Asklemmy

43940 readers

479 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

271

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 8 months ago by JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

404 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 2 points 8 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?