This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think it's because the United States already uses imperial, switching over carries a cost, the United States is large enough that there is no pressure to switch for the sake of standardisation with neighbours, and the United States is historically quite bad at top-down standardisation and national reform. There are fifty states, some might embrace metric and some would resist it, and the federal government would struggle to make it compulsory - it would incur both state resistance and widespread popular resistance. Whichever government tries to make the switch is going to face a lot of complaints, and the other party is inevitably going to seize the issue and portray themselves as soming to save your measurements. Lastly, Americans hate being made to conform with the rest of the world - there is a very strong sense of national exceptionalism and defiance. The ingrained sense of "but we're different" wins out - from everything from climate agreements to conventions on landmines, the US has a tradition of being the exception. Telling the rest of the world to piss off usually goes down well domestically. It's a bit like the British attitude to EU regulations, or the Japanese attitude to whaling. Maybe on its own it wasn't a big issue, but the moment it becomes an issue of pushy, arrogant foreigners telling us what we ought to do, the US goes, "You know what? I'm gonna start doing it even harder."
Disclaimer: I'm Australian, Imperial units are garbage, metric is superior.
There's also just a massive amount of equipment, material, hardware, and even facilities designed around imperial units, sometimes practically irreplaceable. Switching over to metric, even solely for new projects, isn't just or even mostly a matter of getting people to use new units on drawings.
But again: somehow the rest of the world did. Their precious tooling using only Troy ounces, Whitworth screws and French inches except when needing 尺 instead was swapped decades ago. Weird how the other 96% of the globe somehow managed.
More options
Context Copy link
It doesn't really help the "switch to metric" argument that unit conversions are typically done by computer these days anyway. The marginal cost of doing calculations in "harder" units isn't worth it because the calculations aren't really the hard part any more. Consumer products are pretty universally labelled with both, but the imperial units are round numbers: the box in front of me here is "16 oz (1 lb) 454 g".
Raw material stock sizes are probably a more difficult transition at this point: changing to size of the "2x4" (1.5 x 3.5 inches, naturally) would impact pretty much all construction heavily with seemingly little upside.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think the best bet would be California mandating metric. "If you want your products sold in CA, they have to state weights in kg and dimensions in meters. Gas stations are required to (also) display liters for fuel and hPa for tire pressure." Most manufacturers would probably print both imperial and SI units on their products.
Almost all products sold at my grocery store are labelled in both metric and imperial. A quick search suggests this has been federal law since 1992, with a few exceptions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link