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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Regarding Standards, I'd be more worried about the Metric system becoming entrenched than English units. Anything that keeps us from switching to Planck units would be a Bad Thing.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Good points, but I still think that standards - particularly pervasive standards like the metric system, are probably a longer legacy than most of the other structures Prof. Hanson suggests here. In particular, I think that both the metric system and arabic numbers, will have much longer survival times than "Ancients". Most entities (e.g. large corporations) have lifespans not much longer than humans, typically decades. Amongst other things, they are often in direct competition with other similar entities, and get killed off by these battles - (and if we can't stop Hanson's subsistence future, I think the same will happen to any people transiently surviving from this era). A standard like the metric system has far fewer competitors and is far harder to dislodge.

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