International System of Units overhauled in historic vote • Hacker News Board

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#281

Post by rangibaby » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:19 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #274

mbroncano wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most probably because you grew up with it. I’m pretty sure you think the same about your religion, nation, race ... but be sure eveybody else in the world may think the same of their own. And they’d be right too. What I personally find disturbing is how irrational positions such as yours are commonly accepted in a supposedly advanced society. It leads to a pretty bumpy road, time and time again.

Well I actually grew up with the metric system. I'm also not the religion I was raised. I do love my nation, which is easy because I'm American and there is a lot to love. Imperial units are just better for humans to use. I would love if somebody could give me a redeeming quality for metric, but so far nobody has.

It’s easy to convert between units, miles and yard and feet and inches make my brain have a BSOD

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#282

Post by whatshisface » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #256

naikrovek wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are definitely (and thankfully) not the norm. Imperial units are awful. They're more ... human, maybe, in that a foot is about one human foot long, and that an inch is about one human thumb width, and how 0F feels "pretty cold" and 100F feels "pretty hot", and to me the charm of imperial units begins and ends right there. Those are literally the only redeemable qualities about imperial units, and they have nothin…

>They're more ... human, maybe, in that a foot is about one human foot long, and that an inch is about one human thumb width, and how 0F feels "pretty cold" and 100F feels "pretty hot", and to me the charm of imperial units begins and ends right there. As far as we know, humans are the only thing in the universe that care about any of this stuff. A computer couldn't care less if you are using 1 foot or 0.3048 meters.…

I should add to the discussion somewhere that when I write code (or even do calculations) that deals with Imperial units, I just use the SI prefixes and end up with things like centifeet and kiloinches (miles are banished forever). It makes the code a lot easier and the people who are used to Imperial can tell what you're going on about.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#283

Post by Just_Smith » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:22 AM UTC

kderbyma wrote: post #254

stass wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the redeamable qualities of metric units?

Frankly, while mathematically speaking 12 is a great base, people don't think in twelves - you can quickly perform arithmetic and our entire education system of math relies on base 10. Kind of hard to suddenly add two fingers to everyone. Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....

People don't really think in terms of 10s either - that's just societal conditioning based on the usage of fingers to count. If you can accurately picture 1/3 of set, but your number system cannot, it's not really that accommodating of a system.

By the way, you can count base12 on your hands using the digits of your fingers. We just teach kids to use fingers because it's the norm.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#284

Post by rangibaby » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

max76 wrote: post #252

ZainRiz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now can we redefine 1 pound to equal 1 kg? (the opposite of https://xkcd.com/2073 )

Can you imagine the confusion? Having the same word mean a different amount of something would cause a lot of misunderstanding. Saying "This car weighs 2200 poundsm" have two different meanings depending on the year you said it sounds awful. The new metric definitions work because they don't change the actual amount, they just change the way the amount is defined. (Natural constant vs reference weight)

See ton vs tonne

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#285

Post by Ono-Sendai » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

gorn wrote: post #237

Recently I have been thinking about if any of our units makes sense in cosmic perspective. Let's take speed of light for example. It's approximately 300000 km/s. But then what is a second? It's 1/60 of a minute which is 1/60 of an hour which is 1/24 of a day(and so it goes) and all those numbers are arbitrary. A day doesn't make any sense outside our planet anyway, I doubt that there is another celestial body in the…

Yes I think you're mostly correct, it's all pretty arbitrary. An alien civilisation is going to need units of length, time, speed, mass, energy etc..

Speed has an obvious unit which is the speed of light (in a vacuum), which seems to be the same everywhere.

All the others are a bit more arbitrary I guess.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#286

Post by tialaramex » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:28 AM UTC

bcoates wrote: post #162

turdnagel wrote: post #145

So there was a definition of a kilogram based on an actual physical thing with an arbitrary amount of mass. Does this new definition essentially try to approximate that mass as close as possible? What is the margin of error there? I would love to know this for a second as well, although I don't know what we used to measure a second before we locked it to the vibrations of a cesium atom.

The Earth?

Yes. In two ways.

First, the assumption was that the Earth's rotational period was 86400 seconds. Mechanical clocks had given us no reason to doubt this was so.

By the mid-20th century quartz timers were able to discern that the Earth has longer and shorter days, as numerous factors cause the spin to speed up or slow down. Instead of a single day the second was taken to be one 86400th part of an average day over the whole year.

A few decades later the availability of atomic clocks made this seem silly and we uncoupled the second from the variably spinning Earth. The completely arbitrary seeming atomic clock definition of a second was basically chosen to be indistinguishable from our last guess at the "averaged over a year" second.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#287

Post by naikrovek » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #256

naikrovek wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are definitely (and thankfully) not the norm. Imperial units are awful. They're more ... human, maybe, in that a foot is about one human foot long, and that an inch is about one human thumb width, and how 0F feels "pretty cold" and 100F feels "pretty hot", and to me the charm of imperial units begins and ends right there. Those are literally the only redeemable qualities about imperial units, and they have nothin…

>They're more ... human, maybe, in that a foot is about one human foot long, and that an inch is about one human thumb width, and how 0F feels "pretty cold" and 100F feels "pretty hot", and to me the charm of imperial units begins and ends right there. As far as we know, humans are the only thing in the universe that care about any of this stuff. A computer couldn't care less if you are using 1 foot or 0.3048 meters.…

Because adding 7/16ths of an inch to 7/8ths of a mile and getting an answer in inches isn't easy for a human. Adding 1cm to 982m and getting an answer in centimeters is dead easy for a human.

THAT'S why human intuition about measurement doesn't mean a damn thing.

Using metric means using the system optimized for humans. Period.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#288

Post by bnjms » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:31 AM UTC

kderbyma wrote: post #254

stass wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the redeamable qualities of metric units?

Frankly, while mathematically speaking 12 is a great base, people don't think in twelves - you can quickly perform arithmetic and our entire education system of math relies on base 10. Kind of hard to suddenly add two fingers to everyone. Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....

Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....

I honestly cannot make any sense of this part of your argument. The symbols 10 would only look like ten they would still mean a dozen and the properties would remain the same. Furthermore people don’t think in twelves because we are not taught in a dozenal numbering system. And there is no need for twelve fingers it would be a simple thing to create two additional hand symbols to teach children to count to a dozen.

Twelve is a great base. I would prefer it but it isn’t the sort of thing that can be changed.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#289

Post by ubernostrum » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:33 AM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #264

stass wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the redeamable qualities of metric units?

They're globally standard, decimal, and internally consistent. One never needs to wonder how many meters in a kilometer or how many grams in a kilogram. They have some human usable qualities as well; it's convenient that water freezes at 0°C and that a kilogram of water is also a liter.

a kilogram of water is also a liter

I have never, in around four decades of living, had an actual need to determine the mass of a given volume of water, or the volume of a given mass of water.

When cooking, I routinely need to split some quantity of an ingredient into thirds or quarters.

Yet I am also constantly told that I'm ignorant and backwards and irrational for preferring a system that optimizes for the latter, rather than for the former. Base 12 is genuinely better for many real-world applications than base 10, those applications are more common in the lives of non-scientists than the applications metric is optimized for, and I doubt you're going to be able to produce a rational argument otherwise.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#290

Post by martinbooth » Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 1:34 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #274

mbroncano wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most probably because you grew up with it. I’m pretty sure you think the same about your religion, nation, race ... but be sure eveybody else in the world may think the same of their own. And they’d be right too. What I personally find disturbing is how irrational positions such as yours are commonly accepted in a supposedly advanced society. It leads to a pretty bumpy road, time and time again.

Well I actually grew up with the metric system. I'm also not the religion I was raised. I do love my nation, which is easy because I'm American and there is a lot to love. Imperial units are just better for humans to use. I would love if somebody could give me a redeeming quality for metric, but so far nobody has.

One reason to avoid imperial units is that people seem to be generally unsure if they're even using them! I might be wrong, but you're probably more familiar with the US system rather than imperial units (given you said you're american). Did you know there are 20 fluid ounces in a pint?