For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
No, the top number is beats per measure. The bottom number is how many beats are in a whole note. For example, in 6/8 time a whole note has 8 beats, making an eighth note one beat. As opposed to 3/4 time in which a quarter note is one beat.
But the exact same thing can be accomplished just by changing the tempo.
As for the accents, yeah, that’s what I gather the only difference is. But it’s never explicitly taught that way, and there’s nothing hardcoded into the logic of time signatures that suggests it must be that way.
Yeah a lot of music notation has implicit/hidden elements that aren’t ever really explained. A lot of things are done because someone “feels” like it should be that way, and no one questions it for whatever reason.