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>If we’ve somehow got an entire society that can play gymnastics with time in this way, and claim to wrap their head around it, I don’t think changing the calendar is really a huge ask. But I think the only way to pull it off is for the government to mandate its use. There's just not enough interest in fighting the currents for this to reach critical mass otherwise.

While we’re at it let’s convert to the Metric System too. Rip all the bandaids off at once.

You must be from the US, Liberia or Myanmar.

Or the UK, where they drive in miles and weigh themselves in Stones.

In the USA, you can buy soda in liters and most cars use metric wrenches.

In the UK, you can buy pop in litres :)

While I agree in theory, in practice it’s still a bigger problem, as actual infrastructure needs to be changed for the metric system.

As was proven with the recent change of the DST dates, most calendars are handled by computers these days. It would be relatively straightforward to change the calendar.

There would be problems though. Monthly payments for things, for example, would need to be adjusted. So there would still need to be significant lead time.

Other countries have done it in modern times, the UK for one.

I’m just saying we shouldn’t connect the two, not that it’s impossible.

Also, the UK is far smaller than the US, making the infrastructure probably a bit more tractable.

Only if we switch to Base-16 at the same time.

How about the metric time system?

1 day = 10 hours

1 hour = 10 minutes

1 minute = 10 second minutes

1 second minute = 10 third minutes

Or should it scale at 1:100? Why or why not?

I built and android app just like this that marks ten hours, ten minutes, ten seconds and ten ticks being each tick 0.864 ancient seconds. Midnight starts at 000 and noon at 500.

Link?

Not the original poster, but I have decimal time as part of my (free) Android French Revolutionary Calendar app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttaxus.the...

or the source https://github.com/jhbadger/Thermidor-Android

The French [0] tried to implement this twice! They failed both times, and I think it's due to more than having everyone in the world (or country) relearn to hold time in their head. Ultimately I believe it becomes less practical in day-to-day usage. 12 (and obviously 60, as a multiple of 12) can be divided by 2,3,4, and 6, while 10 can only be divided by 2 and 5. This would be the most difficult change for people, as a quarter or third of an hour are important metrics for daily life (I understand that seconds expand the divisibility for the sake of quarters (thirds remain unattainable), but this can happen in our current system and it's not often people speak in eighths of hours). I think this is a more common usage than the expansion of seconds-to-minutes, hours-to-seconds, etc. (a use-case where the decimal system really shines). Though, perhaps with the simplicity of the scaling, people would change their perspective on how they think/speak about time! It's definitely interesting to think about.

As an aside, I think this makes for a lot of practical uses for the imperial system of measurement. In a scale-intensive environment (science labs, kitchens, etc.), I think it would be foolish to not use metric. However, with small, one-off projects (mostly w/r/t length) I think it makes great sense to use feet and inches for halves, thirds, and quarters.

[0] http://mentalfloss.com/article/32127/decimal-time-how-french...

>Or, we could keep around the idea of weeks but rearrange them to be 10 days long to better fit with our decimal number system (7 days on, 3 days off? I might be amenable to that).

Of all the things mentioned above this one won't be accepted by the general population, ever.

It was tried already in the revolutionary France, and is one of the few things that were rolled back.

> If we’ve somehow got an entire society that can play gymnastics with time in this way, and claim to wrap their head around it, I don’t think changing the calendar is really a huge ask.

It wouldn't even be the first time. September, October, November and December are _clearly_ meant to be 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month. I always thought that July & August were the interlopers, being named after Emperors, but I read somewhere that I was wrong.

I share your frustration that there is a faction who seems to have dedicated their existence to making time as irregular as possible.

I had believed something similar. They are definitely remnants of a 10 month calendar, but July and August were existing months (Quintilis and Sextilis, respectively) renamed for the emperors. January and February appear to be the additions [0]. There is quite a bit of interesting history in the rest of that article about how the months have changed.

I can't remember if I'd read about a past society that did this, or it was an idea someone had proposed for a future one, but I love the idea of a 360 day year (12 months, 30 days each), with a 5 or 6 (leap year) day festival at the end commemorating the New Year. It would change birthdays for everyone born after January 30, which seems like it'd cause enough outrage to prevent it, but it's a fun thought!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Legendary_10-mo...

The history of the Roman calendar is somewhat unclear. The Julian reform is well-attested, as is the immediately pre-Julian calendar. This latter calendar is 12 months starting with January with day lengths of 29/28/31/29/31/29/31/29/29/31/29/29, plus an occasional intercalary month of 27 days whose insertion caused February to shrink to 23 days.

The Romans themselves maintained that before the Republican calendar, the year consisted of 10 months of alternating 30/31 days, with the winter months (of what would be January and February) consisting of a vague collection of days omitting a fixed month. But this explanation is dated essentially to people writing "what we used a millennium ago," and there's no attestation of this calendar much closer to its usage period.

In any case, it's definitive that the year used to start in March. When and why it transitioned to January is unclear. For what it's worth, even after most of Western Europe transitioned to using a Julian calendar, the starting date was quite inconsistent until very late. (England only switched in the 18th century, at the same time it adopted Gregorian calendar).

Weeks are exceedingly important constructs! They're the whole reason any hare-brained scheme never amounted to anything.

They are used by religious communities. When your god says you must do something on Sunday or Saturday or Friday, you're not going to listen to anyone trying to tell you we don't need any of those. I mean you're fighting against multiple gods if you're trying to change the nature of weeks. Just like all the past attempts, you'll fail.

I am an atheist and I know this.

True. Even in my thoroughly atheist and liberal nation of birth I get payed double when I work on Sunday. I have no special feelings for it, Sunday or Monday its all the same to me. But thousands of years history and culture can't be erased easily.