Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by timbit42 on Sunday September 25, 2022 @04:55PM (#32976120)

Yeah. Who thought using decimal was a good idea? We should be using dozenal. At least 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5 so doing thirds and quarters is messy. Being able to do fifths isn't as useful as thirds and quarters and you can multiply 12 by 5 and use 60 if you want to divide by fifths, like clocks do.

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Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by int_19h on Sunday September 25, 2022 @05:28PM (#32976461)

Decimal is a natural convention once you're using fingers to count, which humans usually do while they're figuring it all out.

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Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by Joeri on Monday September 26, 2022 @01:51AM (#32979849)

Not true. You can count knuckles on one hand up to 12, two hands up to 144, or 60 if you’re using fingers of one hand and knuckles of the other. Societies used to count knuckles, which is why duodecimal systems were a lot more popular back then. Way easier for doing fractions and divisions in your head as well.

Decimal is a system best suited for written math.

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Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by int_19h on Monday September 26, 2022 @03:52PM (#32987487)

You can count all kinds of things, but of the pieces of human anatomy, fingers are the most convenient because you can fold them while counting. Which is why they're also by far the most popular things to count worldwide, even if different societies use slightly different ways of doing so.

You can count to 12 that way, too, e.g. by folding the thumb first to indicate 1, and then unfolding it with the rest of the fingers folded when you get to 6. Or you can turn the fist upside down etc. Again, there are many techniques, but counting by folding or unfolding fingers is the simplest and the most obvious, which is why base-10 is the most common.

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Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by pessimizer on Sunday September 25, 2022 @07:13PM (#32977423)

As most of us have successfully figured out counting, we can move on to measurement systems that are more convenient when dividing.

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Re:Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we ex... by int_19h on Monday September 26, 2022 @03:52PM (#32987492)

We're too invested into decimal at this point - the cost of the migration would be so immense as to dwarf any benefits from suddenly being able to divide by 3 and 4 easily.

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