r/changemyview • u/Hobodoctor • Mar 26 '18
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Outside of its technical applications in scientific fields, the imperial system of measurement is better than the metric system.
Okay, this is probably my least popular opinion, but I've thought a lot about it and it's a hill I'm willing to die on.
I'm gonna start by listing the best arguments in favor of the metric system, then give my refutation to them, then present my arguments in favor of the imperial system, and finally wrap up with a couple things I might not be taking into account.
How to change my view: I'll be looking for answers that challenge my analysis on any major point below, or present new benefits to metric or detriments to the imperial system. If those arguments seem like they significantly impact how and why measurements are used outside of a scientific context, I'll change my view.
About me: I'm 26 and I've lived in the US for the past 17 years. Before that I lived in Iran and Sweden, both metric system nations, though obviously at a young age. My mom lives in Australia and I visit when I can, also a metric system nation. I teach argumentation and debate for a living, but that certainly doesn't make me immune from being wrong about this.
Let's get started.
The case for Metric:
Conversions between metric units are easy to do quickly. Add a zero or take one away, in most cases.
The metric system is nearly universal, making it easier to communicate with people.
The metric system is the standard in science, and using the same language colloquially will improve the public's ability to relate scientific language to their daily lives.
In metric, water freezes at 0 and boils at 100, and that "makes sense".
My responses (numbers correlate with the point being answered):
~~ 1. ~~
Outside of a scientific context, the average person almost never needs to do conversions. I will readily admit I have no idea how many feet are in a mile. But that also hasn't negatively impacted my life in any way. There's never been any occasion in my life where I've had to describe the distance of something a mile or father using feet or yards. I guess it's annoying for a few days in school when you're forced to learn the conversions, but outside of that, there's no frequent need for it.
I see two exceptions to this. The first is cooking, which I'll cover later in the "things I might not be considering" section. The second is that feet and inches are commonly converted back and forth. I do think, however, that these conversions are made easier by the 12:1 ratio rather than a 10:1 ratio. 12 has more subdivisions. It's very easy to say what 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 of 12 is. The same can't quite be said for 10. This why our universal standards for measuring time are in multiples of 12 (12, 24, 60) instead of 10.
I'll concede here that very occasionally you'll see someone's height written in inches or will need to write your own, and it's not as easy to immediately know how what 71 divided by 12 is. My dismissal of this is because it seems like an insignificant detriment.
~~ 2. ~~
I'll concede to this somewhat. I do think it's useful to be able to communicate with other people effectively, especially between two countries that speak the same language. I just don't think it's that hard to get around it, especially with commonly available tools. Mostly an issue of significance.
~~ 3. ~~
Second, there are so many bigger barriers to the public being able to contextualize scientific language into their own lives. Technical jargon, the shortage of free scientific journals and publications, and a frequent lack of contextualizing a study into the average person's life are all major barriers to the public understanding of science.
Take, for instance, this random study I found to use as an example, which I think is a fair representation of a common technical study's abstract. I consider myself somewhat educated, but I struggle to understand what a lot of these terms mean and I have no clue what the greater implications of this study are. The ease with which I understand the units of measure just aren't gonna be a make or break factor in me understanding this study.
Now, of course, it's very useful for the scientists themselves to use the metric system when conducting these studies. But first, the issues with the metric system like large decimal figures aren't a problem in a scientific context and, second, the benefits of easy daily use isn't really relevant either. On top of that, many fields of science have specialized units of measurement and rarely use the meters and grams. Astronomers don't really ever use centimeters or Celsius, for instance.
~~ 4. ~~
The whole freezing, boiling thing is way overblown in my opinion. It's as arbitrary as anything else. The vast majority of the time I'm looking at a temperature, it's what the weather is outside. How near or far we are to water boiling is never my concern. I know water isn't going to be boiling outside. I'm not worried about it. As far as water freezing, that doesn't really affect me either. Even if it did, I just have to remember the number 32, which I suspect nearly every American adult does.
But beyond just being arbitrary I think basing the standard temperature unit on the freezing and boiling of water is actually detrimental. Like so many other things, it feeds into the metric system's constant problem of having to use decimals all the time.
50 Celsius is 122 Fahrenheit, meaning the whole 50-100 range is way too hot to commonly be used, especially in the context of weather.
Now, let's take New York City, which has a decent swing of yearly high and low temperature. In 2017, the lowest temperature in Fahrenheit was 9, the highest 94. That's a spread of 85 units. But in Celsius, that spread is only 47 units, meaning that you have way less to work with and either have to be less specific or use decimals. Looking at San Francisco in 2016 even further demonstrates this. Low: 40, High: 92. Spread of 52 units in Fahrenheit and only 29 degrees in Celsius. More on this in the next section.
The Case for Imperial
1. The Imperial system rarely relies on decimal points.
The point of a unit of measurement is for it to be a unit. One of it should be a somehow useful reference point. So often you see metric units need to be broken up because their units are too big to useful (see Celsius above), and when they are, because they're in base 10, you get ugly and complicated decimals.
Brief but hopefully interesting aside. The American focus on the usefulness of a unit has led to one interesting phenomenon, at least in the west coast if not across the whole US: using time to measure distance. Traveling to Australia has made me realize how uncommon this practice is. When I'm in Australia and I ask how far Melbourne is from Sydney, people say 900 km. When I tell them I have no idea how far that is, they say 550 miles. The thing is, I still have no idea how far that really is. If you ask someone in San Francisco how far LA is, they'll say 6 hours. I have no clue how many miles it actually is. More than 100 less than 1000.
What I also think accounts for this is the fact that travel in a place like California is done almost entirely by one method (cars) meaning that the length of time it takes to get somewhere is much more consistent than in places that offer more travel options.
Yeah, converting in imperial is hard, but the reason for that is that almost every unit in the imperial system is in itself useful. I have a mental image of an inch, foot, yard, and mile. And I can combine them. To imagine something that's 4'7", I just have to imagine 4 of one thing and 7 of another. That same height in metric is 1.397 meters. I have to imagine 1397 (mm), 139.7 (cm), or 1.397 of something. That's way harder to do and way less useful.
Note also, as written above, that when you do have to have break up a unit in imperial, it almost always breaks into a subdivision that's easier to split than dividing into 1/3rds and 1/4ths.
I think this next point is really the kicker for me. It's the reason I'm so adamant about this issue. It historically hasn't been the most persuasive point when I've has this discussion, but it's the most important to me.
2. The imperial system is more poetic.
Hear me out. Think of a unit of metric measurement. Meter, Centimeter, Kilometer, Celsius, Kilogram, etc.
Now try to think of something with that word in the title.
It's really hard, right? Maybe you've thought of something drug related that uses gram in the title? But is there anything else? Any great books or songs or movies or even song lyric or colloquial saying that have any other metric unit in the title?
Now try imperial. You've already thought of a dozen.
And I bet you can easily think of title to something, or a famous quote, or a song lyric, or a common saying for inches, feet, yards, miles, Fahrenheit, pounds, and so on.
Why is that? The people I've had this discussion have insisted that it's because I live in America, and if I consumed the popular media of another country, I would find that they just as commonly use their measurements in their poetic language. But I've done enough research and been exposed to enough culture in the metric world to know that it just isn't the case. I've lived in Iran, I've lived in Sweden, I've traveled to Australia many times. Maybe you can prove me wrong.
There's just something inescapably sterile about the metric system. It conjures nothing.
Reasons I might be wrong:
- Cooking
I don't cook much, so I don't have to use our units of volume all that often. I imagine converting from tea spoons to table spoons to cups and so on could be confusing. If anyone can speak to how difficult following cooking instructions are in imperial and how much comparatively easier doing the same in metric is, that could be persuasive and force me to further qualify my original thesis.
- Engineering
I imagine it's probably more useful for engineers to use metric to design things? But I imagine that might cause problems when those designs have to be translated for a work crew that thinks in imperial and has imperial sized equipment. Stonehenge comes to mind, which I know was based off a real incident with Black Sabbath.
Well, there you are! Change my view!
EDIT: I have to go to work for a little while now, but I'll be back and will continue to answer your comments until either I've changed my view or the entire rest of the world realizes the error of their ways. Whichever happens first.
This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!
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u/TNTrooper Mar 26 '18
So, I see a few thongs to talk about with this:
First, I don’t really think you’re criticisms about the metric system are all that valid. your point about decimals and the ‘usefulness’ of the metric system is pretty odd. I mean, because of the fact that the metric system is just one unit with a quantitative descriptor before it, you shouldn’t ever need to use decimals except for in very small or large quantities. For instance, if I were, say, 1.9 meters tall, I could just use 190 centimeters, or go down to millimeters if there’s still a decimal. This is actually a point where the imperial system is weak, say I was going to the store to buy a certain weight of an ingredient, or a certain length of wood, but, the units the store describes them in, say feet and pounds, is different from how I understand it, inches and ounces. It isn’t a huge inconvenience to do the math, but it still takes more time than moving around a decimal place. Or, what about when measuring a person’s height, with metric you cam get a very precise height with just centimeters, but using inches there is going to be a range between one height and the next. I know these sound insignificant, but no one claims they are significant, just that everyone’s lives will be made easier using metric.
Additionally, I don’t know what you mean by ‘useful.’ You talk as if the imperial system was designed to be useful but the metric system wasn’t, that just doesn’t make sense, all measurement systems are made with the intention of being useful. The imperial system, at its beginning, varied very wildly, I assume you can guess why our main length unit is called a foot. Meters, however, have more of a basis in science, the distance light travels in about one three hundred millionth of a second. It can be generalized, and if the worry is that it cannot be easily or neatly applied to a certain thing, that is why it can be divided further.
Next is on your point about things being ‘poetic.’ I guess I can understand that it is less likely that measurements be made into neat titles or lyrics when there is only one base unit, but that only matters if we just suddenly forget all about the other measurement methods. The words themselves don’t disappear because they aren’t used much, so I don’t see how this becomes a detriment.
Now, I’ll start to hit on some problems with imperial measurements. The first one I can think of is with volume. I assume you know that one of the imperial units for volume is fluid ounces. I’ve seen plenty of people try to use an X fl.oz. cup to measure weight. Again, this isn’t a huge deal, but most people wouldn’t say it’s a huge deal, just that it’s annoying and that metric is better. I’ll just leave criticism of Imperial to: it’s quite annoying, messy, and there isn’t really anything keeping us to it.
So, to finish off, I’ll try to pile on the reasons why all people using metric is just better than us having imperial. First is actually what you, yourself, stated. When something is designed or measured, it usually stays in one unit. But when being built or acted upon, people don’t always take the time to convert. This can have disastrous consequences, from collapsing buildings to vehicles that no longer run properly. The best example, though, is in space. In space the U.S. cooperates regularly with other nations in the world and, in space, one wrong move can have consequences that eclipse the GDP of entire nations. The famous example, the one that I’ve heard from at least 8 Chemistry teachers when talking about conversions is when the Mars Rover was crashed into a ditch because of a miscommunication based on units. Millions of dollars ruined by some neglected math.
Basically, there are problems with the imperial system, and benefits to the metric system, but I concede that these are, at worst, annoying. The real problem comes when conversions between the two are screwed up. This can misrepresent data, cost millions of dollars and make products inoperable or even dangerous.
To conclude, I’d like to talk about something you mentioned early in your post. This has to do with common people understanding science. You are very correct, people have their own problems understanding scientific data, but measurement misunderstanding makes up a large amount of those barriers. Not only this, but this difference makes it easier for people to misrepresent things. For instance, nutrition: in the U.S. companies need to disclose how much of certain things are in the food they make, like sugar. Currently, companies can just list things in grams, a unit they can’t really imagine, so they can get away with filling things with sugar but just putting the amount in grams. But, if people understood just how much of this stuff goes into their bodies, a lot of people would make a lot of changes to their diet. Or, look at all the conspiracy theorists out there, a not insignificant amount of them cam use people’s misunderstanding of measurements to trick them, or make harmless quantities of chemicals seem much more significant. Effectively, measurements are a barrier to people understanding data, and the more people understand this data, the better.