Poll: Are we in a new decade now?
- Thread starter Nugma
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I'd call it a new decade, but I feel time is an irrelevant creation of man, so I just say its a new day no different than any other.
No, we aren't.
This decade began in the Year 2000, correct? Therefore, this decade ends when it becomes January 1st, 2011.
This decade began in the Year 2000, correct? Therefore, this decade ends when it becomes January 1st, 2011.
If we went by the literal definition of decade, there would either be some overlap, or things would get complicated. I'm going by the 9-year decade for the sake of simplicity.
Technically, no it is NOT a new decade, if you want to consider it from a purely mathematical angle. The fact of the matter is that there NEVER WAS A YEAR ZERO. Think about that for a moment - that meant that after Year 1 had ended, ONE YEAR HAD PASSED since the adoption of the calendar.
So if you extend that logic to today's time - on the 1st of January 2010, only 2009 FULL YEARS had passed since the adoption of the calendar. We are currently IN the 2010 year C.E (or A.D if you prefer). 2010 years would not have passed UNTIL THE END OF 2010.
This is why in old books, the character say "We are IN the XXXX year of our lord". They knew that, for example, the year 1965 did not mean that 1965 years had passed - it mean that 1964 years had passed, and they were currently IN the 1965th year of the common era (or A.D if you prefer).
This meant that the new millennium began in 2001! Which is why Arthur C. Clark called his book "2001: A Space Odyssey" and not "2000: A Space Odyssey", because HE KNEW HIS FREAKING MATH (and history).
Yes ten years have elapsed since 2000. But we don't call 1956-1966 a decade now do we? No we don't. So it would NOT be accurate to call 2000-2009 a decade, even though it is more aesthetically pleasing to do so.
Numbers and math are rock solid and human cultural attitudes are not. Even if most people view it has a new decade, it is not. Culturally yes, technically no and technical stuff MATTERS.
So if you extend that logic to today's time - on the 1st of January 2010, only 2009 FULL YEARS had passed since the adoption of the calendar. We are currently IN the 2010 year C.E (or A.D if you prefer). 2010 years would not have passed UNTIL THE END OF 2010.
This is why in old books, the character say "We are IN the XXXX year of our lord". They knew that, for example, the year 1965 did not mean that 1965 years had passed - it mean that 1964 years had passed, and they were currently IN the 1965th year of the common era (or A.D if you prefer).
This meant that the new millennium began in 2001! Which is why Arthur C. Clark called his book "2001: A Space Odyssey" and not "2000: A Space Odyssey", because HE KNEW HIS FREAKING MATH (and history).
Yes ten years have elapsed since 2000. But we don't call 1956-1966 a decade now do we? No we don't. So it would NOT be accurate to call 2000-2009 a decade, even though it is more aesthetically pleasing to do so.
Numbers and math are rock solid and human cultural attitudes are not. Even if most people view it has a new decade, it is not. Culturally yes, technically no and technical stuff MATTERS.
In the Gregorian calendar, there is no year zero. There was 1 BCE, and the year after it was 1 CE. Or, for those who don't understand Common Era, 1 BC, followed by AD 1. The first year of the Common Era is designated as year 1. That's how the calendars have always worked. It wasn't meant to indicate that one year has elapsed since the birth of Jesus (which is of course the event from which we traditionally measure our date), it was meant to indicate that it was the first year of Jesus' life. The calendar has always meant this. Any amount of research can tell you this.OmegaXIII said:
For purposes of comparison, there is no zeroth day in each year, is there? By your logic there should be, because during the day we call the first of January, a full day has not yet elapsed since the start of the year.
Now that we've got that out of the way, the first decade in the Common Era was the first ten years, from start to finish. The start of 1 CE to the end of 10 CE. Therefore, the second decade in the Common Era began on the first day of 11 CE. By this, we can see that a decade doesn't end until the end of the 10th year in that decade, or the start of any year ending in 1. And since decades start on years ending in 1, we are now entering the 10th and final year of the current decade.
But we all know that people like nice round numbers more than they like semantics.
Yes the new decade started today. Just like the 80's started with 1980 and the 90's started with 1990. The fact that there is no year 0 is just one of the many flaws with our current calender system.
Yay, someone else who actually knows their history.Graustein said:
There's a difference between just a section of time being referred to as "the 90s" as opposed to the start of the actual decade. It is completely possible for the two to coexists. Besides, most of society falsely believes that the decade starts with 1990/2000/2010/etc. so attempting to use something born out of that misunderstanding as proof is not really going to help your cause any.canadamus_prime said:
Once again for the slow people:
There was no year 0.
The count started with 1 AD.
Our calender still uses the same system.
Therefore, anybody with the capacity to count from 1 to 10 can figure out, no matter how tiny their brain, that a decade goes from 1 - 10, 11 - 20, and so and so forth until we get to 2001 - 2010.
This is inarguable. Attempting to argue against it is like attempting to argue that ice floats because it's actually being held aloft by magical pixies (you have no idea how hard it was to come up with something that didn't bash religion here).
In reality a 'decade' is just an arbitrary 10 year period, so like I said before it could be said that we are in a new decade if one wanted to consider decades such as the 70's, 80's, 90's or whatever.TOGSolid said:
You make a good point, it just depends whether we are talking Gregorian or literal, both are perfectly acceptable explanations. What you say about day 0 is very true until you scale back each arbitary unit of time as i did with my example with the year. Units of time are entirely relative - there is no 'natural' unit of time other than a factor/multiple of Earth's rotation.Graustein said:
As you quite rightly say it is purely a semantic argument as to whether you designate it the first year or 0.xxxxx etc of the first year. As you put it though, round numbers just look neater
Yes it is counting, i just choose to count from zero in this particular instance because it makes more sense to me, does this impact on anyone else? No.TOGSolid said:
More importantly does it actually matter at all? A decade is just yet another abitrary name we give to an arbitrary number of arbitrary time units. What difference does it actually make other than faciliating an argument?