I sometimes use millitonne (mt) instead of kilogram to keep people on their toes. I’ve learned that some people doesn’t like to have their weight measured in any kind of tonne.
As someone not born to the metric system but who’s tried to lean into it, this is something I’ve always found a little difficult. “A thousandth of a meter” isn’t a useful concept to me. I don’t think we are good at conceiving of things in their thousands, with good proportionality. I would rather just have a singular name like “squajibbles” for milimeters and memorize an intuitive sense of what that is. I realize I can do that with the word “milimeters” too but my brain sometimes gets stuck on unpacking the math. I was reading Dune last night and the expression “millions of decaliters” really stopped me in my tracks. I felt like I had to start with one liter, a sodastream bottle, and multiply it up. I’d rather have some concept like “fuckajiter” which means an Olympic swimming pool and work with that.
Not really being critical here. Metric is better. But intuitiveness is one of the qualities of a measurements system that makes it more or less appealing and I’ve always found imperial has a slight edge there that makes it harder to just drop as a complete loser of a system.
EDIT: yes, internet, I know the only legal thing to say about metric / imperial is that metric is the only system and imperial is for American asshole cavemen. Oh well. Fuck me for offering thoughts from someone trying to move to metric. I should hide my shame.
I would rather just have a singular name like “squajibbles” for milimeters and memorize an intuitive sense of what that is. I realize I can do that with the word “milimeters” too but my brain sometimes gets stuck on unpacking the math.
This is, in fact, exactly what metric users do in their daily lives… We don’t do math in our heads every time we measure something. We know from experience how large all the units are and pick the one that’s appropriate for a given situation, just like you do.
When you measure something using inches, you don’t then say “it’s this many 1/36ths of a yard” unless you specifically need to convert it into yards for some reason.
Similarly, when we measure something using millimeters, we don’t say “it’s this many 1/1000ths of a meter”. It’s just a millimeter. Don’t get hung up on the prefix, just ignore it and treat it as a unit of a particular size.
I figured that’s what people born to metric do. It’s different when you’re learning it as an outsider, as an adult consciously absorbing the system.
The point isn’t to have an intuitive sense of what a millimeter is just by knowing what a meter is. You have to learn both units individually to have intuition about them. The point is to know that a measurement of 500mm is 0.5m without having to do any math in your head beyond moving a decimal point.
Yes but when you don’t have that intuitive sense through extensive use or being born to it, the math gets in the way as you’re trying to form it.
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.
You just named the main advantage of the metric system as unintuitive and the opposite (squajibbles, fuckajiter, feet, toes, elbows) as the main advantage of the imperial system. Yet, you say that metric is better. I don’t understand. Why do you find metric better then?
I understand that intuitiveness is subjective and that how a person is raised or lectured alters the view on what is intuitive. From a logical perspective, however, I find the metric system much more intuitive as the names of the metrics denote exactly what we are dealing with (except for the case of tonnes). Yes, maybe the wording is confusing. But from the word itself you can infer what is meant, given you know what milli, giga, mega, nano, pico, etc mean. Its just times or divided by 1000. What is feet in miles or nautical miles? Gotta look that up!
Well metric is obviously better for conversions which helps a great deal. I think my intuition problem either goes away with extensive use or being born to it.
I do really like the “foot” as a highly human-relatable unit. At 4 feet tall, a man is aberrantly small or a dwarf. At 5 feet tall, a man is normal but short. At six feet high, a man is tall. At 7 feet tall, he is aberrantly big. It’s a highly usable human scale thing and there isn’t a great analogue in metric. Maybe you get used to decimeters (wait… decameters?) too but they are less commonly used. Giving someone’s height in centimeters has never gotten familiar for me. And the deca/deci thing I think undermines your intuitive point a little. These are easily confused.
I think millimeters and milliliters are great for precision. Imperial sucks below 1 inch or 1 ounce. All fraction bullshit.
So each system has its pluses on intuition. But metric has the conversions advantage and the precision advantage so that’s what wins for me.
