this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Literally no reason not to use metric, idc who or where you are
There is a reason. When you grow up with people around you using imperial units to describe things, you think in terms of it. If you tell me 10 ft., I can picture that in my head, I have an idea of how much that is in real terms. If you tell me 10m, I have no mental idea of how much that is, even if I can convert it. It’s like a language you grow up speaking, versus one you learn later in life.
I do think metric the sole system used in schools, to be honest.
That's true, but it's also a double edged sword: you can easily learn metric just by switching to it.
Try setting a weather widget on your phone to only show you Celsius and don't convert it to Fahrenheit, over time you will get an intuitive understanding of what feels cold to you.
The biggest block to learning a new system is insulating yourself with conversions IMO, imagine trying to learn a new language by just having everyone speak into Google translate
I'm fluent in metric but I can't think in anything but imperial, I'm merely converting in my head on the fly
Yep, that's my life, pretty much. OTOH, my kids don't have to live under the curse of arbitrary units of measurement and only have a vague idea of what a foot is.
That’s a good idea that I think I will try out. To be honest, I have a pretty hard time visualizing distance, even with imperial, so sadly I don’t think that help will help me in that area.
It’s weird, because small units I think about it cm, not imperial.
I'm the same actually, I'm probably more likely to say 1cm than half an inch
Millimeters as well for you? It’s probably because having to use fractions is so much less intuitive.
Millimeters especially, no way am I saying like "1/24th of an inch"
I'm doing the slow switch with decimal time. It works!
Plenty of people in Canada had no trouble switching back when we did.
The good thing with metric though is it's easier to visualise other measurements once you know one of them, cause you just know that each other measurement is just a multiple or division of the one you know. Like if you know roughly how long a centimetre is then you can take a good estimate of how long a meter is knowing that it's 100cm
I mean, yeah, I’m not arguing that imperial is a better system. Metric is superior, absolutely. I’m just arguing against the statement that there’s no reason to use it.
Did you grow up using metric?
It was much more mixed when i was in primary school but by the time I left secondary school it was fully metric. It might've fully changed before I noticed though just cause I was little and parents and grandparents would still be using imperial. I do remember having to learn imperial in school though.
Literally no reason not to drive on the right side of the street as well but maybe it does matter where you are.
While I don't disagree with that, that's just a convention. Metric is inherently superior, solves issues that other systems have and is used by, well basically the whole world.
Counterpoint: most imperial units use only one syllable. It's a mistake that we let scientists name things.
Please explain to me why I should use metric when:
??????
The funny part is we switch to metric when it's science
But only sometimes. Other times, interplanetary probes disappear.
They made fun of that on For All Mankind. An incident on Mars because Russia and America were doing calculations using different systems and someone forgot to convert.
That's based on real incident though
https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page53.pdf
And computer temperatures lol
The question isn't why you should use it, but rather why all these things you've listed are still using it.
We all know that transition isn't easy, but being proud of using the inferior system is weird.
My point is that if I give someone directions in meters they're going to look at me like I have two heads, it's literally like speaking two different languages.