From: A History of Education in Antiquity by HI Marrow
The cat so fast he's a streak 
1yr ago
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#114874
The Ancients could count 
to 1,000,000 on their fingers 
- 78
- 106
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I once met these ethiopian children who looked like ghosts - they counted on the segments of their fingers, pointing with their thumb. They used base 12 for some reason and it was really spooky and cool.
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That's actually an ancient Babylonian way of counting.
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also the reason time is base 12
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Funny enough people jerk off the metric system as being so much superior to imperial, but the metric system was created during the French Revolution. Creating a new series of standardized measurements being in itself a revolutionary act. They also attempted to apply metric principles to time, but that didn't catch on the same way, because the ancient system of time telling is simply better and more intuitive
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If you are a proponent of burgers switching completely to metric but don’t also support universal decimal time, you’re a hypocritical coward.
There is no argument for a metric US that doesn’t equally apply to decimal time aside from “but everyone else uses it”, and yet no one argues for decimal time because no one actually cares about the metric system, just dunking on burgers.
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India should be first to convert to metric time because there would be a lakh seconds in a day.
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Currychads be counting their fat stacks of cash and I can't even tell a lakh from a crore.
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A lakh is a hundred thousand. A crore is a hundred lakh. Why currycels insist on a mixture of hundreds and thousands for large numbers is quite beyond me, but a couple of random facts more to memorise isn't stupidly hard.
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Metric time isn't for time of day, you mean decimal time.
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Time is already metricized for seconds and below. What people don't want to metricize is dates and schedules, which is slighly unfortunate given the many inconsistencies of our calendar system but overall understandable since it would mean a social upheaval far beyond a switch of the units on street signs or rulers.
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Very importantly, it allowed for standardized military equipment. You didn't need carpenters to painstakingly mould limbers to your artillery, you could get tighter fits on your cannonballs and musketballs, easily move divisions between corps. Very useful in case, say, all of your neighbors decide to fight you at the same time.
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Good point, but standardization was the main factor there. A standardized imperial system would have accomplished the same goals but during that time they wanted to get rid of any imperial or aristocratic notions so they started from scratch. But the way a meter is defined is essentially just as arbitrary as the way a foot is
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ackshually a foot is defined as a particular number of meters so that's definitely more arbitrary
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before the meter was invented the length of a foot (unit) was defined as "the length of an average foot", and each city had their own reference foot.
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Thats why Im saying the standardization is the important part, not the metric itself. Besides that it was always close to our foot anyway across most cultures. The Greek pous (foot) that was used to measure length during the building of temples and such was very close in length to out modern day foot
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What a load of crap. The metric system is the only logical system of measurement and is used by the vast majority of the world. Your backwards-butt system is an anachronism and needs to die.
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If you've worked construction, you quickly find that Imperial measurements are intuitively better for guesstimation. I live in a metric country, but scaffolders still use the imperial system when left to themselves. Over the last decade we've had management increasingly make tube sizes be cut to metric measurements, probably to make it easier on the Engineerchads and for pricing.
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Yea I fully agree, think about height. Is it easier to describe a man's height in feet and inches or hundreds of centimeters? I believe tailors also prefer imperial
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Americans measure a man’s weight in hundreds of pounds just fine, even though it’s easier to describe a person’s weight in Stones, which is analogous to using Feet to measure height. Besides, metric folks are as likely to say ‘1.8 metres’ as ‘180 centimetres’ to describe their height. It’s not really about ease as much as what you’re used to.
Britain is a weird place for Metric/Imperial. We still use feet and inches for a person’s height, stones for a person’s weight. We use miles and mph, not kph. Weights in the gym are kilos, and measures on a building site are metric (even though the workers mostly think in feet and inches). Milk and beer are sold in pints, but the measure on the carton or bottle is in mls or cls.
We basically use imperial for most day-to-day things except cooking, where it’s all metric because America’s volume-based measures are obscenely r-slurred.
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there's no difference in difficulty. 5'11'' or 1.80m
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One is fractions the other is decimal. It just makes way more sense to express height in imperial units. Also temperature imperial has a huge advantage
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no
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A "second" is intuitive to humans because it's approximately the duration of 1 resting heart beat.
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Unless you're a fatty
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Metric isn’t useful for anything but conversions anyway, and those almost never matter at all.
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The metric system is unironically superior and only an r-slur would think imperial is somehow better.
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It's better for some things and worse for others. The main benefit is standardization across different fields/industries but if we used a standardized imperial system that goal would also be accomplished
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How would a standardised imperial system work in physics, construction, medicine etc?
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Do you think that people didn't build, study physics, or practice medicine before they invented metric out of thin air? I mean construction in the US is all done in imperial as far as I know. Most of the great monuments in world history were built using pre standard imperial
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Well, that's because there are 24 hours in a day.
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QED
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Thats because we define a day as a 24hr period. If hours were defined differently days would be as well. In the metric system days are 10 hours long
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That doesn't make sense.
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Most intellectual dramatard.
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The hours are 2.4 times longer
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Base 12 is some ancient mesopotamian thing iirc
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Probably convergent evolution because it's such a good base number. Decimal is kind if r-slurred
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Also due to the (((12 tribes))) of Yesrael.
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Those were just allegories for the 12 zodiac signs
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Factcheck: You really believe that shit? Lmao dumbass neighbor 🤣
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Base 12 is so cool
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Base 12 is better if you use fractions rather than decimals.
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Fractions are generally superior and more intuitive than decimals
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Fractions are more used on a smallscale level. You can break things down in halves, thirds quarters and sixes with base twelve. Base 10 is has halves and fifths. Decimals come up rarely for dividing fields, chopping wood, building small buildings, etc.
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I met a bunch of Somalians and they mostly use their long spindly fingers to open bags of trash for sustenance
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Muslims do it to, we count to 33 on one hand (and sometimes 34)
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12 finger sections
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DUDE! we're LITERALLY MONKEYS. on a ROCK! in SPACE!!!!! WOWZA! THERE'S a BALL of LIGHT in the SKY!!!!!!! BONKERS!!!! BINGORINOS!!!!!
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Snappy utterly btfo's the "ancient appreciators" on this post.
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Not really. The people who believe we are all just monkeys floating on a rock generally think we are at the apex of society and assume the "ancients" were little more than primitive cave men
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pretty cool imo
Secured my spot as a top 100 most memorable rdrama poster
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The Wisdom of the Ancients is constantly overlooked, we think in our era of progress we are more advanced but if anything we have actually damaged our ability to think by exporting it to machines. How much more brain dead will we be when AI makes all of our art, stories, and entertainment
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This isn't wisdom. This is a workaround to not having any physical memory for computations, not even a scrap of paper. This is like looking at monkeys bang flint together and thinking "Isn't how they make fire so wise?"
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What's an example of Wisdom in your mind then? Because the ability to work around your own natural limitations with applied experience and knowledge would seem to fit the definition, at least to me.
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Why doesn't the applied experience and knowledge of past generations, aka technology, count? Archimedes was genius, sure, but he wouldn't be able to handle a fraction of the calculations even the shittiest modern mechanical engineer needs to complete.
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I never said it didn't count. How we choose to use and apply technology is where wisdom factors in imo
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The Greeks had paper and way better memory then us lol
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We must study the ancients setting aside modern day prejudices, that will make us appreciate them even more
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My favourite thing about the ancients is how they all hated Jews
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Moslem East
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This book was from the 50s when that term was the predominant one for muslims.
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I still use if. Moslem sounds cooler than Muslim to me. The term Mohhamedean also is old fashioned but makes sense
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Mohamed(peace be upon him)ean
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Saracen is my go to
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i know it's just a good one
my favorite is muhammedeans, circa late 18th century
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Just scratch with a rock, duh
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ancients could count to a million on their fingers (boring)
ancients could count to 2**10 on their fingers (cool and codecel pilled)
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This book was made before programming socks and codecels
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Yeah and clearly after the appearance of decimalshills.
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why the heck didn't they just use their phones...
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