Thursday, September 30, 2021
5:10 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
Funnily enough, when I woke up, I found myself thinking about this new camera, and I started mentally framing a Learning Curve video about the camera’s various control buttons:
“Welcome to the Learning Curve. I’m Doug, this is my planet, and when I learn, YOU learn. Today, I’m learning about all the control buttons on the DJI Pocket 2 camera.”
There are six control buttons for the camera in total, and I got out of bed this morning with the goal of learning what the official name for each button is and then assembling my thoughts about the function of each button. That might be my first official Learning Curve video for the DJI Pocket 2. My goal is to make the video no more than twelve minutes long.
Twelve minutes is my new mantra for the Learning Curve. I’m a big fan of the number twelve. I’ve thought a lot about the base twelve numbering system. It is kind of a touchstone for me in terms of thinking about life. What I mean is that I find it fascinating that, as humans, we simply assume that the way we count is part of the natural order. I’ve tried to explain to people about base ten and base twelve numbering systems, but no one ever is able to grasp it. And that’s understandable. We struggle to grasp the idea that our numbering system is an invention. Everyone assumes that the idea of ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, one million is a law of nature and that there is no other way to count. But, of course, base ten numbering is a human invention, just as much as the Fahrenheit system for measuring temperature is an invention. We could just as easily be using a base twelve numbering system. In fact, base twelve is superior. People get hung up on this idea that decimal shifting from 10 to 100 to 1,000 is part of base ten numbering. And they argue that to count by twelve instead of ten would be confusing and difficult because we can’t use the decimal shifting technique anymore. But that’s not true. What they don’t understand is that in base twelve, we could still use 10, 100, 1,000, etc. That wouldn’t change at all. It’s just that the actual number of items represented by 10 would be greater. In base twelve, the written character 10 would still be the same. And 10 X 10 would still be 100. But the actual number of items represented by 10 and 100 would be greater. And that really makes no difference at all. Those values are just arbitrary, and we can change it to anything we want. But that is such a difficult concept for people to grasp. All we’d really need to do is invent two extra symbols and values to fit in between 1 and 10. If I were in charge of the planet, I’d switch the whole world to a base twelve numbering system.
This is on my mind right now because I’ve watched the first two episodes of the new sci-fi series Foundation. And in the second episode, the main character discusses the base twelve numbering system. It was a fascinating discussion. In the show, they were putting together an archive of all human knowledge. And the assumption, of course, was that everything would be counted using base ten. That’s what all the people in this meeting used. But our main character pointed out that this was just a random circumstance. There was no reason that they had to use base ten. In fact, hundreds of worlds in their galaxy used a base twelve numbering system, and base twelve was actually superior. But the other people in the meeting were just puzzled. They didn’t really understand what she was getting at. And what she was really getting at was that the people in power, the people in the central worlds, just assumed that base ten was part of the natural order because that is what they used.
Anyway, the show got me thinking about the number twelve. And my brain settled on this idea that making the Learning Curve videos twelve minutes long was a fun and interesting idea. I should certainly make an effort to stop making hour-long videos. Of course, I can still talk about the DJI Pocket 2 camera for hours if I want to. I can talk about it for five hours. But instead of posting a five-hour video or five one-hour videos, I can make and post twenty-five twelve-minute videos. People are much more likely to enjoy watching a twelve-minute video than a one-hour video.