This really makes me hate the half-assed use of the metric system in the US. It seems like my local stores go out of their way to use different imperial units for different products, making it harder to compare. Unit prices are great, but when one package is $/oz and another is $/gallon, it defeats much of the purpose.
But both oz and gallon are still imperial units. In metric they would use liters. So this isn't caused by half-assed use of the metric system, but rather by not using it at all.
In your rush to be pedantic, would it kill you to engage your brain for a few seconds first?
The US uses the metric system in many places. However, adoption has been half-assed, and non-metric units remain in common use in many situations. I buy soda and wine in liters but milk and juice in gallons, for example.
The fact that any non-metric units remain at all is due to the half-assed nature of metric system adoption in this country.
What's with the hostility? I was pointing out that WalterBright was down voted for the perfectly valid point that the problem you spoke of is not caused by half-assed use of the metric system. No matter how much I use my brain, it won't become such either. There may be other problems caused by that (I wouldn't know; I'm not American), but you specifically brought up one that is not related to metric in any way.
The hostility comes because you're going out of your way to interpret what I said in a way that makes me wrong, rather than seeing how I'm right.
And you're doing it again. Did you just ignore my explanation above, about how any use of non-metric units in the US is ultimately due to the half-assed adoption of the metric system in this country?
Hey, I understand what you are saying. But he did have a point, why use hostility? You could have made the same comment without the first line saying 'use your brain' and kept everything civil. Even if you are right, do you need to denigrate others who have gotten something wrong?
Pedantry is an inherent part of nerd-dom. It's often a good thing. Computers and other such things don't work on "well, you know what I meant".
However, there's a nasty subset of pedantry which basically consists of pattern-matching words without truly grasping the meaning and using that as a launching point for a "you're wrong" reply. This kind of pedantry derails conversations and wrecks communities.
That's the kind of pedantry I got above with this nonsense reply about how "in metric they would use liters". As if I didn't know that! A moment's thought would indicate, hey, maybe this guy is not a complete idiot who doesn't know anything about metric, and he probably already knows that neither ounces nor gallons are metric, so let's figure out what he actually meant instead of doing a mindless pattern-matching "you're wrong" reply. That is hostility too. Especially when you keep on going even after the guy explains it.
And of course I get the usual internet double standard, where it's perfectly OK to to write a really bad comment as long as you don't outright use upsetting words, but calling that behavior out is criticized.
I don't subscribe to this idea that "civil" is equivalent to "use nice words". To me, "civil" is about how you behave. If you curse but treat other people with respect, that's civil. If you use nothing but benign words arranged in a way that treats other people without respect, that's "not civil".
I suppose any argument in the internet can feel hostile if you care about the subject, but my apologies for any distress I may have caused anyway. My message is not intended to be about whether you are wrong, but whether the example you gave is valid. I did read your explanation, and I find it mistaken. Let me rephrase my argument, and you can point out the part you think is wrong.
If we say that a problem is caused by half-assed adoption of X, it implies the problem can be solved in two ways: (1) Properly adopting X, or (2) Reverting back to no adoption at all. The example you gave can only be solved by 1, because it is an inherent problem of the imperial system. If you take metric out of the equasion, the situation is not affected. While you may have meant to say "the imperial system has problems, let's use metric", one can also understand it as "the transition to metric is causing problems, let's stop it".
Your mistake is thinking that any statement of the form, "I hate X, for example because Y" implies that Y can be solved by any action that eliminates X.
For example, "I hate how they're serving a 50/50 mixture of coffee and urine, makes the coffee taste like urine." This does not imply that the problem can be solved by eliminating the coffee.
