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Electronic conventions I hate

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Again, that's a fallacy: "If 90% of everyone believes in proposition X, and only 10% believe in proposition Y, then proposition X must be correct".

Someday I must find out what this fallacy is called.
 
Well, that's not the name I was after, but it's as good a description as any. There are Latin names for all those classic fallacies, like reductio ad absurdum, ad hominem attack. etc.
 
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This isn't a classic fallacy. It's a modern psychological effect of group dynamics. There are no equivalent classical definitions.
 
I call it's being a sheeple. Argue all you want, you just get added to the herd =)
 
Well, you'll notice I didn't begrudge you your "sheeple", and it's a rather apt description. But the fact is that this is a classic fallacy going back millenia.
 
The current level of population that are sheeple however has reached a mass greater than the entire human population of millennia's past.

It's not an important effect until you realize that even in academia the sheeple effect has taken hold, there is increasingly becoming a lessening need for an individuals input on a matter, it becomes groups which are important, and even in the case of individuals with drastically different viewpoints become nearly impossible to be heard in the herd.
 
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The current level of population that are sheeple however has reached a mass greater than the entire human population of millennia's past.

In other words, "Things are more like they are now than they've ever been".

But I understand what you're saying, and don't disagree.
 
No, what I'm saying is that the system dynamics now are denser than they've ever been before, small anomalies before are now entire system branches. It's not now like it ever was before.
 
Again, that's a fallacy: "If 90% of everyone believes in proposition X, and only 10% believe in proposition Y, then proposition X must be correct".
...

Isn't that a perfect example? If 90% of Americans think Fahrenheit is good and inches are good, you get stuck with it by common consensus even though the fact is that inches and Fahrenheit are far inferior when analysed by anyone who is open minded.

Hence the reason for change! Science improves technology over time. Imperial measurements and Fahrenheit are almost phased out of the scientific community now, they are only lingering in some countires as "consumer units", for now anyway.
 
Mr RB said:
even though the fact is that inches and Fahrenheit are far inferior when analysed by anyone who is open minded.
That however isn't a fact at all. No measurement method has any inherent superiority, C and F can be converted easily albiet there's a nasty repeating decimal involved, this is irrelevant if a calculator of sufficient precision is used. SI units are used in the scientific community because there's already been one nasty error Nasa made with conversion that caused a satellite to fail to enter orbit cause someone forgot to convert properly.

And if by "consumer units" you mean the defacto standard for virtually all US construction and still a large portion of Industrial Fastners..

This does bring up an issue I'm curious about. In the US at least one of the universal standards for construction is studs 16 inches on center, and all lumber is dimensional and based on the foot and fractional inches.. If you were to go to a modern country that is metricized what unit would you find their building supplies in?
 
This does bring up an issue I'm curious about. In the US at least one of the universal standards for construction is studs 16 inches on center, and all lumber is dimensional and based on the foot and fractional inches.. If you were to go to a modern country that is metricized what unit would you find their building supplies in?

hi SC,
The building industry is one one of those grey areas, new buildings are being 'sized' using the Metric system.

Trying to get replacement parts for repairing pre-metric buildings is a pain, all the the new stock is in metric dimensions.

So if for example you want to replace a section of 'old' roof/rain plastic gutter you have to somehow match the join between the two types. This matching applies to lots of other items.

I believe that the change from Imperial to Metric was the correct decision as was the change to our monetary units to the decimal system.

In the U.S. as least you have some sanity it the monetary units, even though you persist with the Imperial measures.

Imagine the U.K. as well as the Imperial units, we had:
Farthings, 4 to a penny
Half pennies
Pennies...... 12 to a Shilling
Three penny bits... 4 to a Shilling
Six penny pieces... 2 to a Shilling
Shillings... 20 to a Pound
Florins.... 10 to Pound
Half Crowns... 8 to the Pound
Ten Shilling notes
Pound Notes
5,10 and 20 Pound Notes
Not to mention Guineas [ 21 shillings]:confused:
 
Call it what you want, I use what I'm comfortable with, and learn the other conventions because I must.

I draw a lot of schematics. I do not use the NXM system (hate it actually), and if I were to redraw a schematic off the wayside it goes. A resistor is a zigzag, a coil is loopy. People will have to know my conventions if they want to understand what I draw, like it or not. I did not invent them, they were what I learned when I was a young duck.

I particularly do not like the Siemens units of measurements. There was an acceptable system of measurements before some bean counter mentalities decided they would exert control on the rest of the world. I will learn them, but I will not use them.

Change just for change's sake is usually not good news.
 
eric, I think you hit the nail on the head though. England has something like 50 million people. The US has something like 300 million... You're still having problems with metrification, the scale is drastically different here, I hope people can understand that and realize that we're not stubborn American's, it's just that getting 300 million people to do ANYTHING is a logistics problem of mammoth proportions, the government doesn't even want to try there's no net benefit. The scientific community is separate altogether.

QuietMan, your argument against Siemens doesn't make sense, it's an SI derived unit for one which means it's going nowhere. For measuring extremely low resistances it's more human friendly than the Ohm, and even saying that it doesn't matter because Ohm's and Siemens are directly convertible simply. For the measurement of conductance of a fluid especially in industry it is the preferred unit.
 
QuietMan, your argument against Siemens doesn't make sense, it's an SI derived unit for one which means it's going nowhere. For measuring extremely low resistances it's more human friendly than the Ohm, and even saying that it doesn't matter because Ohm's and Siemens are directly convertible simply. For the measurement of conductance of a fluid especially in industry it is the preferred unit.

Well, it's not like they invented the measurement; they just renamed it. Everyone seemed perfectly happy with "mho", which was the name of the unit for, what, decades? Kind of like how the psych industry, or whatever you want to call it, suddenly decided that "manic-depressive" either was disrespectful or old-fashioned, and forced everyone to use "bipolar" instead. I agree with QuiteMan here.
 
Odd, all the industrial controls I've run across use Siemens. It's not renamed, it's a reciprocal value direct based on the Ohm.

If you don't like the Siemens, then you best not refer to the time constant of a micro processor in micro or nano seconds, as the reciprocal of that value is how they determine the Mhz...
 
Odd, all the industrial controls I've run across use Siemens. It's not renamed, it's a reciprocal value direct based on the Ohm.

You're wrong, again.

It was renamed.

Yes, it's a reciprocal value based on the ohm: that's why it used to be called mho. Get it?

Used to be. As in no longer is. Which is why all the industrial controls you've run across use Siemens.

(Not sure how that was supposed to be pronounced: like Moe of the 3 Stooges?)
 
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carbonzit, in what industry have you worked in where you have seen a Siemen refered to as a mho? Becuase it hasn't been refered too as an mho since around the 1880's.
 
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Hmm, I've used all my life. Don't assume you are the only arbiter of standards. Just because you haven't used it since the 80's doesn't mean that is true of everyone. I used to work in a metrology lab during the early 1990's calibrating test equipment, it as in use there then, and I was a high level tech until the tech bust in the 2001. Since then, not so much.

There is still a lot of old test equipment out there, and the change was arbitrary (as in not needed). There may be other examples where it was needed, but I'm not aware of them.
 
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