I don’t think anyone believes the current system to be better,
Check our ShitAmericansSay, and you’ll find plenty who argue that metric is worse.
Comment on What has he done to deserve this?
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 1 month agoI don’t think anyone believes the current system to be better, rather too much of a pain to replace. Americans really dislike learning and being inconvenienced.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Although, to be fair, British people say that too, especially when Britain joined the EU. “You mean I have to stop measuring the produce I sell in pounds and ounces?!”
And, of course, they still use MPH. I imagine there would be a massive uproar if that got changed.
British have gone much further with metrification than the U.S. but there’s still way too much resistance. And some of it is very silly indeed- weighing yourself in stone, which is a rather arbitrary 14 pounds.
BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
7 pounds = 1 stone… got it. How much rock = 1 stone then? Or is rock more than stone?
unrelatedkeg@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Both have to be more than a pebble, right?
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Metric is undoubtedly an improvement, and if there were political will, I’d be all for a renewed push to make it the sole standard. Cultural inertia within a single large and wealthy country is pretty much the only “advantage” the older “system” has over metric.
I do get a little bit protective when people suggest that Imperial/Customary/whatever is nonsensical or useless, though. It’s more that it’s disjoint and obsolete. Units arise out of circumstances, and shit like using 12 inches to a foot makes a lot of division into fractions really easy. Same with 8 ounces to a cup, 16 to a pint, and so on. Dividing shit in half or thirds is a pretty easy paradigm to do math in your head if you’re not really getting a lot of formal education. Most of the base units ultimately trace back to something perfectly sensible for a pre-industrial society.
So there’s method to the madness, it’s just that it was a thousand different methods, arising from various trades and merchants trying to standardize (yet also retain) their traditional measurements for their own needs. There’s not the grand unified system that only really became workable with standardized manufacturing and improved communication in the 19th century.
The other funny thing is that while units can and do still cause confusion, many US Customary units are literally defined in terms of SI and have been for well over a hundred years. An inch, for example, is exactly 2.54 cm, because even in the 1890s Americans knew it was stupid to try match a metal stick in London to one in Washington to one in Paris with any greater precision than that, and only the SI had a set process to refine unit definitions in relationship to natural phenomena.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I did say that we hate learning.
slickgoat@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Australia joined the metric system on the 14th February 1966. It took about two weeks before it was running trouble free. Everything changed, including currency, on a single day. The system is pretty easy.
dellish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
True! We used to use pounds, shillings, pence as our currency and I’m very glad I never needed to deal with that shit.
CaptainPedantic@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It has nothing to do with disliking learning. Trying to learn and use a system of measurement without being immersed in it is really hard. For years, I’ve set all my temperature measurements on my phone and thermometers to Celsius, but because I’m surrounded by people and systems that don’t use metric, I have to convert back and forth between the two. It’s a lot of mental effort for basically no gain.
Every day, customary speed and distance units and my intuitive understanding of them are reinforced when driving and seeing street signs. I know how long a kilometer is, but if you say “My brother lives 45 kilometers away”, I’d have a difficult time truly understanding that. I wouldn’t be able to estimate how long it would take to drive there, for example.
Another issue is cost. In my job, it would take weeks or months to update all of the documentation and code to metric. Then customers would have to approve of all those changes. A whole bunch of machinery still uses customary units too, so they would have to be replaced or updated.
I say all of this as a metric lover and evangelist. It’s not trivial to convert an entire massive country to metric. Countries that have converted already should be hugely proud of themselves for accomplishing a difficult task.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Doesn’t need to be instant.
You can have a year or two where both metrics are given side to side on products, weather,…
Even road signs can just slowly update by hanging the new signs next to the old ones for a while, until the old ones are removed.
It is about disliking learning and the need to be contrary to the rest of the world.
FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
There’s always the option to be stuck in an infinite transition period, like in Canada. I was appaled the other day when a buddy of mine used °C for air temperature, but used freedom units for water temperature. The same applies to heights vs distance and speed, weights… It’s all kinds of cursed.
observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I think younger people in Canada only know °F if their thermostat is set to it and they can’t or don’t bother to change. My stupid fridge is in Fahrenheit and that can’t be changed (even though the handbook shows the display in Celsius! A variation of the model is probably sold abroad).
I think Canada properly adopted Celsius, kilometres, litres and millilitres (at least here in Toronto), but all other metric units are the underdog. Even CBC, that is probably the only media outlet that tries to stick to metric will specify people’s height in feet and inches. Shameful.
someguy3@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Hundreds of millions of people learned the new units when their countries switched.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 month ago
All I can say is that the metric system was predominantly taught in my American school experience, with US units mainly limited to math class. The only thing that sucked about using metric in science class is the short unit we had where we needed to convert measurements between metric and US, which I think was arguably the point.
It’s corporations, really, that seem to insist on having their products and tools still defaulting to US customary units, and I can’t fathom why. Even when you go abroad and try to buy a TV, they’re all still labeled in inches, which boggles my mind.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
It’s corporations, really, that seem to insist on having their products and tools still defaulting to US customary units…
I am no corporate fan, but this one is not on them. They already sell the same products in metric everywhere else. If the US switched to metric, most corporations would be able to switch overnight.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Not likey, the production lines used to service other countries are probably not the same used to supply the US.
New equipment would have to be obtained, new processes developed based on differences with regional suppliers, different regulatory standards on the production process would have to be adhered to, and they’d lose out on the generations of compatibility with older standards that they are intent keeping as cost saving measures.
Could they switch? Almost certainly, but it’s a major unnecessary expense.
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I doubt the corporations care in any deep way, same as with anything else. It’s just sort of a chicken and egg thing. They’ll resist change as long as resisting is cost-effective, but that very resistance slows adoption. Still, they will likely shrug and adapt if it becomes obvious that people prefer metric, or even simply stop caring.
folekaule@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Did you go to school in the 70s or 80s? I don’t think it’s like that anymore.
hime0321@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Probably depends on state. I went to high school in Washington state, just about a decade ago, and we were taught SI units in most science classes. Unit conversion was almost always one of the first lessons we had. Chemistry specifically made us learn sig figs, which is much easier to use with SI units, and made me wish we used them everywhere.
folekaule@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That’s probably what it is. I didn’t go to school in the US but my kids went to school in Ohio and my impression was that metric was not the primary system of units used in education, though it was taught.
The argument I hear most often from people defending the US customary units is that the units are more intuitive. For example, an inch is about the size of a thumb, or 0 degrees is fucking cold and 100 is fucking hot.
On the whole, people seem receptive to metric, but don’t want the hassle or cost to convert. They seem content to use metric where it’s important (science, military) and keep the old ways elsewhere.
I currently with in healthcare research and almost everything not patient facing is done in metric, but there are still conversions going on everywhere, leading to data problems that are hard to correct later. People used to thinking in ounces putting those where grams were supposed to go, and so on.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 month ago
90’s-00’s in Massachusetts
randomdeadguy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Inconvenienced might be right. The tagline from the poster treats metric implementation as a punishment. “What did he do to deserve this?” Has the same victimized tone like, “Look what they done to my boy” which completely disregards the merits of either system in favor of nationalism. It almost seems like a cold-war era ideal.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Start with adding a few metric characteristics in imperial. A yard and a meter are pretty close, so call it a kilo yard and centi yard. Same for quart and liter. It’s not switching to metric, but it’s more logical.
randomdeadguy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I suddenly really hate the newfound existence of potential milli-, micro-, and picoyard(s). Thanks.
hime0321@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Except that it has been replaced, or is not the preferred unit for trade and commerce. The SI has been the “preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce” since 1975 according to United States law. Too bad most other Americans are too scared of change to use it everywhere else.
Preflight_Tomato@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I have a friend who argues that “it’s just as good, there’s no difference really”. Then we go camping and have to do a unit conversion on how much water to boil and it takes 2 minutes and a phone calculator.
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
it’s worse than that-- we have gallons of milk, but liters of soda. we drive in mph, but run in 5K. science and medicine weights are grams, but recipes call for ounces. want to fix an american car–hope you have both metric and “standard” wrenches
more like we’d rather stay with the stupidness and inconvenience we know rather than change anything, no matter how much better it would be
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I will point out that with the singular and shining exception of lugnuts, at least this one has not been the case since at least the 1970’s. All fasteners on current(ish) American cars are metric nowadays and have been for quite some time. I’ve never seen a single one that isn’t on any car that’s not old enough to qualify for historic plates.
This used to piss off the oldheads to no end back when I managed a hardware store because they would absolutely insist, sometimes literally screaming in my face about it, that their dang old good old boy red blooded American Ford that they just bought didn’t have no Jap pinko metric bolts in it anywhere not nohow, and 100% of the time they were wrong. (This annoyed me only slightly less than the people who showed up needing a bolt, didn’t know what it was, didn’t bring the old one with them, and the only information they had was “I took it off with a 9/16 wrench.” Hombre, the head size tells me absolutely nothing about the diameter, thread pitch, or length. Then they would claim that it’s just a “standard” bolt, as if there’s any such thing. Also, a 9/16" wrench will usually fairly easily remove a bolt with a 14mm head, so that really tells me nothing. Or 5/8" on 16mm. Etc.)
Harleys, however, take it as some kind of point of pride that they actually do use fractional inch fasteners everywhere.
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
LOL the library equivalent is “i’m looking for a book but don’t remember the title or author, but it was about a woman who fell in love, and it had a red cover!” which describes a not-insignificant percentage of all books in existence
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That, and different editions and prints of different books can and will have different covers.
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The differential bolts on my ford 8.8" are 1/2". Also the lower intake manifold bolts on a gm 3.8l were 3/8" even though everything else was metric. I’m sure there’s also oil drain plugs that are not metric.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
See also: the 9mm and 5 grams in my pockets
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
LOL i’m sure the multiple units of measurement for ammo is worldwide-- thanks USA! but yea, drugs are always metric
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Except for an O
sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
We are used to 2 liter bottles, so we still use them. We run 5ks because its been a standard distance to run for a long time. Other countries also do similar things, old habits die hard.
We use metric for science and medicine because the benefits of metric are much more pronounced for those use cases.
Honestly, using both really isnt that hard. Its only really an inconvenience if you aren’t already used to it. We aren’t changing it because we’re getting along just fine the way things are, and there are much bigger problems to be solved.
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
for one thing, there will always be “bigger problems to solve,” just like with getting rid of DST, which also needs to fucking die a horrible death already
for another thing, thank you for providing a perfect example of my last sentence
sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
American are willing to change things, we just pick what to change, and we aren’t being inconvenienced by this nearly enough to change it.