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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Impound4017@sh.itjust.works 1 day agoIf 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.
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Rothe@piefed.social 22 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.
Impound4017@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Yeah, I’m realizing this is just a bias toward familiarity on my part. There’s several bad assumptions that I made in there which I hadn’t really given too much thought; bad practice on my part, I’ll admit.
Damage@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
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.
BECAUSE THE METRIC SYSTEM IS DECIMAL AND YOU DON’T NEED STUPID CHANGES BETWEEN UNITS, MOST PEOPLE JUST SAY TEN CENTIMETERS!
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.
Impound4017@sh.itjust.works 16 hours 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.
Damage@slrpnk.net 11 hours ago
Good! Here your kilo of sea-level water, use it wisely.
StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social 18 hours ago
No, actually 12 inches in a foot goes hard. base 12 >>>>> base 10
Damage@slrpnk.net 11 hours ago
I mean if we used 12 numerals it could be good, but we don’t, so…