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What's some really unpopular opinion you have? (lemmings.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

2226 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Most of the time when people say they have an unpopular opinion, it turns out it's actually pretty popular.

Do you have some that's really unpopular and most likely will get you downvoted?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the time one is a good unpopular opinion. For example "day" is one of the most common time units there is. I really can't see anyone advocating for a system that is unrelated to day/night cycle.

If night was to fall, sun was to rise and it wasn't a new day yet? And the days ended at different times on different days? Absolutely no one would like that and we'd go back to using days almost instantly.

With that issue always in mind, you're still bound to the earth's rotation for every time-related issue (and a similar one around seasons also looms, for the earths orbit). And you're back at square one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Well, we could always switch to another time unit that uses 1 day as the base unit. Then you would just use md, nd, Gd, Md and all the other prefixes to get to the scale you need. That would be fine for most purposes.

However, the problem is that a day isn’t exactly 86.4 ks, since orbits and rotations are wobbly and messy. If we define the day as a unit today, it won’t be the same a thousand years later. Perhaps the people of the future could use that for common purposes, but scientists would need to use a more precise version that has a crazy litany of decimals at the end. Using the Earth as a foundation for any kind of unit is just asking for trouble in the long run.