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The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

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Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#371

Post by johnnyanmac »

cogman10 wrote: post #291
beloch wrote: post #242

To those who cling to customary units because... 1. "They're more intuitive". They're not. You're just familiar with what 70 F feels like. If you're used to metric, 70 F is meaningless, but you intuitively know what 20 C feels like. 2. "Metric leads to lots of awkward numbers." All systems will fortuitously have round numbers in some contexts and awkward numbers in others. Customary units are different in that there…

Temperature is the worst metric unit to pick for this. Both the imperial and metric versions of temperature are completely arbitrary. It's really baffling to me that THIS is the one that most people talking about metric superiority cling to. Where metric shines is when you talk about subunits like mg vs g vs kg. You don't do that with temperature almost ever. So so what if water boils at 212F vs 100C? Pinning 100 at…

>Pinning 100 at the boiling point of pure water at standard atmospheric pressure is every bit as arbitrary as Fs original 100F pin to the internal body temperature of a horse.

I mean, every unit is arbiturary. But we need to pick something.

I don't have any love for either, but F is the easiest to pick fun at when none of the standard temperatures make any sense. 32 for freezing water, 212 for boiing, 98.6 for human temperature? The 0 and 100 scale were based on the freezing point of some particular saltwater mixture and 90 degrees for human body temperature (which was corrected and then the scale updated to get to the modern temperature).

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#372

Post by johnnyanmac »

threemux wrote: post #62

I'd part with cups and teaspoons/tablespoons and the like, but you'll pry inches/feet/yards and fahrenheit from my cold, dead hands. They're both more convenient for daily use. I think I'd prefer to keep miles as well but I don't have a good reason for that one. Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals for the thing 99% of people are using temperature measurements for: air temp. Where I live, we generally…

>Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals

Meanwhile, I'm fine at 98.6 degrees, but everyone freaks out over 100 degrees. it's a more precise unit, right?

feet/inches make more sense to be attached to. they are based on your body parts (roughly), and we spend a lot of time looking at humans. inches divide our fingers, feet are... well, feet. And yards are steps. We intuitively know what all those feel like through everyday life compared to the scientific way we derive a centimeter. inches and feet being base 12 is more a coincidence than anything else (or maybe not. Maybe there's some golden ratio shenanigans at play).

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#373

Post by johnnyanmac »

IAmBroom wrote: post #258
etiennebausson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not switching to metric for time is reasonable, because there are already two existing 'natural' units for time (the day and the year), and they don't align on each other in metric (a year of exactly 1000 days would be so much easier, but we'll have to deal with reality as it is... or accelerate the rotation speed of the planet I suppose). So long as we live on earth, metric time won't make much sense.

The US isn't on a 365.24-based system, either. Days don't fit neatly into years, anyway. That would have no impact on decimalizing sub-day units: 10 decidays in a day, 2 millidays to cook an egg... But no country did it, which speaks to the power our time traditions really hold in our psyche.

>That would have no impact on decimalizing sub-day units:

part of it is natural. We roughly divide day and night into 2 parts, so we already need to have considerations for halves.

It seems like base 12 was chosen simply due to religion. the zodiac defined the hours at night for ancient egypt, and the Goddesses of Seasons for Greece later on.

Minutes and seconds came because we let astronomers define them based on hours and movements of the sun along a dial. The time it'd take for a dial to traverse a literal arcminute and arcsecond (which is still a thing today). Though these times are very different from today's minutes and seconds. So we have math to thank for the base 60 measurements.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#374

Post by tpm »

ericmay wrote: post #263
samus wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Temperatures in most places are within those bounds That seems to be a quite arbitrary and insufficient criterion. As soon as I start cooking or preparing a warm drink I already step way outside these boundaries. In defense of the relevance of the Celsius scale in daily life: its endpoints represent critical temperatures of the most important liquid to life on Earth at ~1 bar. And at temperatures of 0°C or less I s…

> How so? Celsius was proposed merely 18 years (1742) after Fahrenheit (1724). Sorry, I was attempting however poorly to reference the Imperial system historically, not Celsius versus Fahrenheit there which may have been confusing on my part. > In defense of the relevance of the Celsius scale in daily life: its endpoints represent critical temperatures of the most important liquid to life on Earth at ~1 bar. And at t…

One thing that is great about 0°C representing the freezing of water is that at that point you know there will be ice on the paved surfaces (unless they were dry, cleaned or salted).

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#375

Post by tpm »

ericmay wrote: post #125
relaxing wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Frank Lloyd Wright designed big picture windows and open floor plans because he was afraid of humanity? He was afraid so he tried to induce fear? Through asymmetry? What then of William Blake’s “fearful symmetry”? Amazing that FLW is still traumatizing conservatives 100 years later. Ayn Rand was a fan, didn’t you know? Picasso was trying to convey the feeling of being bombed from the sky in a civil war, so…

> You think Frank Lloyd Wright designed big picture windows and open floor plans because he was afraid of humanity? He was afraid so he tried to induce fear? No, I was speaking about the exterior. The blending in of the surroundings, and hiding of things like the entrance are the hallmark of post-war architectural trends. Not that I'm claiming Lloyd suffered from the same PTSD that returning American veterans did, bu…

> hiding of things like the entrance are the hallmark of post-war architectural trends.. PTSD... American veterans

Post-war architectural trends don't have a lot to do with the war experiences but are, since you are talking about modern architecture, a direct continuation of pre-war modern architecture.

Where is the door? This is Vila Tugendhat, finished 1930. https://www.tugendhat.eu/en/fotogalerie-vily-tugendhat-2012-...

> But moving to the widows, even from that photo you can see how while the interior gives the occupants a nice view, the exterior hides them - sort of like a bunker.

No at all? https://gaptrail.org/amenities/fallingwater/

The features that remind you of a bunker are more in the direction of brutalism (blocky, fortress like appearance but without the intent and function).

> We know as a matter of scientific study that asymmetry in architectural design introduces stress

No it does not, that's just complete nonsense. Have a walk around a really old (250+ years) historic neighborhood (preferably without a lot of tourists), it will be full of asymmetry, and then measure your stress levels. They should be through the roof, right?

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#376

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

bluGill wrote: post #117
graemep wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0 lines up with freezing point is very intuitive.

Perhaps, but useless for most purposes. You need to know how think of a coat to wear and you need a mental map from some number to some coat. It doesn't matter what the scale is, just that you have that map.

> 0 lines up with freezing point is useless for most purposes

Rubbish. Absolute nonsense. It's very useful.

But, each system has points where you can say that it is more convenient . You could defend Fahrenheit all day. I could counter with Celsius usefulness. "below zero" being a synonym for "below freezing" is one of those.

But you miss the context - you will defend whichever one you grew up with. You look for reasons to defend what you know. It is mere familiarity, nothing more.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#377

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

graemep wrote: post #135
bluGill wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but useless for most purposes. You need to know how think of a coat to wear and you need a mental map from some number to some coat. It doesn't matter what the scale is, just that you have that map.

I agree its having the mental map that matters but my intention was to disagree with the parent comment's claim that Fahrenheit is more appropriate to the "human scale of things". its a small advantage, but I think zero indicating when things might freeze is a more useful than "0 degrees lines up with really darned cold"

To me, below zero Centigrade lines up with "really darned cold". It's all subjective.

> zero indicating when things might freeze is useful

Of course it is, parent is being silly.

Picking some other non-zero random number for freezing just seems absurd to me. But that's because Centigrade is what I am familiar with.

Say pick freezing = 12, or 47?. If those numbers for freezing seem absurd to you, then consider that the only advantage that "32" has for you is that you're familiar with it. People will find reasons to defend whichever one they grew up with.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#378

Post by pezezin »

jrm4 wrote: post #366
tzs wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pace off something in feet most people actually try to pace in yards and multiply by 3 if they want to express the result in feet. They could just as easily pace in meters. What is better with metric is the consistent way to name multiples and divisions of the base units. Metric uses power of 10 prefixes but another power could work fine. Power of 2 for example actually fits well with Imperial volume measurements,…

[flagged]

> No, it is not easier to deal with meters if you're talking about physical spaces that humans inhabit. And it's not easier to deal with C when talking about the temperature of a room, because an F degree is just about the smallest difference a human can tell. I know I can tell a 74 from a 73 from a 72 etc in my house.

Why? For anybody who grew up in a metric country, dealing with metres is pretty damn easy. Case in point, my GF is an architect working for an US military base, and she gets royally pissed off every time she has to deal with feet and inches.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#379

Post by cogman10 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #371
cogman10 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temperature is the worst metric unit to pick for this. Both the imperial and metric versions of temperature are completely arbitrary. It's really baffling to me that THIS is the one that most people talking about metric superiority cling to. Where metric shines is when you talk about subunits like mg vs g vs kg. You don't do that with temperature almost ever. So so what if water boils at 212F vs 100C? Pinning 100 at…

>Pinning 100 at the boiling point of pure water at standard atmospheric pressure is every bit as arbitrary as Fs original 100F pin to the internal body temperature of a horse. I mean, every unit is arbiturary. But we need to pick something. I don't have any love for either, but F is the easiest to pick fun at when none of the standard temperatures make any sense. 32 for freezing water, 212 for boiing, 98.6 for human…

100 was the internal body temperature of a horse. The thought for both the brine and horse was that both were more stable temperatures than something like a human and pure water.

As you can imagine, it was harder to obtain pure water and back then they noticed water freezing at various temperatures.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#380

Post by pezezin »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #219
JKCalhoun wrote: post #77

"Back when I was a Catholic-school kid in northern Wisconsin, my school lessons briefly focused on the metric system. This was in the late 1970s." Man, the progressive school (Comanche Elementary in Overland Park, Kansas!) must have had a huge impact on my life. In addition to open classrooms (I was in Unit 5, not 4th Grade), team teaching, a focus on experimental science, a circular layout to the school with a sunke…

>no doubt buoyed by having put astronauts on the Moon NASA did this using customary units >I've been missing it my entire life since Surely you've learned by now that you're missing childhood, not an actual thing about the US? I'm asking this as someone who does think this era was peak Americana, but for totally different reasons than you present, and having not been alive then myself.

> NASA did this using customary units

The Apollo Guidance Computer performed all internal calculations in SI units, and only converted to US customary units for display:

https://ukma.org.uk/why-metric/myths/metric-internationally/...

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