this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Not according to those who think that the new century only began in 2001 because the Christian calendar has no year 0 or smth.
So in the year 2000 it wasn't a new century? Seems pretty stupid
Yep. That's because there can't be a "0th year after that one geezer was born". It's -1 BC (the last year before) and then immediately 1 AD (the first year after).
(I know they did the calculations wrong and it should actually be somewhere around -6 to -4. That doesn't change the fact that there is no year 0.)
Of course there can be an 0th year.
Kids don't start at 1 because they can't be 0, you start counting by days weeks and months and then years. This wasn't even a problem though, because in the 0th year people weren't walking around referencing dates according to whatever calendar we use.
If no years have elapsed then it's the 0th year.
It sounds to me as though some idiot named the 0th year "1", which just happens to be a numeral.
Kids start at 0 because they're not yet 1 year old. They're only 1 year old after their first birthday and during the second year of their life. Jesus wasn't 1 year old during year 1, it was just year number 1 after his (supposed) birth.
Edit: I just remembered: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning
How 'bout we don't give a fuck and use a sensible system instead?
What did I do to you...? I was just explaining what the reasoning for "there's no year 0" is. I don't agree or disagree with it. What would be a more sensible system exactly? One based on anything other than the birth of a mythological figure? Sure. Got any suggestions that are implementable without exorbitant effort?
Just adding a year 0 would be enough. Other than that, the human era.
You know that would shift every year after 0 one down, yes? We'd be in 2024 now. That doesn't seem easily implemented.
That's... not the only option. We could also shift down everything below 1. Sure, that would shift some historical dates, but would not really affect any part of modern life. And we already have situations where we need to account for different calendar systems (e.g. the October Revolution actually happened in November, according to our current calendar), so we know the world doesn't end. And when Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar, which was more complicated than adding a 0 somewhere, the world didtend either.
So you'd want the year leading up to Jesus' (supposed) birth to be 0. Okay. Why though? Never mind that it doesn't make sense to start counting at 0 (calling the first instance of something the "0th" instance), I'm still puzzled over what the benefit would be. I'm not saying the world would end, I'm just not seeing why.
Russia switching to the Gregorian calendar was aligning itself with its neighbours, the world has changed significantly since then, having the "correct" date, i.e. the same as everybody else, has become A LOT more important.
Because we can make it better, even if it's just a tiny amount. To me, that's enough. It's the same with daylight savings time, the imperial system (in the few places that still use it), ISO 8601 date format, and so on. Sure, every individual patch doesn't do a whole lot, and even together the effect may not be world-altering, but I simply refuse to believe in a future where we keep these small bugs around just because we were stupid once and then were too lazy to fix them.
It also wouldn't be starting the count at 0. But to have a coherent system with both positive and negative numbers, there needs to be a 0. Plus, you can still call the year 0 the first year. When somebody is 0 years old, they're in their first year of their life as well.
The Russia comparison was more for feasibility, not for importance.
Whose age exactly are we recording here though? We're counting years since an event (it is now the 2025th year since the event), not somebody's or something's age (the event is 2024 years old).
I seriously do not see how not having a 0th year is comparable to a bug and how having a year 0 would be in any way "better". It doesn't matter, outside of the occasional confusion among people who really aren't affected much by the exact number the current year has as long as everybody agrees.