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Originally Posted by jorgegonzalito
Rocking Robbins:
Very interesting and detailed explanation of the basis of the imperial system and its inprovement on the metric. It is likely to be right, and at least I will not discuss your arguments. In Argentina as in other countries of the world the metric system is always used, although curiously at hardware stores to buy the inch bolts and nuts are used to measure lengths and threads.
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Wow! I never would have suspected that. There has to be a good story behind why that is true and it sure would be fun to know what it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jorgegonzalito
But the vast majority have become accustomed to the metric, and we find it difficult to adopt a different one. The conversion of measures from one system to another can create considerable confusion in critical moments when you have an enemy ship in the periscope focusing, and this is not good. I'll tell you frankly, if as in the case of other versions of Silent Hunter, "Wolves of Pacific" gives me the option to choose Imperial or metric system, I will adopt the latter. In fact the crew voices are heard in English, but everyone will see the texts in Spanish, which is the language I speak and understand better. This does not mean that with practice I then decide to change the system, to make the game more realistic. Indeed orders in -some English and I know I can understand the well-all without reading the translation. Thank you very much for such a full explanation Comrade!
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Really! It's a crime that no-one has made up a mod to translate the voices to Spanish. I know that there are several players from Central and South America in this forum and it really surprises me that neither Ubi nor anyone else has thought to localize the language. After all, part of the function of the game is to teach how the American sailors thought, how it was different from the German way and how it was also the same sometimes. Understanding the spoken words is a large part of that. I'm glad you spend more time understanding English than the average American spends understanding other languages.
And make no mistake--the imperial measurement system is not an improvement on the metric, because it was here first. Strengths and weaknesses of the system are its own, based on no other systems other than Roman and Greek and barbarian tribes of Europe. And you can tell that it wasn't thought up by some educated people because they wouldn't have been concerned enough about how the units of measurement fit their use as by the mathematical relationships and ease of calculation.
We do the same thing when we measure something in units that don't fit the task. We say that the Milky Way galaxy is moving at 1.5 million miles per hour, 2,414,016 kilometers per hour, and think to ourselves that the galaxy is moving like a bat out of hell at breathtaking speed. And it's because we're using completely inappropriate units to describe the movement.
Let's use scale speed instead. When we look at something and say "that's moving slowly" or "that's moving quickly" it has nothing to do with its actual speed in any units. We judge by the amount of time it takes to travel its own length. We see a fly zipping around at 5 kph, 2 mph and say, "this guy is really ripping!" Because he's moving 20 times his own length in a second. We look at a car moving the same speed and say "it's just crawling" because it takes many seconds to move its own length.
Let's do a thought experiment. You and I are standing next to a car and trying to decide if it's parked. We look at it for a couple of hours and we can't measure any movement at all. We agree it's parked, right?
We're standing far enough from the Milky Way to look at it at the same angular size as the car and trying to decide how fast it's moving. How will we do that? See how long it takes to travel its own length. How long is that? Try 50 million years. No instrument in the world could detect that the "car" isn't parked when it's moving at one and a half million miles per hour.
So our science books seriously mislead us with true information because they use units of measurement that are completely inappropriate for measuring galaxies and their movements. That's what happens when you use the wrong kind of units for the task. At that point your understanding of what is happening is so warped it doesn't matter if the units are easy to calculate. Might as well measure our height in microns. Nobody would think that was appropriate. But they don't apply the same thinking to other tasks.