Midnight - an unsolvable issue (without a clock or dictionary)

[gr]

But if you do it in counting terms it goes 58, 59, 60 with 60 being Midnight (Friday). The next unit (Saturday) starts at 1 then 2 etc. (regardless of whether you are counting in minutes or seconds or micro seconds or nano seconds.

ie. Friday doesn't stop at 59 and Saturday doesn't start at 60.

Or something...

All of these countings are counting intervals of time. Midnight is not actually any of them. No matter whether you count in minutes or seconds of nano seconds, midnight will fall between two of the things you are counting! (And hence will not even be assigned a number in your counting-off.)

Can someone remind me why we are talking about this? I forgot.

[gr]

Piggy clearly meant "when all the hands point straight up".

Ahh, but, are all the hands pointing straight up on Friday or on Saturday?

That is a false dilemma for reasons already adumbrated.

[Jaysen]

GR(rrrrrrr),

Is a point an interval?

[Hugh]

GR(rrrrrrr),

Is a point an interval?

Only if you want it to be.

[Jaysen]

GR(rrrrrrr),

Is a point an interval?

Only if you want it to be.

Honest question though.

From a data perspective it is a null interval, an interval of 0. I may be looking at it from the very lopsided view of my experience though... Most folks are smarter than me so I'm willing to think about being wrong.

[gr]

Hugh has it right. We can talk either way. My point is the same good one no matter what language or terminology we decide to use to express it. I was using 'interval of time' to cover intervals of non-zero duration. (But you already understand that.)

If we want to use 'interval' in the way that also counts times of zero duration, then what we would need to observe is that "midnight is not an interval of non-zero duration."

The underlying point is the same and can be expressed with any terminology adequate to the subject.


But as far as I can see there is no cash value in this discussion to using ' interval' in that slightly wider sense. It would just make making the same point a little wordier.

gr

[Jaysen]

A tad background on my rational and why I was asking...

A large portion of my job is managing a systems data tool. We consider "point in time" (PIT) an entity of 0 duration/interval but with attributes. Think of a photo (we actually call them PIT snapshots). We also have "aggregate view" which is more like an average. Think a long exposure but replay-able like a video since it is made up of many PIT. It isn't the easiest thing to explain.

In my maths days I would have said that a point is a null entity with only 4D location attributes (time, X, Y, Z) and since time is an attribute of a point, time can not be a point itself. As my brain has softened (as well as my middle) I'm more confused by the absolutism of that idea than ever. Time was a point when I kissed my wife this morning. Yet time was the attribute of the kiss. And the wife was an attibu...
Kiss....
Wife........
Mmmm............

What were we talking about?

[gr]

But let us not muddy the temporal waters with metaphysical worries about the nature of time.

And what are we here for anyway? To settle Foxtrot's hash, that's what.

-gr

p.s. I am so unhappy with the title given to this shunted thread. First, because the issue is not only solvable but resolved! (Pat, pat.) But more importantly, it ought to be called 'In Which Foxtrot & Company Try Pigfender's Patience'. Another in a fast-growing series!

[lunk]

<sigh>
This hurts, but I'm going to agree with Pigfender: midnight marks the start of the day. Have you noticed that on New Year's Eve we count down to midnight as the start of the new year? Not 1am, not even 12:01am, but 12:00am.
Heck, it's even in the designation: "a.m." = "ante meridiem" = "before noon" = "morning"

Sorry about butting in late, but... 12:00 am can't be midnight. 12:00 pm is, which coincides with 00:00 am. 12:00 am is midday, noon.

[Jaysen]

<sigh>
This hurts, but I'm going to agree with Pigfender: midnight marks the start of the day. Have you noticed that on New Year's Eve we count down to midnight as the start of the new year? Not 1am, not even 12:01am, but 12:00am.
Heck, it's even in the designation: "a.m." = "ante meridiem" = "before noon" = "morning"

Sorry about butting in late, but... 12:00 am can't be midnight. 12:00 pm is, which coincides with 00:00 am. 12:00 am is midday, noon.

Unless one of them is a Nomstrailian who is 180° off on everything. Nomstrailians have it rough spending their entire lives using toe strength to keep from falling off the planet...

[gr]

Sorry about butting in late, but... 12:00 am can't be midnight. 12:00 pm is, which coincides with 00:00 am. 12:00 am is midday, noon.

Apparently conventions actually differ as to how to represent midnight on the clock.

For more on the clock representation of midnight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight#Start_and_end_of_day
And more of that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight

[nom]

<sigh>
This hurts, but I'm going to agree with Pigfender: midnight marks the start of the day. Have you noticed that on New Year's Eve we count down to midnight as the start of the new year? Not 1am, not even 12:01am, but 12:00am.
Heck, it's even in the designation: "a.m." = "ante meridiem" = "before noon" = "morning"

Sorry about butting in late, but... 12:00 am can't be midnight. 12:00 pm is, which coincides with 00:00 am. 12:00 am is midday, noon.

Sorry lunk, at least in English speaking countries (with the singular exception of the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1953) 12am is midnight and 12pm is noon. Maybe it's different in Sweden?

The conversation was fun, but the regulations, conventions and history of use are clear and consistent (see my comments above about New Year, 12:01am, etc).

I've got work to do...

[nom]

<sigh>
This hurts, but I'm going to agree with Pigfender: midnight marks the start of the day. Have you noticed that on New Year's Eve we count down to midnight as the start of the new year? Not 1am, not even 12:01am, but 12:00am.
Heck, it's even in the designation: "a.m." = "ante meridiem" = "before noon" = "morning"

Sorry about butting in late, but... 12:00 am can't be midnight. 12:00 pm is, which coincides with 00:00 am. 12:00 am is midday, noon.

Unless one of them is a Nomstrailian who is 180° off on everything. Nomstrailians have it rough spending their entire lives using toe strength to keep from falling off the planet...

Well, it's already Thursday here, and I stayed up last night to check what happened at midnight. It was 12am. Today. Since you are behind the times you can still do the same...

PS It takes more than toe strength. Willpower, stubbornness and unrelenting bloody-mindedness. That's why nomstralians are so tough...

[devinganger]

Midnight is not an interval of time. It is, rather, a boundary between two intervals of time that are on different days.

No, "midnight" is a label assigned to the 00:00 hour starting the new day, just like "noon" is a label assigned to the 12:00 hour in mid-day.

[lunk]

Well, considering other "logical" systems the British have invented, it makes sense that you count the hours starting at 12 and ending on 11. How do you teach kids that logic?

"No, you don't start at 0 or 1, you start at 12! It's 12, 1, 2, 3 ..."
"So I have nine fingers?"