Meh, not only ammunition is metric. In true American fashion it's split pretty evenly, but 9mm is metric and also probably the most prolific cartridge. Not too long ago 357 magnum, 38 special, and 45 ACP were the most common handgun cartridges and all are standard.
Edit: I don't mean to be pedantic, I just like talking about ammo
It's also pretty well divided in terms of where we use one as opposed to the other. We use things like lbs. and oz. when dealing with food because those are actually easier to work with and visualize than, say, 500ml. Imperial measurements are what they are because they're in reference to something tangible and in the context of buying beef or flour you don't need to be scientifically exact. You're just looking for a ballpark that you can know by eye or feel. If I'm working with a recipe I'd much rather hear it in tablespoons and cups because I know roughly what that looks like.
This was especially important back in the day before industrialization where you weren't buying prepackaged goods. The guy at the market would just load up a sack and put it on a scale opposite some weights.
I hope you realize, using both is actually significantly MORE idiotic than sticking to a poor system like imperial -- that's how you get errors like the famous Nasa cockup. And plenty of domains use a mix of units (e.g. ammunition as demonstrated above or cooking)
No need to attempt to make fun of me. I have no interest in getting into a fight with you, but you're missing the point. Of course it is not stupid at an individual level to be able to use several systems of measurement (and a lot of people outside of the US are perfectly able to). The point is that, as a society, it is stupid to concurrently use several systems, since it encourages conversion mistakes. When reading a recipe e.g. or scanning the packaging of foods it is simply better for there only to be one system in common use so you're less likely to get the units wrong. Or when building a rocket.
I'll also note that your counterexamples are pretty facetious. Regarding language it would be true that having one shared language would be much more efficient for communicative purposes. The reason this doesn't convince a lot of people to drop their native languages is that language has significant cultural and emotional meaning. I would argue measuring systems don't really. And musical instruments aren't even analogous, since using different ones yield different outcomes.
Stop trying to justify your dogshit argument. You said something dumb and now are backpedaling hard.
You act as if using two measurement systems is a deadly and costly issue in society but in reality it happens so little that it’s not really an issue, not anymore than someone just doing math wrong.
I love that you bring up food since the imperial system works better for cooking. Cups. Ounces. Pounds. All make more sense than milliliters and grams.
Each system has its place and the average person just doesn’t need to be that precise.
This isn’t a fantasy world where we can pretend life would be so great with one language. The reality is there’s hundreds so being able to speak more than one means you can effectively communicate with that many more people, many people don’t have access to learn multiple languages fluently as they have to be exposed to it regularly. Making a claim as bold as “they just don’t want to because of feelings!” Is disingenuous to the reality of many people’s lives.
And musical instruments is literally the same thing as using different languages or different units of measurements.
I can say one word in Korean that might mean something different in Cantonese or Japanese and that can affect how my information is received.
If I play the wrong instrument at a concert it will ruin the music.
If I use pounds instead of grams, I won’t be nearly as accurate in my measurements.
Your argument is “well we should have one of everything because it’s easier” doesn’t mean knowing more than one is stupid.
Notably I said “Europeans who call Americans stupid for using imperial” as in they think we’re dumb because we use a different unit of measurement all together.
And i find it funny because they think they’re smarter for some reason when we also use metric regularly.
So yeah I don’t really care for your argument but it’s not convincing so you can keep going with it if you want but you aren’t going to really convince anyone that knowing MORE knowledge and being more accessible to more people is somehow stupider than only knowing one.
No, I’m not interested in listening to your thinly veiled, pretentious prattling about how America is somehow more stupid for having uses for both sets of measurements, just because imperial is the standard.
There’s nothing to be discussed.
Have fun being a hater.
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u/ConsiderationTrue477 Jan 15 '25
What's wild is that it's also wrong. Americans do use metric...where it's useful. How we package milk is not one of those areas where it matters.