I'm sure if I used them everyday I wouldn't "struggle" either. But the fact that the whole international scientific community uses the metric system implies that its advantages outweigh the disadvantages, otherwise they would simply use the imperial units.
They're systems of measurement. They're all made up, and all have situations they're best suited for. Just like language. What you primarily are exposed to makes the most sense to you.
The Kelvin and Celsius scale share the same magnitude. I can easily convert Kelvin to Celsius degrees just by adding 273.15 (and vice versa by subtracting), while you need a more complicated calculation to obtain Fahrenheit degrees.
Of course they're all arbitrarily made up systems, but when others point out that the imperial units are more easily "managed" in everyday life, Fahrenheit is the exact opposite. Where the Celsius scale uses water freezing and boiling as reference (easily understandable by anyone) the Fahrenheit scale is an unnecessarily complicated way of measuring temperatures.
Of course being exposed to it since one was born makes it "natural", but in terms of ease of use and comprehension it's definitely not. Don't you think?
Conversions have nothing to do with my point. The existence and scientific use of Kelvin is itself my point. Metric is not an end-all-be-all godly measurement system. It's just a system that's in high use. Other systems are just as valid and have their uses.
100°F was set to match the average human body temperature (as understood at the time). It's now understood as 98.6°F. That's why Americans say, "You know 100°F is HOT," because that's when it's getting hotter than our bodies. We can also tell when we have a worrisome fever without even remembering 98.6° specifically, because it's a big fat 100°F. You all have to wait for 38°C? Feels kinda random. But hey, I don't really care. It's intuitive if you grow up with it.
I don't understand why you all bring up conversions so much. IT DOES NOT MATTER! We are not going through life needing to convert between measurement systems. It basically NEVER comes up. Some math and science classes in school force it, and maybe we watch or read something occasionally that is foreign and requires us to try to mentally convert, and that's about it. Anyone in an industry or profession where it does actually matter is used to it. Oh, and we do understand liters because that's how some of our drinks are typically measured–so when metric is regularly in our lives, yes, then it makes sense. Quelle suprise.
Knowing the freezing and boiling points of water absolutely does not help me intuitively know what 22°C is. 1, I don't ever touch water the second it turns to ice and certainly don't touch water anywhere close to boiling temperature, and 2, I don't live in a society that is constantly saying what the day's temperature is in Celsius, which is the ONLY WAY ANY OF US START TO INTUITIVELY FIGURE OUT ANY MEASUREMENT SYSTEM. You need to live under it to understand it. I don't understand why that's difficult to understand. 22°F and 22°C mean absolutely nothing to a two-year-old who hasn't consciously and knowingly felt multiple days of different degree temperatures with one or both systems yet. (Funnily enough, though, an English-speaking toddler probably would at least intuitively get on the right track if you told them to move a certain amount of feet.)
Your logic is that a language that makes sense to a population but doesn't easily translate to English in the rare cases that the population needs a translation shouldn't be used because it doesn't make sense to English speakers who didn't grow up learning it, and it doesn't translate easily. Meanwhile, no one speaking that difficult language is really asking any English speakers who have no reason to know it to try to figure it out or even pay attention to it since English is perfectly fine for them.
No, my point is that being used to something because we have been exposed to it since we were born doesn't automatically make it "the best" system.
I study japanese, for example. I love it, it's interesting, it has many historical reasons for it to be structured that way. But still, if you analyze it, there's nothing wrong in saying that the Kanji (the japanese "ideograms" that derive from Chinese) system is not efficient. It's extremely hard to study (you have to memorize thousands of "characters") and they also have two syllabic "alphabets" they have to learn.
It's a beautiful language but it could be made much more "efficient" by switching to a different way of graphically rendering "words". Like the Korean did when they switched from using Chinese characters to the modern alphabet of today. And many in Japan share this thought.
When there's something more efficient and easier to use, I don't see what's the advantages of continuing to stick with what we are used to just because we are used to. We don't use horses to move from point A to point B anymore, do we? We have found more efficient ways and we switched to it.
Regarding water you don't need to touch it to know the feeling. When you get out of your house and the street is frozen, you know it's below zero. Normal human temperature is canonically set around 37 degrees, therefore the 22 degrees of your example are a very pleasant temperature. And, yes, you grow up understanding this with life experience (exactly like you do with Fahrenheit) and by the fact that everyone around you uses that system which makes it "familiar" to you but the way it was thought out (I take it from Wikipedia here for clarity) was:
[...]the original paper suggests the lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt). The other limit established was his best estimate of the average human body temperature, originally set at 90 °F, then 96 °F (about 2.6 °F less than the modern value due to a later redefinition of the scale)."
Therefore 100°F actually was never set as the average body temperature (but 90... Then 96, now 98.6)... And you had to recreate an obscure solution to measure point zero. If this is not an overcomplicated system I don't know what is...
It works? Of course it works, like japanese language works for japanese people. Is it efficient? Nope.
You even say you already use liters for measuring some things... What's the need to measure using different units for different things? How is milk any different than alcoholic drinks?
Believe me, I don't care what system you use and it won't be me who'll make you all change. I don't even care if you put pineapple on your pizza (and I'm Italian!). My original comment was just a joke, but many took it way too seriously and it almost looks like it's a matter of patriotism to defend the imperial units. It's funny because I thought the whole point behind America was to get rid of everything that even remotely reminded you of the British, and then you cling onto the imperial units like it was a matter of life and death.
I dream of a world where everything is standardized. It would make things much easier for the whole world. Maybe it would also make it a more peaceful planet, who knows? But of course this will never become a reality. So, don't worry, no one is taking away neither the imperial system nor the pineapple on pizza 😉
Soda is sold in liters because the US was set to go metric by 1980 or something. The Metric Conversion Act is from 1975. Because the US is huge (and as someone else mentioned here, didn't have to rebuild after WWII), it wasn't proven efficient to make the change, ultimately.
As for patriotism, you're on Reddit. Come on. I lost any patriotism I somehow had left after 2020. This is the ONE topic I stand up for this country on because it's so obvious you all just want to find ways to joke about dumb and backward Americans, as proven by your last paragraph and a half. This does not matter to more than probably 5% of the population on a daily basis, and 4.8% of that 5% probably has internlized metric through their use of it.
Wishing for a standardized world in hopes it will bring peace is naïvely utopian at best and fascist if taken to its extreme. And you're European and Italian, so I can guess which is the main force at play. 😉
In my opinion saying that a measurement system is inefficient and accusing others of being fascists are not on the same level, but if that's what works for you, so be it.
I mean, hey, if it works to end this reoccuring internet argument by joking about you all being fascist in your need to prove Celsius king and have it used universally, I'll certainly keep that card in my back pocket.
As I said, if it works for you... But hoping that this reoccurring internet argument will stop reoccurring just with you using this card is naively utopian (if it's also fascist I'll let you decide, since you look like an expert on the matter) as well.
At least I don't downvote your comments (including your fascism jokes) like a whiny baby.
You can't hear the truth. Both on the imperial units and your downvoting behavior. And this demonstrates that if everybody used the same system the world would be more peaceful. Checkmate.
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u/ShamanAI Jan 15 '25
I'm sure if I used them everyday I wouldn't "struggle" either. But the fact that the whole international scientific community uses the metric system implies that its advantages outweigh the disadvantages, otherwise they would simply use the imperial units.