Comment on How many hands long do they get?

• StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Why do you guys have so much identity tied up in the metric system

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• Impound4017@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If I might make an argument for the imperial system? I’ll acknowledge that it is bad, particularly from a scientific perspective, but one advantage that imperial has over metric is its use case for human related issues. Most of the stuff you interact with daily is much more easily measured in feet and inches vs meters and centimeters (this ignores decimeters, but I’ve literally never seen anyone use decimeters in my entire life). Another good example is temperature. Celsius is more objective, but when dealing with the standard sorts of temperatures humans are generally concerned with, Fahrenheit gives you more granularity within that range.

  All that is to say: If I’m at work and someone uses imperial for an official measurement, I’m putting my fist through the drywall, but from a day to day perspective, I actually prefer imperial.

  Also, the mile is fucking indefensible. I’ll happily leave all 5280 of its feet out to rot.

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  • Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Most of the stuff you interact with daily is much more easily measured in feet and inches vs meters and centimeters…

    … only if it’s what you’re used to.

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  • Rothe@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It is not best for “human related” issues, imperial is pretty bad for those as well, but because you have grown up with they seem so to you.

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  • Damage@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Most of the stuff you interact with daily is much more easily measured in feet and inches vs meters and centimeters

    Hard disagree. The centimeter is the best measurement there is for everyday stuff, you can easily express both round values or weird ones, and don’t need to switch between two scales as you do with feet and inches (and the stupid fact that there’s 12 inches in a feet, wtf). Meters are for distances.

    (this ignores decimeters, but I’ve literally never seen anyone use decimeters in my entire life)

    BECAUSE THE METRIC SYSTEM IS DECIMAL AND YOU DON’T NEED STUPID CHANGES BETWEEN UNITS, MOST PEOPLE JUST SAY TEN CENTIMETERS!

    Celsius is more objective, but when dealing with the standard sorts of temperatures humans are generally concerned with, Fahrenheit gives you more granularity within that range.

    If you’re measuring ambient temperature, 99% of the time being more precise than 1°C is pointless, in a room you may have more variance than that from a corner to another, same goes for outside. For things where you need better precision you sure as hell wouldn’t be using the imperial system, and you could instead take advantage of this neat trick called DECIMALS.

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    • Impound4017@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Fair. I’ll acknowledge I’m biased here in retrospect. In particular, I’ve realized my argument for Fahrenheit (increased granularity) is directly contradictory to my argument against centimeters (too much granularity). Indeed, my view (however poorly conveyed) was that imperial units of length measurement, and the foot in particular, lend themselves to day to day estimation of size, as meters require estimation with fractions/decimals and centimeters require estimation in quantities too large to be reasonably accurate, so I was of the view that the lack of decimeters in common usage was a problem, but you make a good point that this is a fundamentally flawed assumption. After all, if you’re familiar with metric already, it’s not particularly difficult to just say ‘10cm’ and estimate in relation to tenths of a meter.

      Well argued, and certainly more impassioned than my tepid defense of imperial. Consider me convinced; I’m switching teams lol.

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    • StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No, actually 12 inches in a foot goes hard. base 12 >>>>> base 10

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• Deckname@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Are there any? E.g. here in Germany we use kcal instead of kJ for food energy density. Also horsepower is used instead of W for engines. But for the most part we use only metric.

  I’m wondering if there are countries where they completely conform to the metric system.

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  • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    At least when you use calories and kilocalories you don’t have to multiply by 12 or 3 or 5820 when you want to compare a big and a small number.

    Of all the terrible non-metric things Americans use the Fahrenheit is the most defensible. It’s just idiotic when the rest of the world uses metric.

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