In this thread: people bending over backwards to defend their insane, non-logical unit of measurement
Alternatively, people insisting that Americans must be math gods for using such a demanding and archaic system.
Ah nice, this should be a constructive dialogue between open minded and empathetic individuals.
grabs popcorn
Technically the metric system is "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" as per the Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
You're just also allowed to use lbs and feet and stuff and most people do.
The versions of imperial measurements the US uses are even defined in terms of metric units, so they're less a completely separate measurement system these days and more just a weird facade on top of metric, even.
When my American friends insist that feet and inches is just easier for them, I just nod in agreement and give them measurements using rods, chains and furlongs as well. If you're going to go Imperial, you have to know 'em all. An acre is a chain by a furlong, totally logical as that would be 4x40 rods which is of course 43560 square feet. I guess it makes complete sense when your world is only a few furlongs across.
Most people who insist that imperial is better still have absolutely no idea how many spoons there are to a cup, how many cups to a gallon, how many inches to a mile, how many square yards to an acre.
A truly logic system would be entirely designed around a base-12 number system. But we were born with an imperfect set of 10 fingers and that doomed us.
Those aliens have 6 fingers. It's an absolutely ironic twist that their discussion on measuring systems is super illogical for them, and yet logical is the verbiage they use.
Care to elaborate on how base 12 would be better than base 10 in this case?
Basically it's because 12 is more divisible than 10. Factors of 10 are 1,2,5 and 10. 12 has 1,2,3,4,6 and 12. This gives more flexibility when discussing numbers. Our time is technically using base 12, which is why we can say quarter past 4 and it means a traditional whole number. That's the argument I've heard anyway
I believe this is also why we have 360 "degrees" in a circle, and not 365. The ancients hated that a year was clise to, but not exactly, 365 days. They chalked it up to the imperfection of Earth relative to the heavens. But a perfect year should be 360 days because it is divisible by every single digit number but 7.
On the matter of days in a years, there's also the idea of spliting the year into 13 months of 28 days each for a total of 364 days, closer matching the lunar cycle (and women's body). Every day of the year would always be on the same day of the week.
Then the extra day? It's world day, a global holiday for celebrating the new year, and it doesn't belong in any weekday. Sometimes we'd need an extra leap year day (just like right now with 29th February) so they would just both be world day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
Check for pros and cons.
how about we all agree that the best system is american units with metric prefixes. After all it is obvious that it takes an hours to drive 318 kilofeet
I'll just leave this here: https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY
TLDW: metric is better because all the different kinds of units were designed to work together.
Where as imperial units developed organically, within specific trades/use cases. They're not all supposed to work together.
I use imperial because that's what I was raised with, but I recognize metric is better in many ways. My only gripe with metric is the gap in units between Centimeters and Meters. A foot is convenient size for most things.
Well buddy, you're in luck because today you get to stop griping about something that's been part of SI units for the entirety of SI units.
A foot is convenient size for most things.
Aka '30 cm', it's not hard to say. As someone from a metric country you just say the absolute cm value, or maybe 'half a metre', etc.
Jefferson actually intended to make metric standard in the US back in 1793. Unfortunately, the ship carrying the standard measurements from France was captured by pirates.
My only gripe with metric is the gap in units between Centimeters and Meters. A foot is convenient size for most things.
Doesn’t seem to be an issue though, the decimetre is rarely used. Sometimes you find dL, decilitre, for 100 ml. It seems that 1, 100, and 1000 are convenient enough for most things.
When I find a wood working video on YouTube from the states it blows my mind how anyone can not just adopt metric “This is 5” 4/57 and we need to cut it to 5” 5/45 and a half” bzzzzzzz.
"Why do they use the much more complicated system?" "Nobody actually knows."
Those aliens have 3 fingers. A decimal system to them is like a system based on 14, 196, 2744, 38416, ... would be like to us - probably worse than US Customary
14, 196, 2744, 38416, … would be like to us - probably worse than US Customary
I mean if they had a base 14 numerical system then a base 14 measurement system would make perfect sense.
Contrary to that, the US does use a decimal system for numbers while the various units in the US customary system do not have any common base.
humans have used base 8 count the gaps between your fingers, base 12 count the joints on 4 fingers with your thumb, and base 26 by using lots of body parts.
Number of fingers doesn't have to dictate their number system. If they're using a decimal based number system, then a decimal based measurement system is still the logical choice.
Silly Americans, you could be measuring your winnies in GIGAMETERS and yet decide to keep using the kings thumb as a reference for it*
Base 12 is way more logical than base 10, I bet aliens would think we're stupid for counting in base 10 just because we have 10 fingers, my opinion on this is infallible fight me
Base 12 is as arbitrary as base 10 and we don't know what aliens would think nor should we care. Base 16 makes more sense because it is 2x2x2x2 instead of 2x2x3
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