[bearmode]

>How do you write the time? Do you put seconds or minutes before hours? Why not?

No, because the seconds are rarely important.

>How do you write the year? Do you put decade before century?

No, because that's not how numbers work.

>How do you write numbers? Do you put the ones place before the tens?

Same answer.

>Toddmorey asked why units don’t go from small to large and I explained that it is inconsistent with how we write numbers.

Dates aren't numbers. There is a lot more context and meaning around dates that we need to consider when we verbalise and write them. But, for the purposes of e.g. data storage then absolutely - we can consider them no different from numbers. You have to understand that isn't the case with conversational English, though.

[mulmen]

> You have to understand that isn't the case with conversational English, though.

Yes, conversational english is arbitrary. The preference there is the familiar so the listener understands. But both commonly used date formats (MM/DD/YYYY HH:MI:SS and DD/MM/YYYY HH:MI:SS) are inconsistent and arbitrary. You can’t say one makes more sense than the other because that’s just a matter of personal familiarity.