It seems like a weird point to bring up. How often do y’all convert your measurements? It’s not even a daily thing. If I’m measuring something, I either do it in inches, or feet, rarely yards. I’ve never once had to convert feet into miles, and I can’t imagine I’m unique in this. When I have needed to, it’s usually converting down (I.e. 1/3 of a foot), which imperial does handle better in more cases.

Like. I don’t care if we switch, I do mostly use metric personally, it just seems like a weird point to be the most common pro-metric argument when it’s also the one I’m least convinced by due to how metric is based off of base 10 numbering, which has so many problems with it.

Edit: After reading/responding a lot in the comments, it does seem like there’s a fundamental difference in how distance is viewed in metric/imperial countries. I can’t quite put my finger on how, but it seems the difference is bigger than 1 mile = 1.6km

  • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lolOP
    12·
    16 hours ago

    I do know the conversions, at least roughly enough to get the point. I will, however, point out that this same argument applies both directions. That usually results in a pidgin when it comes to language, which would be quite funny, but not very practical in this case.

    Communicating with someone in metric if you already know metric is easy. The process of pulling up a calculator is the same regardless which direction you’re going from, since converting 55" to 1.375m isn’t something that most people are gonna be able to do in their heads

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
      8·
      15 hours ago

      That is in fact incorrect. And the reason is in that other comment. To make a summary of that other comment:

      If an only-metric guy wanted to communicate with an only-imperial one, each would need a table of conversions. For a basic use case, the metric cheat sheet would only need 8 entries, while the imperial one 10. That is, you need to memorize less "magic number"s for metric than for imperial. Furthermore, 5 of those entries in the metric cheat sheet are: 1000, 1000, 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000, which are obviously easy. So the real difference would be more like 3 entries to 10.

      Of course, any kind of real measurement you will need a calculator. But that is reality for any unit conversion across systems. The difference is that you only need to remember 3 numbers to convert to/from metric, but you need 10 to convert to/from imperial.