this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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c is pretty round (universal symbol for the speed of light)
aside from that, nothing. as science and maths are mere attempts at describing the universe all our units are arbitrary, decided to be the way they are purely because you just need to pick something to be your reference point.
at no point has a true non-artificial unit emerged, there is no constant size of anything that could aid in that (one contestant for that title could be the planck lenght but that'ss just incredibly inconvenient to use. "honey could you pelase move the couch 6,25 × 1034 planck lengths to the left? [1m])
Proton masses, the distance light travels in a vacuum in a certain time, and cesium oscillation times are quite constant.
proton masses are rather small - inconvenient
the distance light travels at a certain time - then it'll just be based on our artificial units of time
cesium oscillation i don't know much about but from what i quickly read it's also about keeping time, 1s to be precise, which is still an arbitrary unit
Time can be non arbitrarily defined as a round number value of times cesium oscillates between two hyperfine states, to allow time to be non arbitrary and still a useful size.
The round number would still be arbitrary, no? It’s roundness would be based on the base 10 counting system, which is also arbitrary.
Not arbitrary. Base 10 because we usually have 10 fingers and those are useful for learning counting. If you have to choose a base, 10 is a good option for humans.
That's still an arbitrary number to pick, and the choice of cesium oscillation seems pretty arbitrary in the grand scheme of things.
Math isn't arbitrary. Otherwise there wouldn't be constant debate about whether it's a human creation or fundamental to any existence.
I like the idea of basing everything off fractions of the speed of light, but still keeping base ten. Define 1 year as the time it takes for Earth to go around the sun(somewhat arbitrary in that its human centric, but the alternative seems to be defining it based off an arbitrary phenomena or an arbitrary factor of the planc length). Define 1 month as one tenth of that, and so forth. Admittedly our days wont line up with the day night cycle, but who needs that? Days are arbitrary anyways, and only matter to ensure your factory workers show up as soon as theyre legally allowed to.
Edit: kinda half /s for the last half
i'm a fan of 13 months 28 days each & would love to see more of base 20 around tbf, for some reason base 20 feels cozy to me
fwiw, engineers round Pi and are fine with it...
To be fair, literally everyone rounds pi, since it's transcendental.