> That is a perfect description of how metrification is supposed to work and why it hasn't worked in the US. As a country, we detest intrusive and pointless legislation.
> The funny thing about standards is that they are only valuable if they aren't changed. If people are accustomed to a particular system, then ideas about its being "more logical" and "easier to use" are immediately thrown by the wayside--how is it more effective to switch an entire mode of thought for a different one which will produce no benefits?
>

Um. You define the US as champions of political deadlocking? The problem with regarding any legislation that changes the status quo to be "intrusive" and "pointless" is that it vastly undercuts your ability to be agents of positive social change. Positive change is something that is always gradual and begins first by changing a mindset -- a cultural attitude or perception -- which initiates desire to correct any state of affairs which is less than desirable. Ideally, to cite a turn of phrase that Issachar used recently, one's best work comes from reforming the attitude, and the conscience, rather than the law. Thus legislation ought to naturally reflect the will of the people. But if the "will of the people" is to fiercely oppose any sort of change because one "can't see any immediate benefits," then what are you left with, except stagnation over the generations?

People who write up metrification bills ought to include plenty examples, right within the bill itself, showing exactly why metric is better -- so that the benefits will be immediately obvious to everyone.


> The complication to international business is minimal. Given a threat of loss to (foreign) competition because of the system used,
>

Threats to the American economy are indeed minimal. The US has such a large share of global production that it can afford to call the shots on whatever system it wants to use. 'Might' means 'right' politically; a situation which, sadly, encourages vehement anti-metricists like Freedom2Measure to use blatant propaganda in rubbing dirt into the collective noses of the rest of the world.



> I'm surprised at you, Wolf. Such the metric partisan! While it is certainly bad planning for NASA to allow more than one set of standards [Non-standard standards? What an idea.], neither system is at all in any way imprecise. For that matter, fractions can achieve accuracy in unusual measures far more simply. How does one write precisely 7/17, or even 1/3, in decimal?
>

That one's easy to answer; Imperial is indeed more imprecise. We are not talking about direct conversion of decimal units to fractions and whether the two are exactly equivalent. Where Imperial falls apart completely is in its total lack of scalability. An increasingly large number of jobs in technological sectors are IMPOSSIBLE to perform in Imperial measures. Examples: Quantum interference around electrical wires is calculated in metric. Photolithography to etch silicon chips (where the limit of resolution was previously 0.06 microns) is drafted in metric. I've mentioned before that in one of my previous jobs involving neurotrophic (nerve growth) factors, I was diluting liquid solutions down to concentrations of 20 to 50 picomolar: we found that the range of biological activity in the body for the growth factor was 50x1,0E-12 or 0.00000000005 moles per liter. In designing a dilution series, it's not even possible to subdivide an ounce that finely. Whereas I can do the metric calculation in fifteen seconds inside my head.

As technological and medical advances increasingly force us to think on very small scales as well as the very large, it makes no sense to hinder ourselves with an obsolete system of measurement. It can encompasses neither nanominiaturization technologies on earth, nor the vast astronomical masses and distances between the stars. The advantages of working in metric shouldn't be limited only to corporate scientists and engineers. For example, you might be a model rocket hobbyist who wants to enter the X-Prize Competition (a global contest which will give $10 million to the first group that launches 3 humans into space, in an affordable and reusable ground-to-suborbit vehicule, without using the kind of mega-scale funding which all space missions currently require). It's a LOT easier to build a working small-scale model of your projected "spacecraft" with metric lengths and fuel dimensions and then, when it comes time to create a larger model, just scale the majority of the calculations upwards, intuitively, by moving a simple decimal place -- rather than by multiplying by 8.3454064 x 3.407 x 32 or some other messy Imperial conversion. :-(


> Metrification was never completed in any country. When the system was first proposed by French revolutionaries, they wanted a 10-hour day, a 10-day week, a 400-degree circle, and more. Napoleon responded, "Nothing is more contrary to the organization of the mind, of the memory, and of the imagination. ... The new system of weights and measures will be a stumbling block for generations. ... It's just tormenting the people with trivia." The last sentence is the salient point of this discussion.
>

Depends on how urgently you want to define a clearly useful, *existing* set of measuring tools as 'trivial,' of course. Bringing up the 10-hour day and 10-hour week is irrelevant -- and in fact, trivial -- because no one is seriously proposing to adopt "metric time" as a new standard! I guess a 400-degree circle is an interesting concept, however. Perhaps gremlinn could explain how the right angle was set at 90 degrees (rather than 100°) in the first place.


> It really doesn't make any difference at all whichever system is used. The quantity being measured doesn't change.
>

Of course not. It's the ease of the *way* that the quantity is being measured which is getting changed. Any system which significantly changes cultural standards and methodologies should only be implemented when it makes our lives easier in the long run.


> I'm going to quote from an article in the July issue of "Ideas on Liberty." It says basically the same thing. [...]
>
> "With such an enormous investment in physical and human capital, there ought to be a convincing reason to justify our suffering the stupendous costs, confusions, and hazards of drastically altering our measurement system."
>

Ah yes, the final bottom line is not one of freedom of choice, but of "stupendous capital cost." In fact, it's often only the threat of "stupendous" financial losses which drives industries to change *any* customary standard of measurement. Take, for example, the Y2K bug (which we all know represented the four digits of a Year with a measurement that used only two digits). This was a hardware artifact preserved in both PC hardware and layers upon generations of software. There's nothing like the fear of seeing one's personal, off-shore banking transaction software fail at a crucial time to 'convince' someone to invest in an expensive, multi-million dollar upgrade to his company's computer network. In this case it is not so much a matter of choice as it is a desire for survival. If lack of familiarity with metric measurements does not appear to be a stumbling block right now, then let's just say that eventually, it will be.

The American public grows more and more out of touch with an intuitive understanding of basic concepts in the science behind all the technological toys, and marvels, which we handle every day. Heck, we're already out of touch. Consider; how many people on the street actually know why a microwave is CALLED a microwave? How many folks can explain how a microwave works, without having a secret suspicion that it irradiates toxic carcinogens into one's food (which it doesn't)? Yes... you're probably wondering, at this point, what does this have to do with metrification. My answer is that lack of understanding, and fear of the unknown, in themselves are what motivate certain cultural attitudes. Public awareness can be for the better (as in the collective desire to repair the expensive Y2K bug), and for the worse (as in insisting that switching to the metric system won't yield any socioeconomic benefits at all, and in fact doing so will destroy one's precious 'heritage' of customary units.)

Wolf "thinks SI goes hand in hand with an education in science and medicine; and in The Big Picture, educating people is the one earthly resource that makes even the poorest of nations strong." spirit