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.
As a Canadian with a living memory of when we made the switch here, I feel your pain. Though to be fair, I was a child at the time and so probably had an easier time of it? But in some ways, I’m still transitioning to this day!
Take temperature, for example. When Canada went metric, all the weather reports switched to Celsius but our indoor thermometers and thermostat were still in Fahrenheit. So I wound up in a situation in which outdoor extreme temperatures became more relatable in C, while typical indoor temperature ranges sounded better in F. I particularly liked winter temperatures in C. It was so intuitive that < 0 means snow and > 0 means rain.
Today, I am more comfortable with C for indoors as well, but not for cooking. I guess that’s because a lot of recipes still say set the oven to 350 or check the meat on the grill is at least 160?
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.
if you actually use the metric system, millimeter would become that “singular name” you memorize for a certain length. but you could also tell from the name alone what’s it about roughly, squajibbles on the other hand…
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 dont see a Millimeter as a thousandth of a meter, I see it as a tenth of a centimeter
Scale is what matters. when I measure something in meters I dont care about the exact millimeters
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.
As a Canadian with a living memory of when we made the switch here, I feel your pain. Though to be fair, I was a child at the time and so probably had an easier time of it? But in some ways, I’m still transitioning to this day!
Take temperature, for example. When Canada went metric, all the weather reports switched to Celsius but our indoor thermometers and thermostat were still in Fahrenheit. So I wound up in a situation in which outdoor extreme temperatures became more relatable in C, while typical indoor temperature ranges sounded better in F. I particularly liked winter temperatures in C. It was so intuitive that < 0 means snow and > 0 means rain.
Today, I am more comfortable with C for indoors as well, but not for cooking. I guess that’s because a lot of recipes still say set the oven to 350 or check the meat on the grill is at least 160?
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.
if you actually use the metric system, millimeter would become that “singular name” you memorize for a certain length. but you could also tell from the name alone what’s it about roughly, squajibbles on the other hand…