Society is going all to hell.

howie on 29/9/2008 at 20:43

Quote Posted by catbarf

Convert 386ft to inches without a calculator and then try and say metric is screwy...

I don't really care. The real question should be ----> how many eggs are in a metric dozen? 10 I suppose. Give me 2 rods, a furlong and I will raise you 1 metric mile. Which, I think, the answer is also 10. It's aways 10 people!

BEAR on 30/9/2008 at 03:46

I guess nobody is going to reply to the talk I linked to. Someone really should watch it, its quite interesting. I think we would do well to view the world more in that manor rather than taking our gut instinct on everything.

Chade on 30/9/2008 at 04:09

I watched the first bit of it and read some of the comments.

The talk itself (or at least, what little bit of it I watched) seemed pretty much like common sense to me. It was more interesting reading the comments. I had forgotten how pervasive "guilt culture" can be in western culture.

demagogue on 30/9/2008 at 04:30

I've liked Pinker for a long time. I first heard him speak when I was a wee CogSci student at UT and he gave a whole lecture on why we say Phila-fuck-adelphia and not Phil-fuck-adelphia, and I thought now here's a guy I can appreciate. And I've read every book he's written since.

But I have to say, as with Chomsky, with all due respect you're a linguist and not a social theorist, so leave the social theory to the experts.

That said, though, I generally agree with his thesis and thought he gave a good defense for it, not as a social thinker but just as a run-of-the-mill very intelligent guy that's researched and thought about the problem. So it was good, just not as good as if one of (http://cjrc.osu.edu/researchprojects/hvd/) these guys (project on the history of violence) had given a lecture on the topic or something.

van HellSing on 30/9/2008 at 12:31

Quote Posted by BEAR

In what manner do you think I can view the world if you want me to just sit in my manor?

DDL on 30/9/2008 at 14:06

Quote Posted by howie

Metric dozen is just stupid. I might as well go "How many feet are in an imperial kilometer? 7893 I suppose. Rofl."

Come to that, your whole sentence doesn't actually make sense.

Seriously: would you rather have a system of measurements that jumps neatly in increments of 1000* for each and every unit of..whatever (distance, energy, concentration, power, etc)..or would you like to memorise an apparently arbitrary list of differing increments, that differs depending on what you're quantifying?

Imperial is just...mental: 16 drams to an ounce, 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone, 8 stone to a hundredweight (which incidentally makes a hundredweight equivalent to...112 pounds), twenty hundredweight to a ton.

Length is almost worse: (http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/length.htm)

In terms of actually engineering anything, or quantifying anything in excess of common amounts, using imperial measures would just be adding unnecessary complication and confusion.

seconded about pints though: 500ml just doesn't cut it

*there are of course exceptions to the 'three orders of magnitude' rule, basically around the 'human scale': centimetre and centilitre are handy because nobody wants to measure sub-metre distances in milimetres or drinkable amounts of fluid in millilitres (apparently)..but still, orders of magnitude ftw. After all, we count in base 10, why not measure in it, too?

Gryzemuis on 30/9/2008 at 14:32

The metric system is not just a system, it is the world standard.

Standards are not about what system is the best. Standards are there, so people have a common terminology, and common base. Standards are there for interoperability and communication.

And by coincendence, the whole world, except 3 countries, have adopted the metric system as the standard. Congatulations for being in the group with Birma and Alaska ! Even the UK has adopted the metric system. People need to adjust to the new system, but over time it can be done. No big deal.

You can compare it to the English language. Is it the best language ? Nope, why would it ? Is it the easiest language ? Maybe, maybe not. Is it the most neutral language ? Of course not, check out Esperanto. Does it have the most native speakers ? Don't know, but I guess Mandarin and Hindi have similar numbers.

But most people in the world, who want to communicate with someone outside their own country, use English to communicate. Even if a Japanse speaking person and a Mandarin speaking person want to talk, they probably use English. A while ago, people used Latin for international communications. Now they use English.

You Yanks got lucky there. You don't need to learn a second language. You probably have the aggression of the British to thank for that. Everybody else in the world has to spend time learning a 2nd language. And probably they will be handicapped in international communications because English is only their 2nd (or 3rd) language.

As compensation for that, you could at least adopt the metric system. Stubborn bastards.

Matthew on 30/9/2008 at 14:49

'Adopted' is a bit too strong for the UK. To all intents and purposes we are dual-running both imperial and metric.

BEAR on 30/9/2008 at 14:57

For all intents and purposes, so is America.

demagogue on 30/9/2008 at 17:04

The imperial system hangs around because language is not all about dispassionately sharing standardized technical information with one another like we were robots. Language is also poetic, emotive, saturated in culture.

Things like going to the bar or cafe, the bakery, the butcher, the florist ... You probably wouldn't do those things if you were only in it for the "products". There's a way of life that goes with them.

Leave SI for the generic mega-markets and their rows of indistinguishably standardized cans and cartons of "food" and "sundries".

[/Exaggerating a little to make the point, but just a little...]