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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   30223 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Noon-Is-Noon faction

Ironically, these are the same people who tend to be fans of SI (popularly "the metric system").

When I see those people do this I just laugh. Oh, so now you want to preserve a human-centric unit (like every system of measurement did before SI, metric or not) now that it affects you, rather than those backwards blue-collar people who do human-scale works with their hands? Humans don't divide evenly into fractions of the [wrong] size of the Earth; convenient for a state who wants to alienate its population, inconvenient for anyone who works for a living.

For me, the sun rises at 7 AM and sets at 4 PM. Which makes any job a salt-mine one, where you go down into work in the dark, and you go home from work in the dark. I'm more than happy to push sunset beyond the bounds of the workplace for at least some people because not seeing daylight for 4 months is unnatural, it sucks, and it kills because the evening commute is simply more dangerous when it's dark.

now that it affects you, rather than those backwards blue-collar people who do human-scale works with their hands?

In practice, there is no difference between using metric and standard measurements for mechanical work. 8 millimeters is not actually more or less arbitrary than 5/16 inch. This is simply memorizing different benchmarks and taking measurements in a different format.

I don't particularly want to switch to universal metric system. But I don't hate it either. It's just... different names and sizes.

I've heard arguments that, because the metric system and the imperial system round in different ways, they encourage the use of different ratios. Supposedly this has a lot of knock-on effects re: architecture and other manmade systems.

Noon-Is-Noon faction

Ironically, these are the same people who tend to be fans of SI (popularly "the metric system").

[...]Oh, so now you want to preserve a human-centric unit (like every system of measurement did before SI, metric or not) now that it affects you, rather than those backwards blue-collar people who do human-scale works with their hands?

Don't you have this backwards? The Noon-Is-Noon argument is that 0 hours should be at the time when the point on Earth comes to a phase in the rotation of the planet where the movement component towards the Sun becomes 0 and starts to increase again. That is, the Noon-Is-Noon argument is about the rotation of the planet, not about anything human-centric, whereas the perma-DST argument is about whatever schedule the person proposing it happens to have in their current job, etc.

Oh, so now you want to preserve a human-centric unit (like every system of measurement did before SI, metric or not) now that it affects you, rather than those backwards blue-collar people who do human-scale works with their hands?

I dislike non-SI systems for distance/weight/volume in general precisely because it affects me, especially when doing human-scale works with own hands.

(though I am from area which is dominated by SI with minor encroachment of weird units)

Ironically, these are the same people who tend to be fans of SI (popularly "the metric system").

I think opinions on DST vary a lot among fans of SI given that includes almost everyone on earth except citizens of the united states, the united kingdom and aviators.

Oh, so now you want to preserve a human-centric unit (like every system of measurement did before SI, metric or not) now that it affects you

There's nothing less human-centric about the SI the meter is just a standardization of the toise (also known as fathom, klafter and many other names), a measurement approximating the distance covered by a human's outstretched arms. If you wanted a unit of measure that wasn't human based you would invent something like the nautical mile, not the meter.

The other argument people make along these lines is about units of temperature but firstly nobody actually uses the Kelvin outside of scientific papers and is brine really a more human substance than distilled water?

Besides length and temperature nobody ever talks about anything else. Nobody ever argues that the pound is more human because the roman libra just exists in nature but the french bushel, precursor of the liter is an inhuman monstrosity. Or that the inch of mecruy just gives them a better intuitive understanding of pressure than the hectopascal.

What makes US customary units human-centric is mostly the fact that they are base-2 instead of base-10. Base-2 gives you an assortment of related units that are close to human scale.

For example, there are two tablespoons in a fluid ounce. Eight fluid ounces in a cup. Two cups in a pint. two pints in a quart. Two quarts in a half-gallon. Two half-gallons in a gallon.

Inches are also used in what amounts to a base-2 system, since they are broken down into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty-seconds and sixty-fourths. Foreigners may find it a bit ridiculous that Americans have sockets and wrenches with sizes like 5/8" and 1-7/16". I would say it is worse than metric overall, but the use of fractions does have certain advantages.

And yet, 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon, 6 picas into an inch, 12 inches into a foot, 3 feet into a yard, 1760 yards into a mile and 3 miles into a league. But you will be pleased to know that you can, in fact, ask for half of a liter or a quarter of a liter if you like fractions (and many fraction lovers do just that).

Fahrenheit has more reasonable degrees within human comfort zones to accurately describe the temperature so I think it is superior to Celsius.

Celsius is rather useful in a country that spends a considerable fraction of the year in temps that are on the Celsius minus scale. Important clothing decisions might depend simply on whether the temp on the weather app shows up in red or blue.

How is that different Fahrenheit? We too show blue for freezing temperatures.

Fahrenheit has more reasonable degrees within human comfort zones to accurately describe the temperature so I think it is superior to Celsius.

The human mind can in fact adapt to 40 as "very hot" and "0" as cold instead of 100 = very hot and 32 = cold.

Important clothing decisions might depend simply on whether the temp on the weather app shows up in red or blue.

The point where numbers become blue is in fact completely arbitrary.

The point is that there are about 1.8 times degrees in Fahrenheit between freezing and boiling as there are in Celsius meaning there can be a bit more specificity.

When you need this level of specificity? Celsius has already too much of it. (except rare cases like measuring fever or scientific research)

That's almost always false precision.

Weather reports (never mind weather forecasts) simply aren't good enough to report single degrees, regardless of whether it's Celsius or Fahrenheit.

The human mind can in fact adapt to 40 as "very hot" and "0" as cold instead of 100 = very hot and 32 = cold.

In the United States, 100 is hot and 0 is cold, and anything below 0 or above 100 is very hot or cold. Which I find very intuitive!

I've never understood the argument the US customary units are "human-centric".

Is 0.00731x the weight of an average man really that much more intuitive than 0.0161x? How about 0.588x the historical average height vs. 0.0149x (or was it 0.179x)? Is 2.63 just-noticeable-temperature-difference-intervals worse than 1.46 of them? (I'm not going to bother questioning the zero point of Fahrenheit. Freezing is much better.)

I can tell the difference between 1/4", 5/16", and 3/8" head hex screws from across the room, but that's just because I've seen tens of thousands of each of them. There's nothing intrinsically human about any of my intuitions, it's just what I've learned (and no, I haven't learned metric to the same degree).

Imperial is great because it has so many quick levels of accuracy. When you take a diagonal are you working to the nearest inch? Half inch? Quarter inch? 16th? 1/32000th?
With metric what are you gonna do? "Aha, I see ve have measured 1.285 meters to 1.315 meters, a 97.7% degree of accuracy!"

Are you reporting a length as 11 16/32" if that's what you measure? If not, then it's plain worse communication than 11.50" because it's ambiguous with 11.5". Reduced fractions (e.g. 1/2") is a horrible system, and expanded fractions (e.g. 16/32") is almost as bad.

Also, the multiple levels of measurement was the first thing I dropped when I did construction: everything was in 1" or 1/8" increments, and we didn't use feet (so something might be 135" or 135 1/4", but never 11' 3 1/4", 135 5/16" or 135 1/2" from that measurement). Same with the manufacturing I'm doing now: it's 1/16" (reported as 1/16ths, so 8/16 is the proper format) or 0.001", and never feet when it is imperial.

I've never understood the argument the US customary units are "human-centric".

I mean, I find it really easy to work with some units because I know their origins. It's much easier to know that a "league" is about as far a person can walk in an hour, and it is 3 miles, and then to work from that fact to how far my D&D party could walk with 8 hours of travel on flat terrain, than to do anything involving distance with metric units.

In practice, 24 mi in eight hours would make me assume the party was made up entirely of marathon runners.

Obligatory mention that GURPS, unlike Dungeons & Dragons, has multiple sets of rules for long-distance travel, depending on how much detail you want. Assuming default humans with no encumbrance at all:

  • Basic Set p. 351: Hiking achieves a speed of 50 miles per day, at no cost.
  • Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors p. 32: Hiking achieves a speed of 2.5 miles per hour, at a cost of 1 FP (Fatigue Point) per hour. Once you've lost 7 FP, you move at half speed. Resting regenerates 6 FP per hour. Some quick algebra indicates that the optimal strategy for a 16-hour day is 14 hours and 40 minutes of hiking mixed with 1 hour and 20 minutes of resting, for an overall speed of 37 miles per day. But you may want to keep your FP higher than 3, just in case you are ambushed while hiking.
    • The Last Gasp (Pyramid vol. 3 iss. 44 (Alternate GURPS II) p. 4): It's unrealistic that your speed isn't reduced until you've lost an entire 7 FP. Instead, your speed is reduced by one-fifth after you've lost 5 FP, and by two-fifths after you've lost 9 FP. Also, it's unrealistic that your FP regenerate at 6 per hour. Instead, your reservoir of FP is divided into 5 points of mild fatigue, which regenerate at 1 FP per 2 hours, and 5 points of severe fatigue, which regenerate at 1 FP per 8 hours. Some quick algebra indicates that the optimal strategy for a 16-hour day is 8 hours and 40 minutes of hiking mixed with 7 hours and 20 minutes of resting, for an overall speed of 22 miles per day.
  • Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures p. 21: Hiking achieves a speed of 2.5 miles per hour. Instead of doing a bunch of finicky FP math, just assume that you spend 30 minutes striking camp in the morning, 3 hours resting throughout the day, 30 minutes pitching camp in the evening, and 12 hours actually walking, for an overall speed of 30 miles per day. If you are ambushed while hiking, you are missing 1 FP when the encounter starts.

Seems like the best rule would be something like "pick an exertion level from "Gentle Amble" to "Forced March". Multiply by the difficulty of terrain and individual encumbrance. That's how much fatigue you gain per hour of marching.
The straight-line distance you travel is your march speed x hours x terrain difficulty modifier (from "marked highway" to "the cursed swamp-forest maze of fuck-you."
Tune the table so the DM can have players traveling from 0-40 miles a day.

So you're only moving at the speed of your slowest party member, and the wizard is going to arrive more tired than the monk-ranger. Maybe have him ride the barbarian or use a few spell slots on Harkonnen's Floating Fatass

GURPS also incorporates rules for forced marching, terrain difficulty, and encumbrance, but I omitted them from this simplified overview.

Ahem

It's easier to remember historical trivia and perform the unit conversion than just "5 km/h is walking speed"?

We need two systems, one for you sun lovers and one for us creatures of the night. We could call you guys the enthusiastic lovers of illumination and my guys the mostly only really lovers of climate kontrol systems and my guys will solve our problem by moving underground. What could go wrong?

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