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why is the US not Metric
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soldar:

--- Quote from: Cerebus on November 11, 2019, 03:45:35 pm --- Only if you regard the end of the eighteenth century as "the modern world".
--- End quote ---

The 18th century is classified as modern history. In fact, late modern history.


--- Quote --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_periods

Modern History – After the post-classical era

    Early Modern Period – The chronological limits of this period are open to debate. It emerges from the Late Middle Ages (c. 1500), demarcated by historians as beginning with the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, in forms such as the Italian Renaissance in the West, the Ming Dynasty in the East, and the rise of the Aztec in the New World. The period ends with the beginning of the Age of Revolutions.

    Late Modern Period – Began approximately in the mid-18th century; notable historical milestones included the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence

    Contemporary History – History within living memory. It shifts forward with the generations, and today is the span of historic events from approximately 1945 that are immediately relevant to the present time. For example, the Post-Modern movement (Soviet Union and United States, 1973–present)
--- End quote ---


Cerebus:

--- Quote from: soldar on November 11, 2019, 09:48:12 pm ---
--- Quote from: Cerebus on November 11, 2019, 03:45:35 pm --- Only if you regard the end of the eighteenth century as "the modern world".
--- End quote ---

The 18th century is classified as modern history. In fact, late modern history.

--- End quote ---

The "modern world" and "modern history" aren't the same thing. You can tell because people use different words for them. People don't "fly around the history" or "Write a world of the 100 Year's War".

If your point is to stand, you'll have to go back and change bsfeechannel's  original claim to "The metric system was thought out from the ground up for the modern history" and that would clearly make a nonsense of it.
soldar:

--- Quote from: Cerebus on November 11, 2019, 10:44:29 pm --- The "modern world" and "modern history" aren't the same thing. You can tell because people use different words for them. People don't "fly around the history" or "Write a world of the 100 Year's War".

If your point is to stand, you'll have to go back and change bsfeechannel's  original claim to "The metric system was thought out from the ground up for the modern history" and that would clearly make a nonsense of it.
--- End quote ---


I have no problem with his original quote. To me saying "the metric system was thought from the ground up for the modern world" means it was meant to be a break with the past and focused on the future.

In any case, not worth arguing about.
Cubdriver:

--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on November 11, 2019, 08:16:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on November 11, 2019, 01:32:15 am ---You don’t have a country set. Are you American? Or are you in a fundamentally metric country, and only deal with a small amount of Customary? (If the latter, then you’re still within the group of people that don’t really use Customary, and thus aren’t comfortable with it the way someone is who grew up with it.)


I didn’t say that Americans ONLY see costs and risks. As I and others have said repeatedly in this thread: changes do involve costs and risks, and so one will only accept those when the benefits exceed them. At no point did anyone say that Americans see NO benefits. It’s simply that one has to weigh the benefits against the costs and risks. Do I have to spell out this basic logic in any more excruciating detail, or will me typing it out for the tenth time finally break through that noggin? ;)

--- End quote ---

Try to think if all of a sudden, instead of expressing capacity in farads, you had different units depending on the order of magnitude for expressing the same thing, each with a nonsensical (albeit "historical") relation to each other and employing different bases for whole numbers and fractions, just because some nation wants to stick to a meaningless tradition.

I think you wouldn't be happy if you now had to do the same for resistance, and that you had to apply different conversion factors depending on the order of magnitude of the resistance and the capacitance to calculate just an RC time constant.

That's what would happen if instead of metric, people opted to use their customary system to define capacitance and resistance.

If you are capable of imagining such a situation you will quickly understand how imperial sucks.

--- End quote ---

Why do you have such a huge bug up your ass about the US and the measurement system(s) we currently use?  The reasoning has been explained to you repeatedly (see, for instance, tooki's post above, quoted as part of yours).  Your example is ridiculous - no one is suddenly changing systems - we are continuing to use a system we've been using for many years, while transitioning to metric where doing so makes sense to us.  Is a base ten system fundamentally far more logical?  Yes, it is.  This fact has been acknowledged repeatedly in this thread.  The fact remains that the US is a big country with a large installed base of non-metric things.  It would cost a fortune to change everything over, replace the signs on over four MILLION miles of roads, and get everyone to think in metric units rather than the current system.  At this point, we don't feel that change is worth the cost and effort.  Deal with it.  Somehow, we seem to be doing so.

We get it - in your opinion, everything measurement-wise that is non metric is archaic, sucks, makes no sense, is stupid, <insert additional pejorative(s) of your choice>.  We don't care that you don't like it.  It currently works for us.  If it bothers you that much, feel free not to come here and not to use anything we currently make that isn't based on a metric standard.  Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ give it a rest already.

-Pat
Zero999:
Perhaps the title of the thread should be changed to "Why does anyone care the US is not Metric?" I certainly don't. I couldn't care less if anyone uses crappy imperial/customary units, so long as I know what they are i.e. it's a US pint, rather than imperial pint, so I can convert.
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