[steamrolled]

The point of the SI system is not that one meter is "better" than one foot. It's that we picked one subjective point of reference and then made almost all the other units related to that in a straightforward way and scaled with a common set of prefixes.

In everyday life, the metric system offers no big benefit, except for consistency for international standards and trade. But if you're doing anything engineering-related, your life is simpler if you don't need conversion factors to move between liters, meters, joules, watts, amperes, volts, ohms, and so on.

And FWIW, even to the extent that US engineers sometimes use inches and Fahrenheit, almost everything else they do is anchored to SI.

[kergonath]

> And FWIW, even to the extent that US engineers sometimes use inches and Fahrenheit, almost everything else they do is anchored to SI.

Inches are defined relative to the SI as well.

[IAmBroom]

As are Fahrenheit degrees.

[throwanem]

I don't know why people seem to think this is an "own."

[bregma]

> In everyday life, the metric system offers no big benefit

That's not entirely true. An American driving across the Canadian border on an interstate can automatically go from 55 to 100. That's almost twice as much.

[throwanem]

No it isn't. Our speedos are denominated both ways, it's cheaper, and I drive a Nissan with a V6 and paddle shifters. Not that that's much in any real sense! But neither is a Piper Archer, and those also have enough power to make 100kph feel extremely tame. It's not a high bar, is what I'm saying.

[throwanem]

Even when we use inches, they're frequently themselves metricated via division by 1,000 to produce the "thou." This is an extremely strong convention; I have one (inexpensive) digital caliper that can read in fractional inches, but every such tool I own reads in both millimeters and thou.

I do think it's funny all these folks insisting metric is so humanist seem never to have noticed which of their finger joints is an inch long. For me that's the second of the little finger, but I have large squarish peasant hands. As for the rest, treating a centimeter as 10/25 of an inch and vice versa seems to work well enough for measurements not requiring particular precision, or in other words anything I'd be comfortable doing without a caliper. Where's the trouble, really?

[alnwlsn]

Ah the joys of units! If you work cross-discipline, 1/1000th of an inch is called a 'thou' in machining. For PCBs (not unheard of to attach the two together), the same unit is called a 'mil'. Not to be confused with millimeter, even though it often is confused.

[int_19h]

> I do think it's funny all these folks insisting metric is so humanist seem never to have noticed which of their finger joints is an inch long.

People who grow up with metric instead notice which of their fingers is ~1 cm thick.

[throwanem]

"Instead." Still we have the assumption of exclusivity. I remember broader minds here. What happened?

[lostlogin]

Where does the ‘humanist’ bit end?

Should we go back to fathoms, furlongs, chains, drams and bushels?

This was settled a long time ago for the vast majority of the word.

[fuzztester]

Just for fun, check the yojana and related Indian measures:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojana

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_measurement_syste...

[throwanem]

Now, ironically given I'm for all serious purposes an English monoglot, you're speaking my language. Give me lakh and crore! Give me weights and measures where I can feel the history. Just like my mad 5,280-foot (1,360-yard) mile, which I love.

And give me also the precise rational tenths-and-tens units, too, of course, for when we need accuracy more than soul. I work in thou all the time! All I've really been saying is, there's a place in the world for both ways of doing things. Why's everyone else so hellbent on having exactly one or the other?

[bregma]

It's far more impressive to express gravity in units of stone furlong per fortnight squared. It's 7.14 x 10^10. Makes gravity on Jupiter look puny.

[throwanem]

It's that plus or minus about three orders, sure.

[throwanem]

If we should find they serve us better, why not?

[nancyminusone]

>bushels

Someone hasn't been to an apple orchard recently.