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submitted 2 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] shinratdr@lemmy.ca 155 points 2 months ago

For proof that this thread is just people justifying what they know as better somehow, look no further than Canada.

We do cooking temps in Fahrenheit, weather in Celsius. Human weights in pounds, but never pounds and oz. Food weights in grams, cooking weights in pounds and oz. Liquid volume in millilitres and litres, but cooking in cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. Speed & distance in kilometres, heights in feet and inches.

Try and give this any consistency and people will look at you like you’re fucked. The next town is 100km over, I’m 5ft 10in, a can of soda is 355ml, it’s 21c out and I have the oven roasting something at 400f. Tell me it’s 68f out and I will fight you.

People like what they are used to, and will bend over backwards to justify it. This becomes blatantly obvious when you use a random mix of units like we do, because you realize that all that matters is mental scale.

If Fahrenheit is “how people feel” then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft? They aren’t. You just know the scale in your head, so when someone says they’re 7ft tall you say “dang that’s tall”. That’s it.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 2 months ago

then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft? They aren’t. You just know the scale in your head, so when someone says they’re 7ft tall you say “dang that’s tall”. That’s it.

to be clear, we use feet and inches, and there is historical precedent for breaking things down once they get past a certain grouping, we only have 10 fingers after all. To me the difference between 200cm and 220 is literally fuck all. You ask me the difference between 4 ft and 6ft and i can pretty quickly tell you.

I find it weird that when measuring height in metric, people using cm exclusively, i've noticed this a lot actually, people will use cm or mm in places where it arguably doesn't make any sense. I could see the justification for doing math maybe, but like, that defeats the whole point of it being metric no?

Shouldn't you be using meters and cm for height specifically? Since most people are a good bit over one meter i feel like it would make sense to do it that way. But then again that's just kind of a shit bucket worth of options you have, ideally you would use decimeters, but nobody uses those things for some reason.

[-] TheKingBombOmbKiller@lemm.ee 8 points 2 months ago

I find it weird that when measuring height in metric, people using cm exclusively, i’ve noticed this a lot actually, people will use cm or mm in places where it arguably doesn’t make any sense. I could see the justification for doing math maybe, but like, that defeats the whole point of it being metric no?

Why is that defeating the whole point of being metric? If you know someone is 183 cm tall, you also know that they are 1.83 m tall. If its easier to say the length in cm, you do. No need for "one meter and eighty-three centimeters" or "one point eighty-three meters", just "a hundred and eighty-three centimeters". Often you just skip saying the "centimeters" part as well, because most people can see that you're not the size of a skyscraper without getting a ruler out.

[-] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

yeah idk, i guess it's just weird to me, because here in the us if you measured someones height in inches alone, you would be chased out of a room. We strictly use feet and inches, and then yards if referring to a more "broad" range. So you can very safely assume something is in feet and inches if its just two numbers stuck together.

I feel like i could very easily get confused with metric if i'm not running a consistent rule for default units. Seems like an easy way to get a random x10 error in there to me.