Only if you’re used to it.
Comment on Banana for scale
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Wait, no, this isn’t really correct.
Metric is the first part, but it is also the second part. The entire point of imperial units is that they ARE humanistically intuitive measurements.
Science = metric, relatable = imperial.
rbos@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Like, I’m at a shop right now, and outside the window are some scooters.
How many scooters?
I think in units of scooters, not pieces of metal in scooter shape that add up to a volume of mass and energy. Because that’s not what I’m thinking about right now, I just see six scooters, and you instantly know that there are six scooters.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
But you don’t measure the number of scooters by gram, either.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
This is true, but that’s because everybody has accepted the unit of scooter as the accepted unit count for scooters…
Okay that’s a bad example, because just counting things is the way to count things. But also, maybe that’s the point - maybe, counting things is just super simple, and why direct or single-level abstract measurements is the difference: metric = relating everything to a single point, and imperial = just counting. Yeah? Maybe?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
since we’re talking hypotheticals, sometimes you order sausages by the unit, sometimes you order them by weight.
honestly idc which really, i am the best sassage eater on the team just give me the damn wurst. give me the damn wurst.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are four scooters
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
My heart yearns for the humanity, passion, integrity, competence, and empathy that that show promised me.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I expanded my comment, but, basically, you can get used to any system. Humans are incredibly adaptable.
But for the same reason we’re bad at conceptualizing how rich a trillionaire really is, metric may not be better than imperial. Or, maybe imperial is the reason we’re bad at conceptualizing! I haven’t thought about that before! But it’s an interesting idea!
olafurp@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We have also units in metric, except it’s always the same ones. Horse is around 2m and a small banana is 15cm, a human foot in around 30cm.
You can measure the parts of your body to get to the same point reference pretty fast and it’s very relatable when you live in a non-imperial country.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How much is a kilohorse
RichardDegenne@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Imperial doesn’t use multiplicative prefixes very much.
Instead, they would invent a new random unit, the skyscraper, which is equal to a random number of horses, like 176.
And then everyone goes “Yeah, a skyscraper is 176 horses, everyone knows that.”
TownhouseGloryHole@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That is 1,000 horses, obviously.
olafurp@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Beat me to it
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
3 horsepowers at the wheels
Schemen110676@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Where is the world is Fahrenheit relatable?
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Temp ranges 0-100 in real life in temperate, North America.
What do they span in Celsius?
soupcon@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
That doesn’t even stand up on its own terms.
Farenheit doesn’t “intuitively” tell you whether there’s going to be ice on the road or whether your pipes are liable to freeze, and also has the added pain in the ass that on a very hot day you need 3 digits to represent the number instead of 2, and doesn’t even compensate for it by removing the possibility of negative values which can still also happen.
On top of that the extra scale doesn’t give you a perceivable difference between the numbers, that is to say, I could put you in a room and ask you if it was 70F or 71F and you’d basically be guessing.
Celsius on the other hand is eminently relatable: negative number means ice/snow, single digit means heavy coat, tens means lighter coat/sleeves, twenties means nice, thirties means hot, forties means remain indoors.
Schemen110676@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Lol no
US temps (°F), roughly:
NE / Midwest - winter 15-35, summer 70-85 Northern Plains - winter 0-25, summer 70-85 Southeast - winter 40-65, summer 80-92 Desert SW - winter 45-68, summer 95-110 Pacific coast - winter 40-58, summer 60-78 Alaska (inland) - winter -20 to 0, summer 55-72
Celsius in comparison
OC…water freezes, 100C water boils
BambiDiego@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Metric is very relatable if you just, use it, just like imperial.
The only difference is metric is also easy to scale up or down, imperial is pure “fee-fees”
Your implication that metric is not humanistically intuitive is just bonkers when you consider 99.125% of the developed world just uses metric for their every day, always, with no issue.
Germans, Koreans, and Indians aren’t suddenly going “oh no! I can’t measure these shoes and these plates! I only have SCIENCE numbers, not BaldEagleBananaBurgerFreedom™ numbers!”
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
First off, I want to point out that imperial measurements originated in Europe, not the US. No need to get upset about where the standards are from or who use them, we aren’t talking about that, as I want to eliminate patriotism and tribalism, and isolate the subject to just the differences between the measurements.
Secondly, whether or not something is used commonly or not doesn’t define if something is humanistically intuitive. And I think you misunderstood what I meant by that, anyway, and might be twisting my words away from their original meaning, by using those specific words wrongly in a strawman fallacy, thus making two blind jumps away from my argument and essentially arguing against something that I never really said, which is a waste of both of our time and energy.
I’m saying that the units are human-intuition centric first, not other reference point first.
If you base your 0-100 measurement of temperature around the freezing and boiling points of water, that’s fantastic, but it’s significantly less relevant for what temperature it is outside. Sure, you can divide and multiply it well and it’s a range that’s relevant to water.
But the 0-100 being based around what temperatures span from really cold to really hot to humans (and temperate zones where most humans exist), you’ve created a unit that is significantly more relevant to weather and how it feels and affects us. People who use Fahrenheit basically never, ever use decimals for weather or cooking food, because those are the things that most people REALLY do day to day.
They’re just different philosophies in how to measure stuff, and a lot of people use both at will, because we like to just use the best thing for the job. If people younger than me want to use all metric or all imperial, cool, I don’t give a shit, they’re all available. Whining about units is bizarre. Like, just don’t use them if you can’t be flexible. It’s like language: the person who speaks the most language wins because they understand the differences, pros, and cons. Whereas the person who only understands one language is limited in perspective and understanding, and when that person rages about other standards, they look ridiculous.
Speak your language, if it works, fantastic. But don’t piss over here because you don’t understand the differences. I’m just trying to get through life and I bet you are, too. If you want the truly weird conversions, though, go between imperial and metric ;) those are awesome.
BambiDiego@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The origins don’t matter, every civilization, region, and town made its own system, I’m referring to the fact the the US and the UK are the only developed nations that still USE imperial, when there’s an easier, widespread, more sensible system available right next to it.
That’s not a strawman fallacy as I didn’t deny your input by miscategorizing your personal value, if anything it approaches a bad reason fallacy or an antecedent denial fallacy, but it’s neither because we both made our points of view on separate foundational assumed beliefs without addressing proofs or evidence. One could also throw an appeal to emotion or an appeal to ridicule fallacy in there with my silly joke about imperial units but we’re not debating a verifiable, objective truth. Neither are we attempting to find some higher level of human understanding of our spaient peoples world, we’re just wasting time on an internet forum, as in “they’re just opinions, man.”
Every unit of measure that humans created to measure the world we live in, like metric and imperial, is human-intuition centric first. Imperial units were created just as formally, and informally, as metric. The imperial system is based on a different system, based on another system, that was based on the science at the time used for pharmaceutical, military, and crafting applications. Just because imperial used hands and feet of SOME guy doesn’t make it less or more arbitrary than the measure of “one liter of water.” A system, based on a system, based on science at the time that is just easier to understand in the base 10 system we live in.
The 0 - 100 hot-cold argument for Fahrenheit is just incorrect. It was made by SOME GUY and 0° was the freezing point of HIS brine in HIS basement. 0 F° isn’t cold, it’s deadly, and 100 F° is not. That seems just as arbitrary as 0 - 40 C°. If the scale was the same people would actually refer to Celcius as -32 - 40 C° instead, and that’s just not the case. Decimals are not scary, they’re equally simple to use by any person who uses the base 10 system, unless the argument is that people who use Fahrenheit also struggle to make change when handling money.
Measurements are not one-to-one comparable to language, but when most people who are familiar with both tell you that one is clearly superior, and most of the world’s educated people agree, and it’s an easier system for children to understand, then it’s fairly safe to call one system better. Maybe some languages are better at one thing than another, but language is interpretive, flowing, changing, adaptable. Measurements are not, they need to be universally, unambiguously understood.
wieson@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Yeah everyone had their archaic human-derived measures but every city on the Rhine had a different system.
If you were a cologne cabbage trader and had 100 cologne pounds of cabbage, the would be 104 pounds in Düsseldorf, 98 pounds in Mainz, 91 in Karlsruhe and 102 in Frankfurt.
Wonderful human derived measurements.
I get the impression some people think the whole world was English imperial units and then we started to turn metric on a whim.
Metric is wonderful for international and interregional trade and communication. There’s practically only one blank spot on that map.