[havercosine]

It is an interesting thought experiment to wonder if certain things were discovered earlier or later owing to a particular type of maths that we practiced.

I was amused to learn that there are societies dedicated to the cause of dozenal system who write papers and books urging everyone to switch. On the other hand, I don't know if it is exaggerated but French revolutionist had grand ideas of creating decimal based systems even for time. But better sense prevailed in the long run!

It is interesting to think how can changes of the form "if we can align everyone to change and adopt this new way" can be brought about at any scale beyond a few thousand folks. I think large mass adopted switches (horses to cars, smart phones) have been about incentives and convenience demonstrated by some early adopters. But for basic arithmetic this seems impossible to pull off!

[anon84873628]

Yes, it's a coordination problem where the incentives for a single individual don't match the optimal global solution. Aka trapped by network effects. You don't see this problem with cars or smartphones because the benefit to the individual is obvious and independent of other people's choices.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_failure_(econom...