this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Feet are way more intuitive than meters, doesn't matter which one you grew up with because one is based on something intuitive like the size of a foot while the other is based on some weird shit about how far light travels in a tiny fraction of a second.
Nah, meters are very straightforward and easy to work with. How far is a kilofoot? God only knows, but a kilometre is a trivially visualized distance. What's 1/100 of a foot? Dunno, but with meters it's a centimeter which is, again intuitively easy to grasp.
Only when you've gotten used to it. The thing with your examples is that very rarely does anyone actually need a kilofoot or 1/100th of a foot, but they very, very frequently need a mile or an inch. Metric was designed to make sense on paper, standard measurements were designed to be useful in every day situations.
What do you use a mile for? One km is about a 15 minute walk.
Metric isn't intuitive to you because you aren't used to using it. Relevant xkcd.
Sure, feet might be intuitive, but that's the exception. What's an inch? Or a mile? Or a cup? Cups come in more sizes than feet do!
An inch it about the distance between the two knuckles on your forefinger.
A mile is about one thousand steps, or fifteen minutes of travel at a brisk pace
A cup is a cup, before portion sizes got daffy there was a pretty common cup that everybody had.
"Standard" measurements were refined over thousands of years by actual artisans making actual crafts. Metric was designed by a bunch of rich French people and foisted on the rest of the world because it makes more sense on paper, regardless of how in practical use it requires you to break out a ton of awkward decimals and other contrivances to make it match the human experience.
Read the xkcd comic. There are plenty of metric associations you can make in your mind, too.
Metric came out of the French Revolution, which was caused by the underclasses rising up and overthrowing "a bunch of rich French people". And then saying, "Hey, let's try doing things rationally for a change. Like our systems of measurement."
Because the bourgeoisie that lead the French Revolution famously remained 100% in lockstep with the underclasses. There was never a moment where the needs of the rulers diverged from the needs of the masses and a whole new regime of class strife arose from it, no sir.
The metric system was applied top-down to french society by its ruling class, it was not some grassroots attempt to make the world better.
There's nothing quite as intuitive as a table of numbers and associations that you can memorize by rote. Pass me my flash cards!
Notice that despite the presence of many people who grew up with and use the metric system none are complaining about how hard it was to intuit metric units?
If you stop telling people what they should find intuitive for a moment and actually listen to people telling you about their experiences then you might find that this is not an issue.
As I said elsewhere anyone can get used to anything. I was also propagandized in school by teachers who insisted over and over for years that metric was better and that using anything else was a waste of time - it was only when I became an adult and started making shit for myself that I realized the truth.
I'm not sure if you should be arguing against the metric system because it was applied top-down across Europe by Napoleon, considering the history behind how the imperial system was spread to what is now the USA. I mean, it's literally called the imperial system.
The metric system was applied across the entire world and wiped out almost every single indigenous standard of measure that existed previously. The English unit of measures has a similar history vis a vis the British Empire spreading it, but my argument would be that indigenous measurements writ large should have been retained, not that they should have been wiped out once and for all by a second, even more imperial system.
You missed the point of their comment. Those measurements make sense to you because you grew up with them. If you read the xkcd you can easily see how you can make up the same comparisons for metric
I'm afraid you missed the point of mine. Anybody can "get used to" pretty much anything, but the difference between standard measurements and metric is that standard measurements are based on practical things that people interact with every day, while metric measurements were worked out on paper by the French bourgeoisie over a hundred years ago. They sought to use rationality to make a better measurement system, and in doing so made one that is totally untethered to the human experience.
I've read the xkcd, the xkcd only responds to one common argument against the metric system, one which I am not making.
no, I didn't. You still aren't understanding even what you are saying, much less other people.
no. no they are not. Let's look at some 'standard' measurements as you call them (they're actually not standard as you'll immediately see):
Great. so we're off to a perfect start. A foot is..... as long as your own foot. ^https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(unit)^
Next up! Inch!
Oh, well you might say "an inch is just a foot divided by 12". nope. no it was not (all stuff in this comment is past measurements, because every unit of measurement on the planet uses metric as its base)
Perfect. What's a barleycorn's length?
Oh ok, so it could be up to 3x the distance from one barleycorn to another. Perfect. Another 'standard'
^https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inch^ ^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barleycorn_%28unit%29^
How about the 'rod' or 'pole' or 'perch' (all the same thing) ^https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(unit)^
Great. So this one I have no visual reference at all. Is this pike length or sword length? (oh you're all about referencing 'standard' objects, but just in case you don't know a pike can be up to 25 feet long)
Do you see how ridiculous this is? You're talking about standards that evolved over time from some 'base' to mean absolutely nothing today in relation to what they were hundreds of years ago. Metric was also based on 'standard' things, like the kilogram, which is just the weight of a litre of water (see, simple). You're acting like the 'standards' of one unit are superior to the 'standards' of another unit, except that the unit of measurement you're saying is superior is completely disconnected from each other. If it wasn't for standards bodies coming in and saying "a foot is not the length of your foot, it's exactly this ... long" then there would be absolutely no way to convert between any units in imperial measurement.
Once again your argument has gone somewhat obliquely past mine and not actually addressed it, although I do appreciate how incredibly smug you are telling me I don't know what my own argument is.
I never said that standardization was bad, what I said was that the references for standard measures were more useful. We don't carry around rods for poking oxen much anymore, so that unit of measure is rightly confined to history.
I never said you did.
I just showed you exactly how that is not the case. A measurement saying a foot is as long as your own foot is completely useless in every context except the one where you do the measuring and never communicate it to anyone else. The same applies to literally every imperial unit. I also went on to show you that metric units were also based on standard measurements, like kilogram being exactly the weight of a litre of water. You conveniently ignored the fact that imperial was using weird standards while metric used useful, convertible standards. Please try converting 1cu ft of water to weight in imperial, with the 'standard' that it's the length of your foot, not someone else's foot.
And please do stop referring to imperial units as 'standard' measures. That doesn't mean what you think it does.
i'm not sure if i'm allowed to post PPB here so let's pretend I did and that you realized and admitted you're wrong.
The original definition of a meter was 1/10000000 of the distance from the equator to the poles, hence the circumference of Earth being 40000km.
That's awful. Nobody on the planet has any frame of reference for the distance from the equator to the poles. The measurements used by people in the real world should be based on something they encounter frequently.
That's for feet only, how about the other measurements? Each person feet also different with each other, it's kinda weird to just assume children length of their feet is the same with adult's.
IIRC 1 metre originally is a length choosen so that Earth circumference is 40000km, the later definition is more stable standardization, because turn out you can't get precise lengths doing that.
For a person's foot to measure exactly 12 inches long, they would wear a US size 14 men's shoe. Size 47 for the Europeans. So "spproximately the size of a foot" is pretty far off anyway. Most people don't wear size 14 shoes. In fact, people who wear size 14 shoes often have a lot of trouble buying shoes.
What's important here is that the standard measurements evolved naturally from people doing and making things. The common lengths were so chosen because they were easy to "eyeball" for craftspeople, and they were lengths that were useful to make things in - not some arbitrary designation based on phenomenon far outside the human experience.
Maybe so for feet, how about other measurements and its conversion. Where's inch coming from and why it's 12 inch to be 1 feet, and for yards, miles etc. It's kinda arbitrary, not natural, and confusing