Talk:Metrication controversy/Archive III

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Merge with Metrication

I suggest the content of this article is merged with metrication and redirected there. Not for any POV or political reason - just because the general rule is to include both pro- and counter-arguments in one article. Anyway, quite a lot of the content is reproduced over at metrication. What do people think? Toby W 08:30, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea. Mark Richards 21:58, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Right, well I've done it, and made this page a redirect. Toby W 08:18, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Cool - there might be some work on integrating them still, but this is better - are there any redirects to fix? Mark Richards 16:13, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Fixed 'em :o) though yes, no doubt the two could be better integrated Toby W
It was once part of Metrication. It was split out in a tidy up of that article. It's large enough to stand on its own. I don't think it should be merged back. Jimp 01:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Where the evil is.

Aviation industry (plane factories, pilots schools, airlines, airports, ATC) should be discussed in the article, because they are the huge stronghold of anti-metrication and ustomary resistance and by defeating them america would become metric by 2040, the 400th anniversary of the metric idea. 195.70.32.136 12:19, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


The above is a load of BS! Point 1) The United States "became metric" in the 1700's when it was officially recognized as a legal system of measure. I'm sorry that the pro-metric crowd feels so compelled to force other people to follow them lock-in-step. Point 2) The above author also tries to make the ludacris assertion that the Aviation Industry is the only resistance in the US to metric usage.

The true source of evil are the pro-metric crowd that is trying to force people to use the metric system. arfon 21:16, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

The reason that metric needs to be "forced" is that no individual can convert on his or her own. Everyone will use the units that everyone else uses. Therefore you all have to switch simultaneously. Polls show that most Americans prefer customary units because most people are used to them, because everyone else uses them and because they haven't had the opportunity to try metric to any meaningful extent. Those polls should also ask "would you prefer metric or customary if everyone else used metric?" and "Do you think being patriotic is more important than making the best decisions?" and compare the results.
The pros and cons of the two systems must be seen from the perspective of the future citizens, the unborn children. Which one would they prefer if they could make a rational decision on their first days, without being influenced by history? I can't see how there can be any doubt. All switch-over costs are one-time and therefore negligible in the long run. Thus it is those who selfishly and nostalgically cling to the old system who are the evil ones! Magnus Holmgren 14:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
"Evil"? For goodness' sake, there's nothing "evil" about customary or metric. Personally, I'm rather fond of customary. I'm also fond of non-decimal currencies, despite growing up with a typical decimated currency of dollars and cents. I find the obsessive decimation in modern times rather impersonal and clinical. However, I accept that it's an asthetic appeal, and that, for pragmatic reasons, the US should use the same system everyone else does, which happens to be metric.
Metric is, from a practical standpoint, a little better than customary, but it's not that much better. Honestly, it's strongest argument is just that it's the global standard. Nik42 09:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
You are missing the point: the metric system is a popular standard around the world, but, again, any system could be standarized, so that's not where the real advantage is. Indeed, a meter could have been designated as the equivalent to the size of an average foot, average height of a 10-year old boy, or a fraction of the distance to the moon. However, the real advantage of the metric system is about how easy is to convert between metric units, and this is just because the base (10) is the same as our traditional numeric system (10). For that reason, the real strength of the metric system is the easyness to calculate areas, volumes, adding and substracting. For example, converting from 34 7/16 inches to foot is not that straightforward, and much less to miles... converting from centimeters to meters to kilometers is as trivial as moving the decimal point a few places. Another example: If my room is 10'6" by 12'3", it's not straightforward to calculate the area in square feet (you would need to perform about 2 divisions, 2 additions, one multiplication, and one division... if the measurement was in centimeters or meters, you would need only one or two multiplications). If I have a pool of 20 by 30 foot, 6'15" deep, how many galons does it have? In contrast, it is easier to calculate the volume in cubic meters of a pool of 6 meters by 9 meters by 2.5 meter deep, and converting to liters is trivial (just multiply by 1,000). Maybe it's just me, but the last time I had to use an equivalency table to convert between metric units was in elementary school. I could not say the same about converting between inches, foot, yards, miles, acres, pints, quarters, gallons, and so on. Luiscolorado 16:51, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Sure, its easier to convert between units, but it's not that hard to do math in customary. *shrug* Then again, I'd prefer it we used the traditional pounds/shilling/pence instead of dollars and cents, so I'm just weird.  :-)
And I never have to use an equivalency table. The conversion factors are easy to remember. Yes, there are a few weird ones, like 5,280 feet to a mile, and a gallon is annoyingly close to, but not quite, 1⁄8 cubic foot. Math would've been so much easier if the gallon had been standarized at 1⁄8 cubic foot, or 5,000 feet to a mile. But, the everyday units are quite simple. Multiplication by 12's or 3's or 8's and the like is quite simple. And how do you need "two divisions, 2 additions, 1 multiplication and 1 division" for 10'6 x 12'3? Use fractions, and it's simple. 10½ x 12¼ = 21⁄2 x 49⁄4 = 1229⁄8 = 153 5⁄8 ft².
I just don't see how it's THAT much better. I'll grant that it's a little more convenient (but, how often do you calculate, say, area, without using a calculator in the first place?), but I don't think it would be worth the trouble of converting to metric if it didn't have the advantage of being a global standard Nik42 21:12, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd only be happy if we could all stop talking about evilness, how France or the EU is trying to force metric upon the UK and the US merely for the sake of forcing, and so on.
SI isn't perfect. In particular, its units are not less arbitrary than the foot or the pound. But to say that customary is almost as good you have to ignore facts. The relations between units are much more systematic. For example, how many of you know how many cubic inches there are in a gallon (US and UK)? Magnus Holmgren 14:45, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
And how often do you need to change between units? I just think that the advantages of the Metric system are exagerated. I'm in favor of metrication, because it's the global standard. I just get sick of people saying that the traditional units are somehow horribly confusing (despite its use by uneducated peasants for centuries) and/or "evil". I consider it ugly, especially the use of prefixes, but it's a lost battle. We'll eventually have to adopt it, so the sooner the better. Still, I consider it a shame that some sort of harmonization of traditional European systems (e.g., a standard "international foot", an "international pound", and so on) wasn't adopted instead of the dull, ugly, metric system. But, we have to take the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Nik42 08:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with the above -- mainly because the place where the metric units are used the most is in the sciences, and they actually use the SI system, which is most accurately said to be derived from the metric system. (For example, the mole, an SI unit used in chemistry and outright essential in chemistry as a measure of amount & part of the most often used measure of concentration, is not a metric unit of measure: there is no such thing as a millimole*, centimole*, or kilomole*.)

wrong! There are kilomoles, and millimoles! Please don't write outright false statements like that.Chtito 06:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The mole is the SI unit for amount of substance. This was not decided upon by the Conference Generale des Poids et Mesures until 1971. You can read about this in National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 330, page 8. [1] Gerry Ashton 18:08, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

An ignored issue

The base units, the second, the meter, and the speed of light have been around a long time and have changed over the years in precision. What is being ignored is that the second and the meter are not based upon either a physical science or mathematical constant, they are terrestrial definitions only. The current numeric value for the speed of light is defined relative to the second and the meter, which effectively gives it no relational link to any physical science or mathematical constant. A "unit of time" and a "unit of length" should have true relationships to physical science and mathematical constants. It would be easy to create a true scientific set of base units by starting with a known physical science constant and mathematically relating a "unit of time", a "unit of length" and the speed of light to each other. Currere 11:12, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

You’re quite mistaken. The metre is (currently) defined in terms of Einstein’s constant, vulgo the speed of light in vacuum. The second is defined by constant subatomar properties of an cæsium isotope. There’s nothing “terrestrial only” about that. The only SI base unit with a problematic definition still is the kilogram, but that is being worked on. We’ll just have to wait (at least) until the next CGPM. Christoph Päper 16:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
You are ignoring that the number of cycles of the cesium transition was chosen such that it fit the best astronomical determination for the duration of the second. It is noted in the definition for the speed of light that it is a defined value not a measured value, and it is defined using the second and the meter, both terrestrial derived values. Currere 17:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
You, Currere, are ignoring the fact that this is not the point. Current definitions may have been chosen as a best-fit to eariler terrestrial based ones but they are still very much based on physical constants. "The current numeric value for the speed of light is defined relative to the second and the meter," you claim "which effectively gives it no relational link to any physical science or mathematical constant." You've got things the wrong way around. The metre is defined in terms of the speed of light not the other way around. Or to put it another way, it is noted in the definition of the metre that it is a defined value not a measured value, and it is defined using the second and the speed of light. In short, you're wrong. Jimp 04:51, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
The NIST webpages NIST-second has some discussion on how the basic units were created, and they do not state they were derived from physical constants. The duration of the SI second was defined independent from the speed of light, otherwise it would result in a circular definition. The Swiss office of metrology METAS-metre states in its metre definition, "The metre definition assigns a fixed value to the speed of light c. This fundamental constant can therefore no longer be measured; it has been fixed by definition. From this can be concluded that the unit of length is dependent on the unit of time, the second." Currere
The definition for emphemeris time contains the discussion on how the particular number of cesium transition counts was arrived at. "After three years of comparisons with lunar observations it was determined that the ephemeris second corresponded to 9192631770 cycles of the cesium resonance." It took them three years to determine the count that fit emphemeris time, it was the best average arrived at in the 3 year period. It is my contention that the SI base units, including the meter are a poor choice for scientific calculations, as they were defined without the use of physical science or mathematical constants. It is another argument for anti-metrication. Currere
It may be an argument for the adoption of Planck units (though there are good arguments against) but it's not much of an argument for anti-metrication. Without metrication we'd have various sets of traditional units. Traditional units originally had no less a terrestrial basis. This is the original basis though. The second & metre have since been redifined. Redifined, as what you quote well illustrates, according to the period of cæsium resonance and the speed of light. Note that to be "fixed by definition" is not the same as to be "a defined value". The speed of light is fixed by definition: by the definition of the metre. Jimp 14:04, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
It is desirable to use metric or some other standard for commerce, but I find it ridiculous that the SI units were adopted with nary a whimper from the scientific community. They must know that the "second" is just a stable ephemeris time unit. It would have been much more sensible to start with a known physical science constant, such as the wavelength of the precession emission of neutral hydrogen, and relate the "unit of time" to that value rather than making the meter, a terrestrial length, fit the astronomically defined second. There is a need for a "fixed by definition" value for the speed of light, but the SI definition is not related to a physical science or mathematical constant. There is a simple way to do it. Currere 00:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Loss of landmarks

The whole section has a strong anti-metric POV ("artificiality and inhuman scale of metric measurements", "crude decimal base", etc). --cesarb 16:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Then fix it ... if you wouldn't mind. I'd fix it myself but I can't find those phrases ... which section do you mean? Jimp 6 March 2006
I too notice some major NPOV violations in this article. You better fix it. --69.232.218.27 05:10, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've found the section. It's been deleted and rightfully so.
69.232.218.27,
Itmight be helpful if you'd point out which statements you find to be biased. I'd be glad to neutralise the point of view if only I had time right now. However, 69.232.218.27, you're free to edit too. Jimp 6 March 2006
I didn't know where to start, the POV was too dense. Someone else just deleted it. --cesarb 11:20, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

An old soviet would say the the PURGES section on Stalin's page is a non-neutral POV also even though it's all fact. Do you sacrifice truthful information for political correctness in an encyclopedia??? --Arfon March 9th, 2006

References

If the references directly support the information, let's get some footnotes so the readers can easily trace these things. NickelShoe (Talk) 14:44, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

major edits

Okay, I've edited the article in an attempt to improve it to something more neutral, factual and grammatical. I've tried to keep as much as possible as I could, lest anyone accuse me of WP:POINTing my way towards "if you delete the POV there's nothing left", but some stuff just had to go.

I removed the "pricing" section altogether, because its two paragraphs were a) some vendors may, or may not, take the opportunity to reduce the size of their containers but still charge the same price, and b) the utterly stupid paragraph about French wine. My attempts to re-write paragraph 'a' failed, because I couldn't write it in a way that made it clear it wasn't utter crap (yes, I saw the source there; I'll wager the writer there doesn't know any more about what it's like to live in a metric country than you do), and paragraph 'b' wasn't just speculation, but blatantly false speculation. So, the whole thing had to go.

I left in "Social problems", although I personally disagree with it and know from firsthand experience that it's crap (the previous generation in Australia was taught how to convert to metric, and my generation was taught how to convert to imperial; we're all equally well-versed in the important units), my disagreement is no less OR than the original writer's. I removed the stuff about common vs civil law countries, because that can never be properly sourced (much like the French wine bit).

I rewrote "unit confusion", because while it may be true that this is a real, life, honest-to-goodness argument used by the anti-metric people, it's neither NPOV nor correct to say that we metric-users "commonly" get confused between millilitres and litres, for example. I added {{fact}} to the "Avoirdupois" bit, because it contradicts our article — does avoirdupois predate English units or not? I removed "even in those days ..." because, frankly, it's meaningless: one would expect more resistance to metrication two hundred years ago than today, when it is perfectly natural and the way of nearly the entire world. fuddlemark (fuddle me!) 16:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Adding references; propose to delete at least one tag

I've done a fair amount of work on this, and added a number of references. I'd propose to remove at least the tag that claims that this article contains original research from the article in chief.

There's enough technocratic, scientistic and Europhiliac bias among the editing base that I doubt that consensus is achievable that any article that dares assert that reasons exist why anyone should refuse to genuflect before the Goddess of Reason and be assimilated to metric perfection could ever be considered NPOV, but I think at least most of the claims of original research have been made moot by these recent changes. Smerdis of Tlön 17:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thought we were just in the business of documenting those reasons which are out there, be they for or against this "genuflexion", rather than asserting them. Some flowery language there Ihcoyc but I dunno. I'm pro-metrication, sure, but does that make me a technocrat, a scientist, a Europhiliac; and if so, what's wrong with that? I don't know that the editing base is so terribly biased here, though. I readily accept that there are arguments against metrication ... even some good ones. It's no POV to document them if they're out there. Nor is it POV to scrutinise them: some of them are blown out of proportion, some are just bollocks. The same it true for the opposing view, of course. Good work on the references. Jimp 8-9 May 2006
On the subject of bias. Who was it who wrote the following?
The metric system is indeed based on the Sumerian cubit, because like many other weapons in the Devil's arsenal, it originated with Semiramis and Nimrod.
Jimp 07:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Possibility of fatalities due to metrication?

Although I've already stated my preference for metric units on my user page, there are stories to be told from the changeover. When New Zealand was converting to metric units, my mother was driving on a highway that had metric road signs. The car she was driving at the time had the old units, so she thought the '100' sign meant '100 miles' and started driving at 95 miles per hour (about 150 km/h.) I think anyone that's confronted with a similar problem when their car uses the old units and the sign specifies the new units would probably be in a similar situation. Metrication could be fatal if not enough information is provided. Scott Gall 09:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Fortunately for us Americans (Southern Americans at least), our resistance to metrication coincides with our resistance to speed limits. :P
But seriously, sounds more like yet another reason for people to listen less to authority figures (even the inanimate ones) and more to all that grey stuff God put in between their ears.

12.150.117.30 14:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I would guess it'll depend a lot on common sense. If the maximum speed limit is 60 mph and you see a 100 sign, would you assume they've suddenly decide to change the maximum speed limit to 100 mph or realise there must be something wrong. The greater problem would be in urban areas and areas with low speed limits. If you see a 50 sign which means 50 kmh but you think it's mph you might possibly be forgiven for being mistaken. But again it depends, if you're near a school and you think the speed limit would be 50 mph your probably too stupid to be driving. I agree with 12.150... somewhat but I think it's an issue of driver education and intelligence. The signs indicate the SPEED LIMIT. They don't direct you do drive at that speed. Scott, I'm sure you've seen the signs, it's a limit not a target, drive to the conditions. Of course, when your car or whatever has the wrong units, you might have a problem since it can be somewhat difficult to gauge your speed independently so you might not realise you're going a lot faster then you should be if you don't look properly and assume the car is in kmh when it's in mph. But this would primarily be if you happen to be in an area without other cars Nil Einne 20:51, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
The argument of confusing miles per hour and kilometers per hour doesn't sound very convincing to me. A driver of any but very limited experience can tell what the speed limit could possibly be (by the location and the quality of the road), so I'm sorry to say that, but your mother could have used little more common sense. Another argument is that highways worldwide have either the speed limit of 110..130 km/h (60..75 mph), or no speed limit at all, so thinking there's a speed limit of 100mph is a little unusual, wouln't you agree?. I haven't seen a highway in my life with the speed limit of more than 130 km/h. LMB 15:19, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Delete or modify surveying section

The article contains a paragraph alleging that resurveying to restate property dimensions in SI is impractical. I will divide the paragraph into individual sentences for discussion:

"One major obstacle to metrication in the United States is its established system of Torrens title registration for real property."

According to Brown (1995:36-37) the Torrens system is only used in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and the city of Chicago; in the rest of the United States the evidence of title is recorded.

"The metes and bounds descriptions of land in deeds and other title documents are tied to the well established Public Land Survey System and the Lot and Block Survey System, all of which use English measures such as feet, rods, and furlongs."

Referring to the "Glossary of Deed Terms" of Brown (pages 374-400), the terms in this paragraph are throughly confused. The message that deeds are more often in feet and rods than in SI is true, but it neglects vara which is used in the Southwest and Florida (Brown 1995:44).

"All of these systems of land measurement were in place well before there was ever any thought of converting any measurements in the United States to metric measurements."

The first large survey ordered by the U.S. Congress was the Survey of the Coast. The very first baseline measured for this survey, near New York City, was measured in 1817, and was measured in meters. The Survey of the Coast and successor agencies (now the National Geodetic Survey) continued to use meters ever since (National Geodetic Survey 2001). This is not to say there isn't an enormous amount of data measured in feet, just that this sentence exaggerates the dominance of traditional units for surveys.

"The process of re-surveying each tract of land in the United States to produce a revised metes and bounds description of the various lots or sections in metric units would be quite costly."

It is difficult to find a citation to prove a negative, but I don't believe it is customary in most areas to resurvey unless a property is divided or questions arise about the location of the boundaries. Since land surveyors are skilled with computers and mathematics (NCEES 2005), conversion would place little additional burden on the surveyors, compared to the effort of remeasuring distances in the field. Gerry Ashton 20:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

References for survey paragraph discussion

Brown, C., et al. Brown's Boundary Control and Legal Principles (4th ed.). New York: Wiley.

National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying. Fundamentals of Surveying (FS) Exam Specifications. [2]

National Geodetic Survey. (2001). The Hassler Legacy: Ferdinand Rudolf Hassler and the United States Coast Survey. [3]

Price increases due to changes in standards of measurements (nonmetrical example)

When I was in middle school, my teacher had mentioned in mathematics that at one point, carpeting and flooring were measured in square yards, not square feet, yet when the standards changed, from yards to feet, the price was only cut by 1/3, resulting in a 3 fold increase in prices.

A simple google search can show that there is still confusion on such simple conversions and what prices should be comparable in different measurements, yet in the same set of standards ( [4] was a decent enough link with an example of this point however, i don't know how prevalent differently scaled units with differing base unit prices still is these days, and unfortunately when i was told this the net was still a rather new thing and highly unlikely there's going to be alot webpages talking about this)

I point this out to give credence to the price escalation argument against metrification as a change in standards without using the metric system per se, hopefully giving a more neutral example.

Can anyone back me up with some harder evidence of this? I apologize for my lack of producing pictures of such quotes, links to such references, but this is something mentioned to me about 11+ years ago and not exactly the material for a breaking news story.

First paragraph mangled

The first paragraph has been edited several times this month. For a while there was an incomplete sentence, and now the sentence reads

Today, only the United States of America, Liberia, and Myanmar (Burma) have gone under the process of metrication.

This sentence is obviously false; every country that currently uses the metric system has undergone the process of metrication. Gerry Ashton 20:48, 24 July 2006 (UTC)