Fun read on the tyranny of “enlightenment”
(twitter.com)
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Yep, close enough at least.
Nope. The number of hours in a day has no natural basis. I guess you could argue 12 is a "timey" number due to the lunar cycles, but then why 2x12? Why not 4x12 or 365? And then why 60 minutes and seconds? The Sumerians invented that shit purely for mathematical convenience. And if they can do it, why can't someone else?
Some cultures count by moving the thumb between the sections of each finger, which is base 12. You only think base 10 is good for counting and 2x12 is good for dividing the day because you were raised that way through some quirk of history far beyond your control. You could easily find yourself living in a world of base 10 timekeeping and base 12 counting had history gone differently (and not really that significantly). Colloquially, I would call this a coin flip.
Look, we can argue about whether specific examples are good or bad, but you're not addressing the larger point: what in human history can't be called a coin flip under your standard? And what is the value of ignoring the motivations behind something in recent history that is relevant to modern issues just because somewhere thousands of years ago it could have gone a different way?
The tweet thread opens with simple ridicule, implying that we should all dismiss base 10 time as preposterous on its face. This is not the case. That is all.