4 ms·

Literally the whole world uses SI, only USA plus a few small countries chose to remain in the dark ages.

by okket 8y ago

kasey_junk 8y ago
This is of course not true. If I go to England I’ll see & hear references to ‘stone’ for weight. Similarly most of the world uses Celsius instead of Kelvin for temperature. In China you’ll see measures denominated in duplicate units at times. The world over you’ll see variations in what units people use.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  The UK also uses mpg, and confusingly enough, the Imperial gallon is significantly larger than the American one.
- sfifs 8y ago
  And in India, we still use a more traditional counting system beyond thousands - we say "lakh" for 100,000 and "crore" for 10,000,000. The words million and billion are not in common use.
jayess 8y ago
So a system of measurement determines whether people are in the "dark ages." I see.
- okket 8y ago
  When you set human extremities as references instead of fundamental physical properties, yes.
  - ihsw2 8y ago
    The US put a god damned man on the moon, they're far from dark ages.
    - okket 8y ago
      And lost a mars orbiter thanks to the US customary units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_... Think what could have happened if the Apollo Program was an international effort and not a U.S. only one.
      - adolph 8y ago
        Probably wouldn’t have left low Earth orbit [0]. For better or worse more effective organizations generally present themselves as a unit with aligned interests. Organizations with misaligned internal interests get as far as the lowest common denominator among their interests weighted by the relative power of members. That’s a far more significant factor than choice of measurement standards. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
  - rainbowmverse 8y ago
    You're misinformed. A foot as a measurement in 2018 has no more to do with a human foot than a computer chip has to do with a potato-powered calculator. Imperial units have had standard metric translations for a long time.
    - okket 8y ago
      Of course, you can use or invent whatever measure system you like, if you provide a translation. But why translate? Why not use what the rest of the world uses? When you come from the outside, it feels like a trip to middle ages reading about 'furlongs', 'hogsheads' and 'pennyweights'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units
      - Piskvorrr 8y ago
        "There's this widespread legacy system. Why won't those stupid people just migrate to the newish and better one?" (Key words: legacy, migrate. I still see dozens of WinXP systems around, alive and kicking.)
        rainbowmverse 8y ago
        That's exactly it. Metric is on every single food item. Food is like a modern 64 bit system. Meanwhile, the roads are still in miles per hour and all temperatures are in Fahrenheit, so I need an 8 bit subsystem to run it. I would have to convert back to feet and miles if the article didn't have it because I'm not used to those units since I never have an opportunity to use them in my daily life. Metric is not as intuitive as its promoters insist. Intuition is developed through use. Civilization-scale issues require civilization-scale solutions. I can't unilaterally convert to metric in every context because it would be terribly impractical. I would spend my days doing conversions. That's a huge waste of finite time and energy.
        mschaef 8y ago
        > Food is like a modern 64 bit system. Meanwhile, the roads are still in miles per hour and all temperatures are in Fahrenheit, so I need an 8 bit subsystem to run it. The problem with that analogy is that a 64-bit computer is inherently, in isolation, much more powerful than an 8-bit. For the vast majority of cases, the same is not true for a switch from from, say, ounces to ml to measure the size of a bottle of water.
perl4ever 8y ago
The US uses SI and has for a long time. This is ridiculous propaganda. Source: Personal experience - I took high school science classes in the US, in the first half of the 90s. I've also owned metric tools purchased in the US, and several cars with metric measurements on the gauges.
- okket 8y ago
  The metric system is widely used in the U.S. school system? That is news to me.
  - mschaef 8y ago
    Even back to the early 90's, it was the one and only unit system used in science classes.
  - kindohm 8y ago
    I grew up in the U.S. We were taught to use the metric system throughout my schooling and used it (metric) for all science courses in university. But in my university engineering labs on machining and machine tools, it was all taught in inches and feet. Not sure if that's because that's what industry used. I never entered my career as a manufacturing engineer.
    - magduf 8y ago
      For some odd reason, a lot of mechanical engineering and machining in the US is still done in inches and feet, though I think most of it is related to the defense sector. If you get into the automotive sector, for instance, you won't see that any more; they finally went all-metric in the 90s or so. Anything where the product is going to be sold internationally is probably metric. In other engineering disciplines (except maybe civil), it's all metric. You won't hear EEs talking about semiconductor feature sizes in fractions of an inch.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    Since at least 1975 when a federal law was passed making metric the “preferred” measurement system. In the 80s I was doing metric conversions in years 4 or 5.

Literally the whole world uses SI, only USA plus a few small countries chose to remain in the dark ages.

by okket 8y ago

Literally the whole world uses SI, only USA plus a few small countries chose to remain in the dark ages.

This is of course not true. If I go to England I’ll see & hear references to ‘stone’ for weight. Similarly most of the world uses Celsius instead of Kelvin for temperature. In China you’ll see measures denominated in duplicate units at times. The world over you’ll see variations in what units people use.

perl4ever 8y ago
The UK also uses mpg, and confusingly enough, the Imperial gallon is significantly larger than the American one.
sfifs 8y ago
And in India, we still use a more traditional counting system beyond thousands - we say "lakh" for 100,000 and "crore" for 10,000,000. The words million and billion are not in common use.

jayess 8y ago

So a system of measurement determines whether people are in the "dark ages." I see.

okket 8y ago
When you set human extremities as references instead of fundamental physical properties, yes.
- ihsw2 8y ago
  The US put a god damned man on the moon, they're far from dark ages.
  - okket 8y ago
    And lost a mars orbiter thanks to the US customary units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_... Think what could have happened if the Apollo Program was an international effort and not a U.S. only one.
    - adolph 8y ago
      Probably wouldn’t have left low Earth orbit [0]. For better or worse more effective organizations generally present themselves as a unit with aligned interests. Organizations with misaligned internal interests get as far as the lowest common denominator among their interests weighted by the relative power of members. That’s a far more significant factor than choice of measurement standards. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  You're misinformed. A foot as a measurement in 2018 has no more to do with a human foot than a computer chip has to do with a potato-powered calculator. Imperial units have had standard metric translations for a long time.
  - okket 8y ago
    Of course, you can use or invent whatever measure system you like, if you provide a translation. But why translate? Why not use what the rest of the world uses? When you come from the outside, it feels like a trip to middle ages reading about 'furlongs', 'hogsheads' and 'pennyweights'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units
    - Piskvorrr 8y ago
      "There's this widespread legacy system. Why won't those stupid people just migrate to the newish and better one?" (Key words: legacy, migrate. I still see dozens of WinXP systems around, alive and kicking.)
      - rainbowmverse 8y ago
        That's exactly it. Metric is on every single food item. Food is like a modern 64 bit system. Meanwhile, the roads are still in miles per hour and all temperatures are in Fahrenheit, so I need an 8 bit subsystem to run it. I would have to convert back to feet and miles if the article didn't have it because I'm not used to those units since I never have an opportunity to use them in my daily life. Metric is not as intuitive as its promoters insist. Intuition is developed through use. Civilization-scale issues require civilization-scale solutions. I can't unilaterally convert to metric in every context because it would be terribly impractical. I would spend my days doing conversions. That's a huge waste of finite time and energy.
        mschaef 8y ago
        > Food is like a modern 64 bit system. Meanwhile, the roads are still in miles per hour and all temperatures are in Fahrenheit, so I need an 8 bit subsystem to run it. The problem with that analogy is that a 64-bit computer is inherently, in isolation, much more powerful than an 8-bit. For the vast majority of cases, the same is not true for a switch from from, say, ounces to ml to measure the size of a bottle of water.

perl4ever 8y ago

The US uses SI and has for a long time. This is ridiculous propaganda. Source: Personal experience - I took high school science classes in the US, in the first half of the 90s. I've also owned metric tools purchased in the US, and several cars with metric measurements on the gauges.

okket 8y ago
The metric system is widely used in the U.S. school system? That is news to me.
- mschaef 8y ago
  Even back to the early 90's, it was the one and only unit system used in science classes.
- kindohm 8y ago
  I grew up in the U.S. We were taught to use the metric system throughout my schooling and used it (metric) for all science courses in university. But in my university engineering labs on machining and machine tools, it was all taught in inches and feet. Not sure if that's because that's what industry used. I never entered my career as a manufacturing engineer.
  - magduf 8y ago
    For some odd reason, a lot of mechanical engineering and machining in the US is still done in inches and feet, though I think most of it is related to the defense sector. If you get into the automotive sector, for instance, you won't see that any more; they finally went all-metric in the 90s or so. Anything where the product is going to be sold internationally is probably metric. In other engineering disciplines (except maybe civil), it's all metric. You won't hear EEs talking about semiconductor feature sizes in fractions of an inch.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  Since at least 1975 when a federal law was passed making metric the “preferred” measurement system. In the 80s I was doing metric conversions in years 4 or 5.