A hilariously stupid piece of real world foundational debt is the measurement system referred to as United States Customary Units. Having grown up in the US, my brain is filled with useless conversions, like that 5,280 feet are in a mile, and 2 pints are in a quart, while 4 quarts are in a gallon. The US government has considered switching to metric multiple times, but we remain one of seven countries that haven’t adopted Système International as the official measurement system. This debt is baked into road signs, recipes, elementary schools, and human minds.
A not-so-hilariously stupid mistake is to think that the traditional measurement system is stupid. His picture illustrates one of its virtues: the entire liquid-measurement system is based on doubling & halving, which are easy to perform with liquids. The French Revolutionary system, OTOH, requires multiplying & dividing by 10, which is easy to do on paper or with graduated containers, but extremely difficult to do with concrete quantities (proof: with one full litre container and two empty containers, none graduates, attempt to divide the litre into decilitres).
The real foundational debt is that we use a base-10 system for counting, due to the number of fingers & thumbs on our hands, rather than something better-suited to the task. If we fixed that problem, then suddenly all sorts of numeric troubles would vanish. There's actually a lot to be said about the Babylonian base-60 system, to be honest.
That's an... interesting point I haven't seen brought up before. Makes me appreciate the "traditional" system more.
Still, I guess we aren't going to drop base-10 any time soon, so I believe the US should just accept the "traditional" measurement system as something that used to be very practical, but no longer is due to progress of technology, and switch to SI.
Agreed; this is a really interesting perspective. It points to how different applications yield different optimizations. Base 60 is fucking cool. I really like musing on how we arrived at the duration of a second.
It really is! The number of digits might be a bit much for normal use, so perhaps base-12 is more realistic. If we're going to upend tradition, might as well do it for good, well-founded reasons …
Of course, that would have been equally a problem had one team been using kilogramme-metre-seconds and the other gramme-metre-seconds, and could have been avoided by standardising on customary or on French Revolutionary units!
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It's a great article, but I do have one quibble.
A not-so-hilariously stupid mistake is to think that the traditional measurement system is stupid. His picture illustrates one of its virtues: the entire liquid-measurement system is based on doubling & halving, which are easy to perform with liquids. The French Revolutionary system, OTOH, requires multiplying & dividing by 10, which is easy to do on paper or with graduated containers, but extremely difficult to do with concrete quantities (proof: with one full litre container and two empty containers, none graduates, attempt to divide the litre into decilitres).
The real foundational debt is that we use a base-10 system for counting, due to the number of fingers & thumbs on our hands, rather than something better-suited to the task. If we fixed that problem, then suddenly all sorts of numeric troubles would vanish. There's actually a lot to be said about the Babylonian base-60 system, to be honest.
That's an... interesting point I haven't seen brought up before. Makes me appreciate the "traditional" system more.
Still, I guess we aren't going to drop base-10 any time soon, so I believe the US should just accept the "traditional" measurement system as something that used to be very practical, but no longer is due to progress of technology, and switch to SI.
Agreed; this is a really interesting perspective. It points to how different applications yield different optimizations. Base 60 is fucking cool. I really like musing on how we arrived at the duration of a second.
I stand by the assertion that being one of 7 countries that only sometimes uses SI has very real costs. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-climate-orbiter/
It really is! The number of digits might be a bit much for normal use, so perhaps base-12 is more realistic. If we're going to upend tradition, might as well do it for good, well-founded reasons …
Of course, that would have been equally a problem had one team been using kilogramme-metre-seconds and the other gramme-metre-seconds, and could have been avoided by standardising on customary or on French Revolutionary units!
What's better about a base-60 system compared to a base-10 system?
Probably the same benefits as a base-12 system compared to base-10. More divisible factors.