6 ms·

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiori

Such a long article, repeatedly praising the "simplicity" of the metric system, and it still ignores all possible opposing views. Not a word about the superiority of the duodecimal system when dividing quantities, even though a couple of examples are quoted (12 inches is a foot, 12 pence to the shilling). No effort to explain whyever someone would approach the matter in this way. The author is either extremely biased or extremely ignorant.

spoils19 4y ago
[flagged]
- irdc 4y ago
  Ah yes, the global conspiracy to get people to...checks notes...occasionally use a pocket calculator. Very socialist indeed. A system merely suitable for the human scale will never enable you to reach beyond.
  - bliteben 4y ago
    Fractions are good for your brain and inherently more accurate.
    - wirrbel 4y ago
      A decimal value is just a form of approximate, decimal fractions. Also fractions of metric values should be even better for the brain, if stuff does not cancel out as easily. so if you want to make the argument that not using a calculator is inherently better, its even better to not use a calculator using the metric system.
- wirrbel 4y ago
  Romans thought in base 10 (X,C,M) a bit strange to refer to them. But I would happily adopt a base 12 number system with base 12 units. Let’s say we use X for 10 and Ǝ for 11, 134 would be 1Ǝ, 24 hour clock a 20 (base 12) hour clock
  - euroderf 4y ago
    As a new father, I have toyed with the idea of raising my child with base 16.
    - wirrbel 4y ago
      throughout my life I planned on teaching my kid(s) this one created word for the state of being not-thirsty. So in German, there is 'satt' which means 'not hungry', but for thirst, there is no corresponding word and its one of these urban memes that the corresponding word for not-thirsty would be 'sitt'. Now that I have a kid, my kid has not learned the word 'sitt'. :-) Anyway, I wouldn't have made the news as this dad did: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229808/Linguist-reveals-I-spoke-Klingon-son-years.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229808/Linguist-re...
      - randomcarbloke 4y ago
        What's wrong with quenched or sated?
        wirrbel 4y ago
        Does not exist as such in German.
irdc 4y ago
Quick, how many inches are in a yard?
- bliteben 4y ago
  How many seconds are in a minute? How many hours are in a day?
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    Minutes and hours are not SI.
- satiric 4y ago
  As an American, the only time I use yards is with football fields. When am I going to use inches in that context? It's not a simple conversion because it's not a common conversion. It's like converting between inches and meters. The imperial system is multiple systems smashed together, and it's optimized for the more common conversions. Not saying it's a perfect system, or that metric isn't better, but it's absolutely useable. I'd much rather stick with imperial than half-ass a conversion to metric and be stuck between the two systems, like what's happened in Canada and the UK.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  Quick, how many mm in a dm?
  - abricot 4y ago
    100 mm
    - Fatnino 4y ago
      I too have 36 inches to a yard available at a moments notice. Also 39 to a meter.
  - defrost 4y ago
    Trivial, but . . . who actually seriously uses decimeter on a weekly basis and what for? I've used metric for 50+ years and I'm in the field of sensors and measurement with application from remote sensing to minerals and energy .. and I've yet to use a decimeter unit (outside of a programming exercise). The convential usage is pico, nano, milli, centi, and full metre (and upwards to kilo, etc).
somat 4y ago
It does not bother me, it turns out that having an inconsistent measuring system is not actually that bad. and metric, it turns out has no more purity in it's base units than any other system. Take the meter, the group setting up the metric system was searching hard for something that was close in size to a yard so they choose 1/10_000_000 the distance from the pole to the equator. nothing wrong with that, but it is not really better than any other arbitrary unit, and with the better defined ways to calculate it(now defined as 1/299792458 of a light second), just as random. Or celsius, base it on 100 units between the freezing and boiling points of water, not a terrible thing to use, however with the later discovery of absolute zero, they needed a scale that used that, but did not try to redefine the measurement system to include absolute zero, so now you now have this really awkward 273.15... degree difference between the two scales, the nice scale that starts at zero has no other auspicious points to calibrate it at, and the scale with nice points does not start at zero. they could have made their new scale 100 degrees between zero and the freezing point of water, but that would have re jiggered every other derived unit, so understandable that they did not. Personally I think an si system set up around base twelve would kick ass, what would make it even better would be to replace our base ten number system with a base twelve one, 10 is kind of a poor number in terms of fractions possible. 2 is fine but nobody wants to use 5, things just get awkward when you use 5. nether one is ever going to happen but it is fun to think about our assumptions when it comes to counting and measurement.
- perilunar 4y ago
  > metric, it turns out has no more purity in it's base units than any other system. The base units are still somewhat arbitrary, in that they are based on this planet: the meter is related to the gradian and the circumference of the Earth. Celsius is based on the freezing and boiling point of water in our atmosphere. Mass is based on a specific volume water. If we were to set up a system now we could base it on fundamental physical constants (e.g planck or atomic units). But then we would have the same problem that the US currently has: endless arguments about how the old system is so much more 'natural' and convenient than the new one. The fact is that the rest of the world has gone metric, and the US will too, eventually. But SI has 2 things that the Imperial and US Customary systems do not have: 1. It is coherent: the base units and the derived units relate to each other simply without arbitrary conversion factors. With Imperial and US units you can't even convert between length, area, and volume without them. 2. It is based on powers of 10. There is only one unit for each quantity, and a single system of common multipliers. > Personally I think an si system set up around base twelve would kick ass If we had 12 fingers and used base 12 in everyday life, then a measurement system based on multiples of 12 would be awesome. Base 12 is much better than base 10. But we don't.
wirrbel 4y ago
How many ounces are in a pound?
- tzs 4y ago
  That's not so much an argument for using metric units as it is an argument for fixing naming in the Imperial system. What makes Imperial units harder to remember than metric units is not that they are related by factors of 2^n 3^m instead of factors of 10^n. It is that the names of different units of the same kind are not predictable based on their ratios. If you had a system with the same relationships as Imperial, but say all the weight units were of the form <prefix>pound, where <prefix> indicates the multiplier or divider to go from pounds to that derived unit, and the same prefixes were used also used with length units so lengths were all <prefix>yard, Imperial units would be a lot easier than they are now. The metric vs Imperial debate would then simply be whether factors of 10^n are better or worse than factors of 2^n 3^m.
  - wirrbel 4y ago
    > If you had a system with the same relationships as Imperial, but say all the weight units were of the form <prefix>pound, where <prefix> indicates the multiplier or divider to go from pounds to that derived unit, and the same prefixes were used also used with length units so lengths were all <prefix>yard, Imperial units would be a lot easier than they are now. > The metric vs Imperial debate would then simply be whether factors of 10^n are better or worse than factors of 2^n 3^m. I find the idea interesting, but it isn't about imperial vs metric, but about a base-(2^n) fantasy metric system vs metric. There is an appeal but of course it will never happen, neither will the imperial-unit world migrate to that nor will the metric world.
- brg 4y ago
  A pints a pound the world around.
albertopv 4y ago
Taken as a whole SI units are really what makes the difference
downvotetruth 4y ago
Sexagesimal could map to Alphanumeric dropping C,O,S,V,W,X,Z and adding ~!@$%&? and optionally 1 for #
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

spoils19 4y ago

[flagged]

irdc 4y ago
Ah yes, the global conspiracy to get people to...checks notes...occasionally use a pocket calculator. Very socialist indeed. A system merely suitable for the human scale will never enable you to reach beyond.
- bliteben 4y ago
  Fractions are good for your brain and inherently more accurate.
  - wirrbel 4y ago
    A decimal value is just a form of approximate, decimal fractions. Also fractions of metric values should be even better for the brain, if stuff does not cancel out as easily. so if you want to make the argument that not using a calculator is inherently better, its even better to not use a calculator using the metric system.
wirrbel 4y ago
Romans thought in base 10 (X,C,M) a bit strange to refer to them. But I would happily adopt a base 12 number system with base 12 units. Let’s say we use X for 10 and Ǝ for 11, 134 would be 1Ǝ, 24 hour clock a 20 (base 12) hour clock
- euroderf 4y ago
  As a new father, I have toyed with the idea of raising my child with base 16.
  - wirrbel 4y ago
    throughout my life I planned on teaching my kid(s) this one created word for the state of being not-thirsty. So in German, there is 'satt' which means 'not hungry', but for thirst, there is no corresponding word and its one of these urban memes that the corresponding word for not-thirsty would be 'sitt'. Now that I have a kid, my kid has not learned the word 'sitt'. :-) Anyway, I wouldn't have made the news as this dad did: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229808/Linguist-reveals-I-spoke-Klingon-son-years.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229808/Linguist-re...
    - randomcarbloke 4y ago
      What's wrong with quenched or sated?
      - wirrbel 4y ago
        Does not exist as such in German.

irdc 4y ago

Quick, how many inches are in a yard?

bliteben 4y ago
How many seconds are in a minute? How many hours are in a day?
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  Minutes and hours are not SI.
satiric 4y ago
As an American, the only time I use yards is with football fields. When am I going to use inches in that context? It's not a simple conversion because it's not a common conversion. It's like converting between inches and meters. The imperial system is multiple systems smashed together, and it's optimized for the more common conversions. Not saying it's a perfect system, or that metric isn't better, but it's absolutely useable. I'd much rather stick with imperial than half-ass a conversion to metric and be stuck between the two systems, like what's happened in Canada and the UK.
Fatnino 4y ago
Quick, how many mm in a dm?
- abricot 4y ago
  100 mm
  - Fatnino 4y ago
    I too have 36 inches to a yard available at a moments notice. Also 39 to a meter.
- defrost 4y ago
  Trivial, but . . . who actually seriously uses decimeter on a weekly basis and what for? I've used metric for 50+ years and I'm in the field of sensors and measurement with application from remote sensing to minerals and energy .. and I've yet to use a decimeter unit (outside of a programming exercise). The convential usage is pico, nano, milli, centi, and full metre (and upwards to kilo, etc).

somat 4y ago

It does not bother me, it turns out that having an inconsistent measuring system is not actually that bad. and metric, it turns out has no more purity in it's base units than any other system. Take the meter, the group setting up the metric system was searching hard for something that was close in size to a yard so they choose 1/10_000_000 the distance from the pole to the equator. nothing wrong with that, but it is not really better than any other arbitrary unit, and with the better defined ways to calculate it(now defined as 1/299792458 of a light second), just as random. Or celsius, base it on 100 units between the freezing and boiling points of water, not a terrible thing to use, however with the later discovery of absolute zero, they needed a scale that used that, but did not try to redefine the measurement system to include absolute zero, so now you now have this really awkward 273.15... degree difference between the two scales, the nice scale that starts at zero has no other auspicious points to calibrate it at, and the scale with nice points does not start at zero. they could have made their new scale 100 degrees between zero and the freezing point of water, but that would have re jiggered every other derived unit, so understandable that they did not. Personally I think an si system set up around base twelve would kick ass, what would make it even better would be to replace our base ten number system with a base twelve one, 10 is kind of a poor number in terms of fractions possible. 2 is fine but nobody wants to use 5, things just get awkward when you use 5. nether one is ever going to happen but it is fun to think about our assumptions when it comes to counting and measurement.

perilunar 4y ago
> metric, it turns out has no more purity in it's base units than any other system. The base units are still somewhat arbitrary, in that they are based on this planet: the meter is related to the gradian and the circumference of the Earth. Celsius is based on the freezing and boiling point of water in our atmosphere. Mass is based on a specific volume water. If we were to set up a system now we could base it on fundamental physical constants (e.g planck or atomic units). But then we would have the same problem that the US currently has: endless arguments about how the old system is so much more 'natural' and convenient than the new one. The fact is that the rest of the world has gone metric, and the US will too, eventually. But SI has 2 things that the Imperial and US Customary systems do not have: 1. It is coherent: the base units and the derived units relate to each other simply without arbitrary conversion factors. With Imperial and US units you can't even convert between length, area, and volume without them. 2. It is based on powers of 10. There is only one unit for each quantity, and a single system of common multipliers. > Personally I think an si system set up around base twelve would kick ass If we had 12 fingers and used base 12 in everyday life, then a measurement system based on multiples of 12 would be awesome. Base 12 is much better than base 10. But we don't.

wirrbel 4y ago

How many ounces are in a pound?

tzs 4y ago
That's not so much an argument for using metric units as it is an argument for fixing naming in the Imperial system. What makes Imperial units harder to remember than metric units is not that they are related by factors of 2^n 3^m instead of factors of 10^n. It is that the names of different units of the same kind are not predictable based on their ratios. If you had a system with the same relationships as Imperial, but say all the weight units were of the form <prefix>pound, where <prefix> indicates the multiplier or divider to go from pounds to that derived unit, and the same prefixes were used also used with length units so lengths were all <prefix>yard, Imperial units would be a lot easier than they are now. The metric vs Imperial debate would then simply be whether factors of 10^n are better or worse than factors of 2^n 3^m.
- wirrbel 4y ago
  > If you had a system with the same relationships as Imperial, but say all the weight units were of the form <prefix>pound, where <prefix> indicates the multiplier or divider to go from pounds to that derived unit, and the same prefixes were used also used with length units so lengths were all <prefix>yard, Imperial units would be a lot easier than they are now. > The metric vs Imperial debate would then simply be whether factors of 10^n are better or worse than factors of 2^n 3^m. I find the idea interesting, but it isn't about imperial vs metric, but about a base-(2^n) fantasy metric system vs metric. There is an appeal but of course it will never happen, neither will the imperial-unit world migrate to that nor will the metric world.
brg 4y ago
A pints a pound the world around.

albertopv 4y ago

Taken as a whole SI units are really what makes the difference

downvotetruth 4y ago

Sexagesimal could map to Alphanumeric dropping C,O,S,V,W,X,Z and adding ~!@$%&? and optionally 1 for #

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]