Or were all the old second counting systems wrong?
Many people have pointed out that if you start a timer on your phone and count out to 45 Mississippis, hippopotamus or number-one thousands it now ties out to a minute.
I have tried it a dozen times myself and after 45 counts I get anywhere between 54 to a minute and 4 seconds.
I specifically remember counting chunks of time as long as 15 minutes and not being off by a minute.
The point of those kind of estimation methods is not so you’ll agree with a clock, it’s so you’ll agree with yourself if you do it twice. Using a “foot” as a literal measuring unit isn’t so dumb if only one person is measuring.
In cooking, what a “cup” is in volume can vary by like 30% from cook to cook and depending on environmental factors. But if you’re the same cook, working in the same environment, your method will work every time.