• Philharmonic3@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    Look I get it, but also, I like fahrenheit and miles. They are more intuitive and closer to the ‘feeling’. 100 degrees is really hot. 100 mph is really fast. Maybe that’s my own bias from growing up with it though

    • Hubi@lemmy.world
      0·
      11 months ago

      Yeah, I think it’s mostly just a familiarity thing. To me 0°C is cold af, 10°C is chilly, 20°C is nice and 30°C is hot. 100 km/h is fast but not really fast, though I’m probably biased in this regard from regularly driving on the Autobahn lol

      • businessfish@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        exactly! whenever anyone says imperial units are “more intuitive” and better reflect “how it feels to humans”, i can only think: obviously, you grew up with it. that’s what you know.

        no matter what measurement system you were raised on, it will feel intuitive to you and reflect how you as a human experience the world because you are used to measuring things in those units. having said that, i’d much rather we used metric if for nothing else than the ease of unit conversion.

        • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          11 months ago

          When it comes to Fahrenheit, there is some merit to the idea - 0 to 30 is a small scale compared to 0 to 100, and unlike Imperial vs. Metric, Celcius has no base 10 system that makes any more sense than Fahrenheit does. . The opposite is true of kilometers and miles - kilometers is more refined since each unit is a shorter distance.

          I’d prefer the Metric system, but Farenheit over Celcius for temperature measurement.

          • pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.works
            0·
            11 months ago

            The fixed points (for 0 and 100) are much more logical though and can be used to accurately recreate the scale anywhere (well… it’ll be slightly off on higher altitude since boiling temperature changes but it’s still not far off).

            0°C = water freezes (= it’s snowing)

            100°C = water boils

            meanwhile:

            0°F = the coldest night Mr Fahrenheit experienced, thinking it couldn’t get any colder than that

            100°F = Mr Fahrenheit’s own body temperature (he had a slight fever apparently)

            How would you recreate that??

    • Kaboom@reddthat.com
      0·
      11 months ago

      Yeah, and the benefits of switching does not out weigh the costs, like redoing all the signage and re-educating everyone and inevitable higher accident rate.

  • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    11 months ago

    I’ll preface this by saying that this isn’t an argument in favor of the imperial system, nor is it an argument intending to detract from the usefulness of the metric system. But I have wondered if there is some merit to having a simple, colloquial, “human friendly” system of measurement — something that’s shown to be the best system for people to grok, and is the most convenient to use in day-to-day life. If you need precision, and well defined standards, then certainly use the metric system, but is the metric system easy for people to grok? Say you ask someone to estimate a length. Would they be more likely to accurately estimate the length using the metric system, the imperial system, or some other system? Likewise for telling someone a length and asking them to physically reproduce it. Would they be more likely to do so with the metric system, the imperial system, or some other? It’s an interesting problem, imo, and it doesn’t seem to get much attention.

    It could very well be that people can, indeed, grok measurements the best when using the metric system, but I currently am unaware of any research that has been done to show that. If anyone is aware of any research that has looked into this, then please let me know! I’d be very interested to read it.

    • amelore@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      That’s a feature supporters of imperial thinks it has. Even if imperial/some special third option is better for guessing, the difference has to be big enough that it’s worth the hassle of having multiple systems or converting everyone again. If it’s not worth having two systems but it is worth converting everything , then you still have to keep or prove that it’s worth losing the conveniences of metric like 1 km = 1000 m , 1 L of water weighing 1 kg , water freezing and boiling at 0 and 100 °C

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    0·
    11 months ago

    While we are at it, let’s all (as in the entire planet) switch to 24hour UTC and the YYYY.MM.DD date format.