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If you want to try using bishops mitres as a unit of measurement, you're more than welcome, but the length of that hat was probably made using a more intuitive

If you want to try using bishops mitres as a unit of measurement, you're more than welcome, but the length of that hat was probably made using a more intuitive reference unit, you might want to use that instead, maybe it was cubits, I'm not sure. >an appeal to nature then No. It's an explanation that imperial & similar ancient measurement units were adopted with the goal of being simple and intuitive for people to quickly understand. This was accomplished by choosing immediately relatable reference points. In the case of a hogshead barrel, that reference point was the ox head. A mile, that's 1000 paces, that's both simple to remember and intuitive. A kilometer, that's 621.4 paces, that's neither simple to remember nor intuitive. No unit in the metric system maps simply to anything a human can immediately relate to, this is by definition of each unit in the system.

sangnoir 4y ago
> No unit in the metric system maps simply to anything a human can immediately relate to This "intuition" is not intrinsic, though, but is because of familiarity. If you've done track sports (or watched athletics), you can visualize 100m. If you've watched NFL, you can "intuit" 10 yards empirically - not because it equals to 30 feet and you look at your own feet. The same goes for 21"/27"/42"/60" (TVs). The only scenario I can imagine where of human-relatibility would matter is when the unit is unknown to the listener, e.g. if someone introduced me to a carlength (or the notoriously unintuitive 'length of a football field'); however, this is now completely unnecessary with modern education and standardization The origin of the measure is just lore, and counts for nothing; which is why being immersed into a system which you were previously unfamiliar with (metric or imperial) bestows the same "intuitiveness" - as anyone who joined the US army can tell you. The argument that imperial units are somehow relatable as they are similar to naturally occurring things is a textbook appeal to nature.

sangnoir 4y ago

> No unit in the metric system maps simply to anything a human can immediately relate to This "intuition" is not intrinsic, though, but is because of familiarity. If you've done track sports (or watched athletics), you can visualize 100m. If you've watched NFL, you can "intuit" 10 yards empirically - not because it equals to 30 feet and you look at your own feet. The same goes for 21"/27"/42"/60" (TVs). The only scenario I can imagine where of human-relatibility would matter is when the unit is unknown to the listener, e.g. if someone introduced me to a carlength (or the notoriously unintuitive 'length of a football field'); however, this is now completely unnecessary with modern education and standardization The origin of the measure is just lore, and counts for nothing; which is why being immersed into a system which you were previously unfamiliar with (metric or imperial) bestows the same "intuitiveness" - as anyone who joined the US army can tell you. The argument that imperial units are somehow relatable as they are similar to naturally occurring things is a textbook appeal to nature.