Thursday, January 4, 2024

Culture Vs. Math - The Year Zero

Year Zero 

Although I constantly complain about the gematria claims regarding dropping zero, admittedly there’s a historical precedent for the idea.  And this ties in to the roots of why gematria pretends to be math when it clearly is an excuse for a fuzzy form of pseudo math used to confuse the type of person that struggled with math in their primary education.

Even as recent as yesterday some clown on Twixter made the often used hypocrisy of claiming that in numerology you always drop zeroes.  No you don’t.  You’ve never always dropped zeroes.  From the very first when the current form of conspiracy gematria was being cobbled together with the loosest set of rules imaginable you used it as either/or instead of always.  Dropping when it suits you, keeping it in when it suits you.

So what’s going on with year zero that nobody talks about as having important events?  Didn’t the newspapers at the time mention the drone strike that centurion Piberius Minimus called down on the Germanic tribe on 7/19/0000?  If it had been a year earlier, they would have reported the date as 7/19/0001.  A year later, after further R&D to stop the drones from blowing up on the launchpad as they were wont to do (the Roman SpaceX or Space10 program as it was called) it would have been been 7/19/0001.

And that’s why they needed a purely cultural and social convention to explain the duplication; the need for a BC or AD that gives a reason for historians to get in arguments today when they aren’t analyzing the Space10 program being predictive programming or not.

Other cultures had figured out that a number line beginning with -2 and ending at +2 had a need for something resembling 0.  -2,-1,0,1,2.  The Romans and their ego knew that some concept of a zero was mathematically useful, their word nulla, but didn't have much use for it.  A shame really as when they invented the etymologically related Nutella spread they would have known it wasn’t a good idea.  Just because the Space10 crews liked it, why should we suffer?

The anachronistic jokes have a point behind them.  It’s obvious when a large span is involved it’s not a big deal.  Or anything without precision.  When you’re making a purely cultural and arbitrary decision on a calendar spanning thousands of years it’s no big deal.  But when cultural collided and wasn’t instantly thinking about drone striking a Germanic village to take their stuff the smarter people were sharing ideas.  And progress was being made.

The Roman centurion wanting to double the size of his Seal Team knew that going from X to XX was good enough for the math.  But their scientists, talking to the smarter Persian scientists realized, some funny stuff going on with the math.  If my post battle army needs to be V sized bigger to steal the spoils of war, it could be a combination of calling for reinforcements and reduction via death by pointy metal of enemy soldiers.  Somewhere in between adding 1 reinforcement and pointy metal death of enemy is……something.  And those Persian scientists might be staunch pacifists more interested in mathematical progress than the politics of Julius Seizure.

A clash of cultural convenience versus the need for precision.  Gematria and its actual origins and sad excuse for math is a purely cultural thing.  Astronomy and by association astrology have no need for precision.  It’s a matter of faith following the precedent of what went on before.  And even worse, now gematria simply makes up a new rule on the fly to justify whatever bullshit story is being concocted today.

Social progress lagging behind technological progress rears its head again.  Technological progress can work on adding reinforcements or improving pointy metal death techniques.  Or it can at least rely on the vague to the numerologist middle ground of the zero.  But inevitably the conspiracy gematria crowd aligns with the pointy death and lack of progress crowd.  No nuance, no color television.  Everything is is versus them, all or nothing, all -2 or +2 with no zero in the middle.  Because deep down the ringleaders know there is a zero in there, but zero dollars in their pocket doesn’t enrich them.

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