[coldtea]

>I'm sorry, but that is just elitist bullshit.

That's fine, the thought-stopping accusation of "elitism" doesn't bother me. It's a preoccupation for people preferring equality based on dumbing things for the lowest common denominator, lest - god forbid - someone has to make an effort.

I don't think lowly and condescedingly of people like that, I think they're capable of learning and making the effort - they're just excused and encouraged not to.

People who actually have learning difficulties (because of medical conditions or other issues) or people from diffirent cultures accustomed to other systems, are obviously not the ones I'm talking about - and don't excuse the ones without such difficulties, and in countries that have used this convention for 1000+ years.

>Second, your implicit premise is likely wrong. Different people have different talents and different challenges

The huge majority that confuses this doesn't do it because they have a particular challenge or because their talents lie elsewhere. They do it because they never bothered, same way they don't know other basic knowledge, from naming the primary colors to pointing to a major country on the map. They also usually squander their talents in other areas as well.

Besides, if understanding that 18th century is the 1700th is "a challenge", then the rest of history study would be even more challenging. This is like asking to simplify basic math for people who can't be bothered to learn long division, thinking this will somehow allow them to do calculus.

[dahart]

> This is like asking to simplify basic math for people who can’t be bothered to learn long division, thinking this will somehow allow them to do calculus.

Oh dang, you kinda sorta had me until here. This sways me towards @Perseid’s point. :P Math education is full of unnecessary mental friction, and it pushes lots of people away. We know that finding better, simpler ways to explain it does, statistically, allow more people to do calculus. Long division is a good example, because it’s one of the more common places kids separate & diverge between the ones who get it and the ones who don’t, and there are simpler alternatives to explaining long division than the curriculum you and I grew up with, alternatives that keep more people on the path of math literacy.

We can see similar outcomes all over, in civil and industrial design, and in software and games, from cars to road signs and building signs to user interface design - that making things easier to understand even by small amounts affects outcomes for large numbers of people, sometimes meaningfully affecting safety.

The numbering of centuries is admittedly a simple thing, but maybe it actually is unintentionally elitist, even if you don’t think condescendingly, to suggest people shouldn’t complain about a relatively small mental friction when having to convert between century and year? Yes most educated people can handle it without problems, but that doesn’t tell us enough about how many more people would enjoy it more or become educated if we smoothed out how we talk about it and make it slightly easier to talk about history. This particular example might not change many lives, but it adds up if we collectively improve the design of writing and education traditions, right? Especially if we start to consider the ~20% of neurodivergent people, and ~50% of less than average people.

> They do it because they never bothered

Why should people have to bother, if it’s not necessary? Your argument that some people are lazy might be deflecting. Is there a stronger argument to support the need to continue using this convention? Being able to read old history might be the strongest reason, but why should we waste energy and be okay excluding people, even if they are just lazy, by perpetuating a convention that has a better alternative?

[card_zero]

There are a lot of shibboleths and pointless conventions in the world. Flutists are called "flautists" because classical musicians aspire to be Italian, and if you don't pretend to be Italian too you'll embarrass yourself. Minute hands were originally long because they pointed to an outer dial of minutes, while hour hands were distinguished by being decorated, but now being slightly longer is just a stylization that means minute hand (even though "minute" means "small") and we have two pointers using the same dial for different enumerations, one without the relevant numbers and distinguished by fractional differences in its width and length. British English spellings are substantially French, and this is perpetuated as a matter of national pride.

Like the word shibboleth, these examples are all kinds of language. Even the clock hands are a sort of visual language. Nth century is another language element. The conventions make outsiders stumble, but for insiders they're familiar and shedding them would be disturbing. Over time they become detached from their origins, and more subtle and arbitrary.

In programming we have "best practise", which takes good intentions and turns them into more arbitrary conventions. These decisions are unworked again later by people saying "no that's dumb, I'm not going to do that", even if it is "how we do it" and even if learning it is a sign of cleverness. We have to be smart to learn to do dumb pointless things like all the other smart people.

Is this good? Keeps us on our toes, maybe? Or keeps us aligned with bodies of knowledge? I think it's definitely good that we have the force of reformist skeptics to erode these pointless edifices, otherwise we'd be buried in them. But new ones are clearly being built up, naturally, all the time. Is that force also good? Alright, yes, it probably is. Put together, this is a knowledge-forming process with hypothesises (I don't like using Latin plurals, personally) and criticisms, and it's never clear whether tradition or reform is on the dumb or overcomplicated side: it remains to be seen, as each case is debated (if we can be bothered).