[dwcnnnghm]

Having lived in the UK, I found the balance between systems to be quite nice. I think that the Imperial System is actually underrated for daily use: most of the measurements are intuitive (based on sensory information and easily visualizable objects) and align better with common uses of measurements (rough approximations and division into equal parts). I think the metric system is beautiful and elegant, but for non-scientific tasks I don’t think it’s as valuable.

[slyall]

Thats what people say who have grown up with the system. If you grew up with the metric system in day to day life then you'd say the same.

eg A Metre is a distance between two held out hands. A litre is half a 2l bottle. A kg is the same weight as a litre of water or a small bag of something like sugar. I instinctively know how hot 10, 15 20 or 30 degrees is.

I grew up with 20 and 30cm rulers so I can picture how big they are. At school we had various weights around. Stuff is sold in metric weights.

[dwcnnnghm]

By “two held out hands”, do you mean a person’s wingspan? Is there something similar for centimeters? I’m asking out of genuine curiosity and not antagonizing. I would love to have more tools at my disposal. An inch, for example, is the length of the first digit of the index finger. [0]

With length, I find that most of my use cases are division into equal parts as opposed to scaling. The imperial system was designed for this (frequently using base 12) [1]. I understand that this may be due to my framing.

I agree with the sibling comment about temperature granularity. Fahrenheit set 0 degrees to the coldest temperature in his hometown, then used freezing water and body temperature as reference points. 100 degrees is about body temperature, and around as hot as ambient temperature gets for many people.

[0] Useless trivia: an acre is one chain (66’) by one furlong (660’) and was supposed to be the amount a field a single ox could plow in a day. Neither of the latter two measures are commonly used anymore but a mile was redefined from 5000’ to 5280’ to make it an even 8 furlongs.

[1] Apparently this is the reason that the French failed twice to establish Metric Time

[slyall]

I mean a nice natural two hands held apart is 1 metre. I can use that to roughly measure things like the width of a room.

My full outstretch (wingspan) is around 2m.

[geraldwhen]

I adjust a thermostat regularly. 1C is way too large a swing, and I’ve stayed at hotels that offer half degree F adjustments.

Celsius doesn’t work well for human temperature. In America, air conditioning is common. Even poor people have air conditioning and often use it.

[psd1]

Come on, surely you don't believe your own argument. If thermostats can offer fractional-degree adjustment in fahrenheit, they can offer it in celsius.