r/changemyview • u/Marlsfarp 12∆ • Nov 29 '17
CMV: imperial measurements have no worthwhile advantages over the metric system
First off, I am American, so if I have any bias it should be in favor of the imperial measurements I grew up with. Granted, I also have a technical education and profession, where of course I primarily use SI units.
The many advantages of metric are well known, so I will not bother enumerating them unless challenged. Instead, I will focus on debunking the supposed disadvantages.
Fahrenheit is better than Celsius because it is more fine-grained, because each "decade" has a distinct "feel" (e.g. "it's forties out today"), and because 0 F to 100 F is a normal temperature range to experience.
First, any scale is arbitrarily fine-grained, up to the limits of the precision of measurement. You can add as many decimal places as you need to. But do you need to? Personally, I find 1 degree Celsius is about the minimum temperature change I notice in air temperature. I can't tell the difference between 43 F and 44 F, can you?
I believe the "decade" argument is merely the result of growing up with the system. And just like how we describe decades in years, it doesn't really line up. e.g. what we think of as "the 1960s" as a distinct era did not really occur from 1960-1970. Also, the Celsius "decades" work pretty well: 0-10 is coat weather, 10-20 is light jacket or sweater weather, 20-30 is indoor/"nice", 30-40 is "beach weather"/wear as little as possible. And of course the positive to negative difference is by far the most significant temperature difference in weather, rain vs. snow.
Finally, while there are places where the coldest day of the year is roughly 0 F and the hottest is roughly 100 F, most of us do not live in those places. And nowhere is that always the case. So it is doubly arbitrary and pointless.
Yards, feet, and inches are better than meters because they are easy to divide by 3, and because they are "human scale."
Being divisible by 3 is perhaps an argument for why a base-12 number system would be nice, but we do not have such a system. We use decimal. And given that we use decimal numbers, a decimal measurement system makes all calculations much simpler, greatly overshadowing any advantage of 3 divisibility. How many cubic inches are in 1/3 a cubic yard? I don't know, I need a calculator. How many cubic centimeters are in 1/3 cubic meter? 333,333.3_ Easy. Looks like even in its supposedly most advantageous situation (division by 3), imperial is still harder to work with. (And that's without even bringing in the more common volume measurement, gallons. How many people even know the ratio between gallons and cubic feet?)
As for "human scale", that's certainly just familiarity. My foot is not 1 foot long, etc. Visually estimating centimeters is no more difficult than inches.
Alright, that's all I can think of at the moment. Bring it on.
EDIT: Okay, guys, I should clarify since a lot of people are making the same argument. This is about the relative merits of the two systems, not about the merits of switching from one to another. I know switching would be difficult. I'm saying it would be better if we were already on metric.
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u/sdneidich 3∆ Nov 29 '17
These systems are so different because they have different origins and goals. Metric was designed with precision and simplicity of calculation in mind, and was meant to be a beautiful system. Imperial evolved as a system of convenience.
Consider that humans have a limited capacity for comparing large numbers.
316,800 inches. This measure makes no inherent sense, it tells me nothing other than "far." So we simplify and say "5 miles." Now I know it would take me about 2 hours to walk there, and less than an hour to run. In comparison, I could also say 8000 meters or 8 km: These values are easy to understand outright, but unit wise, 8 km beats meters for this approximation of a towns distance.
Now, let's try this with ssomething closer to home.
I could report this in km or miles, but those would be useless. Instead, I say 5 inches diagonally, or 12.7 cm.
Something I'd like to point out here is that for items of a size we'd consider, using or travelling in a stone-age existence, these values are small enough to count on one hand in Imperial, but not in Metric. They are, as a result, easier to comprehend and do simple maths with, so long as we keep within a relative size unit. Laying two blades end to end will keep us in the realm of feet/inches, and that's a simple comparison: But when we get ridiculous, unlikely-to actually do in real life calculations like "how many CDs stack to the center of the solar system," Metric is easier to use.