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If a person from 1700 asked you your job, would they understand your answer, and if not, how would you explain it to them? (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well, it's just how math and numbers in English work.

Cardinal numbers, the number of things you have, start with zero because you can have none of something (or less with negatives, but that's neither here nor there).

Original numbers, Numbers that show which things were in what order (first, second, etc) start at one, because you can't really have a zeroth something because then it would really be the first one.

So year 1 is 1 because it's the first year, and it starts the first century. It would have been entirely possible for English to make the names a little nicer, but given that it isn't, the math means the first set of one hundred years are the years before the one-hundredth year and cetera.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, zeroth would still be zeroth; it's just based on the cardinal the moment before it arrived rather than after, assuming you start with nothing and add objects. Unfortunately that's not conventional, probably in any language, and so you get a situation where a positional notation clashes with how we want to talk about the larger divisions of it casually. This sort of thing is exactly why computer science does use zero indexing.

Relatedly, there was also no year 0; it goes straight from 1 BC to 1 AD.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

But then otherwise we would have a year +0 and a year -0. You really want that on your conscience?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Signed zero is hiding under your bed.

I mean, it would be notated 0AD/BC(E) so it's not like it would look goofy either. A separate year 0 that's neither would also be an option, with the reference event within it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Signed zero is hiding under your bed.

Ha! Then it's trapped! I have one of those fancy beds with drawers in it.

Wait... That means it's going to pop out of my drawers...

Anyone want a bed?