Seriously though, I wonder if immigration is going to help with that?
Almost everyone else in the world uses metric in everyday life. Immigrants to the US have to go through the unpleasant process of adjusting to not doing so. I'm sure many (most?) of them wish they didn't have to do that. As the immigration process continues, might this lead to growing popular support for finally phasing out non-metric units?
RLY? Hello from the UK! Here we are metricated in general and then it goes a bit mad. As you know we generally have at least five ways of saying the same thing. Well actually we don't any more. Mostly metricated but we still have inches and feet etc hanging on in there.
I suspect that most other countries are the same. I recall (my Mum) buying stuff in West German markets by der pfund (slightly larger than the Imperial pound, I think).
We used to measure spirits by the gill and when we joined the EU after a while we metricated most of our measures to this: https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law/sp...
We still drink pints (obvs!)
I did say almost everyone. The UK is unusual in still retaining significantly more pre-metric units than the average country does, although still much less than the US. Road distances in miles and speed limits in miles per hour being the most obvious one. Almost everywhere on earth, other than the US and UK (and maybe a tiny handful more, such as Burma/Myanmar, Liberia, Antigua), road distances are in kilometres.
> I suspect that most other countries are the same.
Many countries have some occasional lingering use of pre-metric measurements, but 90%+ of day-to-day units are metric. In the US, it is the other way around, 90%+ of day-to-day units are non-metric. The UK is unusual in lying somewhere in-between.
> I recall (my Mum) buying stuff in West German markets by der pfund (slightly larger than the Imperial pound, I think).
Since 1854, Germany has used the "metric pound" (Zollpfund) of 500 grams exactly, as opposed to the US/UK pound of exactly 453.59237 grams (since 1959; before then, the US and UK had slightly different definitions of the pound). Prior to the metric system, almost every country in Europe had its own unique "pound", all of which were near (but not exactly) 500 grams. Some countries (e.g Australia) metricated by dropping the pound entirely, but several West European countries (such as France and Germany) instead metricated it to be exactly 500 grams. Arguably, the metric pound actually is a metric unit (0.5kg is a sufficiently round multiple of the base unit, even if a power of 2 instead of 10), whereas the US/UK pound is not (nobody would consider 0.45359237 to be round)
> We still drink pints (obvs!)
In Australia, we still measure beer by pints too. But our pint is different from the UK pint. The UK pint is exactly 568.26125 mL. The US liquid pint is exactly 473.176473 mL. In Australia, a pint of beer is exactly 570 mL (metricated by rounding up from the UK pint), except (for obscure historical reasons no one seems to be able to explain) in South Australia were a pint is instead defined as 425 mL (a volume of beer which in other Australian states is called a "schooner").
However, stuff like beer sizes falls into that "10% of surviving non-metric" which many countries have, so I don't think it really counts.
Farenheit is no longer a thing these days here. I remember people talking about temps into the "100s" eg when Wimbledon was on and it was a proper scorcher. Have not heard that in at least 10 years, probably closer to 20. Ironically enough we have had a lot of record breaking temps in the last 10 years, across a record of about 150 years of decent data.
I'd love to see you pour a pint to five decimal places! Our Weights and Measures Act of ??? used to be pretty draconian and so was enforcement but that seems to have slipped somewhat. Our pint glass has a mark next to a crown (and an EU marking!) and the beer must hit it - you don't have to allow for the shape of the meniscus but a German used to having a decent "Feltwebel" (a nickname for the head on a beer - Sgt Major) is going to get into trouble! We also have special pint glasses with a longer section above the rib to allow for a larger head but still allow the pint mark to be met. I haven't seen those for a while.
I note you mention schooners and the like in AUS (and why on earth do you have a different pint size - it doesn't really matter) and that basically proves my point about routine odd units still in use, everywhere. We all have our little peccadilloes ...
I think a lot of people who have attachment to non-metric units, their attachment is more to the names (and in some cases the interrelationships) rather than the precise values. I wonder why more consideration wasn't given to metrication by redefinition:
1 metric inch = 25.0 mm exactly (0.4 mm shorter than the old inch)
1 metric foot = 30 cm exactly (4.8 mm shorter than the old foot)
1 metric yard = either 90 cm exactly (1.44 cm shorter than old yard) or 1 metre exactly (8.56 cm longer)
1 metric mile = either 1.5 km exactly (609 m shorter than the old mile) or 1.6 km exactly (9 m shorter than the old mile) (either way, with 1 metre = 1 metric yard, 1 mile would be either 1500 or 1600 yards, which is easier to remember than 1760)
1 metric pound = 500 grams (46.41 g heavier than the old pound)
1 metric ounce = either 30 grams (so a metric pound is actually 16⅔ metric ounces–1.65 grams heavier than the old ounce) or 31.25 grams (so a metric pound is exactly 16 metric ounces–2.95 grams heavier) or 25 grams (20 metric ounces to a metric pound, 3.35 grams lighter than the old metric pound)
I know some people would get confused by old versus metric, but people already have to deal with some of that already (e.g. troy ounces vs avoirdupois ounces, short vs long ton, UK vs US gallon, statute miles vs nautical miles, etc). Actually some European countries did pursue this approach seriously – both France and Germany redefined the "pound" as 500g in the 19th century, and in both countries it still sees some use in informal contexts. But in the English speaking world, it was considered, but for whatever reason never seriously pursued.
> I'd love to see you pour a pint to five decimal places!
I wonder why the UK doesn't follow (most of) Australia's example and redefine the pint (for the purposes of draught beer only) as 570 mL?
> I note you mention schooners and the like in AUS (and why on earth do you have a different pint size - it doesn't really matter) and that basically proves my point about routine odd units still in use, everywhere.
People don't really think of standardised beer glass sizes as units of measure. Nobody would try to measure anything (except the quantity of beer they've drunk) in schooners, unless they were indulging in a colourful metaphor. Traditionally Australia has this complicated system of 6-7 different beer glass sizes, which is somewhat different in each state – originally they were all defined in terms imperial fluid ounces, and then with metrication they were rounded off to the nearest 5mL – but in practice most places only have two of them on offer, occasionally a third. So a "pint" in Australia is really no more a unit of measure than a "schooner" or "middy" or "pot" is. A few places (generally German/Austrian themed bars/restaurants) also sell draught beer by the stein (1 litre) or half-stein (500 mL). Unlike the UK, in Australia you can legally sell draught beer in whatever sized glass you wish, so long as it isn't likely to deceive customers.
Under 16 CFR § 500.8, metric-only labelling is illegal in the US for many categories of consumer products. Does any other country make metric-only labelling illegal?
1. beer and cider (not e.g. wine, spirits or non-alcoholic beverages) must be sold by the pint, half pint, or third of a pint (strong beers and at tasting festivals mostly) when delivered "draught" ie they pump it into a glass, rather than handing you a can or bottle.
2. milk can be sold by the pint in re-usable containers (typically glass bottles for the purpose). I'm not sure this is actually mandated by law, but since it depends on the containers even if it wasn't you can't easily switch.
3. precious metals like gold, silver and platinum, are sold by the troy ounce.
The Brexiteers would probably like to push harder on this, but they're old and their "brave" economic experiment is a colossal failure, so "Let's make things worse" went off the agenda pretty firmly, now it's all about rescuing some sort of dignity from the mess.
(and I come from the UK which is still half-metric)
[EDIT] I've just been informed LRH didn't completely die. I'll petition for the singularity reset.
> The Holocene calendar, also known as the Holocene Era or Human Era (HE), is a year numbering system that adds exactly 10,000 years to the currently dominant (AD/BC or CE/BCE) numbering scheme, placing its first year near the beginning of the Holocene geological epoch and the Neolithic Revolution, when humans shifted from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and fixed settlements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar
(Of course, the choice to add exactly 10,000 is a compromise to make it trivial to interconvert between HE and AD.)
You can even buy Human Era calendars: https://shop-us.kurzgesagt.org/collections/calendar
The 2000/2001 start of the 21st century is reasonable debate. Mathematically, 2001 makes sense. In terms of being excited during the 1999→2000 transition with all the digits incrementing, it makes more sense socially to have celebrated the new millennium and century then.
All we have to do to get a year 0 is decide that there was one.
But it’s not one, it’s 0
The thing that gets me is that when they invented the CE notation, they went to the trouble of inventing a “BCE” notation for BC. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
Also while we are fixing broken modular arithmetic, let’s add a proper modulo division operator to all the languages that got % wrong :)
I'll change when we have a metric clock used regularly.
By which I mean, something like using rods, but with SI-prefixes.
Because mega-rod and giga-rod sound hilarious to me.
Also those units end up with a lot of pretty alien things as their bases, 10e-35 meters isn't super useful for human things. Whereas a rod maps pretty well to "down the hallway a bit", and a half a rod works pretty well for "the other side of the room". meter and foot work well for this as well, but they don't sound nearly as cool, though I would be willing to measure distances in "kilo-feet" just to screw with people. Alternatively a system of esoteric units starting with the meter would also work for what I'm thinking about (say, 12 meters to the dimber, with 60 dimbers to a schlimmel).
Communication is more important than measurement. Nearly everybody else needs to abandon their languages and adopt English, Spanish or Mandarin - because standards. Half the people of Europe share no common language and can't communicate properly with one another, if only we could talk some sense into them and get them onto a standard.
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, Zürich is contemplating making school children study English before French/Italian. That's great, except Switzerland is already quad-lingual, depending on canton. Making it more difficult for a german-speaking person in Zürich to go to Geneva probably won't be great for unity. Instead of all cantons adopting one of the existing four as the universal language, they are now trying for English, it seems.
(As an immigrant observer.)
That’s likely deliberate and quite sensible, as elevating one of the existing four would probably cause disunity.
Something similar happened at the creation of the modern Indonesian state. Rather than elevating e.g. Javanese, they imported Malay as the neutral foundation of the Indonesian language.
Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4). Feet are made up of 12 inches, a number that can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Very convenient. One yard is three feet, gaining all the divisibility benefits that feet already have, and then some.
How about volume? Especially when dealing with recipes, the customary units are extremely convenient, with perhaps one exception. One gallon is four quarts (alternatively, two pottles, but that unit is not encountered much, shame), one quart is two pints, one pint is two cups, one cup is eight fluid ounces, one fluid ounce is two tablespoons, one tablespoon is three teaspoons. Excepting the last one (three instead of two), these measures make it very easy to double and halve quantities at will. Just a little bit of math, and third and quarter measurements are not difficult either. Effectively the customary volume measurements are counting in binary.
How about temperature? What's a more convenient scale for human living conditions? 0–100 °F or -20–40 °C? I know what one I'd pick. I am aware people live in even colder and hotter environments, but the majority of people in the world don't need to worry about values outside of this range. I also think "0 is very cold" and "100 is very hot" just makes more sense than "-20 is very cold" and "40 is very hot".
Metric/SI systems have been pushed in the United States since the 1860s. The continued use of the customary units is not for lack of trying. The customary units are plenty good already, have a few advantages of their own, and SI has failed to present itself as an overall better system. We'd probably adapt just fine, but we don't want to. We already have a convenient system for everyday use. (SI is probably better in scientific fields, and it's already used in such industry, so there you go.)
[1] Yes, even the SI base units. Look up their definitions and they're all defined with very difficult to remember numbers that you can measure against physical constants. This is because old meters, grams, liters, et al were arbitrary things and physical constant definitions have been retrofitted onto them. United States customary units are likewise defined as multiplications against the SI base units. Customary units already benefit from the physical constant definitions.
The fact that the metric system is decimal and all conversations essentially consist of moving a point around are much more trivial. 1000 millimeters is a meter. 100 centimeters is a meter. 10 millimeters is a centimeters. it's in the name. Same for liters, same for kilogram. You don't need to do math, you just move a separator. It's not arbitrary, that's the big advantage.
Especially when you jump several magnitudes. 3.5 liters is 3500 milliliters. What's 3.5 gallons in ounces? eight ounces are one cup, two cups are a pint and two pint are a quart IIRC but then four quarts are a gallon? And there's more units. I always forget them and I actually tried to learn them.
448. That's not even hard. There's 128 fluid ounces per gallon. 3×128=384, add 64 to that for 448.
You could work through that from the smaller units if you didn't know off hand. Still, it's pretty unusual to want fluid ounces at that scale. Keep it at 3.5 gallons.
> 448. That's not even hard. There's 128 fluid ounces per gallon. 3×128=384, add 64 to that for 448.
I think you just unironically showed why SI is the superior system.
Also, how do you feel about degrees, minutes, and seconds?
Shhh! Don't let them know that SI's base ten counting isn't some kind of scientific absolute and is just as arbitrary as inches and feet, and if humans had 11 fingers, SI would be different.
Sometimes, they do.
Sure, Americans also use non-metric units, but that's not as unique as is claimed. First hit for "site:.uk mpg" is "MPG stands for miles per gallon and is used to show how far your car can travel for every gallon (or 4.55 litres) of fuel it uses".
A handy trick is to memorize conversions in terms of a particular reference object or entity, instead of memorizing "the" conversion factor as a decimal. For example, while I know an inch is 25.4mm, I convert volume by remembering that 5.7 liters is 350 cubic inches - for obvious reasons.
I disagree it is a false premise. If you look at major economies – other than the US and UK – >80%, >90% of units encountered in everyday life are metric. In the US, it is more like the other way around. The UK and the US are both outliers from the global average on this, but the UK to a lesser degree than the US is. No other major economy (for any reasonable definition of "major") is an outlier in that sense.
> We learn the metric system in school,
In the majority of countries worldwide, people only learn the metric system at school. The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
> Sure, Americans also use non-metric units, but that's not as unique as is claimed. First hit for "site:.uk mpg" is "MPG stands for miles per gallon and is used to show how far your car can travel for every gallon (or 4.55 litres) of fuel it uses".
That's not a very good argument – the US and the UK are the only major economies to use miles for road distances (and hence also speed, fuel efficiency, etc). All other major economies use kilometres, not miles.
If this wasn't bullshit, then people would be able to spontaneously state the criterion that produced this specific list.
I mean, the criterion exists, and therefore the list is technically correct, but nobody researches it before repeating the meme, and it's not at all obvious without research.
If the reasoning doesn't come to you naturally and intuitively, endorsing it I think is insincere. Like the redefinition that demoted Pluto from planethood.
>The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
This is too vague to even determine if true. Also the implied premise is getting silly. Teaching non-metric measurements needs to be stamped out? Do people learn about miles and gallons in hedge schools in proper countries? If so, is that to be emulated? Is it bad to teach languages other than your preferred one? Do French people know what CV stands for?
Let's forget about Liberia and Myanmar and just focus on major economies. People can argue about the definition of "major", but for the purposes of this discussion, let's define it as G20 members.
In how many G20 members does the average person make significant, regular use of non-metric measurements in their daily life? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is "only two" (US and UK), and for the US that usage is significantly more than the UK. So, there is a very real sense in which the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) are outliers on adoption of the metric system in everyday life. That's not "bullshit".
> >The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
> This is too vague to even determine if true.
I have lived my whole life in Australia. Here, non-metric measurements are not part of the government-mandated curriculum. That was true when I was a child and is true for my own children who are at school today. Schools and teachers are free to teach whatever they want (within reason), but if it isn't part of the official curriculum, there is no incentive for them to spend any significant time on it, so the vast majority won't. Most school children have heard of inches/miles/etc, but for most of them their understanding of it is limited to "outdated stuff we don't use any more but Americans still do"
Most countries worldwide are closer to Australia on this than to the US. I mean, how much time do schools in France or Germany or Japan spend on teaching how many ounces in a pound or how many yards in a mile? How many countries – other than the US – have learning details of how to use non-metric measurements in their standard school curriculum?
Canada as well. Usually I'd assume no one cares but you did say G20.
So I’d break it down like this: of the 19 countries directly in the G20 (so not counting those only indirectly in it via the EU’s membership) - 1 has high degree of everyday use of non-metric measurements (US), 16 have low, and the other two are in-between, we might say medium (UK and Canada). That leaves 80% of the G20 in the “low everyday use of non-metric measurements category”.
Unlike the UK, Canada uses kilometres rather than miles for roads, so in that regard is more metric than the UK. Although I’ve also heard that some Canadians do crazy things like use Celsius to measure room temperatures but Fahrenheit to measure oven temperatures.
This is an interesting question. The amount of usage would need to be quantified. The definition of "average person" would need to be explicit. You have data?
Whatever the data might show, I am confident it won't show a stark division between the US, Liberia, Myanmar, and every other country. But if I'm wrong, that would be interesting.
>Here, non-metric measurements are not part of the government-mandated curriculum
That's exactly what I mean about a hyper-technical argument.
Does the US have a government-mandated curriculum; is it an apples to apples comparison; does its treatment of metric measurements translate to actual classrooms, &c, &c, &c...
>how much time do schools in France or Germany or Japan spend on teaching how many ounces in a pound or how many yards in a mile
That might be interesting to compare with the US. If you have such a statistical analysis, would you share it?
the customary units were plenty good in europe too, as far as i can tell. though i guess maybe they were not the same in all countries, which may have been a motivation for the switch.
We would lose consistency between new and old MW for example or milligram and millilitre. But shouldn't it otherwise be fully consistent?
That doesn't work out so conveniently when you are measuring natural things. You get something that is say 73 inches long and dividing it in 3rds won't come out even. It's convenient for many manufactured things because for things where people will have to subdivide them manufacturers pick lengths that will be easily divisible into those subdivisions.
But manufacturers can do that in SI units too. E.g., if you were making say rods and you expected customers to need to cut them into equal pieces you could make them 84 cm (just over 33 inches). That's divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84.
> How about temperature?
What I don't get about metric temperature is why it even exists. All C really changed from F (once they flipped the direction of Celsius' original scale when had higher numbers mean colder!) is the size of the degree and the zero point.
With the other metric units (length, volume, area, mass) the new units cleaned up messes of a whole bunch of named units in all kinds of relationships. But there was no mess with F. F would have been fine as the temperature for metric and (as you noted) it actually fits in a lot better with the range of temperatures that most people have to deal with.
The thing that doesn't make sense about this argument – the US and the UK are the only major economies which haven't adopted metric for 90%+ of use cases. (Everywhere retains non-metric units in certain exceptional cases – e.g. most countries use feet for altitude in aviation, although that is largely due to the economic influence of the US, and to a lesser extent the UK.) And even the UK uses metric significantly more than the US does, despite the retention of miles for road distances being an obvious holdout.
If your argument really explains why the US hasn't switched, how does it explain the fact that the vast majority of the rest of the world has?
That said, I think economic resiliency and early mover (did)advantage are the other parts of that story. Not many nations can handle the trade impediment of their own units of measure, but the UK and US were/are both large enough. And I think because we industrialized early, switching with the rest of the world was more expensive, so we stuck with it.
English units weren’t a “more convenient” system than that used by the rest of Europe. Before the metric system, France used - feet and inches - and the French foot was composed of 12 French inches. The difference was that the French inch was a little bit longer than the English one - about 7%, although the ratio between the two varied over time, because before all this modern technology made it easier, maintaining consistent units was very hard. Feet and inches go back to the Roman Empire, but everyone ended up using a slightly different foot/inch. Even the US and UK used to use different inches (pre-1959), although the difference between the two is microscopic (but was considered important in US land surveying, since over hundreds of miles the difference can add up to several feet.) And today the US and UK still define non-metric volume measurements completely differently - the UK gallon is 20% larger than the US one
> And I think because we industrialized early, switching with the rest of the world was more expensive, so we stuck with it.
The problem with that argument is that US industry is actually more metricated than US everyday life. It is in domestic and consumer settings where the US lags the most in the adoption of the metric system; in industrial settings, it depends on the industry, but some US industries use metric heavily (for example, design and manufacturing of automobiles.)
Close to all trade, construction, design, healthcare etc in Britain is done in metric units.
The idea that 0-100F is somehow the range of “human living conditions” is completely bizarre to me, but I can see why someone from a place like the American Midwest might think this is true.
To me 0C is so much more meaningful than 0F, especially when talking about weather. The difference between -1C and 1C is something you can literally see around you. The difference between -1F and 1F is not.
Anything “below zero” is literally frozen and completely inhospitable to normal human life!
Ironic since I don't live in the midwest. I've visited there during summer once. :)
> The difference between -1C and 1C is something you can literally see around you. The difference between -1F and 1F is not. Anything “below zero” is literally frozen and completely inhospitable to normal human life!
I dunno, down to 20°F/-7°C, it's pretty easy to have liquid water still when hit by direct sunlight. It's also not really that extremely cold (I'm still fine with short sleeve shirts in the 20s F). 0°F/-17°C is where I'd say things get extremely cold and even direct sunlight ceases to melt water.
I believe you when you say you feel that way at those temperatures, but I personally wouldn’t wear just a t-shirt when at any temperature under 10C/50F.
So Fahrenheit matches the subjective temperature range where you might feel comfortable, but not me. And so you can’t make a general statement that it matches “human living conditions” when others think that Celsius better matches their comfortable range.
I wish we'd standardize the world over on DST. I prefer having an extra hour of sunshine in the evening than the morning.
Permanent DST year round!
Now if we could only get the US onto the metric system and abolish daylight saving time.