this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Coming from the UK generation that grew up during the decimalisation process, and therefore being equally comfortable with both systems, imperial measures are far less intuitive than metric. Don’t mistake simply being being used to something as it being intuitive.
We use a base 10 numeric system because that’s how many fingers & thumbs we have. Having a system of weights and measures based on that decimal system, is far more intuitive than a system that scales up through orders of distance using different scaling factors at ever order, is so unintuitive as to be absurd.
Right but if basing things on our hands makes them intuitive, it’s hard to beat “hands” and “feet” for human scale relatability.
As a craftsman, I live milimeters for precision. Very useful and easy to work with. I hate not having anything between centimeters and meters though. I know decimeters exist but nothing’s ever listed that way and so it isn’t something I’ve developed any intuitive sense of.
When I sent some measurements to my uncle to make a bed, I sent it in 200cm x 160cm. Not 2m or 20 dm. You know those exchanges because it's obvious but since people are used to cm for height, it's useful to compare stuff with yourself and that's why cm is the most used measurement for craft.
If whatever you are building fits in a hand, measurements will probably come in mm, because idk why but people enjoy 3 digit measurements.
Me, my wife, my child all have differently sized feet and hands.
Tbh, as an european I kinda absorbed a lot of imperial by just living on the anglophone internet, and honestly have nothing good to say about it.
I can intuitively guesstimate what a mile, yard, foot and inch are in metric, and I do, because it's useful in my particular corner of the Internet, not because it's a good system.
I have no idea what a gallon, stone, lbs or oz are. Volume of itself is kinda unintuitive, same with weight. Can't be bothered.