@casualconversation l’ve always known that time is an artificial construct ever since I was told to sit down to study. As l grew up, l saw mechanical clocks getting replaced by battery clocks. Until l realised that the clock is actually being run from a centralised node, no matter where you’re located.
What l’m realising now is that, the calendar too is being constructed from a centralised network, whether it’s the question of the World Cup or a war.
I just shared my rambling with you all.
What’s your thoughts/perspective/observation on this ???
I disagree that it’s irresponsible, because the difference rarely matters, and for the ELI5 style answer I was giving, that level of nuance would have been out of place.
I acknowledge there is a distinction, and that when it’s relevant, clear language helps avoid ambiguity. But I made a call to keep it simple in my response, which I stand by. Any ambiguity that was introduced will have been at least partially cleared up in this following discussion!
True enough, but I’m more concerned about how our language influences our own thoughts than those of others. OP was clearly talking about colloquial time, and in your top level reply, you changed the topic to spacetime. If I may be so bold as to speculate on your internal world, I doubt you even noticed that you’d changed the subject, because the homonym smoothed over this disconnect and made it disappear.
This is a good example of how our linguistic norms directly influence our perceptions in some very dramatic, yet mostly invisible ways. Everyone is susceptible to this kind of influence. In our current society, only skilled rhetoricians have the ability to engineer language to control other people’s perceived realities. Naturally, these rhetoricians are employed by billionaires to push a Capital-friendly consensus reality.
If everyone had more knowledge of linguistic engineering, we could democratise both language and perception, giving more power to the people.