty fifty nine".
And at this point, we move from the "minutes" place to the "hours" place. After 59:59 comes 1:00:00. This is equal to 3600 in base-10. So, at this point, decimal uses the term "thousand". I guess base-clock could use the same term... but since we're basing this on a clock, the phrase "o'clock" makes just as much sense.
I guess I just have to make a compromise between the two.
So 1:00:00 is "one o'clousand".
The digits in the "hours" spot can only go from 1 to 12. Actually, no. It's 0 to 11. It seems wasteful to spend a digit there if it can only ever go up to 11, so let's just write 10 and 11 as A and B. Yeah, that works.
We then come to the next digit to the left. What happens when we reach twelve o'clousand? Well, at this point, we switch from AM to PM. You basically just start counting over from 1 again, except that you add "PM" onto the end of whatever number you're saying.
For example, to say a number like "seventy-one thousand one hundred thirty" in base-clock, you would say "nine o'clousand forty five senty thirty PM". Makes sense.
Of course, this totally ignores the fact that a lot of people don't use AM/PM clocks, they use 24-hour clocks. Guess we need to accommodate this too. So how about, to be fair to both systems, numbers are spoken with AM/PM, but written as military time? So the number above would be written as 19:45:30. That works. And that justifies using A and B, since the next digit is always either a 0 or a 1.
Though, if we're saying "AM" at the end of every number, then we lose the familiarity with decimal for small numbers. The fact that 1 is just, well, 1, and not "1 AM" is pretty helpful. So perhaps you only actually pronounce the meridiem if it's PM. Yeah, that's fine.
All right, so then we get up to 1B:59:59. This is equal to 86399 in decimal. What's the next number after that? Well... we move on to days of the week.
Now, up until this point, I've been pretending that we use "thousands", "millions", "billions", and so on. This is not the case everywhere though. In fact, India is a fairly large country and they don't use this system. They instead use lakh, crore, arab, kharab, nil, padma, shankh, etc.
If you've never heard of this system, I encourage you to look it up yourself and do your own research. Because it's kinda beyond what this thread is for.
Anywho... let's be fair to everyone and inclusive and incorporate lakhs into our system. This is mainly just to serve the purpose of making base-clock as confusing as possible, but hey, it also helps with inclusivity and I fully support that.
So, the next segment of time is the "day". To make this work, we'll have to specify which days of the week it is, since the week is the next unit of time after that. But I also need to incorporate lakh into this somehow? How is this even going to work?
I've got it!
So, the number after 1B:59:59 can be a "monlakh". And then as you get multiples of those, you get "tueslakh", "wedneslakh", "thurslakh", "frilakh", and "saturlakh".
Dates don't generally have colons written after them. For example, if I were to talk about May 19th at five o'clock, I'd write "5/19 5:00:00". So we could do the same thing here. Just use a space instead of a colon. A monlakh is written as 1 00:00:00. A tueslakh is written as 2 00:00:00. And this continues until saturlakh, which is 6 00:00:00.
Of course, this digit is base-7, since there are seven days in a week. So after saturlakh, we move onto the next unit, the weekillion. This is just another digit, so it becomes 10 00:00:00, for "one weekillion".
Once we reach four weekillions, we move onto months. Since decimal, at this point, just keeps using the -illion suffix regardless of how big the numbers get, we must do the same. So, the number after 36 1B:59:59 is a "januillion". Multiples of januillion will have the names februillion, marchillion, aprillion, mayillion, junillion, julillion, augillion, septembillion, octobillion, novembillion, and decembillion.
Now, usually, when writing a date, you write a slash between the month and the day, so we'll do the same here. You get numbers like 4/13 08:34:47.
This is pretty basic. The "4" is the month, then the "1" is the week, then the "3" is the day, then the "0" is the meridiem, then the "8" is the hour, the "34" is the minute, and the "47" is the second. This works.
Now, again, we end up in a situation where numbers only go up to 12, so it makes sense to just count using a single digit. So, for example, a decembillion will be C/00 00:00:00.
This does still leave another unanswered question. What happens when we run out of digits? Sure, C/36 1B:59:59 is a big number (it's equal to 31449599 in that boring base-10 system - unsurprisingly, this is close to the number of seconds in a year). But people use numbers that big (or bigger) all the time. How do we go beyond this number?
Well, that's what years are for. There is a clear difference between 2019/08/12 and 2017/08/12 in our time-keeping system, so base-clock should do the same thing. Once you hit C/36 1B:59:59, you can just add a slash and start over. The next number is 1/0/00 00:00:00. We do still need a word for that new slash, to clarify where it is, and "year" works as well as any.
There is no maximum on the year number, so you can go on to 9999999/C/36 1B:59:59 if you want, and beyond. It's basically just decimal from here on out. That number is pronounced "nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine year decembillion three weekillion saturlakh eleven o'clousand fifty nine senty fifty nine PM."
This is a fully-functional system.
Well, almost. We do still need a way to work with non-integers. For the sake of my own sanity, I'm just gonna say that they work the same in base-10. Given that every number less than sixty works the same as in base-10, it makes sense that commonly-used non-integers like one-half and pi (or tau, if you feel like being a rebel) are also under this system. So, for example, if you add 0.99 to the number that I gave above, it'd be written as 9999999/C/36 1B:59:59.99. To pronounce it, you can just say "point nine nine" after the "fifty nine" but before the "PM", just to make things slightly more confusing.
And this can go on forever. Pi in this system is 3.141592653589793238... just like in decimal.
I am now so far removed from reality though, that anything even remotely resembling real numbers feels like a breath of fresh air. Like, I think making this post has made me go insane.
What was the point of doing this? Like, how did I start this thread? I don't even remember.
Let me read up.
Right, okay. I was talking about how the metric system handles time in a weird way. And, like, I get it. It's convenient to think of time in days, given that there is a constant of the Earth rotating and the sun coming up and going down. And then years are based on seasons, which is why a year is how long it takes for the Earth to complete a lap around the sun. But given that the universe isn't mathematically perfect, these are not factors of one another. Meanwhile, down on Earth, other time units are needed for mundane human use. So it makes sense that none of it fits together nicely, since all of it was made for different purposes.
And obviously it wouldn't be compatible with our human-made base-10 numbering system. So it makes sense that if you tried to make a numbering system based on the way we use clocks, it wouldn't work.
But still, it's a fun thought exercise. I quite enjoyed making base-clock. Even though I will not be using it myself.
Now, obviously, changing the way we count is simply not going to happen. Period. Any benefits that we would gain from switching is outweighed by the detriment of making the switch itself. So I think we're past the point of no return here and we are stuck with decimal.
I mean, so many things simply wouldn't work anymore. Take, for example, the metric system. There are 100 centimeters in a meter, there are 1000 grams in a kilogram, and so on. If we switched to, say, dozenal, this becomes a lot less elegant. Now all of a sudden there are 84 centimeters in a meter and 6B4 grams in a kilogram, which is much less elegant.
The metric system revolves around base-10 numbers.
That is... with one exception.
Time.
There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 12 hours in a meridiem (that's the AM/PM thing, for "ante meridiem" and "post meridiem"), 2 meridiums in a day, 7 days in a week, 4 weeks in a month, 12 months in a year, and then years just count up indefinitely.
This is ridiculous. Could you imagine if we counted anything else the way we counted time?
Well, I can. Let's imagine it together!
Full disclosure before we get started: THIS IS A JOKE. I do not want nor expect base-clock to actually take off. It's absolutely absurd, and I'm only presenting it here because it's funny.
So we'll start with the beginning. The first number is 1. So far, so good. The second number is 2. The third number is 3. And, in fact, we can keep going pretty far and not run into any issues at all. It's just like decimal.
Then we get to 59. This is where base-clock diverges from base-10. So... at this point, we run out of "seconds" and move on to "minutes". The number after 59 is 1:00. We'll pronounce this as "sixty" for the sake of convenience.
If we keep going, then we get 1:01, which is "sixty one". Then we get "sixty two", "sixty three", and so on. Once we hit 1:10, then we have a problem. We can't just call this "seventy", because it's not a new digit. Instead, this is just "sixty ten". And we can count all the way up to "sixty fifty nine" this way. 1:59. When we get to 2:00... I guess that's "twelfty". I mean, given that the way we named the numbers 20, 30, 40, 50, and so on in decimal... that's kinda the trend we have to follow here.
So 1:00 is sixty, 2:00 is twelfty, 3:00 is thirsenty, 4:00 is foursenty, 5:00 is fifsenty, and 6:00 is sixsenty. Actually, we can probably just turn "senty" into its own word for the sake of convenience, so we could then get "seven senty", "eight senty", "nine senty" and so on. This would continue until we reach 59:59, which is "fifty nine senty fifty nine".
And at this point, we move from the "minutes" place to the "hours" place. After 59:59 comes 1:00:00. This is equal to 3600 in base-10. So, at this point, decimal uses the term "thousand". I guess base-clock could use the same term... but since we're basing this on a clock, the phrase "o'clock" makes just as much sense.
I guess I just have to make a compromise between the two.
So 1:00:00 is "one o'clousand".
The digits in the "hours" spot can only go from 1 to 12. Actually, no. It's 0 to 11. It seems wasteful to spend a digit there if it can only ever go up to 11, so let's just write 10 and 11 as A and B. Yeah, that works.
We then come to the next digit to the left. What happens when we reach twelve o'clousand? Well, at this point, we switch from AM to PM. You basically just start counting over from 1 again, except that you add "PM" onto the end of whatever number you're saying.
For example, to say a number like "seventy-one thousand one hundred thirty" in base-clock, you would say "nine o'clousand forty five senty thirty PM". Makes sense.
Of course, this totally ignores the fact that a lot of people don't use AM/PM clocks, they use 24-hour clocks. Guess we need to accommodate this too. So how about, to be fair to both systems, numbers are spoken with AM/PM, but written as military time? So the number above would be written as 19:45:30. That works. And that justifies using A and B, since the next digit is always either a 0 or a 1.
Though, if we're saying "AM" at the end of every number, then we lose the familiarity with decimal for small numbers. The fact that 1 is just, well, 1, and not "1 AM" is pretty helpful. So perhaps you only actually pronounce the meridiem if it's PM. Yeah, that's fine.
All right, so then we get up to 1B:59:59. This is equal to 86399 in decimal. What's the next number after that? Well... we move on to days of the week.
Now, up until this point, I've been pretending that we use "thousands", "millions", "billions", and so on. This is not the case everywhere though. In fact, India is a fairly large country and they don't use this system. They instead use lakh, crore, arab, kharab, nil, padma, shankh, etc.
If you've never heard of this system, I encourage you to look it up yourself and do your own research. Because it's kinda beyond what this thread is for.
Anywho... let's be fair to everyone and inclusive and incorporate lakhs into our system. This is mainly just to serve the purpose of making base-clock as confusing as possible, but hey, it also helps with inclusivity and I fully support that.
So, the next segment of time is the "day". To make this work, we'll have to specify which days of the week it is, since the week is the next unit of time after that. But I also need to incorporate lakh into this somehow? How is this even going to work?
I've got it!
So, the number after 1B:59:59 can be a "monlakh". And then as you get multiples of those, you get "tueslakh", "wedneslakh", "thurslakh", "frilakh", and "saturlakh".
Dates don't generally have colons written after them. For example, if I were to talk about May 19th at five o'clock, I'd write "5/19 5:00:00". So we could do the same thing here. Just use a space instead of a colon. A monlakh is written as 1 00:00:00. A tueslakh is written as 2 00:00:00. And this continues until saturlakh, which is 6 00:00:00.
Of course, this digit is base-7, since there are seven days in a week. So after saturlakh, we move onto the next unit, the weekillion. This is just another digit, so it becomes 10 00:00:00, for "one weekillion".
Once we reach four weekillions, we move onto months. Since decimal, at this point, just keeps using the -illion suffix regardless of how big the numbers get, we must do the same. So, the number after 36 1B:59:59 is a "januillion". Multiples of januillion will have the names februillion, marchillion, aprillion, mayillion, junillion, julillion, augillion, septembillion, octobillion, novembillion, and decembillion.
Now, usually, when writing a date, you write a slash between the month and the day, so we'll do the same here. You get numbers like 4/13 08:34:47.
This is pretty basic. The "4" is the month, then the "1" is the week, then the "3" is the day, then the "0" is the meridiem, then the "8" is the hour, the "34" is the minute, and the "47" is the second. This works.
Now, again, we end up in a situation where numbers only go up to 12, so it makes sense to just count using a single digit. So, for example, a decembillion will be C/00 00:00:00.
This does still leave another unanswered question. What happens when we run out of digits? Sure, C/36 1B:59:59 is a big number (it's equal to 31449599 in that boring base-10 system - unsurprisingly, this is close to the number of seconds in a year). But people use numbers that big (or bigger) all the time. How do we go beyond this number?
Well, that's what years are for. There is a clear difference between 2019/08/12 and 2017/08/12 in our time-keeping system, so base-clock should do the same thing. Once you hit C/36 1B:59:59, you can just add a slash and start over. The next number is 1/0/00 00:00:00. We do still need a word for that new slash, to clarify where it is, and "year" works as well as any.
There is no maximum on the year number, so you can go on to 9999999/C/36 1B:59:59 if you want, and beyond. It's basically just decimal from here on out. That number is pronounced "nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine year decembillion three weekillion saturlakh eleven o'clousand fifty nine senty fifty nine PM."
This is a fully-functional system.
Well, almost. We do still need a way to work with non-integers. For the sake of my own sanity, I'm just gonna say that they work the same in base-10. Given that every number less than sixty works the same as in base-10, it makes sense that commonly-used non-integers like one-half and pi (or tau, if you feel like being a rebel) are also under this system. So, for example, if you add 0.99 to the number that I gave above, it'd be written as 9999999/C/36 1B:59:59.99. To pronounce it, you can just say "point nine nine" after the "fifty nine" but before the "PM", just to make things slightly more confusing.
And this can go on forever. Pi in this system is 3.141592653589793238... just like in decimal.
I am now so far removed from reality though, that anything even remotely resembling real numbers feels like a breath of fresh air. Like, I think making this post has made me go insane.
What was the point of doing this? Like, how did I start this thread? I don't even remember.
Let me read up.
Right, okay. I was talking about how the metric system handles time in a weird way. And, like, I get it. It's convenient to think of time in days, given that there is a constant of the Earth rotating and the sun coming up and going down. And then years are based on seasons, which is why a year is how long it takes for the Earth to complete a lap around the sun. But given that the universe isn't mathematically perfect, these are not factors of one another. Meanwhile, down on Earth, other time units are needed for mundane human use. So it makes sense that none of it fits together nicely, since all of it was made for different purposes.
And obviously it wouldn't be compatible with our human-made base-10 numbering system. So it makes sense that if you tried to make a numbering system based on the way we use clocks, it wouldn't work.
But still, it's a fun thought exercise. I quite enjoyed making base-clock. Even though I will not be using it myself.