this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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How do you account for doubling precision? Decimal only records 10-fold steps.
In any context where it's important, you'd note it with +/-. Not really a problem.
I guess there's nothing wrong with saying 1/8th metre, 1/8th centimetre, 15/16th metre either. Just as some people might use 0.356 inches.
I'd be a big fan of fractional metric.
Although if we really wanted to go crazy (this will never happen), we'd ditch base-10. It's a stupid base that we only use because of our fingers. Base 12 is superior and is actually the strongest defense of feet and inches (though yards can fuck right off). It has 6 divisors whereas 10 only has 4.
Base 60 is also cool (divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60), but that would also be significantly more difficult to teach children - it takes them long enough to learn the order of 26 letters.
And being a geographer, I adore 360 because it's fucking awesome to work with, and you don't get a better composite until 2520, which is just too much to deal with.
yeah, a duodecimal metric system would have been better. Still, it's more important to have a standard system than it is for it to be ideal. It's the strongest argument for US customary system within the USA, as well - but that argument breaks down when you widen the scope to the world.
In the 18th century context, and its dozens of competing measurement systems, something like the metric system was sorely needed just for standardization. We're just lucky that it was something more or less sensible. Had the US customary system won out, I think we'd be objectively worse off.
So it could have been better, but it could also have been MUCH much much worse.