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  • Good Morning John! It is 2015 meaning... nothing.

  • The orbit of the Earth is an ellipse; there's no point on it that is the beginning of that

  • ellipse. The Earth's day has nothing to do with the Earth's year. We catch a glimpse

  • of this when we wake up in the morning and it's already New Year's in Australia. We're

  • all like, "Well, I mean, what, but, come on!" The perils of living in a global culture,

  • John. We don't get to ignore all of the seemingly fundamental things that are actually totally

  • arbitrary and just made up.

  • So that's what I'm going to talk about today here on the second day of 2015: just a short

  • list of things that seem intractable but are totally made up.

  • Gendered Names: Allison, Hazel, Ashley, Carol. They all seem like girl names to us but 100

  • years ago they were more commonly used for boys.

  • Alphabetical Order: There's nothing special about 'A' that makes it go first. The alphabet

  • is seemingly just completely randomly ordered. All the vowels are mixed in; most commonly

  • used letters are at the beginning and the end. There are some things that have order,

  • like 'U', 'V', and 'W' are together because they were all once one letter. The interesting

  • thing about this completely arbitrary order of letters, though, is that we've been using

  • it roughly the same for over 3,000 years. That's longer than any of the words in our

  • language have existed. If you're wondering why they're in that order, no one knows.

  • Base 10: When we count we do 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and then we get to 10 and we

  • take the 1 again and put a zero after it. There's no reason why that has to happen at

  • 10. It could happen at 12. It could happen at 18. It could happen at 3. It could happen

  • at 5. Binary is when it happens just after the 0 and the 1. Base 10 isn't special at

  • all. It's actually probably more annoying than some other systems we could use. Base

  • 12 might be better. We, in fact, use base 12 a lot when we talk about dozens. Probably

  • we use base 10 just because we have 10 fingers. That's the reason.

  • Bugs Are Gross: The culinary preferences of different cultures are wildly diverse. Now

  • we think that the idea of consuming grub is just, no, just bleaaagh. But 80% of studied

  • cultures eat insects so we are, in fact, the weird ones.

  • Pets are Cute: Lots of cultures think that we are crazy for letting animals live inside

  • of our house, and when my dog comes in from the yard after stepping in her own poop, I

  • kind of agree with them.

  • Dirty Dancing: If the pole is horizontal, that's gymnastics. If the pole is vertical,

  • that's stripping.

  • Guys Can't Wear Skirts: There's absolutely no reason why men's legs have to be confined

  • to separate cloth cylinders. Of course, I have seen this norm broken, but not without

  • feeling that little bit of, like, "Wow, this is weird" feeling that you get when you see

  • a norm being broken.

  • Money: This is a piece of paper. It's a very fancy piece of paper but it's just a piece

  • of paper. There's nothing that makes this worth $20 except that we just sort of agree.

  • This becomes weird to me when I see these, $2 bills, which are worth $2, like, they're

  • a legitimate currency, but they look fake to me. They look like they... no. Weirdly

  • enough, I like $2 bills. I hate $1 bills, but twos... It's just 'cause they're weird.

  • Even weirder, nowadays there's actually a number on a hard drive somewhere, then that's

  • the thing that decides whether or not I can buy food or a house or a Tesla or a yacht.

  • This video is just a few silly examples, but by forming our language, culture very literally

  • controls our thoughts. We can't think with words that we don't have. It's hard to separate

  • yourself enough from culture to be able to examine it. If you separate yourself too much

  • it can be really uncomfortable. I have been there! It is!

  • We need culture, we need norms, we need there to be an order to the alphabet and for there

  • to be a first day of the year. But there are some bits that, while being convenient, are

  • not innocuous, and it is our job to pick those out and say "You! This don't belong here anymore."

  • That's something that we can do but only if we take the time to step back and examine

  • our culture, which is best done by examining other people's cultures. Which is why, if

  • you can, you should study broadly and deeply and watch Crash Course World History. And

  • all of Crash Course. And also SciShow. And yeah. Okay.

  • John, thank you for your amazing video on racism this week. If people haven't scene

  • it, you can go check it out, youtube.com/vlogbrothers. That's where we're at.

  • Okay, John, I'll see you on Tuesday.

Good Morning John! It is 2015 meaning... nothing.

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為什麼字母表是按字母順序排列的?八件完全任意的事 (Why is The Alphabet In Alphabetical Order? Eight Completely Arbitrary Things)

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    稲葉白兎 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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