XKCD: metric conversions

[Newby]

I could do that. If I was good at physics and all... :o

[MyndFyre]

It IS funny, but their temperatures sound like they were written by somebody from CA or FL, they needed a Canadian to go over them and tell them what "Cold" means. :)

QQ

[Camel]

-10 isn't a cold day in Boston (or maybe it is)

That's 14 degrees farenheight, which is pretty god damn cold, but not "as cold as it ever gets" in Boston. That's about how cold Boston has been so far this season.

[Hitmen]

That's 14 degrees farenheight, which is pretty god damn cold, but not "as cold as it ever gets" in Boston. That's about how cold Boston has been so far this season.

With random 50-60 degree days here and there, fun new england weather.

[Towelie]

its 1 Celsius here and raining. Fuck this.

[Blaze]

its 1 Celsius here and raining. Fuck this.

Cry more!

[nslay]

Just to be somewhat serious, but from the king's foot, to water?  The metric system sure is earthly/humanly to be the logical replacement of the imperial units, which only suffer from painful conversion long remedied by computers (and Google).  Why aren't we using units derived directly from the behavior of the universe like, say, Kelvin?  What's so special about base 10 and water to be the entire basis of a measuring system?  Oddly, people have an extremely easy time doubling things in their head...why not the binary kibi, mebi, gibi, and friends?  I don't really believe the 10-finger argument since history indicates some ancient civilizations used different bases (e.g. like base 60, which still haunts us today).

[iago]

Just because not everybody uses base 10, doesn't mean that base 10 doesn't derive from a natural obsession with fingers (or toes).

But I agree, base 10 is a bunch of nonsense, binary/hex is where it's at. :)

[nslay]

Just because not everybody uses base 10, doesn't mean that base 10 doesn't derive from a natural obsession with fingers (or toes).

But I agree, base 10 is a bunch of nonsense, binary/hex is where it's at. :)

All I'm pointing out is that decimal is not intuitive.  If it were, it would have been simultaneously adopted by almost every ancient civilization.  If having 10 fingers was really the intuitive motivation for decimal, it went unnoticed by ancient civilization like Babylon, Egypt and even the Mayans.  But, its a known oddity that people have a very easy time doubling quantities in their head.  I wonder if the human mind is better suited to bases of powers of 2.  It's hard to objectively tell...but I think the fact that people have an easy time doubling quantities should be a good indicator.

[iago]

All I'm pointing out is that decimal is not intuitive.  If it were, it would have been simultaneously adopted by almost every ancient civilization.  If having 10 fingers was really the intuitive motivation for decimal, it went unnoticed by ancient civilization like Babylon, Egypt and even the Mayans.  But, its a known oddity that people have a very easy time doubling quantities in their head.  I wonder if the human mind is better suited to bases of powers of 2.  It's hard to objectively tell...but I think the fact that people have an easy time doubling quantities should be a good indicator.

A lot of people miss intuitive stuff. :)

I think people are better at patterns than anything, and doubling follows a pattern.

[nslay]

All I'm pointing out is that decimal is not intuitive.  If it were, it would have been simultaneously adopted by almost every ancient civilization.  If having 10 fingers was really the intuitive motivation for decimal, it went unnoticed by ancient civilization like Babylon, Egypt and even the Mayans.  But, its a known oddity that people have a very easy time doubling quantities in their head.  I wonder if the human mind is better suited to bases of powers of 2.  It's hard to objectively tell...but I think the fact that people have an easy time doubling quantities should be a good indicator.

A lot of people miss intuitive stuff. :)

I think people are better at patterns than anything, and doubling follows a pattern.

Or maybe ease of doubling is an indication that the brain stores quantities in a binary-like representation.

[Explicit]

All I'm pointing out is that decimal is not intuitive. If it were, it would have been simultaneously adopted by almost every ancient civilization. If having 10 fingers was really the intuitive motivation for decimal, it went unnoticed by ancient civilization like Babylon, Egypt and even the Mayans. But, its a known oddity that people have a very easy time doubling quantities in their head. I wonder if the human mind is better suited to bases of powers of 2. It's hard to objectively tell...but I think the fact that people have an easy time doubling quantities should be a good indicator.

A lot of people miss intuitive stuff. :)

I think people are better at patterns than anything, and doubling follows a pattern.

Or maybe ease of doubling is an indication that the brain stores quantities in a binary-like representation.

Neurons do fire in a binary-like manner give or take the inhibitory effect on neighboring neurons. This leads me to believe that the universe would be more accurately depicted by binary-representation.