Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty • Hacker News Board

Re: Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty

#111

Post by usrbinbash » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 4:54 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #107

usrbinbash wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why not just officially ditch what is, at this point, a quirky anachronism at best, and a potentially really expensive source of mistakes [1] at worst? [1]: https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metr...

Largely, the because the costs to change what remains, isnt worth the savings we'd get from doing it. Moreover the people who would have to bear those costs, are often the people in business least able to do so.

Out of curiosity, how much would that cost?

And just so it's easier to put that number into perspective, how would it compare to, say, spending more on defense than the next 10 countries on the list combined, having the most expensive Healthcare system in the world, or having trillion-dollar tax cuts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

https://www.statista.com/chart/8658/health-spending-per-capi...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2019/10/10/trum...

Re: Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty

#112

Post by usrbinbash » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:10 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #108

usrbinbash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not true. The US has never used the Imperial system, we use the US Customary system So how is using yet another different system defining arbitrary measurements that cannot be easily converted, do not directly correspond with the radix 10 numerical system, and are also not widely used make things better? > Nobody is doing this. Yes, people are doing such calculations all the time. How many concrete transpor…

Yes hundredweight is an official measurement, but it's not a widely used one (I think it might be used in the sale of nails only?) - which is the parents point. We'd just calculate it in pounds or fractional tons. You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time. To go on from this, we've converted everything that meaningfully effects our external comp…

> You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time.

No I don't. I said they are more difficult than they have to be, and for no good reason.

> I dont think our competitiveness would be helped or harmed if meat was sold in kilograms vs lbs

https://gizmodo.com/five-massive-screw-ups-that-wouldnt-have...

Maybe not, but it would probably have helped in not having a 125 million dollar space probe go up in flames.

Re: Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty

#113

Post by mulmen » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 9:38 AM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #112

Aloha wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes hundredweight is an official measurement, but it's not a widely used one (I think it might be used in the sale of nails only?) - which is the parents point. We'd just calculate it in pounds or fractional tons. You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time. To go on from this, we've converted everything that meaningfully effects our external comp…

> You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time. No I don't. I said they are more difficult than they have to be, and for no good reason. > I dont think our competitiveness would be helped or harmed if meat was sold in kilograms vs lbs https://gizmodo.com/five-massive-screw-ups-that-wouldnt-have... Maybe not, but it would probably have helped in not…

125 million dollars is precisely nothing in the scheme of interplanetary exploration and we already learned our lesson. I would expect someone so obsessed with radix 10 as yourself to understand orders of magnitude.

In the places it matters the US already uses the metric system. This has been true for more time than Germany has used the metric system.

Since the time the metric system was created a world war was fought, centered around a misguided sense of supremacy. The people with a sense if moderation and the ability to compromise in the face of real constraints won the war. The adherents to strict philosophy were destroyed.

The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed because of a miscommunication. We could have done it all in IS Customary units. Nobody did any calculations in their head. This is a hard task. We learned from that, as we always do. The US has still led the largest presence on Mars. We know what we are doing.

Re: Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty

#114

Post by saalweachter » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:21 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #108

usrbinbash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not true. The US has never used the Imperial system, we use the US Customary system So how is using yet another different system defining arbitrary measurements that cannot be easily converted, do not directly correspond with the radix 10 numerical system, and are also not widely used make things better? > Nobody is doing this. Yes, people are doing such calculations all the time. How many concrete transpor…

Yes hundredweight is an official measurement, but it's not a widely used one (I think it might be used in the sale of nails only?) - which is the parents point. We'd just calculate it in pounds or fractional tons. You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time. To go on from this, we've converted everything that meaningfully effects our external comp…

Hundredweight show up in agricultural settings -- you'll see the price of pork being $123/hundredweight, instead of $1.23/lb. I assume this is because the price of meats used to be pennies per pound, and people wanted the numbers to be bigger, $12.50/hundredweight instead of $0.125/lb.

Re: Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty

#115

Post by saalweachter » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:31 PM UTC

usrbinbash wrote: post #106

mulmen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because as of right now, only 3 countries in the world (US, Liberia and Myanmar) officially use imperial units This is not true. The US has never used the Imperial system, we use the US Customary system, which has been based on the metric system since 1893. > If I have to figure out hundredweights per acre, given that X inches of rain fell, I'm gonna need a calculator, a conversion table, and social context to know…

> This is not true. The US has never used the Imperial system, we use the US Customary system So how is using yet another different system defining arbitrary measurements that cannot be easily converted, do not directly correspond with the radix 10 numerical system, and are also not widely used make things better? > Nobody is doing this. Yes, people are doing such calculations all the time. How many concrete transpor…

> How much rain did fall on Hamburg in 2022 given a city size in square kilometers, and an average fall of cm/day.

Oh, now you're in US customary unit territory.

Let me introduce you to the acre-foot.

The acre-foot is the unit of measure for reservoirs. For instance, the Ashokan reservoir is 8300 acres with an average depth of 46 feet. Its volume is 381,800 acre-feet.

If an area 10,000 acres received 3 inches of rain, you need 2500 acre-feet of reservoir to put the outflow in.

How big do you need to make your 2500 acre-foot reservoir? Well, if you're working with 100 acres, you make it 25 feet deep.

Re: Bell Labs gave up its roof to patch the Statue of Liberty

#116

Post by usrbinbash » Mon, Apr 10, 2023, 11:00 AM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #113

usrbinbash wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time. No I don't. I said they are more difficult than they have to be, and for no good reason. > I dont think our competitiveness would be helped or harmed if meat was sold in kilograms vs lbs https://gizmodo.com/five-massive-screw-ups-that-wouldnt-have... Maybe not, but it would probably have helped in not…

125 million dollars is precisely nothing in the scheme of interplanetary exploration and we already learned our lesson. I would expect someone so obsessed with radix 10 as yourself to understand orders of magnitude. In the places it matters the US already uses the metric system. This has been true for more time than Germany has used the metric system. Since the time the metric system was created a world war was fough…

> Since the time the metric system was created a world war was fought, centered around a misguided sense of supremacy. The people with a sense if moderation and the ability to compromise in the face of real constraints won the war. The adherents to strict philosophy were destroyed.

Out of the countries that won that war, all but one have either switched to the metric system, or were already using it. So did all the countries who lost that war. In fact, every country other than Myanmar, Liberia, and the US officially uses the metric system.

So what exactly does WWII have to do with using, or not using the metric system, the ability to compromise, or the mathematical, economic, scientific and technical fact that the metric system is more widley accepted, and for good reasons?