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On the contrary, as a stupid American, I'm grateful for the imperial system because it doesn't require much thinking at all. The intuitiveness of the imperial
by VoodooJuJu 3y ago
On the contrary, as a stupid American, I'm grateful for the imperial system because it doesn't require much thinking at all.
The intuitiveness of the imperial units actually don't demand much thinking from my American pea brain: an inch is about the width of my thumb, a pound is about the weight of how much meat/grain I can fit in my hands, a mile is about a thousand paces - it's actually quite simple and intuitive, which is perfect for a dumb stupid American like me.
I can't imagine doing something like woodworking without my brainlet system. Inches are a nice "bite-size" unit that fractionates quite nicely for cutting wood. They don't make me think too much. In metric, my thumb would be about 2.53 centimeters, the kerf of my saw is 1/8 an inch, and that's like 253/800cm as a fraction - yikes! An inch is a good whole number to start working from.
And then like - what's a centimeter even? It's one hundredth of one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator passing through Paris. Woah - get me outta here! That's just too much numerology for me. And my brain can't relate to or conceptualize that. Again, because I'm just so stupid, and American. I have to stick to the simple stuff: thumb -> inch, pound -> fits in my hands, mile -> thousand paces, gallon -> 10 pounds of water.
- happymellon 3y ago> And then like - what's a centimeter even? About the thickness of your pinkie. A kilo is about 1/2 a lb so it's not really wildly different. > pound -> fits in my hands > gallon -> 10 pounds of water. How do you do 10 handfuls of water?
- xorbax 3y agoIt's so intuitive he does it naturally Not like that arrogant metric, for which he can find no useful representation...for some reason A reason that is clearly about the utility of metric itself rather than one's constant use of imperial.
- unwind 3y agoUh, you meant that a pound is about 1/2 kg, not the other way around.
- happymellon 3y agoWoops! You are correct.
- jdeisenberg 3y agoA gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds, so your estimate of 10 pounds is about 20% too high. To add to what someone else posted in terms of metric to “intutive” equivalences, 1 km is about 600 paces (for me, it’s also the distance from my house to the Asian market) People living in metric countries have these sorts of “intuitive” relationships figured out. If you ever go to Europe, you will not see people anxiously furrowing their brows over their calculators to figure out how much things weigh or how far it is to the end of the block. And, of course, there’s an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/526/ https://xkcd.com/526/