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For a real explanation of this watch this illuminating video.
TL;DW According to the perons, it's based on counting sheep and from base 20. 1 score = 20 sheep. 2 score = 40 sheep.
To get to 50, you have 2.5 score, but they don't say "two and a half". They are quite Germanic and say "halfway to 3" (Germans do this too). So, 50 = half three score.The video also points out that English has (as the hodgepodge of a language it is) yet another remnant of Germanic languages: 13-19 are not "te(e)n-three to te(e)n-nine", but "three-te(e)n to nine-te(e)n", just like in German "drei-zehn bis neun-zehn".
It's quite easy to mock other languages, but there's always a reason for why things are the way they are. Think of Chesterton's fence.
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There's also a reason for imperial measurements, but it's still a worse system than metric.
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What's your suggestion for a change to the Danish counting system? Do you think it is as obvious as going from imperial to metric?
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Yes.
Stop being weird, Danes, literally everyone else figured it out.
It'S tHeiR gErmaN hEriTaGe
If the Frisians can figure out how not to be a bunch of weird number freaks while running around on clogs on their dikes and being half fucked up French the Danes have no excuse.
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I agree with your broader point about linguistics, but Chesterton's fence has never sat right with me. Consider the inverse:
This annoying and unnecessary fence is an inconvenience, but since nobody can remember what it's for, we dare not remove it
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Chesterton's fence is a warning not to commit this logical error: I don't know what this fence is for, therefore I know there is no reason for it.
It doesn't say never to remove it. It means you should try and figure out why it's there and ask around before removing it.
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It's just a logic exercise that advicates forethought when enacting change. The bigger problem is people taking parables and thought experiments as gospel, faithfully adhering to the text without considering it's intent.
More people need to read Asimov's Foundation
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I honestly don't understand what's insightful about it. It encourages a functional viewpoint that results in you inventing proposed uses for something that is a vestige of an inefficiency. Justifying something useless isn't curiosity, it's just masturbation. You should identify how a structure interacts with it's current environment. There's a reason functionalism is considered worthless in sociology.
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I think the point is more that you should take care to consider why it was put there because it might be something that is not immediately obvious.
You should identify how a structure interacts with it’s current environment.
OK, but what if it was put there to stop something that only happens once every 10 years? Without taking the time to learn this, you might tear it down and then after a few years you're scrambling to solve a problem that was already solved.
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I'm very hostile to excuses for conservatism because they're often positions to apologize for power structures that have a secondary gain. The point I'm making is you should never approach something that previously existed as if it was beneficial by default. It's often not and that's a fallacy as much as automatically believing it's useless. That's what this guy was doing with his Catholic apologia.
You should consider history to develop predictive theories(like what you're describing). But those are always subordinate to observable reality and bothering with trying to justify them too much is generally worthless. Sometimes you just need to act.
In essence, it's a bad argument because it both presupposes you don't interrogate why things exist(you do, that's the entire point of the argument in the first place) and argues that an unknown reason might exist you might have to defer to. No shit. There might also be an unknown reason that it's incredibly destructive. Neither of those themselves are an argument, but one is certainly an appeal to tradition masked by an analogy.
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there's always a reason for why things are the way they are
Of course, no one is saying that the Danes were so drunk that they simply wanted to make their numbering so much different than everyone else. The problem is that they don't want to change it, probably because "it has always been this way" or something.
Even Norwegian, which was historically more like Danish, changed to using "normal" counting in the 1950s. So it can be done, but Danes seemingly don't want to change, despite the fact it makes their language harder to learn/use.
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Change it to what? Twenty-one? One Twenty? Four times twenty and one? Four time twenty plus ten and five? You could go the Germanic way, the Anglo-Saxon way, or the French way. Probably there are more ways to express numbers.
It's not as straight forward as imperial to metric, where metric is logical and imperial isn't. A vigesimal system is logical, just like binary or hexadecimal.
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even imperial had a logic when it was made, same with every old measurement system. Everyone has hands, fingers, and arms boom you have small scale. The acre was once just what a single ox and plow could do in 1 day. there was never a need to square feet per acre, who would ever need that. Plus look at how old system were written. Try uses the metric system with roman numerals.
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How many inches are there in a foot? How many in a yard? How many in a mile? More importantly: why? The foot is from a duodecimal system (12 points = 1 line, 12 lines = 1 inch, 12 inches = 1 foot), but then then suddenly 3 feet = 1 yard.
Also the imperial system is simple, not logical. Sure, it's based on body parts and simple things like that, but every moron could've seen that hands have different sizes. Now you have about 3 imperial systems (international, British, US) maybe more even more if the old colonies invented more units. Everyone knows the way forward for units it the SI units. It's logical, it's straight forward, and it's used worldwide - except for a minority of regions that are staunchly are against it.
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It's a shame that, when Norwegians changed their counting system, the suggestion of using "to-ti" didn't catch on for 20. It would be analogous to saying "twoty" in English.
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This comment makes me so sleepy...
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I just tried to say tentyfive like four times in a row and I couldnt speak for 20 seconds after that. Thank you.
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but there’s always a reason
By and large, there's a reason for everything, but it's just not always a good reason.
If I have 100 rocks and take away 8, the answer to how many rocks I Have should not require a math problem. We're counting, not making change. If your counting system isn't decimal-based, you're no better off than the US using imperial measurements.
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