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• stickly@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I mean theres no objectivity to the way we describe the universe anyway

  • Our society has arbitrarily landed on a base ten numbering system. This colors how we measure, but it could have just as easily been any other historical numbering system (12/20/4/60…)
  • The length of a meter was chosen by the French based on the size of Earth at that time and relative to Paris. That obviously doesn’t work if you try to account for earth’s gradual shedding of mass or gaining mass via meteors
  • The length of a second was defined as a fraction of earth’s daily rotation even though the rotation speed is slowing over time
  • We have thousands of names for specific frequencies of visible light but don’t really bother for the other 99.9965% of the electromagnetic spectrum
  • We still use classic binomial nomenclature for naming animals even though the whole system of taxonomic rank has basically been abandoned by biologists because evolution is too messy to classify

  We basically just do things the way someone in the distant past decided to do things (though we’ve gotten better at defining them via natural constants).

  The most clear, “rational” way to observe the universe would be with Planck units (ie. describing the universe within the bounds of our current theories of special relativity, quantum mechanics and gravity). But even that could be upended if we were to further develop/prove our physics theories. An alien race might show up and think our system based around discrete Planck lengths is primitive and quaint.

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  • Dasus@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I mean theres no objectivity to the way we describe the universe anyway

    You’re going all in the self-delusing. If there’s no objectivity, then how come we can launch shit to other planets? Why does that tech work?

    A meter is more less a yard. Ever heard the term “yard-stick”? Ofc you have, and you know what it means, but you’ll pretend not to.

    I’ll tell you that I’m klorknon gribbits tall and that is not objective, because it’s just some bullshit I just made up. Like the bullshit you keep making up to not have to learn the measuring system the entire rest of the world uses.

    Feets and pounds are nowadays objective, as they’re based on metric standards, which have been strictly objectively defined, no matter what sophistry you want to wave around about how no measuring system is arbitrary since you don’t understand it.

    A second is exactly 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.

    And here’s the dictionary definition for “objective”.

    objective

    adjective

    : expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations

    Your “b-b-but it’s a closer to human-scale scale actually much better cause cooking temps and 0 temps don’t matter” is affected by your personal feelings that Fahrenheit is somehow “more human-scale”, whatever the fuck that means.

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