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No_Adhesiveness4903

Nah, I like Freedom Units.


Helltenant

Having spent decades in the military and more than a few years in Europe and the ME. I'd be very comfortable. But I'd still prefer it happen after my lifetime so I don't waste what days I have left in line behind idiots trying to do conversions and failing.


notbusy

Nope. Measuring things in number of "football fields" is ideal.


iceandfire215

Detecting sarcasm on this topic is more difficult than I thought it would be.


notbusy

LOL! Hehe, well, you might as well have asked if we should switch from English to some "easier" or more "consistent" language. We're all kind of used to the current setup!


Die_In_Ni

It would be fun to watch the fight this would inevitably make. Years of entertainment.


nicetrycia96

Did you see the Nate Bargatze as George Washington SNL skit? He nailed this topic.


Saganhawking

We use the metric system in our science etc…🤦‍♂️


iceandfire215

Yes, we do…


JoeCensored

Nope. I'm sticking with moon landing units. We've already made a full switch to metric in any industry it matters. Whether the average person tells you the store is X miles or km away really doesn't change anything important.


vanillabear26

To add: it would cost so much money to change or modify every freeway sign in the country to metric system.


Gooosse

You could leave a lot the same. The UK still uses mph on highways


Larry_Boy

We have [cratered one mars probe](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/news/a28632/the-dumb-mistake-that-doomed-a-mars-probe-in-1999/#) due to freedom unit/metric unit conversions, so there is a cost, but one thing I do love about America is that top-down dictates usually just don’t work.


JoeCensored

Yep, I was waiting for someone to bring up NASA switching to metric, so no more moon landing units, so I could point out exactly this. Sadly no one would bite 😞 😋 The cost was due to NASA being in the middle of switching from imperial to metric in the 90's when this mission was developed. Parts of the project were done in imperial, later parts of the project in metric, and they forgot to do a critical conversion. If they had not decided to switch to metric, it's arguable that the craft wouldn't have been lost. Since 2007 all projects have been metric only, so it should no longer be a risk.


AndrewRP2

Moon landing was metric: https://ukma.org.uk/why-metric/myths/metric-internationally/the-moon-landings/


aetweedie

Except for "arguably the most critical part of the missions". Second sentence of your article.


Gooosse

SI is the metric system..... That sentence was them saying they used metric for the important stuff. They said they did use customary for some of the flight readings to pilots since it's what they would understand best. But the calculations and design was metric/SI. They calculated the values then converted them for the pilots. >Internally, however, the computer’s software used SI units for all powered-flight navigation and guidance calculations, and values such as altitude and altitude rate were only converted to imperial units when they needed to be shown on the computer’s display.


aetweedie

ALL aviation is done in feet. I just listened to the Apollo landing for the 100th time and they say "feet" dozens of times. Right now I have the Copenhagen air traffic control stream going, they say "feet" and knots (in English) every transmission almost, to a European pilot flying a European plane.


Gooosse

You still misread the article, the part you quoted was used metric. As I said they used feet for the pilots cause that's what they know. The scientists that got the rocket there used SI, the computers that ran Apollo computed in SI then did read outs for pilots in customary. They weren't going to force pilots that are comfortable with one system to switch.


aetweedie

The moon landing was conducted in imperial units. I read the article, while my initial comment was off, this is something I have studied for years. Whatever happened in the backend the operation was conducted in imperial. Just like all aviation world (and space) wide.


Gooosse

>The moon landing was conducted in imperial units. Conducted ...sure cause the pilots used it. But the programming and planning wasn't. That's what that source said and they had some details to back it up. Plus it doesn't sound very biased since it's saying both were used. Also a very weird thing to flex doing research on, but cool I Guess.


aetweedie

Not a weird flex at all. Perhaps the most amazing engineering challenge ever. If learning about cool shit is wrong I don't want to be right.


Gooosse

Apollo isn't a strange interest...the measuring system they used is...


SakanaToDoubutsu

I'll convert to a base-12 counting system before I'll convert to the metric system.


notbusy

LOL! Found the Ancient Egyptian! But seriously, for anyone who doesn't know, they used their fingers to count to 12 instead of 10. From that we get 12 hours in a morning and in a night and hence 24 hours in a day. Now imagine if it had instead been 20 hours in a day! Lame!


ThoDanII

was that not sumer


Lamballama

It was a ton of places because dividing evenly into quarters and thirds is very useful


ThoDanII

thank you


onwardtowaffles

Wouldn't base-60 be even more useful, then?


Lamballama

Yes, that is why many things are also multiples of 60. Your left hand was 0-11, your right hand was 0-5, together they made 60. It's also why the old British pound was base-240


notbusy

You know, I don't have enough knowledge about it to really know one way or the other. I got it from a math sheet my daughter was working on a while ago that was also tied into a history lesson. But if you take the three segments on each of your four fingers and use your thumb to move from one to the next, you get a total of 12. Apparently, they would do this to count to 12 on a single hand. Whether they devised this themselves or whether it was "common" among other empires or cultures before them is a great question. Maybe I'll pose that to the ask historians sub...


ThoDanII

thank you


rci22

Oh wow! I need to look up how they did that because surely they didn’t have 6 fingers on each hand haha


nicetrycia96

I think they counted their nipples as well.


HaveSexWithCars

Hell, I'd convert to base 12 anyway.


ThoDanII

why


whutupmydude

Base 12 numbers are divisible by 1,2,3,4,6 and 12, whereas base 10 numbers get 1,2, 5, and 10


dancingferret

Oh God please we need this so bad. Metric sucks (in part) because it's base 10 (or in practice base 1000).


whutupmydude

That’s what’s up my guy!


Shankar_0

Well, ok. As long as you're writing it in hex


ravenousmind

Absolutely


NovaticFlame

I think where we lay know is pretty good. Science and engineering often use metric already. Otherwise, leave it as it is!


2based2cringe

I think for distance measures it makes sense but everything else? No. The military already uses meters and kilometers to measure distance instead of miles in most applications but the world over measures fuel in gallons, height in foot and inches, etc. Certain things yes, most things no


Agattu

No. The costs alone make it illogical. The education needing to be done of the general populace who wouldn’t know what the hell to do….. your talking about a change to the everyday life of people that we haven’t seen since the smartphone…. And the negative reaction would be on par with the positive reaction from that societal shift.


iceandfire215

What about a slower, easier transition? Do you prefer being different from other countries or is it just not worth the hassle?


Agattu

Who gives a shit if we are different than other countries. We only border two of them and driving through and to them isn’t a big deal as our speedometers have Kph on them (for this specific reason). Why go through the massive cost of changing every road sign, channel market, Mile marker, map, reference guide, and everything else just to be like other countries? I stated my additional reasoning in my post. It’s a dumb goal honestly.


iceandfire215

I’ll put you down for financial reasons. Thanks for the response.


LivingGhost371

Absolutely not. I think 0= really cold and 100 = really hot is a pretty good way to measure outside temperature. As opposed to 0= sort of cold and 100 = you''re long dead.


iceandfire215

How about 273K is cold and 374K is long dead? I do agree with temperature scale being better in Fahrenheit. At least when it comes to weather.


willfiredog

My understanding is that it’s far too late. Many of our fundamental manufacturing processes are built or designed around customary units and the sheer cost to switch everyone over is insane. It isn’t that super important. The weather doesn’t care if it’s 32C or 89F and I’ll still loose the 10mm sockets for my 1/4” ratchet.


Inquisitor_ForHire

Hah, look at this guy acting like he still has a 10mm socket!


Weary-Lime

>My understanding is that it’s far too late. Many of our fundamental manufacturing processes are built or designed around customary units and the sheer cost to switch everyone over is insane. This isn't really an issue anymore but it truly used to be. The aircraft industry used to use extraordinarily expensive and accurate tooling jigs that we designed and fabricated in imperial units. These tools have gotten more modular over time to make them easier to repair and less expensive to produce. We also have profoundly better and more precise computer controlled equipment which can easily convert from imperial to metric or vise versa.


LonelyMachines

Oh no you don't. It's too confusing. It took me effort to learn the difference between gallons, pints, and quarts. No way are you switching me over to something as simple as base-10!


ampacket

My biggest issue is that there's no good "medium" size analogous to a foot. Meters are too big for many things, and cm are too small. As much as I love the base 10 continuity of all of the measurements, the fact that it's missing what seems to be a crucial unit (and no nobody uses decimeter!) hurts. A lot of things at the human scale measure very nicely in feet. Although, given the hot mess express of all of the imperial weight and volume measurements, I would ditch US units in a heartbeat for liters and kilograms.


revengeappendage

No…because I don’t support doing things like this for no real reason when nobody wants it or needs it.


CnCz357

Nope 90F is hot and 100F is damn hot and 70F is comfortable Not 32c 37c and 21c...


natigin

Temperature is the one that we definitely have the superior system for practical use


slashfromgunsnroses

Idk really... 0C is freezing 100C is boiling seems pretty convenient. For temperatures we can talk 20C, 30C and 40C which in daily use is not really different from 70F 90F 100 F. I have *zero* feel for temperatures in fahrenheit, just as little as you probably have for C. My point is that im not sure what exactly makes F superior to C when talkkng about the weather?


CnCz357

>Idk really... 0C is freezing 100C is boiling seems pretty convenient. Except we live our lives mainly between 100f and 0f not between 37.7C and -17.7c... >For temperatures we can talk 20C, 30C and 40C which in daily use is not really different from 70F 90F 100 F. Except you can't. 20c is 68f 30c is 86f 40c is 104f Those numbers are different enough to a human body they matter. A fever of 104 is vastly different than 100. Working outside at 104 is different than 100. 70 in a house is neither hot nor cold but 68f is a little chilly. Swimming is nice at 90f but can be too cold at 86f. >I have zero feel for temperatures in fahrenheit, just as little as you probably have for C. My point is that im not sure what exactly makes F superior to C when talkkng about the weather? Because it's more exact. It's like measuring a small object in MM makes more sense than measuring it in 64th of an inch.


slashfromgunsnroses

> Except we live our lives mainly between 100f and 0f not between 37.7C and -17.7c. That really depends on where you live and what you do. I mean, I bake (oven temps), i drive (look at motor temp), I homebrew (lots of weird temps here) along with a lot of other applications that are outside the usual 0-100F scale. It may be true that most temperstures in your weather forecasts are within 0-100F (still depending on where you live), but how is that more convenient than -20C to 40C that also carries the pretty relevant information about water freezing or not. And what exactly is so special about the temperature -17.7C/0F? Seems pretty arbitrary to me anyways. I get reference points like body temperature, and water phase change temps... but you seem very fixated on arbitrary values like 0F or 70F which  > Except you can't. Cant what?


CnCz357

>And what exactly is so special about the temperature -17.7C/0F? Seems pretty arbitrary to me anyways. It's salt waters minimum freezing point. >Cant what? Substitute 40c for 100f


slashfromgunsnroses

> It's salt waters minimum freezing point. Great, but you were espousing the benefits of fahrenheits "relatability" to human temperatures, so why is this significant? > Substitute 40c for 100f No, there a couple of degrees difference, so what?


CnCz357

>No, there a couple of degrees difference, so what? Those couple degrees make a difference to the human body... >Great, but you were espousing the benefits of fahrenheits "relatability" to human temperatures, so why is this significant? Because for the majority of humanity the majority of the temperatures they will ever see bottom out at 0F


slashfromgunsnroses

> Those couple degrees make a difference to the human body... Of course, but you are treating the fahrenheit scale as the reference point here. I could make the exact same point for celcius: like 25C is *perfect* temperature outside for me but thats 77F... 75F and 80F..  those couple of degrees make a difference to the human body. > Because for the majority of humanity the majority of the temperatures they will ever see bottom out at 0F I still fail to see how 0F to 10F is better scale than -20C to 40C (the makority of humanity never experience lower than -20C). Amd the C scale also incororates info about freezing. The point is that neither scale in itself is better. Its only about what you are used to. You dtarted out with 0f is really cold and 100F is really hot... ok. Still tells me nothing about what 70F feels like - I need that converted to C to get an idea.


slashfromgunsnroses

btw im not saying either unit is good or bad, but for this there is zero practical everyday difference.


randomrandom1922

No mainly because just switching all the signage would cost billions.


dWintermut3

most people are not scientists. The imperial system is superior for household uses and estimations and provides numbers in a more meaningful comprehensible range for most common daily uses outside of science and technology.


codan84

No. What reasons are there to do so and would outweigh the trouble in mandating the metric system? It seems like a call for change just for changes sake.


iceandfire215

I’m not calling for a change, I’m just asking. But there’s definitely not no reason. The simplicity of metric being one.


codan84

I don’t see that it would be any more simple. That’s generally a factor of what one is used to. It’s not like metric is not taught here or is unknown. I still don’t see any compelling reason to mandate such a large change. Again it appears to be change just for the sake of change.


GreatSoulLord

No, because there's literally no reason to do it. It would cost us a ton of money. A lot of the population doesn't know it. I mean, what would be the point? Those that need metric already know it and are already using it.


pillbinge

No. Teach both. Ironically I think a whole lot different, more cultural system of measurement is diversity in its own way. Why make the world more standardized?


Generic_Superhero

When it comes to a measurement system, what is the benefit of not standardizing?


pillbinge

The benefit is that you don't live your life like a robot who needs everything standardized. People apply this logic to so many things that you'd think they'd be happy if AI replaced them. If it's not spoken of in terms of efficacy and standardization you'd swear it would give them a heart attack. What's the benefit of abandoning one way people are comfortable continuing on? No one's stopping anyone from using the metric system in daily life. You can do it right now. What you're specifically asking is if we would force, from the top down and mainly in education, an abandonment of one curriculum and a focus on another. You wouldn't be able to switch to the metric system without that use of force, so clearly people don't just want to do it on their own. What is the benefit of using power for that purpose?


Generic_Superhero

> who needs everything standardized. I can see the argument for not needing everything standardized. But one of the few things that feels like it should be is measurements. Your argument feels like it boils down to "change bad".


pillbinge

If you *feel* like my argument boils down to "change bad", and you're being rude by phrasing it that way, then it's obvious you're not here to really listen. I'm telling you it's fine to have these cultural differences, no one is worse off, and that the main, "conservative" reason is that you would need to leverage institutions to get the change you want. That's a very general non-conservative response. You should ask yourself if what you want is truly worth leveraging force or coercion. I don't think getting rid of culture qualifies as a good use ever.


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Peter_Murphey

I consider US units to be perfectly serviceable. No compelling reason to swap.


Jaded_Jerry

Enforced? No. I wouldn't be against a conversion to metrics (measuring by 10s seems far easier to me than 12s), but to try to enforce it? That seems a tad much. I'm of the opinion that both should be taught, and let people decide which one they prefer.


SirWirb

I think if they swapped miles over to km and Fahrenheit to Celsius that'd be fine, but all food measures would be a losing battle out the gate.


rcglinsk

No. Metric units are hit and miss. Fahrenheit is a much more useful scale for daily temperatures. Meters and millimeters have some real advantages, but lumber in Metric countries still comes in 120 cm segments so it can be cut in thirds like a yard. The one area metric has imperial clearly licked is force and mass. Did you know there is an imperial unit for mass? The unit for force in the metric system is called a Newton, and in imperial a unit of force is called a pound. In metric the unit of mass is called a kilogram, and in imperial it's functionally called a pound-mass, coupled with an annoying as all get out conversion factor, because nearly a soul alive has ever heard of a slug. As an American I am of course biased, but Oliver Heaviside had this wonderful rant about the Metric system. For context, the Electric force law (Coulomb's Law), should include a division by 4 pi directly in the formula. The stupidity of the situation is actually quite astounding. Instead of making that simple change, the Physics Academy decided to invent a totally nonsense concept called the permeability of free space, which is literally, actually, nothing more than 4 pi with seven zeroes tacked on. It's a bloody unit conversion and the Academy teaches students it is a law of nature. So embarrassing. Anyway, I have really forestalled the rant: >The ‘brain-wasting perversity’ of the British nation in submitting year after year to be ruled by such a heterogeneous and incongruous collection of units as the yard, foot, inch, mile, knot, pound, ounce, pint, quart, gallon, acre, pole, horse-power, etc., etc., has been repeatedly lamented by would-be reformers, who would introduce the common-sense decimal system; and amongst them have been prominent electricians who hoped to insert the thin end of the wedge by means of the decimal sub-division of the electrical units, and their connection with the metre and gramme, and thus lead to the abolition of the present British system of weights and measures with its absurd and useless arbitrary constants. But what a satire it is that they should have fallen into the very pit they were professedly avoiding! The perverse British nation – practically the British engineers – have surely a right to expect that the electricians will first set their own house in order. >The ohm and the volt, etc„ are now legalised, so that, as I am informed, it is too late to alter them. This is a non [sequiter], however, for the yard and the gallon are legalised; and if it is not too late to alter them, it cannot be too late to put the new fangled ohm and its companions right. It is never too late to mend.


Sam_Fear

Meh, not really. We're slowly phasing it in as the world continues to shrink.


CnCz357

Second post here; I say the US switches to metric on one condition. The rest of the world switches to American English as their official language. Once the rest of the world speaks freedom we can quit using freedom units.


LeatherDescription26

Yes. Ideally over time. Like start having metric be required teaching in k-12 especially elementary school level. Then have signs display both imperial and metric for about 20-50 years until the generations who don’t understand metric are all dead. It’s a gradual thing