this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
617 points (95.0% liked)

shitposting

1636 readers
161 users here now

Rules •1. No Doxxing •2. No TikTok reposts •3. No Harassing •4. Post Gore at your own discretion, Depends if its funny or just gore to be an edgelord.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jumuta 52 points 1 year ago (4 children)

the clock and the AM/PM system makes much more sense when you count from 0.

0am 1am 2am 3am ... 11am

0pm 1pm 2pm 3pm ... 11pm

instead of:

12am 1am 2am 3am ... 11am

12pm 1pm 2pm 3pm ... 11pm

the ancient people that invented the clock were programmers all along??

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

you may find comfort in knowing that in a mathematical sense, its reasonable to say 12am=0am.

this is because 12 hour clocks use modular arithmetic. doing arithmetic modulo 12 is basically the same thing as doing normal arithmetic with the whole numbers, except you add in the rule 12=0. for example, modulo 12, we have 15 = 3 + 12 = 0 + 3 = 3. (this explanation of modular arithmetic comes from viewing it as “normal addition” in a quotient ring.)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This, basically a lot of things were based on 12 in the olden times. But since the French were against everything British, including their imperial system they based their metric system on base 10. I heard there were even clocks in France that had only 10 hours

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There was decimal time, with 10 hours of 100 minutes, and a prototype of metric time, with the day as the base unit.

[–] Ad4mWayn3 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

12 hours can be evenly split into halves, thirds, fourths and sixths, but naah, apparently is better to only have ten to split it into halves and fifths (who uses fifths anyway) is better right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can split ten by any number you wish. That's the beauty.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I mean, that's the argument for feet vs meters lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It has nothing to do with French. The decimal digit notation was invented in ancient India, then it got adopted by the Arab world and finally reached Europe in the 10th century. But even before so called Arabic numerals ancient Romans were using decimal system as well and their Roman numerals are also based on decimal system.

Thus people all over the world agree that the decimal system is superior, since the ancient times.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's probably that way because the system of time predates the invention of zero as a concept by a millennia or two.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Everyone here assumes that midnight=12a.m. is valid everywhere but in a lot languages this is not the case (German and French just to name two). So maybe this is just something weird English speaking people do...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're making me want to make a new clock that has a 0 at the top and a 23 to it's left.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I've seen it before (well i think it was 24, not 0), but 24h analog clocks are a thing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Jumuta 1 points 1 year ago

yep, 24h time is vastly superior