The US wanted to rid itself of as much English influence as possible, she even changed the spelling. Odd that she held on to Imperial.
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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It’s always worth bringing this out again at times like these, while the US trots out the same old excuses for their lack of progress that every other country that used to have old measurements has made.
“It’s fine”.
I'm in agreement with everything except temperature. I'm not saying that Celsius is bad, but I do think that using the phase changes of water as the sole point of comparison is a bad argument.
For most people, the interaction with temperature is through the weather, and I don't think Celsius is inherently better for that. I like that in Fahrenheit 0 is a cold winter's day, and 100 is a hot summer's day. I find that more relevant in day-to-day life than the phase changes of water. The big argument I see for preferring Celsius is that everybody else is doing it, so we may as well jump in.
However, in regards to the other systems of measurement, metric is best. The imperial system was nice when manufacturing measuring tools was difficult, so using easily divisible numbers allowed for easier creation of accurate measuring devices. But it has been quite some time since that was a reasonable argument (and that's only really relevant for some of the units anyway).
I do think that using the phase changes of water as the sole point of comparison is a bad argument.
Why? Water is extremely important to life and very abundant. The phases changes of water are something that you are confronted with in every day life, all the time.
For most people, the interaction with temperature is through the weather, and I don't think Celsius is inherently better for that.
I do, because the temperature being above or below freezing is a very important boundary. Freezing temperatures means slippery roads, frost on windows, car locks freezing shut, etc. A lot of our interaction with the world outside is affected by the temperature being below or above 0ºC. By comparison, 0ºF is completely arbitrary, nothing changes when you cross that boundary.
I like that in Fahrenheit 0 is a cold winter's day, and 100 is a hot summer's day.
10ºF is also a cold day, so is 20ºF and 30ºF. Just like 90ºF is also a hot summers day.
I find that more relevant in day-to-day life than the phase changes of water.
None of those seem relevant to me. I don’t need a round number to know that 37ºC is a hot day. There is no significance to 100ºF. 99ºF is also a hot day and so is 101ºF. Nothing interesting happens when you cross the 100ºF threshold.
When you cross the 0ºC or 100ºC, potentially dangerous things start to happen of which you need to be aware.
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Basing a unit of measure on a purely subjective and variable thing like "it feels hot/cold" is a terrible idea. The metric system specifically tries to avoid that.
Plus, whether it feels hot/cold is going to be equally easy in metric and imperial, since nobody's personal preference falls in the same place. At least with metric, there's an additional point of reference for worrying about ice.
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Basing a unit of measure on a purely subjective and variable thing like "it feels hot/cold" is a terrible idea. The metric system specifically tries to avoid that.
Plus, whether it feels hot/cold is going to be equally easy in metric and imperial, since nobody's personal preference falls in the same place. At least with metric, there's an additional point of reference for worrying about ice.
Temperature is so much more than weather
Also it's very relative. For me. 0 celsius is a cold winter day. Which is about 17f
100f is also a degree that never occurs here.
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For the Time units - in terms of organizing by a list of numbers, I find year, month, day the best because it organizes itself.
- 20241210 today
- 20241211 tomorrow
- 20241217 a week from now
If these were folders in a computer, they'd be in numerical order automatically.
How about addresses on mail going from most general to most specific?
United States Missouri, Kansas City 55555, N Lincoln Ave 1546, Apt 456 Joe Sturgeon
I was typing that as a joke because it is the opposite of the system in the US, but aren't there places that follow this method?
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The US system month/day/year is pretty bad, but honestly, so is day/month/year. Pretty much everything else is written from largest to smallest unit. Regular numbers: 123, here 1 is the 100s, 2 is the 10s and 3 is the 1s. In money, when a currency also have smaller units, you always say the largest first. "3 dollars, 50 cents." A digital clock displays the numbers ordered from largest to smallest - 10:45:31. So why are people so proud of the european date format? Writing out a full timestamp would switch from increasing to decreasing units.
ISO-8601 is the only sensible choice.
I think it was just us Swedes who embraced ISO-8601
It's been Canada's official standard for decades. It's just starting to hit the general population though.
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I've seen people (ie USers) say that imperial makes more sense because it's easily divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6 so it's more intuitive. Yet I've never seen any of these people campaign to ditch their base 100 currency for a more "intuitive" £ s d style system. You already use decimal currency and find it easier than a system where 240¢ makes $1.
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