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from the does-the-pensioner-want-to-repay-his-benefits-and-go-back-to-work,-too? dept.
In the quixotic battle against old age, some people use skin care and spin class.
That’s not enough for Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old who feels like he’s in his 40s. The Dutch pensioner is asking a court in his hometown of Arnhem, southeast of Amsterdam, to change his birth certificate so that it says he took his first breath on March 11, 1969, rather than on March 11, 1949. The judges heard his case Monday and promised they would render a verdict in the next several weeks.
Ratelband sees his request as no different from a petition to change his name or the gender he was assigned at birth — and isn’t bothered that this comparison might offend transgender people, whose medical needs have been recognized by the American Medical Association. It comes down to free will, he maintains.
I want to be recognized as an alien trapped in an Earthling's body.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 09 2018, @03:25PM (1 child)
> Time is a quantitative standard, and the units of its measurement would make sense even with no human around to do the measuring.
no it isn't. Humans do agree on corrections so often. try to run or even sync with an NTP server for fucks sake
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday November 09 2018, @05:36PM
I think you're disagreeing with the wrong part.
Time is a quantitative standard in this case, with age being the distance the Earth has traveled relative to the Sun since a person was born.
Its units of measure are approximations at best, but they're good enough for things like government work. Many of them would certainly make no sense without humans interpreting them according to our social constructs. Hours? Minutes? Seconds? independently meaningless. (But days, years? Not meaningless, and we measure age mostly with those.)