Actual poster from 1917 that made me laugh. A lot.
Also, those motherfuckers are measuring the weight of those balls in kilograms, aren’t they?
Actual poster from 1917 that made me laugh. A lot.
Also, those motherfuckers are measuring the weight of those balls in kilograms, aren’t they?
10 can only be divided evenly by 2 and 5. 12 can be divided evenly by 2, 3, 4, or 6. The Babylonians were right, base12 is superior to base10.
“Hey could I borrow a drill bit?”
“Sure, what size?”
“Seventeen sixty-fourths”
“Fuck you”
Sorry man I think in 2024 you’re objectively wrong.
You’re pointing out the problem in base10 having too many fractions that don’t divide cleanly. This is why base10 is shit.
Low IQ Base10: 17/64 = 0.265625
Equivalent expression in Chad Base12: 15/54 = 0;323
This post is about the metric system, not base 10 vs base 12. Metric is superior to imperial.
Also 15/54 is in no way more convenient than 17/64, I’m assuming you’re joking.
It’s the same number in different bases and divides out to 3 dozets(I made this up) in base12 and 6 digits in base10. Our friend you replied to was pointing out that it was a mistake to adopt base10 measuring instead of throwing out base10 counting because base12 fractions divide more easily due to the increased factors. And he was right.
Ok, I reread their comment and I see what you’re getting at. Base 12 would be better in many cases but I just don’t see anybody switching anytime soon. We would pretty much have to start over. If people had 12 fingers we probably would have started on base 12 to begin with.
Cultures that used base 12 counted on their finger joints with their thumb. 12 for each hand. Many common folk did that since you could count much higher if you counted by the dozen using both hands. Go from counting to 10 to finger counting to 12 dozen or a gross(144 in base10). Since we still have the English words for base12, you can see how close we were to adopting it.
I wasn’t aware there are any cultures that use base 12, neat.
I mean… Western cultures? That’s why so many Western measuring systems are in base 12 and why we have special words for dozen and gross.
Base 10 being ubiquitous is fairly new and it replaced bases like 12 and 16 that were easier for people to track mentally.
EDIT: And that’s not to say non-Western cultures didn’t use 12 or 16. They’re super common all over.
I mean, some people do have twelve fingers.
And the metric system would be better still if it was base12. It’s time for a replacement.
The world if metric began in base 12:
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I’m enjoying you playing devil’s advocate here thoroughly.
Lemmy is so pigheaded sometimes with certain topics that all they see is one side of everything.
Let’s use BasePi then
“hey can I borrow a drill bit?”
“Sure, what size?”
“0.33333333333333333333333333333333 centimeters”
Metric drill bits are measured in mm and hardy anybody needs that much (0.33333… mm/cm) precision. I have a set of metric drill bits in 0.1mm increments and I personally might not ever need greater precision than that. Maybe in some lab environments they need greater precision but I imagine once you’re on that level it would be custom anyway.
0.33333… is what happens when you try to divide 10 by 3. This is because 10 is such a broken number that 1/3rd (a pretty common fraction) becomes an infinitely repeating decimal. In base12, 1/3rd is 4.0. Metric is broken by design because it’s based on base10. Lets take the lessons learned from the metric system and invent something new, something better, something base12.
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And 12 doesn’t divide nicely by 5. So what?
How often in real life do you want a 5th of anything? Is it more often than a third or a quarter? I bet it’s not
Now look at your money and repeat that.
Yes, I learned about fractions and decimals in elementary school.
Then why are you simping for base10 when you know enough math to understand that base12 is superior
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Oh you don’t have a seventeen sixty-fourths? No problem, just give me a letter H sized drill bit, that’ll do fine.
Exactly. What we did was backwards. We shouldn’t have changed our measurement system to base10, we should’ve changed our counting system to base12.
You still can!
Stupid Achaemrnid Empire fucked us all
Should’ve. Didn’t. Oh well. Stuck with it.
In retrospect I definitely would have liked a duodecimal metric system, but we have what we have at this point. It’s good enough and a DAMN sight better than imperial.
That would be an argument…IF it would be consistently 16 between each unit
Il leave this one here to see if it’s 16 every time: https://youtu.be/r7x-RGfd0Yk
Spoiler: it’s not!
I’m not defending the imperial system. I’m saying the metric system is also stupid and we should have gone with something base12 instead of base10. There’s nothing special or magical about the number 10, our numerical system is only base10 because we have 10 fingers. That’s not much better than a foot being based on the size of the kings boot.
Hexadecimal or bust
16 is only divisible by 2, 4, and 8. Base12 wins again.
Base grahams number is superior
Mars Climate Orbiter.
How do you know they don’t use base12 on mars?
Well, someone did.