Sure, but pretending you’re all going to meet at exactly 4:37 or whatever is just lie. Nobody is actually accurate down to the minute in their casual lives, and using units that are more precise than they are accurate is just lying about your accuracy. You can use modern clocks without pretending that single minutes matter. That’s why some people still talk about things like quarter hours even when using digital clocks. That’s a much more human kind of timescale.
Hey, if you live in a place where the public transport actually shows up when it’s supposed to that’s nice for you, I guess, but where I’m from pretending that the public transport is accurate down to the minute is also a lie.
Yep, quarter hours are how we normally function today. Which is fine and I wholly agree. You still need the second for that system to function though, as you can’t get that without measuring time.
I mean, the actual length of a second is pretty arbitrary. We could use a different basic unit of time and still be fine, but I get the point you’re making. I was never trying to argue that the invention of the clock was a bad thing, just that modern society has a problem with overly precise “measurement” of things that themselves aren’t actually as consistent as the measurements.
Sure, but pretending you’re all going to meet at exactly 4:37 or whatever is just lie. Nobody is actually accurate down to the minute in their casual lives, and using units that are more precise than they are accurate is just lying about your accuracy. You can use modern clocks without pretending that single minutes matter. That’s why some people still talk about things like quarter hours even when using digital clocks. That’s a much more human kind of timescale.
Matters for public transport tbh
Which didn’t operate on that strict a time schedule (if at all) in the time period OP is asking about.
Fair. I’d hate to show up to my bus 5 minutes early just to realise it left 10 minutes early, though
Hey, if you live in a place where the public transport actually shows up when it’s supposed to that’s nice for you, I guess, but where I’m from pretending that the public transport is accurate down to the minute is also a lie.
Yep, quarter hours are how we normally function today. Which is fine and I wholly agree. You still need the second for that system to function though, as you can’t get that without measuring time.
I mean, the actual length of a second is pretty arbitrary. We could use a different basic unit of time and still be fine, but I get the point you’re making. I was never trying to argue that the invention of the clock was a bad thing, just that modern society has a problem with overly precise “measurement” of things that themselves aren’t actually as consistent as the measurements.