I would like to believe in calendar reform as a goal. At the same time, I think calendars are one of the only pretty decent somewhat universal standards we have going for us, and if we changed it at all, you KNOW we would just be using two competing standards, not everyone would want to switch because people are stupid, so unless you forced it from the top down through technology, like a really advanced, shitty version of y2k, which would make people super pissed, I dunno if any of it would work.
This is the reason. Small changes like un-doing Daylight Savings is doable. But moving every holiday, birthday, and anniversary to another month+day combo would make this move daunting. The inertia of this kind of data would just make any transition period super long. So while you could implement the new calendar as a locale for phones and computer operating systems, but you'd probably be using two calendars for the rest of your life.
Not necessarily. Up until a fixed date for all the world, current calendar. From that day on, new calendar.
My initial thought was “well, we changed calendars before, we can do it again” but then realizing the world’s current population of ~8 gigapeople is considerably larger than what the population was the last time the calendar was changed to what it is now.
Last time there were riots. "They stole 10 days".
Oh wow, I would never have considered that they’d think like that.
Counterpoint: 1st shift, 2nd shift and 3rd shift work. Some people are better off using different systems that exist alongside but separate from the norm.
... And vice versa, workplaces and life offer us systems that dont work well for us but we need to use them because we need money to live. So not only would 3rd shift be a bad fit for most people, I'd argue most people do worse with the current calendar than they could with a new one.
Fair point actually, I suppose, then, that my point, retrospectively, is that nobody should ever expect that, were we to adopt any new calendar or time measurement system, we'd somehow do less math. We will only ever do more math.
I would like to believe in calendar reform as a goal. At the same time, I think calendars are one of the only pretty decent somewhat universal standards we have going for us, and if we changed it at all, you KNOW we would just be using two competing standards, not everyone would want to switch because people are stupid, so unless you forced it from the top down through technology, like a really advanced, shitty version of y2k, which would make people super pissed, I dunno if any of it would work.
XKCD: Standards
This is the reason. Small changes like un-doing Daylight Savings is doable. But moving every holiday, birthday, and anniversary to another month+day combo would make this move daunting. The inertia of this kind of data would just make any transition period super long. So while you could implement the new calendar as a locale for phones and computer operating systems, but you'd probably be using two calendars for the rest of your life.
Not necessarily. Up until a fixed date for all the world, current calendar. From that day on, new calendar.
My initial thought was “well, we changed calendars before, we can do it again” but then realizing the world’s current population of ~8 gigapeople is considerably larger than what the population was the last time the calendar was changed to what it is now.
Last time there were riots. "They stole 10 days".
Oh wow, I would never have considered that they’d think like that.
Counterpoint: 1st shift, 2nd shift and 3rd shift work. Some people are better off using different systems that exist alongside but separate from the norm.
... And vice versa, workplaces and life offer us systems that dont work well for us but we need to use them because we need money to live. So not only would 3rd shift be a bad fit for most people, I'd argue most people do worse with the current calendar than they could with a new one.
Fair point actually, I suppose, then, that my point, retrospectively, is that nobody should ever expect that, were we to adopt any new calendar or time measurement system, we'd somehow do less math. We will only ever do more math.
There is only math.
Aaaa no more math please no