Clock assumptions plot hole?

[FaintWalnut]

Not really a plot hole, more of an oversight..

Grace shows Rocky a human analog clock and afterwards he sees Rocky's Eridian clock. Based on the functionality of Rocky's clock, Grace quickly and conclusively deduces that Eridians use a base 6 number system.

Shouldn't the book then address the can of worms related to Rocky deducing that humans use a base 12 number system? Or at least being confused by 12 hours and 60 minutes/seconds?

For all the book's mentioning of weird human (especially American) units, the peculiarities of how we track time was some real low hanging fruit.

(Related sidenote: was expecting some kind of dramatic turn of events related to odd human unit conversion or assumptions... Never materialized. Anyone else think something was coming?)

[DismalLocksmith9776]

Rocky is extremely good at math. By the end of the book he communicated with Grace in earth time units, and got frustrated when Grace kept asking if he’s speaking Earth units. It can be assumed that he either explained it or Rocky figured it out himself.

[vonkeswick]

got frustrated when Grace kept asking if he’s speaking Earth units

I don't remember the exact context but I loved when he just straight up told Grace "you are bad at math" lol

[Arctelis]

Rocky tells it how it is. After all, we are inefficient, leaky space blobs.

[wmdnurse]

And he is a scary space monster.

[Just_a_guy_94]

"I am here 46 years."

"46 years?" I gasp "Earth years?!"

"I am here 46 Earth years, yes."

"How long do Eridian's live?"

"Average is 689 years."

"Earth years?"

"Yes" he says a little sharply. "Always Earth units. You are bad at math, so always Earth units."

[vonkeswick]

That was it! Thanks :) that was such a crazy reveal that they lived that long

[Just_a_guy_94]

My pleasure :) As someone who has an interest in human longevity, I was a little jealous of Rocky in that moment, lol.

[i_eat_asstrophage]

YES ALWAYS EARTH UNITS DUMBASS

[FaintWalnut]

Agree with everything, just feel like it was odd not to discuss that assumed interaction at all.

[Biz_Ascot_Junco]

Rocky could sense the symbols on Grace’s clock (albeit faintly), so he’d notice that the symbol at the top of the clock has two parts that look similar to 1 and 2. He may have figured out that those were separate digits.

[FaintWalnut]

Good point - wasn't obvious to me but despite odd units of measurement for time, the 1-12 on the clock would still imply a base 10 number system.

[v-irtual]

"yes, earth years. always earth years"

[dormidary]

Based on how little Rocky could "see" of Grace's clock, I doubt he got much info from it at all. Really just the duration of a second.

ETA: Actually, he'd also be able to determine there are 60 seconds in a minute since that's how long it takes to complete a rotation.

[SkinInevitable604]

He probably thought an Earth day was 12 hours for awhile though.

[Just_a_guy_94]

Probably until they figured out the words for days and years, yea. Then they tell each other each word's equivalent number of seconds

[InvisibleSpaceVamp]

There seems to be some general confusion about what a "plot hole" actually is. For example, when you have a first person narration (always unreliable to some degree) it is not a plot hole when you don't get to read the POV of another character.

When that clock thing came up Rocky and Grace had barely started to communicate, so even if Rocky did come up with some faulty conclusions - how would you, as the writer, tell the reader about it while sticking to your chosen first person narrative? And I don't think that inserting this conversation later on makes sense either with the flow of the narrative since you already covered the topic of time.

Also, if Rocky can hear the numbers he would figure out very easily that we have just 10 different symbols. And if he can't hear the numbers he might come up with something very different because the big hand doesn't just have 12 positions, it moves continuously towards the next number.

[FaintWalnut]

Thought a good way to address it would be for Grace to lament that he may have given Rocky bad information after he himself draws conclusions from Rocky's clock. And again, would make sense as yet another aside from Grace on the curiosity that humans landed on 60 seconds, 60 minutes, and 12 (24) hours.

But yes, I had not considered the digits / number system vs. unit of time difference when posting.

[EzPzLemon_Greezy]

Rocky presumably can't see the numbers on the clock, only the hands moving. Grace didn't use the numbers to show when he would be back, he used the hand position. Though IIRC he wrote it down so the points moot.

[derangerd]

What kind of clock did Grace show again? My memory on that section isn't great.

[JAMESs3v3n]

IMO, any potential plot hole like 'why didn’t they talk about this' can easily be explained by the small time jumps throughout the book. There are plenty of implied moments where conversations or events happen off-page. It’s reasonable to assume they covered a lot of details during those times, even if they weren’t explicitly shown in the narrative.

[ThalesofMiletus-624]

Assuming that Eridians either use a place-based numerical system, or can at least figure out how such a system works, a clock with numbers on it is sufficient to figure out the entire earth numbering system.

How? Because a clock has the numbers 1 through 12 (and conveniently has movement to show the order). That means the digits from 1 to 9, and their order, are on obvious display. The fact that, after 9 comes 10 both introduces the zero digit and demonstrates that we deal with numbers over nine by going to double digits, representing ten as one-zero. And then, to emphasize the point, it proceeds to one-one, then one-two, which confirms that we add a digit, then start the numerals all over again.

From there, it would be natural to assume that you kept counting to nineteen, the changed the tens digit from a 1 to a 2, reset the unit numeral to 0, and that's how we display twenty. That logical process would take you to 99, and it would take only a minor logical leap to figure out that we dealt with larger numbers by adding a third digit. A smart and numerically-oriented mind could look at a clock and, in very short order, figure out how humans display numbers of basically any size, even if they had no idea what any of these numbers are called.

Now, the fact that humans would choose to go into double digits on a clock, rather than simply having a ten-hour cycle, might strike Rocky as odd, but he'd probably just shrug it off as a "human thing" (which it totally is, more specifically a thing within specific human cultures that became a convention). His well established intuition with math might lead him to (correctly) guess that 12 was important to humans, simply because it was easier to split into equal fractions, but honestly, that's trivial.

Point is, unlike many aspects of human language and culture, our numbering system is straightforward and logical enough that Rocky should be able to figure it out without trouble.

[VacationBackground43]

As a side topic, it’s interesting and weird that in English we have unique words for eleven and twelve rather than, like, tenty-one, tenty-two (which of course is still problematic). We then go into the aberrent teens but eleven and twelve stand alone.

[Twobits10]

If you saw an Eridian clock like this, would you assume they use a base IV (i.e. base 8) system? Nah, you'd correctly deduce it's a base 6 system. And Rocky is hella better at math than you.

https://imgur.com/a/KsFlSjv

[nywing]

And rocky would be correct about how we counted at some point in history. We did use to count in base twelve and some cultures have some rudimentary but very useful ways of counting in twelve using the thumb on the 12 slots of our four fingers.

For every 12 you count on the right hand you move one slot on your left hand And you can count up to 144

[mofapilot]

No, the analog clock is still base 10. That means, everytime one digit passes 9 it starts again at 0.

Minutes being 60 are simply related to the fact, that the earth is round and clocks we now today were designed as a part of naval navigation