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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

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?
- imtringued 3y ago
  >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). I never had to measure anything with my fingers or other body parts. I don't know what the point of that is. Being off by an accumulated error of 5 mm is often inaccurate enough that you failed and have to redo things. I don't have to remember "several", because kilometers, meters, centimeters, millimeters are just meters with zeroes to the left or the right of the comma. The thing is, Americans use their own nonstandard metric system. They use metrics like thousandths of an inch, which is just 0.0254 mm or as big as 25.4 micrometers. Thousandths makes things sound smaller than they really are. Then you realize it's just 1/40 of a millimetre and it sounds really big at that point and the engineering profession shows it, by having another unit. Ten thousandths of an inch. Wow, amazing. We have almost reached parity with the micrometer! The average Joe massively benefits from the fact that the measurement relates to the planet, because the planet is a shelling point common to all humans and therefore a good way to reach an agreement. Meanwhile your ideas are great if you want to divide humanity into multiple disagreeing camps.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Also at the same time possibly using various fractions of inch... Like can't you really decide on doing one way or an other?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

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?

imtringued 3y ago
>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). I never had to measure anything with my fingers or other body parts. I don't know what the point of that is. Being off by an accumulated error of 5 mm is often inaccurate enough that you failed and have to redo things. I don't have to remember "several", because kilometers, meters, centimeters, millimeters are just meters with zeroes to the left or the right of the comma. The thing is, Americans use their own nonstandard metric system. They use metrics like thousandths of an inch, which is just 0.0254 mm or as big as 25.4 micrometers. Thousandths makes things sound smaller than they really are. Then you realize it's just 1/40 of a millimetre and it sounds really big at that point and the engineering profession shows it, by having another unit. Ten thousandths of an inch. Wow, amazing. We have almost reached parity with the micrometer! The average Joe massively benefits from the fact that the measurement relates to the planet, because the planet is a shelling point common to all humans and therefore a good way to reach an agreement. Meanwhile your ideas are great if you want to divide humanity into multiple disagreeing camps.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Also at the same time possibly using various fractions of inch... Like can't you really decide on doing one way or an other?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]