> Plenty of people, myself included, get more instant meaning from a digital readout.
More from outside knowledge than from the digital readout itself. There's no way to tell from a digital readout there are 60 minutes in an hour or seconds in a minute, or that there's a 12-hour period that means something (and no hints to guess.) There's no evidence that the time represented on a digital readout changes at a constant rate or is sequential and doesn't jump around or go faster sometimes and slower others. Everything on an analog clockface is just there.
If you found an alien digital clock written in alien language, it would take you forever to figure out anything about it; it would take a while to figure out anything useful even if you knew it was a clock. If you found an alien analog clock, it would be immediately obvious what it was and what it was doing, and you could use it to help you understand the alien digital clock.
edit: also, when your alien digital watch did the equivalent of jumping from 12 to 1, it would throw everything off, especially if there were a different symbol for 1 second or 1 minute that there was for 1 hour. An analog clock visually explains the transition between 12 and 1.
I think all this stuff is obvious, I'm confused about the argument being made that it's not. There's just less information on a digital readout. I feel like I'm trying to explain that movies have more information than movie scripts, but Kolmogorov would say to compress them both and compare the filesizes.
> If you found an alien digital clock written in alien language, it would take you forever to figure out anything about it; it would take a while to figure out anything useful even if you knew it was a clock. If you found an alien analog clock, it would be immediately obvious what it was and what it was doing, and you could use it to help you understand the alien digital clock.
I disagree with this. This seems to assume that an alien analog clock would look/function more like our analog clocks than an alien digital clock would look/function like our digital clocks. I'm not sure there's any reason to make that assumption.
The only assumption is that analog means a gauge of some sort with a pointer or pointers moving between symbols, rather than a series of symbols that change for digital. I wouldn't have any problem with assuming a circular gauge (because we calculate periodic things using circle math), but it's not necessary.
That's kind of a big assumption, IMO. Why does it need symbols? Perhaps a hypothetical alien species has an analog clock that keeps track of times with shades of color. Or audio tones. Or it uses a gauge, but the gauge vibrates and the vibrations mean something.
Combine that with the fact that their time system might not be based on a fairly regular rotation of the planet. Perhaps they value some other less regular measurement more. Or perhaps their planet does not have regular rotation. How might a time system evolve and be portrayed in those cases? How can you be sure that an analog display would be easier to interpret than a digital one?
Similar to how a 12-hour analogue clock does not necessarily imply that we actually have 24 hours in our days, an alien analog clock could potentially be vastly different than the same alien's digital clock.
> I'm not sure there's any reason to make that assumption.
analog clocks are modeled around the idea that the time is circular because that's the natural cycle of day and night (same concept of the meridian, plus dark hours, when there is no shadow).
I imagine that any alien civilization that lives on a planet that rotates around its star and has a light/dark cycle would measure time in a similar fashion.
> analog clocks are modeled around the idea that the time is circular because that's the natural cycle of day and night
This is not supported by evidence. For one, it would make a 24 hour dial make more sense than a 12 hour one. For two, many early non-discrete clocks took the form of parallax observation or liquid flows and were not inherently circular.
hourglasses and other similar devices are for keeping discrete times, not continuous times like in
"it cooks in half of that"
but they are circular inherently, when the top half falls to the bottom, we flip them and the cycle restarts.
analog clocks started as 24 hours historically [1]. the division of days in 24 equal segments was well know since ancient history, we still use base 60 to measure time because that's what babylonians used when they invented time keeping and started counting days in a year (360 of them, in base 60)
If you limit the set of "analog clocks" to 24-hour dials, then yes, you have proven a tautology. If you look at the overall history of time device user interfaces then circular displays don't seem like such a slam dunk. I'll point you to Al Muradi of 1200's Spain again who often uses little doors or other time indicators.
there are bizarre incantations of everything throughout history
Almuradi clock is still a *solar* clock hence it only works when the light rays hit it, so like a meridian, it can't show the full 24 hours rotation. in fact it's an half circle, because the earth rotates around the sun, the only approximation you can get is circular, of course there are meridians that do not display hours on an arc of circumference, but that's simply a design choice.
But at that time the fact that a day was of 24 hours was a long well known fact.
the point is that if your planet rotates around a star, the first thing beings living there would notice are the repeating patterns generated by light rays. Which are most probably shadows creating something like a circle (or an oval)
>Almuradi clock is still a solar clock hence it only works when the light rays hit it
No, Almuradi's works are powered by water and moved by gears. At least one used light to illuminate particular numbers, but the optical aperture was moved by gears.
>Which are most probably shadows creating something like a circle (or an oval)
During the course of the day the shadows make a half circle at best. Over the course of a year the end point at the same time of day makes an uneven figure eight, known as the analemma. At no point is there a circle or an ellipse.
Passive solar timekeeping has its limitations and the next phase of development was the water clock.
These simple water clocks, which were of the outflow type, were stone vessels with sloping sides that allowed water to drip at a nearly constant rate from a small hole near the bottom. There were twelve separate columns with consistently spaced markings on the inside to measure the passage of "hours" as the water level reached them. The columns were for each of the twelve months to allow for the variations of the seasonal hours. These clocks were used by priests to determine the time at night so that the temple rites and sacrifices could be performed at the correct hour. [0]
If anything the circular three hand clock is a pragmatic method of indictors based on the method of power control. Looking at the Antikytheria mechanism for example, the back side shows a deep understanding of how the different cycles of time measures interact.
Going back to the original topic of "an alien digital clock written in alien language," to the degree that we could comprehend on what basis they kept time a time communication rooted in a sidereal period cannot be a given since the aliens might come from a tidally locked planet or one like Mercury which "rotates on its axis exactly three times for every two revolutions it makes around the Sun."[2] Even if they just used the Unix epoch time would look linear and relative; not circular.
Iirc historically the day was first split into 12 parts with sundials, and only later was the night also split into 12 parts. Maybe thats where the 2x12 comes from. I guess another benefit is that it's simply less cluttered with 12 divisions.
I don't think you're getting how important the word instant is in this context. An analog clock might be better for decoding an unfamiliar time system. It might be better for teaching children how we count time. It might implicitly contain more information. It might be better in a thousand ways. None of that matters.
For whatever reason I get a faster and more accurate sense of what time it is from a digital watch. I am not alone in this. Therefor the assertion that an analog readout is more instantly meaningful for everyone is wrong.
When I am at the train station I can have an immediate idea of what time is it just looking at the analog clocks around (they are digital displays mimicking analog clocks) even if I can't read the numbers from afar.
Digital clocks are harder for me because I have to parse the information: is that a 6, 8, 9, or zero?
It doesn't make much difference in the end, bit having to actually read the number forces me to be precise and I can't rely on intuition.
The more I age, the more my vision deteriorate, the more I find analog clocks easier to read.
Oh absolutely. Your experience is in line with what Douglas Adams was originally saying. Plenty of people get a better sense of time from analog displays.
I'm not saying digital works better for everyone. I'm not even saying digital works better for most. It could easily be the case that I'm in the 1% of weirdos who have an easier time with digital. My only point is that it isn't universal either way. Adams said digital watches are silly because everyone gets a better sense of time from analog. It is a funny joke. But he is wrong about the facts.
I think "faster" and "more accurate" are getting inappropriately conflated in this discussion.
It is faster to visually parse two hands of an analog watch than it is to parse four digits of a digital watch. But the price you pay for this is accuracy, and if you wanted to parse the analog watch face as accurately as digital, it'd take you more time than just reading the digits.
> Therefor the assertion that an analog readout is more instantly meaningful for everyone is wrong.
Maybe I'm confused about the assertion. The sentence "A picture with a bird in it" is more quickly recognized by very fluent English speakers than an actual picture of a bird. But it conveys far less information to a far narrower audience.
The problem with the original statement is the phrase "more instantly meaningful". It might be correct if it said "more meaningful", but I doubt it's more `instantly` meaningful for someone who can read numbers quickly.
More from outside knowledge than from the digital readout itself. There's no way to tell from a digital readout there are 60 minutes in an hour or seconds in a minute, or that there's a 12-hour period that means something (and no hints to guess.) There's no evidence that the time represented on a digital readout changes at a constant rate or is sequential and doesn't jump around or go faster sometimes and slower others. Everything on an analog clockface is just there.
If you found an alien digital clock written in alien language, it would take you forever to figure out anything about it; it would take a while to figure out anything useful even if you knew it was a clock. If you found an alien analog clock, it would be immediately obvious what it was and what it was doing, and you could use it to help you understand the alien digital clock.
edit: also, when your alien digital watch did the equivalent of jumping from 12 to 1, it would throw everything off, especially if there were a different symbol for 1 second or 1 minute that there was for 1 hour. An analog clock visually explains the transition between 12 and 1.
I think all this stuff is obvious, I'm confused about the argument being made that it's not. There's just less information on a digital readout. I feel like I'm trying to explain that movies have more information than movie scripts, but Kolmogorov would say to compress them both and compare the filesizes.