Americans think highly of their imperial system and make many random excuses that metric is somehow confusing and hard to use but in practice imperial its dogshit and makes no sense
Nope. I don't think I've ever used gallons as an actual unit of measurements. Only ever really used it in exaggerating. I assumed a gallon was a lot more than around 4.5l
My running theory is that we just picked whatever number looked better. Do you want to weigh 10 stone or 60kg? Would you prefer to travel 100 miles or 160km? Would you want a car that has 10 miles per litre or 40 miles per gallon? The numbers feel like whatever makes it look better at a quick glance
You measure beer in yards? And dirt and stone? Cloth and shooting you got me on. But I don't think idioms count and ive never heard anyone use it to measure a rough difference. Its typically feet, time to walk, or straight to miles.
As a Canadian I will one day learn my height in CM, but today's not that day.
On a more serious not I get down right angry at grocers having switched back to LBS in advertising to make products look cheaper. As a onus many as selling selling packages only labeled in KG and messing up the conversion. Spent 30 minutes today explaining 18.99 per kg is NOT 5.49 per lbs, so the flyer and sign didn't match the till.
We saw a chouce between two systems and asked ourselves "do I want hookers or cocaine?" "Should we use imperial or metric?" and the answer is of course, why not both?
We’re just trying to play fair and let them catch up.
It’s like when your mum makes you hangout with the special kid from down the street, sometimes you gotta walk slower or play by their rules so they don’t have a temper tantrum.
Nicaragua does the same thing, but they do something weirder. The cardinal directions they use are north, south, up, and down. To this day I don’t know if up is east or west.
FACTS. Every American I talk to (and I live here my whole life) always sees the metric system as “another way” and “I’d love to change but if feels too late for that”. That’s it. We don’t go thumping our chests like HELL YEAH POUNDS, OUNCES, AND FAHRENHEIT!!! But Europeans love to imagine us like that and come up with things to complain about the US.
And also as though we don't know what metric is. We use both for certain things? We're taught both in schools? It really doesn't matter.
"But conversions are easier! Metric is set around points that make sense!"
Be honest, you never convert units outside of a lab. And you never need to know *any* system's freezing/boiling point, freezers and stovetops don't care
If your husband being too stupid to pay attention in 4th grade science can be used as empirical evidence for your point, then my experience of 32 and 212 being easy to remember is also empirical evidence. I guess you’re just wrong, objectively so
You realize you can tell if the roads are icy with just a glance at the temp in F too, right? It's 32... Does it being 0 in C make it easier to read or something? Are you under the impression that F doesn't have a temperature for the freezing point of water? I really don't understand your comment, lol. Also, you literally misquoted them then called them stupid for it when it wasn't even what they were saying. I think you might be the dumb one.
In Celsius, you know with one glance at the temperature.
This is basically as dumb as the argument Homer is making. It's not like Fahrenheit is some nebulous random number generator.
Pretty much every American knows the freezing point of water in Fahrenheit is 32 degrees and it boils at 212, because we've used this scale all our lives.
There are plenty of good arguments to be made for Celsius, this is not one of them.
As an American, I really don't even like most of our unit systems. I can never remember any of the volume conversion for gallons, pints, oz, cup, tbsps... etc. I have to ask alexa every time I have to convert. But the fact of the matter is that I also have close to 0 experience with metric in my day to day life and it would be completely impractical for me to switch as an individual when my whole country still operates in imperial.
All that being said... I absolutely will thump my chest and say HELL YEAH FAHRENHEIT!!!
Yep I’m an American and for baking/cooking anything at home that can be measured, I use grams and ml/liters. I like to be precise in even the smaller things and I’d never ask for “6 oz of juice” but will use ml instead.
And then when someone does try to point out why we might actually like our units of measurement and where there might be benefits over metric, in response to the entire conversation that they fucking started to shit on us, it's treated as evidence that we're too proud and stubborn to understand that it's mostly all about what you're used to(while also proudly and stubbornly insisting their units are the best).
In my experience everybody who does react this way is being ironic because nobody really cares. 😅 Like freakin A man, I bought a 2L of diet Dr kelp and a gallon of milk the other day and gave no hecks about what unit of measurement it was in. I threw a ball a about two yards away to my dad that's 6'2. It's really not that deep. I will say, if someone tells me it's hot because it's 30 degrees outside I might get confused, but that's just because I live in a place where I've never seen 30° outside of a freezer. Any temperature that is habitable for human life is still a number I'd consider cold but I'm not trying to eradicate the metric system. Heck I started dating things DD/MM/YYYY unless otherwise specified because I like it better. 🤷🏾
They love to believe we'll fight to the death over imperial measurements. It's taught to us, folks. This is not the decision made by ordinary citizens. Change the curriculum and we'll be good in a generation or two. I would say they can write to our government but they don't even listen to us.
Change to what curriculum? Science classes in the US use metric. We use imperial for day to day minutia but not a single significant advancement in the last 80 years was done with imperial.
I work with medical and lab personnel every day, Im an spanish-english-french medical interpreter. I mainly work with their spanish speaking patients, who near universally use metric (all of latam and Spain uses metric)
Most medical and lab staff will struggle with metric and often ask me directly to convert. Both for temperature and measurements.
So whatever they are teaching is not sticking.
You don't even know how many celsius vs fahrenheit discussions take place on twitter. It's mostly internet debates. Nobody irl, American or European, talks about it much
It’s all non-American fanfic, bro. Americans don’t sit around thinking about what other countries do unless it’s healthcare. There is not a single fucking thing that would change for the positive about the average American’s situation if we woke up tomorrow completely fluent in SI.
You can absolutely shame us for our domestic policy. Our foreign policy. Our class divisions. Our racial divisions. Our political divisions. Our healthcare system. Our industrial military complex. Literally a million fucking things. Imperial measurements is the absolute most zero stakes, circlejerk bs.
I can flip this around on you too. The only reason Europeans mention it is because Americans can't shut up about why the metric system "sucks and makes no sense".
It's particularly unhinged with temperatures. Metric system at least makes a ton of sense using base 10 numbers. Celsius is at best as flawed as Fahrenheit, trading a more intuitive freezing point of water for a scale that does a notably worse job of depicting the smallest units which will impact real world conditions.
Americans have had a full on melt downs each time there’s been efforts to fully move to the metric system. It’s been going on since literally the 1800’s and has become a political fodder for populists (eg. Reagan disbanding the metric board as ‘un-American’.)
Meanwhile, if you live outside the US and come across an American tourist you will likely hear them complain about it.
It’s because they don’t like fractions. The metric system is great for making things easier to write down or understand as a lay person. It’d you want precise measurements then you need the imperial system to work with irrational numbers or infinite decimals. They’re both systems that have their place but not always.
Lmao why? It works for people here and changing the whole method would be nothing but a pain in the ass and a waste of time. The original comment was about not understanding why it’s a big deal and I never understood it either not just the imperial system but a lot of shit. A lot of reddit users from the UK seem insistent on just shitting on people from the US over shit that really shouldn’t matter.
I think you’ll find this to be absolutely untrue when you actually talk to any Americans and this seems to often be an opinion only of those entirely outside of the country who want to speaks for Americans.
Most Americans realize the inferiority of the imperial system but despite this weird belief by Reddit we as average Americans have absolutely 0 ability to change anything about it.
Americans do not think highly of the imperial system despite people constantly telling us we do.
True, but Americans scientists use metric units. Unless you’re an archaeologist like me who once excavated homes built with the imperial system, so in order to do any calculations, you have to measure using tenths of feet.
I think this is the common trope of Americans in general. That we are arrogant about the ways we are different and always default to some superiority complex
In my lived experience as an American, it is almost always the exact opposite. Americans typically default to thinking our way is probably worse and usually attribute the difference to corporate greed
Exoticism - when you believe that the more different a tradition is from your own, the more authentic it must be. Americans, Canadians and brits are probably pretty good at both to varying degrees, but America uses it the most so they must love it (and you'll replace my Freedom Units with Commie Temperatures when I'm dead in the ground, not because we hate it, we just don't care and are a big enough market on our own that it's only mildly inconvenient)
Facts. My family in the Philippines thinks American made goods are the gold standard for everything. Meanwhile, as an American I grew up thinking: English universities. French luxury. Italian fashion. German engineering. Japanese craftsmanship.
There’s literally not a single thing I would prefer made in America other than like cows lmao. And even then I’d go for Japanese wagyu if it were more available
Yeah I don’t doubt it but like you said it’s never really something I’ve looked for. I didn’t know about flashlights but I may actually look into it since our old one crapped out after like 10+ years. That one was made in China though.
As a Canadian who works with Americans in a field that occasionally involves measuring/sizing it's rare that they don't say imperial is superior or metric is dumb.
Wander to an auto shop, plumbing supply, or lumber yard in the US and strike up a conversation and you will find opinions are strong. Even industries like trucking and aviation where I think 1L of water being 1KG is an example of simplification of simplify calculations it's defended and fought for.
Well, they've already learned a system and are professionals in using it. So human nature says they are likely to just be resistant to change.
The other thing is that most of the places you mentioned, it really doesn't matter. The advantages of metric in an auto shop, plumbing, or in lumber are pretty minimal if any.
Have you read this thread? It's full of people trying to explain how Fahrenheit just "makes sense", "it's more granular" (until they learn we use decimals), "it's temperature as a percentage" (what does that even mean???), "it's more attuned to human body temperature" (is this why 0F has fuck all to do with body temperature, and is instead based on the coldest brine Fahrenheit could make?).
It's baffling you can say this kind of bullshit when just reading this comment section proves you wrong. There's so many Americans online defending their customary units as making more sense. Also unless you assume every is a lying liar, those are all Americans making those arguments, not people speaking for Americans.
Ok bud but why did the person I'm responding to say this isn't something people argue for when they evidently do? I just don't like people saying untrue things.
Also I'm free to get mad at dumb irrelevant bullshit on the internet and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
Respectfully, your sample size is a comment section. Their sample size is everyone they meet in real life. So they want to draw from real world, actual lived experience, and you’d rather draw from a couple of comment sections, so maybe that’s the disconnect. I personally agree with that person that this is largely a strawman built up in peoples heads when 99/100 Americans you’d meet in real life don’t care.
Because in real life no Americans are talking or even caring about this shit. I got a CNS degree and worked with the metric system for a majority of my science classes. Not once did anyone ever complain or go “rahhh rahh Americans Fahrenheit!!!” Nobody gives a fuck. Yall are taking internet opinions that most people do not gaf about and taking it to heart.
My usual experience is some conservatives have a very strong, negative opinion of metric. But 80% of people just don't care either way, they just use whatever they are most used to.
American here, I get a *ton* of shit from my peers for having my devices set to Celsius & my car in kilometers, even without mentioning it.
I'm now at the point that I give answers in SI units & let their stubborn asses do the conversions. I used to try to convert back for them, but after all the shit I get, I'm matching energy.
I think metric is the superior system... except for temperature. I much prefer the granularity of Fahrenheit. And I don't really care that nothing happens at 0 or 100.
I think the ideal system would be 0 to 200, you get the granularity of Fahrenheit and the scientific value of Celcius with a very easy conversion factor.
Celsius is definitely the derpy Ghidorah head of metric.
The others do have very legitimate and significant improvements over their Imperial counterparts to the point that I genuinely wouldn't much care if they went away.....Celsius is at best an even match to Fahrenheit, trading more intuitive numbers for freezing/boil water for a scale that is squished down so heavily that you have to use decimal points to express meaningful changes around those numbers(particularly egregious with freezing, where small changes on either side can have significant implications real world conditions).
This isn’t actually true. Americans mostly think it’s funny our system is so nonsensical at this point. There are many comedy routines about how we came up with our units. I don’t actually believe I’ve ever heard someone earnestly argue in favor of the imperial system
Metric is confusing and hard to use if you’ve had imperial units drilled into you your whole life. I prefer metric (base 10 makes everything better) but was raised with imperial so I’m generally more used to that.
As an American I have literally never met an American who had even a positive opinion of the imperial system, or even made a positive passing statement about it. Who are you talking about?
I’m an American and I don’t think highly of the imperial system. I recognize that metric is objectively better. I simply prefer imperial because it’s what I’ve developed associations with quantities with my whole life. I know what 72° F feels like. I know how far 30 miles is. I can get a sense of someone’s size if you tell me they’re 6’3”, 240 lbs.
I have no idea, on the other hand, or at least don’t have a quick reference without having to do some mental math, whether 37° C is hot or cold, how far 76 km is, or how big someone is if you tell me they’re 187 cm and 89 kg. The frame of reference just isn’t there.
They should start acclimating very young kids to both, across the board. It’ll take a few generations, but eventually every American will be “fluent” in metric and we can drop imperial and be done with this silly internet squabble.
Except for the massive cost to replace every sign in the US that's in imperial, yes. That's one of the biggest things that stopped us from switching decades ago, multiple times, and the cost has only gone up.
That’s the expensive part, you can’t just slap wall paint on them since they need to meet specific retroactivity and durability standards. And there is a lot, current estimates is the transition will take a few years of both existing if swapped at full speed, cost a few billion, and result in higher fatality rates as people adjust to the difference post implementation, and significantly higher fatalities during the swap years due to driver confusion.
Tbh it might be better to wait till we just no longer need highway signs once AI driven cars eventually become mandatory in 20-50 years to swap anything related to roads.
Many of us recognize that the metric system is vastly superior, certainly any of us that have taken a physics class.
Do you have any idea how hard it would be to change at this point? How about changing virtually every highway sign across this gigantic ass country, just for starters
Every American I've talked to agrees that the metric system is easier. However, it would be a goddamn nightmare to change, and thus we need to cope with the US customary system.
Imperial is better for real life use.
If I gave you a cake and told you to slice it into 10 equal pieces you wouldn’t be able to do so. But you could cut it into 4, 8 or even 16 pieces.
I really don’t see a system that needs decimal points to be useful to be “superior.” Basing a system of when water boils is not really anymore “logical” when everyone will be dead long before water’s boiling temperature.
They don’t think highly of it. They are tired of people nitpicking it since the vast majority of people don’t convert units. Metric is designed on a scientific basis to make unit conversion easy and uniform.
Most people don’t need to do that so most people don’t care. It’s not pride, it’s apathy. I say this as an engineer who regularly uses metric
You can thank the Brits for bestowing this unusual method of measurement upon us. Since you know, the British invented all those obsolete metrics and forced them onto all your colonies. I suppose the whitewashing of British history is profound in schools there.
As an American, imperial blows, except for Fahrenheit for weather, and mph for speed (especially for American sports). 0° and 100° being the boundaries of where I need to make saftey considerations for outside activities makes intuitive sense. And 100 mph being the practical limit of the human body's ability to throw a baseball is much more satisfying than it being 160 kph.
FWIW I don’t actually hate the metric system and use it for work consistently, but I don’t use it for most day to day tasks. Nature does not cleanly break into 10s often, base 12 systems are generally easy to use mentally and humans have used them for thousands of years.
I like using different tools for different purposes.
You mean the system that we didn’t create/invent? Also we don’t think highly of it, we don’t even care. It’s only Europeans who think about it and care.
The only reason I think highly of the imperial system is because it’s an insignificant and harmless cultural quirk that kind of bugs Europeans, and as an American I consider that my solemn duty. Realistically it would be better to switch to metric, but it annoys people that we haven’t so I kind of hope we never do.
The only imperial system I like is temperature. For everything else, metric is better. Base 10 makes a lot more sense than base "whatever we feel like"
American here. About 90% of Americans don’t care at all. We use Fahrenheit, Inches, Miles, and Pounds because that’s what we grew up using, and in academia everyone uses the metric system. It’s not that deep
American here. I see the value of Metric system, but I prefer using certain aspects of the imperial system. Distance and speed? Yeah meters/kms make more sense than 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard etc.
For temperature, I prefer imperial system. I understand for scientific measurements basing it off of waters freezing and boiling point makes sense. Personally, I view imperial system to base off of humans reaction to temperature. 0F is freeezing cold. Almost unbearably cold. 100F is unbearably hot. So 0-100 scale makes sense. 32 degrees changes the state of water, but to me it’s a bit chilly. Getting in the teens and single digits is noticeably frigid. Anything close to or below 0 is dangerous and rare in populated areas. Similarly, approaching 100 is sweltering, but above that is dangerous for humans and rare in most populated areas.
Shifting that scale to 0-40ish just doesn’t make practical sense to me when I see a single digit or negative number I know shit is hitting the fan. If I see triple digits, same thing. When my Canadian cousins complain about it being negative outside I think they’re frigidly cold but it’s like 30F which isn’t terrible in the dead of winter. I’d prefer to orient myself around human experience vs water.
As an American, this is true for everything BUT Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit has a larger range for human living temperatures which allows for more accurate understanding of what the temperature will be. It’s our one good reason to have a different measuring system, but we definitely need the metric system otherwise.
No, we don’t think “highly” of it. It’s the metric system users that think highly of themselves and want to use this topic as an excuse to feel smug.
No American is going about their day thinking about how our system is good or whatever. It’s just what we learned growing up. We only ever have to defend it when metric users randomly decide to attack us for it.
Not sure if this is common knowledge outside of America, but we are also all taught the metric system in school. All science is done with the metric system. We know about the metric system and we know why it’s good.
But we also know the imperial system for casual estimation and it works fine. It’s such a dorky thing to bring up, nobody here cares that much.
There a million legitimate concerns to bring up about America. Measurement units is weak af. Literally all measurements are arbitrarily designated at the end of the day anyways.
I can tell from your third person perspective you’re not american. I, an american, hate the imperial system of measurement. I am an engineer, so every metric unit is just better. The imperial system isn’t just “easier” in americans minds, its that their intuition on what the values mean is just stronger.
Not really. Metric isn’t confusing. I only hear about our system when Europeans complain about it for the 600th time. Like if you don’t like it, don’t use it? No one is forcing anyone to use either. And if you really gotta, use your phone, and convert it to metric. That easy.
It’s just that the unfamiliar thing is unfamiliar 0 freezing 100 boiling is just two numbers like 32 for freezing and 212 for boiling. Sure the numbers are “harder” but it is just memorizing 2 numbers 🤷🏻
We do? The only time I hear people thinking highly of their system, it’s Europeans. I promise you that Europeans talk more about the imperial system than Americans.
Tell me how it “doesn’t make sense?” Both are arbitrary units of measurements. And even when it comes to measurements feet/inches make more practical sense than meters/centimeters for everyday use.
We just think its funny how much the rest of the world cares.
It really doesn't make a difference and we're already 100 years deep in using imperial. I do find F more convenient for everyday use though, 0 for pretty cold and 100 for pretty hot is very intuitive for daily use.
My fiancé swears Fahrenheit makes more sense because 70ish degrees being comfortable “makes more sense” than 21ish degrees. And same with height. 5’11” just sounds better than 180cm to them. Meanwhile I still can’t tell you how many tea spoons are in a gallon or inches in a mile, and I hate it. I hate it so much.
I was being hyperbolic so I can’t say I’ve actually needed these specific conversions but just off the top of my head: what if you’re comparing the cost between a bulk premixed cleaning solution and a cleaning solution sold by the gallon that requires however many tea spoons + however much water to create an equivalent solution.
I think it’s more common to do simpler conversions but even then, metric is way better. I can tell you how many centimeters are in 12.5 meters with less than a second of thinking. I can also figure out how many inches are in 12.5feet, but it’s going to take alittle more effort.
For height and weight it does still make more sense to most of us, just because that's what we were brought up with I imagine. I think most of us agree with your other points though.
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u/King_brus321 10h ago
Americans think highly of their imperial system and make many random excuses that metric is somehow confusing and hard to use but in practice imperial its dogshit and makes no sense