Comment on Banana for scale
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours agoLike, 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 3 hours ago
But you don’t measure the number of scooters by gram, either.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours 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?
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
I’m not really following. What, are we counting feet, then? Mine?
Feet are just really entrenched in the way Americans think about lengths. It may not sound like it’s abstract, but it is. If I said “yeah, it’s about sixteen hands long”, people would have to parse wtf I’m talking about, but then have to grapple with how long a “hand” is exactly and what 16 of them means.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
The foot is no less arbitrary than the meter. If you are just unfamiliar with the unit and confused by the fact it’s named after something often close in size to it that’s fine, but keep in mind for a while a meter was defined as the length of a specific metal rod, same as the foot and yard.