[Info-vax] Why is starting epoch 17 Nov 1858?

[Tom Wade]

On 2021-03-11 15:51, Dave Froble wrote:

> There is a major difference..  The Gregorian calendar is somewhat more 
> accurate.  The metric measurement system is no more accurate.

The Gregorian Calendar does a better job at realigning our dates of the 
year with the seasons.  The metric system does a better job at 
realigning our measurement system with the base of our counting system. 
  However, the main commonality I was referring to was the hostile and 
emotional reaction to both simply because it was a foreign idea.

Consider the first thing that was 'metricated'.  It was rolled out in 
the US first, and gradually found its way across the world.  It was 
money.  Prior to independence, you would have used the irrational system 
of 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound.  The 
founding fathers replaced that with a decimal system of 100 cents to the 
dollar.  So $2.65 and 265c are the same thing, and this brilliant idea 
rapidly spread to the rest of the world.  Britain and Ireland were the 
last holdouts that still used non-decimal units like 
pounds-shilling-pence until 1970.  Great fun adding costs like #2-11-6 & 
#1-3-11 and calculating the change from a #5 note (I remember it well). 
  The metric system simply applied the American idea to measurement, and 
my height is 1.74 m or 174 cm.  Simple.  And that's before we start 
manipulating measurements like 5/16", 3/8" etc compared to whole 
millimeter units.  Not so much to do with accuracy (although mm are more 
precise than 1/16"), more to do with ease of calculation.  The key thing 
is that we use a decimal base 10 counting system, so it makes sense to 
have the measurement system reflect that (of course, if we were to 
persuade non-computer people to adopt hexadecimal then the metric system 
wouldn't offer much advantages :-) )

> Your argument is the same as "French is a better language than English, 
> stop using English".  It is an opinion.  I understand English, I do not 
> understand or speak French.

Firstly, human languages are very different from measurement systems. 
Learning a new language is very difficult.  You can learn metric in 20 
minutes.  You use your language pretty constantly, so it is far more 
important in your daily life than how big an inch or liter is.  Lastly, 
language contains a huge amount of literature, culture and knowledge. 
Losing a language means a great loss of information and heritage.  A 
measurement system is simply a tool, no more. There is no need to wrap 
it in emotional or cultural baggage. If a better tool comes around, why 
leave yourself at a disadvantage by refusing to use it?

>  I understand the English measurement 
> system, I know how long an inch is without having to think about it.

The important thing here is that you are confusing familiarity with ease 
of calculation. Unix users (to keep the topic somewhat relevant to the 
list) are quite convinced that 'ls', 'cat' and 'ps -ax' are sensible 
commands, and would find "directory", "type" and "show system" alien. 
But you can get used to anything quickly.  I used to know how big an 
inch and foot are because back in the 70s we used them.  I became quite 
comfortable with metric after a few weeks. More important than knowing 
how big an inch or a centimeter is (hint: width of your finger), the 
complexities come when you have to perform any measures or computations. 
Believe me, your children would wonder how you stuck with something like 
that for so long, in the same way that mine do when I describe pounds 
shillings and pence.

> Why am I irrational if I choose to use something I'm familiar with?

It's not irrational to use something familiar, it is quite reasonable. 
What is irrational is to actively and emotionally oppose something that 
is an improvement simply because it comes from somewhere else (not 
claiming you in particular are doing this).  It would be irrational, for 
example, to oppose mixed case filenames in ODS-5 simply because the idea 
came from Windows or Unix, and isn't the way things were always done in 
VMS.  If a proposed change offers benefits, then yes, we should adopt it 
irrespective of whose idea it was.  If it is not better, then don't. 
You can find plenty of Internet sites comparing the benefits of metric 
and imperial/colonial units (e.g. www.metric4us.com/why.html).  You're 
right in that you shouldn't adopt something just because 95% of the 
world already has, but it is even worse to refuse to consider it simply 
because it comes from somewhere else.

And I haven't even mentioned the loss of the Mars Orbiter ...

Tom Wade