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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)

#401

Post by yencabulator »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #373
IAmBroom wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

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

I forget which country did it but their historical time system counts hours as two halves from sunrise and then from sunset... That sounds a lot better than noon and midnight, to me. We could totally do

  sunrise = 0.00
  sunset = 9.99 -> 10.00
  sunrise = 19.99 -> 0.00
(For some standardized values of "sunrise" and "sunset" that don't slide around over the span of a year.)

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

#402

Post by yencabulator »

Pure hell of growing up metric and being forced to use inches is

- what's half of 1-7/8"

Metric: half of 44mm is 22mm. half of 45mm is 23mm [1]. half of 46mm is 23mm. Trivial

- which one is bigger 5/16" or 3/8"

Metric: 9mm is obviously bigger than 8mm.

Fractions are just unnecessarily complicated.

[1] Millimeters are small enough that you'll never need to go below that except in specialties like machining.

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

#403

Post by gonzalohm »

kakacik wrote: post #142
gonzalohm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. As an European living in the US. The only US units that I find useful are cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. And that's only for cooking. It's way faster to measure volume than weight (although less accurate)

Those are not US measures, we use them in Europe as well

Really? I have never seen them in use in Spain

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

#404

Post by rkomorn »

kakacik wrote: post #142
gonzalohm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. As an European living in the US. The only US units that I find useful are cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. And that's only for cooking. It's way faster to measure volume than weight (although less accurate)

Those are not US measures, we use them in Europe as well

I've not seen them used as precise measurements in France or Portugal.

In the US, you buy measuring spoons that have specific sizes (1tbsp is 1/2oz, and 1tsp is 1/3tbsp).

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

#405

Post by ecommerceguy »

Ronsenshi wrote: post #37
ecommerceguy wrote: post #28

Aren't imperial units considerably easier to calculate on the fly in construction and when squaring? They seem to come more natural for me.

Can you give an example? I can't imagine calculating conversions between inches and feet to be easier than using millimeters/centimeters/meters. Or using mostly millimeters in construction in Europe. You have one unit to deal with that generally tends to be integer value. No need to fractions.

Imperial’s base-12 (inches) is more factor-rich than base-10:

12 divides cleanly by 2, 3, 4, 6

10 divides cleanly only by 2 and 5

Obviously downvoters who've never used a speed square nor tape measure before.

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

#406

Post by ecommerceguy »

NuclearPM wrote: post #31
ecommerceguy wrote: post #28

Aren't imperial units considerably easier to calculate on the fly in construction and when squaring? They seem to come more natural for me.

No. They are only more natural to you because you are used to it.

Have you never used a tape measure before? How about a speed square? Yes easy comes natural for me. I like that.

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

#407

Post by etbebl »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #393
ericmay wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, we went over the Metric System that whole year. I can still sing the "Metric Family" song from the film on metric units ("Kilo", "Milli", etc.). And to my young an impressionable mind, the U.S. was joining the rest of the world "Free World" in a kind of Star-Trek-like casting aside of the old things that divided us—joining each other with a focus on progress, science, space… I’ve always found this peculiar be…

> I hope we never change sustems, and I don’t think we will anytime soon. If we do, however, we should not switch to Celsius because the useful scale of Fahrenheit is far superior 0-100 versus 0-32. Celsius isn’t very Metric-y. Except that Fahrenheit's extra precision doesn't really matter. Unless you can tell the difference between 72°F and 73°F, or 34°F and 33°F.

I absolutely can tell the difference between house temperatures of 67, 68, and 69 F. Not so much down in the 30s, but in the typical ambient range of temperature, that level of precision seems to match my body's sensitivity (in fact, I wish my thermostat was just a bit more precise).

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

#408

Post by sarchertech »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #388
sarchertech wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that a scale that generally falls between 0-100 is inherently slightly more convenient than that that generally falls between -17 and 37. Obviously both can be adapted to. But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their desig…

> if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water. This is completely nonsensical. I draw the exact opposite conclusion regarding what some "logical" aliens from planet Vulcan would cho…

When defining a scale from scratch only for the purpose of defining how the temperature feels it a human, you don’t think human body temperature would factor in?

> What are you even talking about? -17 is a complete irrelevance to me, it does not happen,

It lines up with 0F, which in most of the US is about as cold as it gets. You could be more specific and lick the weight 95% percentile coldest yearly low and get -19 or -16 or something. The specific number is irrelevant. The point is that a scale where the daily values generally fall between 0 and 100 is something that most people would admit is a point in that scale’s favor.

That doesn’t mean that Fahrenheit is better than Celsius. It does mean that there are objective advantages to it for some purposes.

If you can’t sit down and analyze Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin and make a list of pros and cons for each, you’re just being stubborn.

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

#409

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

sarchertech wrote: post #408
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water. This is completely nonsensical. I draw the exact opposite conclusion regarding what some "logical" aliens from planet Vulcan would cho…

When defining a scale from scratch only for the purpose of defining how the temperature feels it a human, you don’t think human body temperature would factor in? > What are you even talking about? -17 is a complete irrelevance to me, it does not happen, It lines up with 0F, which in most of the US is about as cold as it gets. You could be more specific and lick the weight 95% percentile coldest yearly low and get -19…

> It lines up with 0F, which in most of the US is about as cold as it gets.

"most of the US" . And yet you think that a group of aliens looking at planet Earth would anchor on that region. This makes no sense. It is what I meant by "parochial".

> The specific number is irrelevant.

Lets set the zero point to an irrelevant number, it's be great!

> does mean that there are objective advantages to it for some purposes.

Sure, I agree. In some places.

> If you can’t sit down and analyze

I can. But if you don't know better than to avoid focussing on that, you're missing the mere familiarity that was emphasised repeatedly.

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

#410

Post by sarchertech »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #395
sarchertech wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Of course it does. That’s my entire point. For the intended purpose of measuring air temperature there are some advantages to Fahrenheit. Celsius is not self evidently superior in that regard. Theref…

> all of the bad things I need to worry about related to freezing water happen much lower than that. Well, that's you, it's not me. 0F is a completely useless benchmark where I am, it never happens. And someone north of you will want a lower point. This is all parochial. 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, not…

I’m not defending anything. I admit that Celsius is superior to Fahrenheit overall if we are going to adopt one temperature scale for all temperatures.

What I’m saying is that a scale where most most values on most days fall between 0-100 is objectively better than a scale where they fall between -17 and 37.

There are only 2 states in the country where the average winter lows are below 0 and they have tiny populations. So 0 isn’t set at a perfect temperature for the purpose of air temperature in the US, but it’s not too far off from it.

> 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.

I didn’t grow up using metric, but I use grams for baking and generally use mm for designing things. Despite the difficulties (most recipes in the US aren’t metric).

And there are several people in this thread who report that they grew up with Celsius and have never used Fahrenheit, but they agree that for air temperature it’s a nice scale.

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