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

  • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
    4·
    21 hours ago

    I just don’t believe you at all.

    There are 12 inches in a foot. So the scale of a foot is 12x that of an inch.

    There are 100cm in 1m. That is 100x.

    Europeans convert cm to m very frequently, and it’s a scale shift 10x larger than the one of inch-foot.

    We also convert km to m frequently, which is a 1000x scale shift. It’s more than half that of yard-mile.

    The reason you don’t convert often is because it is a pain in the ass to do so. Not the other way around.

    The reason you say “an eight of a foot” has meaning, while “0.125 feet” does not. However, saying “125 meters” is way easier for both the listener and the talker than “an eighth of a kilometer”. If it weren’t, we’d say 1/8km, since nothing in metric prevents you from doing that.