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dietr1chyesterday at 9:01 PM2 repliesview on HN

I didn't say it was SI units, but it's easily convertible to them. Metric isn't magic, but it's a cohesive set of legos that can be transformed easily without requiring messy arithmetic and hard to memorise scale constants.

Are you not pretending people use the modern, most-precise definitions in the day-to-day just to give yourself a stab at claiming that Metric is awful? Non-metric would face the same dilemma when trying to establish units in a way that can be scientifically replicated. The counter point is that non-metric is so bad that people don't even bother using it in this endeavor ;)


Replies

bigstrat2003yesterday at 10:48 PM

> I guarantee you you would be able to adapt without any problem.

I guess it depends on how you define "problem". It took me years (probably a decade or so) to get good at estimating measurements. I would expect that to relearn how to estimate using metric units would take a decent portion of that (though probably not all). That is a very real cost to me if we were to adopt metric units. Meanwhile, metric also confers no benefit to me (ease of conversion math is irrelevant when I carry a calculator in my pocket, and I've learned the conversions I need in everyday life). So the cost-benefit analysis of switching to metric would be negative for my usage.

But more to the point, it's fucking rude to come in here as you did and call people "uncivilized" for something as petty and meaningless as which units of measurement they use.

diydspyesterday at 11:18 PM

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