It seems like a weird point to bring up. How often do y’all convert your measurements? It’s not even a daily thing. If I’m measuring something, I either do it in inches, or feet, rarely yards. I’ve never once had to convert feet into miles, and I can’t imagine I’m unique in this. When I have needed to, it’s usually converting down (I.e. 1/3 of a foot), which imperial does handle better in more cases.
Like. I don’t care if we switch, I do mostly use metric personally, it just seems like a weird point to be the most common pro-metric argument when it’s also the one I’m least convinced by due to how metric is based off of base 10 numbering, which has so many problems with it.
Edit: After reading/responding a lot in the comments, it does seem like there’s a fundamental difference in how distance is viewed in metric/imperial countries. I can’t quite put my finger on how, but it seems the difference is bigger than 1 mile = 1.6km
I’m fairly certain the only reason we don’t know the things Fahrenheit was based on is because he didn’t write it down.
While Celsius is based on something real (the freezing, and boiling points of distilled water at sea level), it’s not something that someone can measure at most locations? Fahrenheit has the same issue, mind you, the only calibration point it had that’s always measurable is the average body temperature, which is also inconsistent, as anyone who’s tried getting pregnant will know.
At the end of the day anything we base a temperature scale on could be considered arbitrary, though modern Fahrenheit is also based on freezing/boiling water, we just put the points at 32 and 212 (180 degrees between) instead of 0 and 100 (100 degrees between). AFAIK the reason the freezing point is at 32 was because the original 0 point was based on the freezing point of a brine solution? Either way, point is now they’re both based on the same thing: When a specific uncontaminated liquid changes phases at on specific parts of the planet that don’t exist in a lot of countries
While true picking anything is arbitrary, picking something that’s reliably constant on this planet is definitely less so than old measurements of the length of some king’s arm length or whatever that cannot be intuitive to anyone at all (unless their arm happens to be the same I guess, but that’s very inconsistent at best).
Maybe I was too vague, but picking something that can be derived consistently is ordered of magnitude less arbitrary than whatever literally everything in the imperial system is.
As for fahrenheit’s original 0° being an “oopsie”, clearly the high end is very clearly still not based on boiling. The scale isn’t based on something if the number that thing happens at is 212°. Even 200 is just ugly.
The scale should’ve been redone once that got sorted out, ancient communications standards be damned. Even just forgiving that, it should’ve been tossed out in favor of a cleaner method immediately. Keeping that filth is just unconscionable.