7 ms·

>The kilometer was based on 1/10000 the distance between the poles and the equator. And that measurement they got was ultimately off, which is why the meter be

by qball 3y ago

>The kilometer was based on 1/10000 the distance between the poles and the equator. And that measurement they got was ultimately off, which is why the meter became (until its later redefinition), for all intents and purposes, "the length of some arbitrary metal bar". Clearly, "some fragment of roughly how large the Earth is" is a base unit designed first and foremost for human-scale measurements, and definitely not by self-fellating academics that would never seriously have to use the thing (and whose work does not, by and large, depend on the base unit used; Americans use thousandths-of-an-inch for everything under 1/64th). Fortunately, metric time was too weird even for the French. >but by measurements everyone on the planet could reproduce using the sun and a bit of water, at least to a very acceptable approximation. By contrast, the "foot", which is literally named after the device used to approximate it. The median human being has two of these. In fairness, you usually have to be taught which part of one's body approximates the inch and is thus harder to do. >join the metric system The metric system was initially imposed at gunpoint by the French upon most European nations in the first place due to the French going batshit insane just before 1800 and conquering most of the Continent. The Russians, being a nation that rather famously was not conquered by the French during that time, would retain Arshins until Communism (at which point the Soviets would impose the metric system, also at gunpoint- kind of sensing a theme here); the English would retain the Imperial system even longer than that. It's also why people living in the only nation that really has a choice all measure distance and height in (square) feet, inches, and kilometers (per hour), human weight in pounds (and very rarely ounces), most other weight in grams and kilograms, non-cooking-related volume in liters, and non-cooking-related temperature in celsius. It would have been objectively better from a usability to have just set '1 meter = 1 foot' and call it a day- could have even been (one of) the French foot, too. But no, just had to fuck it up for everyone who actually has to use it because "we know better".

mathieuh 3y ago
I never thought I would see an American Exceptionalist comment about a system of measurements. Metric measurements are as intuitive to me as American customary units are to you. I can just as easily use my handspan or the lengths of my fingers to estimate lengths in centimetres as you can in inches. I know without thinking what clothes I should wear when I see the weather forecast in Celsius. I know roughly what temperature I should set the oven to in Celsius based on what I’m cooking. Having grown up in a metric country, American or imperial units mean nothing to me. If I’d grown up in America I’m sure American units would be intuitive for me. The only difference, as you say, is metric is far easier and more intuitive as soon as you want to do anything complicated with those measurements.
- arlort 3y ago
  > I never thought I would see an American Exceptionalist comment about a system of measurements. You haven't been on the internet long, have you? Welcome, and I'm sorry
- qball 3y ago
  >American Exceptionalist Ah yes, because all criticisms of SI's inherently flawed design must be from an American. Lol, lmao even. >I can just as easily use my handspan or the lengths of my fingers to estimate lengths in centimetres as you can in inches But you can't do that for meters, whereas you can for feet- and I only need to remember one body part for one inch (and one for one foot, naturally) whereas you have to remember several because the centimeter is too small, and the meter too big, to use in this way (you cannot even really generate 1 cm- so you have to do multiplication every time you want to do this). The SI base unit's design handicaps its usability here- having to use fractions or having to multiply by 2 or 3 afterwards to compute what would normally be counting by 1s is, obviously, not an improvement. See, the average Joe gains zero benefit from the knowledge that he is using a measurement that has something to do with how large the Earth is. Sure, navel-gazing academics like the symmetry, and math problems in school are a bit easier when you're just staring at an abstract number rather than having to sanity-check a measurement of an object you have sitting in front of you- but a system of measurement designed for human beings (and not states or vague modernist principles) should have picked the latter to work on, not the former. It is not a coincidence that every country in the world, pre-SI, set their measurement's "1" (or 1/10th, 1/12th, or 1/16th) at what we now consider to be 25-30mm: good design, intended for humans. The fact that number in SI is not a round one: bad design, intended for... something else. >is metric is far easier and more intuitive as soon as you want to do anything complicated with those measurements. Until you want to divide them into thirds, fourths, sixths, or eighths, then you have to remember the 3 numbers of the fraction anyway. Doing this makes sense for abstract things like money and (to an extent) volume, since I hope you're not measuring liquids with your hands, but "visualize how much water this is in relation to some length" is generally not a problem anyone who isn't writing things down already (and can thus deal with arbitrary conversions) has. And for those who do work in odd fractional measurements... they're already working in decimal anyway and have been ever since the caliper was invented, so what difference does it make for them?
peeters 3y ago
> And that measurement they got was ultimately off, which is why the meter became (until its later redefinition), > By contrast, the "foot", which is literally named after the device used to approximate it. The median human being has two of these. It seems odd to criticize the metre for a lack of accuracy against historical basis when the modern definition is accurate to within 0.02% of its historical basis, and yet praise a unit that, if measured by its historical basis, would be off on its mean by around 20% and vary by 40-50% amongst the population.
peeters 3y ago
> It's also why people living in the only nation that really has a choice all measure distance and height in (square) feet, inches, and kilometers (per hour), human weight in pounds (and very rarely ounces), most other weight in grams and kilograms, non-cooking-related volume in liters, and non-cooking-related temperature in celsius. If you're talking about Canada, none of that mess comes from a plethora of choice, it's just the result of American cultural and economic influence, in addition to history. Yes Canadians are well versed in both systems but it's not like we particularly like having to deal with US units in our lives.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  This can get quite frustrating where the two worlds meet, for instance in construction.
branko_d 3y ago
Reducing SI adoption to “gunpoint” is just silly. It was objectively better system and that’s why it ultimately prevailed.
- qball 3y ago
  >It was objectively better system No, it isn't, and I've already outlined the reasons why. >Reducing SI adoption to “gunpoint” Is what actually happens. The French pushed it through their Revolution, the Soviets did it in '25, the PRC in '59. Interestingly, a good chunk of the existing Chinese measurements were metric themselves for a while: simply imposing a new order was the objective. Thus always to modernists.
  - jorams 3y ago
    > No, it isn't, and I've already outlined the reasons why. The only argument in favor of imperial measurements you've given is that humans have two feet, which isn't much of an argument given the variation in sizes of those physical feet.
  - jmopp 3y ago
    I still have no idea what an ounce is supposed to measure. Is it mass? Is it volume? Is the ounce for measuring gold different to the ounce for measuring food?
throw0101a 3y ago
> It would have been objectively better from a usability to have just set '1 meter = 1 foot' Which foot: the international foot (0.3048 meters) or the US survey foot (1200/3937 meters)? * https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/geodesy/international-foot.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/geodesy/international-foot.htm... * https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot Here's another one: which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers? It's a pound found of feathers that weighs more. This is because gold (and other precious metals) are measured in the Troy system, where one pound is the equivalent of 373g: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight Whereas most other things use the Avoirdupois system, where one pound is the equivalent of 454g: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois Now, which weighs more: one ounce of gold or one ounce of feathers? In this case the gold, because the Troy system has 12 ounces per pound, so you'd have 31g, while the Avoirdupois has 16 ounce per pound, so you'd have 28g of feathers. And remember that there are British/Imperial units and US customary units, so things like cups are different between countries: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units So when you say "We should have used unit X as the basis of Y", whose unit of X should have been used? Also worth noting that the US has used the metric system as the foundation of the customary system since 1893: > Under the Mendenhall Order of 1893, metric standards, developed through international cooperation under the auspices of BIPM, were officially adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States, though some metric standards were used in practice before then. The definitions of United States customary units, such as the foot and pound, have been based on metric units since then. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
eqvinox 3y ago
> people living in the only nation that really has a choice all measure distance and height in (square) feet The U.S. automotive industry certainly disagrees. They've largely (80~90%) gone metric quite a while ago.

by qball 3y ago

mathieuh 3y ago

I never thought I would see an American Exceptionalist comment about a system of measurements. Metric measurements are as intuitive to me as American customary units are to you. I can just as easily use my handspan or the lengths of my fingers to estimate lengths in centimetres as you can in inches. I know without thinking what clothes I should wear when I see the weather forecast in Celsius. I know roughly what temperature I should set the oven to in Celsius based on what I’m cooking. Having grown up in a metric country, American or imperial units mean nothing to me. If I’d grown up in America I’m sure American units would be intuitive for me. The only difference, as you say, is metric is far easier and more intuitive as soon as you want to do anything complicated with those measurements.

arlort 3y ago
> I never thought I would see an American Exceptionalist comment about a system of measurements. You haven't been on the internet long, have you? Welcome, and I'm sorry
qball 3y ago
>American Exceptionalist Ah yes, because all criticisms of SI's inherently flawed design must be from an American. Lol, lmao even. >I can just as easily use my handspan or the lengths of my fingers to estimate lengths in centimetres as you can in inches But you can't do that for meters, whereas you can for feet- and I only need to remember one body part for one inch (and one for one foot, naturally) whereas you have to remember several because the centimeter is too small, and the meter too big, to use in this way (you cannot even really generate 1 cm- so you have to do multiplication every time you want to do this). The SI base unit's design handicaps its usability here- having to use fractions or having to multiply by 2 or 3 afterwards to compute what would normally be counting by 1s is, obviously, not an improvement. See, the average Joe gains zero benefit from the knowledge that he is using a measurement that has something to do with how large the Earth is. Sure, navel-gazing academics like the symmetry, and math problems in school are a bit easier when you're just staring at an abstract number rather than having to sanity-check a measurement of an object you have sitting in front of you- but a system of measurement designed for human beings (and not states or vague modernist principles) should have picked the latter to work on, not the former. It is not a coincidence that every country in the world, pre-SI, set their measurement's "1" (or 1/10th, 1/12th, or 1/16th) at what we now consider to be 25-30mm: good design, intended for humans. The fact that number in SI is not a round one: bad design, intended for... something else. >is metric is far easier and more intuitive as soon as you want to do anything complicated with those measurements. Until you want to divide them into thirds, fourths, sixths, or eighths, then you have to remember the 3 numbers of the fraction anyway. Doing this makes sense for abstract things like money and (to an extent) volume, since I hope you're not measuring liquids with your hands, but "visualize how much water this is in relation to some length" is generally not a problem anyone who isn't writing things down already (and can thus deal with arbitrary conversions) has. And for those who do work in odd fractional measurements... they're already working in decimal anyway and have been ever since the caliper was invented, so what difference does it make for them?

peeters 3y ago

> And that measurement they got was ultimately off, which is why the meter became (until its later redefinition), > By contrast, the "foot", which is literally named after the device used to approximate it. The median human being has two of these. It seems odd to criticize the metre for a lack of accuracy against historical basis when the modern definition is accurate to within 0.02% of its historical basis, and yet praise a unit that, if measured by its historical basis, would be off on its mean by around 20% and vary by 40-50% amongst the population.

peeters 3y ago

> It's also why people living in the only nation that really has a choice all measure distance and height in (square) feet, inches, and kilometers (per hour), human weight in pounds (and very rarely ounces), most other weight in grams and kilograms, non-cooking-related volume in liters, and non-cooking-related temperature in celsius. If you're talking about Canada, none of that mess comes from a plethora of choice, it's just the result of American cultural and economic influence, in addition to history. Yes Canadians are well versed in both systems but it's not like we particularly like having to deal with US units in our lives.

jacquesm 3y ago
This can get quite frustrating where the two worlds meet, for instance in construction.

branko_d 3y ago

Reducing SI adoption to “gunpoint” is just silly. It was objectively better system and that’s why it ultimately prevailed.

qball 3y ago
>It was objectively better system No, it isn't, and I've already outlined the reasons why. >Reducing SI adoption to “gunpoint” Is what actually happens. The French pushed it through their Revolution, the Soviets did it in '25, the PRC in '59. Interestingly, a good chunk of the existing Chinese measurements were metric themselves for a while: simply imposing a new order was the objective. Thus always to modernists.
- jorams 3y ago
  > No, it isn't, and I've already outlined the reasons why. The only argument in favor of imperial measurements you've given is that humans have two feet, which isn't much of an argument given the variation in sizes of those physical feet.
- jmopp 3y ago
  I still have no idea what an ounce is supposed to measure. Is it mass? Is it volume? Is the ounce for measuring gold different to the ounce for measuring food?

throw0101a 3y ago

> It would have been objectively better from a usability to have just set '1 meter = 1 foot' Which foot: the international foot (0.3048 meters) or the US survey foot (1200/3937 meters)? * https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/geodesy/international-foot.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/geodesy/international-foot.htm... * https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot Here's another one: which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers? It's a pound found of feathers that weighs more. This is because gold (and other precious metals) are measured in the Troy system, where one pound is the equivalent of 373g: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight Whereas most other things use the Avoirdupois system, where one pound is the equivalent of 454g: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoirdupois Now, which weighs more: one ounce of gold or one ounce of feathers? In this case the gold, because the Troy system has 12 ounces per pound, so you'd have 31g, while the Avoirdupois has 16 ounce per pound, so you'd have 28g of feathers. And remember that there are British/Imperial units and US customary units, so things like cups are different between countries: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units So when you say "We should have used unit X as the basis of Y", whose unit of X should have been used? Also worth noting that the US has used the metric system as the foundation of the customary system since 1893: > Under the Mendenhall Order of 1893, metric standards, developed through international cooperation under the auspices of BIPM, were officially adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States, though some metric standards were used in practice before then. The definitions of United States customary units, such as the foot and pound, have been based on metric units since then. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...

eqvinox 3y ago

> people living in the only nation that really has a choice all measure distance and height in (square) feet The U.S. automotive industry certainly disagrees. They've largely (80~90%) gone metric quite a while ago.