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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14841802
It’s absolutely true that a lot of modern-day problems with being tired come from bad sleep habits. What I’m talking about is a real phenomenon that isn’t being in front of a screen too close to bedtime. If anyone wants to know more, here’s a 3-minute video from AsapSCIENCE about what research shows.
I hate it, whenever this shit comes up. We didn’t use body-based measurements because of the EVIL TYRANNY OF THE HORRIBLE EVIL BAD EVIL KING.
We used them because, while the king might have been a bit taller than the average man, he was still basically the same size as most people. And so the measurements were actually conveniently sized, based on the scale of the human body (ALSO, THE KING’S CUBIT WAS A STANDARD MEASUREMENT, WHICH IS A GOOD THING. SEE MY EDIT, BELOW).
But the supposedly logical metric system calibrated the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance on the Earth’s surface from the north pole to the equator.
That’s arguably mathematically beautiful. Arguably. But it’s not useful to people. It’s not based on the human body. I object to that. I think it was a deeply anti-populist decision, made by haughty nobles, who quite rightly got their heads chopped off, right after they came up with that shit.
Those nobles had no idea how common people used measurements. They didn’t consider the people who actually built houses or tables or ships. They were planning on using the metric system to do pure science. That’s fine. That’s good. We need that. But there’s no reason the scientists can’t use a measurement that is also good for engineers and carpenters.
But no, the aristocrats were going to pick something they thought of as numerically lovely, and never spared any fraction of a thought for the real people, who would have to use the measurements to do real-world shit. Again: it’s good that they had their heads chopped off. They were pieces of shit.
When that revolution was happening, we should have revamped the metric system based on a Universal Standard Cubit. I think we should have gone and measured the cubit lengths of a million real people, from all cultures, all regions, all faiths, all races, and taken the average of them. That would have been useful and appropriate.
EDIT: I’m just saying, if you’re going to hate on the nobility, at least be consistent. A lot of people are like “Cubits? No, because kings bad.”
But then you’re like “Metric system good. Metric system forced on us by SMART aristocracy.”
EDIT 2: PEOPLE ALSO FAIL TO REALIZE THAT THE ANCIENT CUBIT WAS A STANDARD MEASUREMENT, WHICH PROVIDED MOST OF THE BENEFITS OF MODERN STANDARD MEASUREMENTS, LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE THE FUCKING METRIC SYSTEM.
It’s TURBO DISHONEST to extoll the fucking virtues of metric standardization, then go “oh, stupid bad evil stupid evil dumb king was such an egotist that he FORCED his people to measure things using his arm.”
MOTHERFUCKERS, IT WASN’T ABOUT THE KING’S PRIDE. IT WAS THE INVENTION OF A STANDARDIZED UNIT.
You guys think standard units are good! That’s what the cubit was! People had literally been using their own forearms, but some genius was like “nah, we need a standard one…but we should keep it about the size of the arm. Might as well use the ruler’s arm as a ruler, that way he’ll probably pay for a bunch of them to be made, with his massive gold stash.”
That right there was A+ Rant material! Absolutely excellent!
Thanks. I at hope some people at LEAST get it through their heads that you shouldn’t think of the ancient cubit as “big dumb king made people use his body measurements, because he had a big dumb ego.”
As I said, it’s LITERALLY the actual opposite of that. Royal cubits were the first standardized measurement, and they brought probably 90 percent of the overall benefits that the later metric/SI system would bring, thousands of years later.
Look I’m gonna be honest, I had zero opinions on cubits prior to seeing your post, mostly because I was unaware of their existence. Just based on your incredible passion alone, I guess I’ll think back on them fondly now, as a huge milestone for human civilization.
Yeah but metric was built that way so there’s a reference that isn’t “We all agreed an inch = this long”.
If we lost every metric ruler, scale, micrometer, etc, we can backtrack and make a new one from the description. Try using your thumb as an inch reference.
Yes, algorithm-based standardization IS an actual new (and very recent) development of the modern SI system. But remember, the new definitions are indeed VERY NEW. The metric system originally relied on standard meter-bars and weights, which would be used to physically calibrate everybody’s meter-sticks.
YOU’RE STILL NOT UNDERSTANDING WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, WITH THE CUBIT SYSTEM.
The old cubit system that everyone is deriding, when they say “lol, imagine using a king’s arm as your measurement” was NOT a matter of using anyone’s actual goddamned meat thumb as a measurement.
Maybe it was, before the king’s body parts got involved. But by standardizing on a what was supposedly the king’s body parts, you got THE BENEFITS OF STANDARD MEASUREMENTS.
They had a standard cubit rod, in the palace or temple or wherever, and you would use that shit to calibrate everyone’s everyday-use measuring sticks. Remember: people are saying that it was dumb and ego-driven for the measurements to be based on the king’s body. But, to make it abundantly clear, THE STANDARDIZATION WAS THE USEFUL PART OF THE WHOLE THING.
The idea of a forearm-length and a finger-length became axiomatic and abstract. The important part was that it was a standard unit that everyone could rely on. It was the same from one end of your kingdom to the other, and you didn’t have to worry about one guy’s arm being shorter than another guy’s arm, and so your building comes out crooked.
I’ll say it again, to be super-duper-incredibly clear: it’s unfair and idiotic to be like “HAHA, IMAGINE BEING SUCH A DUMBHEAD THAT YOU WOULD USE A KING’S ARM TO MEASURE STUFF,” but then turn around and praise the metric system for the wonders of standardization. You can see the ancient world’s standardization either as “tyrants made the people use their system” or “someone invented standard measures, and that’s why the Egyptians could build so much awesome shit.” The latter is correct.
As I have said a couple times in other comments, the real genius move was deciding to base the new standard units on the king’s body, in the first place. I’m certain it was NOT the actual kings who had the idea, but whoever it was realized they could use the power of the king for everyone’s benefit.
If someone had come up with the concept of a standard cubit and just shopped the idea around, everyone would have been like “cool, that’s great” and then fucking ignored them.
But some massive-brained motherfucker went to the king with the idea. This did several things:
It got the royal family to fund the creation of the standard system. Funding is good. You can’t have a new system without funding, and the king was the guy with the funds.
You need a safe, well-maintained, centrally located place to store the precious original calibration cubit rod. The king has one or more of those places. They’re called palaces, government buildings, and/or temples. Those places are made to be secure, yet accessible for people who need to get official shit done. Absolutely perfect places for making new rulers from the calibration rods.
When people get a delivery of new rulers that are based on the king’s forearm, they are VERY unlikely to say “cool, whatever” and refuse to use them. That could be seen as rebellious, rude, or impious. So you get people to ADOPT your new system of standardization.
This shit is fucking genius. It delivered a huge percentage of what we think of as the benefits of the metric system, thousands of years before the goddamned metric system.
Yes, there are genuine innovations that came along with the metric system itself, and as the SI system has been refined, over the last couple centuries. But that journey STARTED with someone deciding to use the king’s body parts as a standard.
Nobody should ever use “haha, it’s so dumb to use measurements based on a long-dead king’s meat parts” as some kind of CONTRASTING example. That makes no sense. That shit WAS the beginning of standardization. It’s not the opposite of the metric system. It’s the progenitor of the metric system.
I’m not deriding the genius science-coup of appealing to royal ego, or pretending that there’s a desiccated thumb we’re using as a standard.
They changed in 2019 from physical reference ‘blocks’ for the shared weakness as all the other systems that have a ‘master’ calibration unit - whether that’s the SI kilogram or a cubit, or the goddamn kings arm. If the ‘master’ calibration unit changes, that introduces imperceptible drift.
This becomes even more important for actual science - say your scale manufacturer calibrates against the standard ‘master’ measure last week, but your prior lab scales are older. Or apply that across different countries even - they all calibrated against the ‘master’ standard, but minute changes between years or decades looses the authentic standard of X. Dust, temperature, damage, etc all can very slightly throw off the consistency
That’s all totally valid.
My pet peeve is when people talk about the old king’s-body-part systems, as if they are the dumb old opposite of the new, logical metric system. That’s not just false, it’s ludicrous. Ya know, because the one system grew directly out of the other. They were never actually in opposition, as concepts. The SI progenitors just wanted everyone to be on the same standard, worldwide. And for that standard to be more perfect, more consistently defined, and continually improved upon.
In truth, the real step forward is the stubborn persistence of the international organizations that have worked across language barriers and times of international conflict to keep the system going.
And, of course, it has to be remembered that all that effort wasn’t worth doing, until very recently. Up until we had really fast mail (and then telegraphy/telephone) systems for communication, extremely interconnected and fast trade routes between essentially all nations, and extremely advanced cooperation among cross-continental scientific organizations, it didn’t really make sense to try and put everyone onto the same unit system.
In other words, the SI system came along when worldwide conditions were ripe for it to prosper. That’s not taking anything away from the aforementioned grit and determination and labor that the SI founders and current organizers have done. I’m just saying that it’s incorrect to characterize the situation as “gee, people were soooooo simple and dumb and gross, before these amazing French dudes saved us from our primitive inches and feet.”
And yet that’s how people talk about it. Like I said, it’s a pet peeve.
EDIT: Also, I think a lot of people fail to recognize that all the powerful nations in the pre-SI world had completely functional systems of standard measurements. It’s just that those systems didn’t function outside of their specific nations/empires. Again, there’s too much of a hyper-grandiose narrative, as if these French giants came along and invented ALMOST THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF MEASURING STUFF, overnight.
Hard disagree. There is far too much variability in the body size of adult humans, especially when taking sex into account. Sure, maybe my foot closely resembles the foot-size of said monarch but my 5 ft tall wife’s doesn’t.
There’s no reason to use body paste measurements for nearly any purpose in the modern day. You can’t build a house based on the rough size of someone’s arm when you have half a dozen people minimum working on a project. You need a standard unit which would need to be measured using a standard unit measuring device. Either way you need to use a measuring tool, so why not use a standard that makes the math easier.
Yeah, that’s why you have to choose between three different door sizes, when you go into any building. And why cars have to have different steering wheel sizes, for different sized people. Oh wait, no. That’s not how it works, at all. People’s average body size IS basically the same, if you exclude the actual dwarves and the actual NBA players.
Yes. That’s why I suggested a Universal STANDARD Cubit. It would be a standard length, just like the meter. But it would be based on the PEOPLE. Not some random, useless fraction of the distance from the pole to the equator. How is that useful to anyone? Pegging the definition at least in the AREA of a human arm’s scale HAS to be better than that.
Funny you should bring that up, too. The metric system should been based on 12, not 10. Dividing things by numbers other than 2 and 5 can be useful. And, by the way, you could ALWAYS multiply things by 10, just by adding a zero or removing a zero. That’s not some special thing that the metric system invented. I don’t know why people think that it is.
I read the edits on your original comment. I think you’re missing the point that the metric system at least scales in a reasonable and expected way, which is not the case in the imperial system of measurement.
And to your point about averaging a human arm and using that as a measurement standard, no, it’s not necessarily better. You still need an exact standard that you have to measure against for any kind of precision. Making it similar to the size of a human body part doesn’t matter unless you’re estimating, which isn’t how anything is built anymore.
There are reasons the old standards were abandoned.
THAT’S WHAT THE OLD CUBIT WAS.
Go look it up. The Egyptians, Sumerians, and Israelites had standard cubit-sticks that they would keep in the palace and use to make the ruler-sticks, for actual use. That is the SAME CONCEPT OF STANDARDIZATION THAT MAKES THE METRIC SYSTEM USEFUL. Let’s be clear about that. These were carefully calibrated tools. That’s why you could use them to build highly functional irrigation canals, large buildings, and fucking pyramids. They weren’t estimating, based on the human body. The cubit was a STANDARD MEASURE, which brought almost all the benefits of standardization, as soon as it was invented.
That concept of standardization was not invented by French motherfuckers, thousands of years later. It was already a thing.
But you get that shit twisted. When French aristocrats in the 18th Century re-discover standardization, you’re like “AHHH, YES. MARVEL AT THE SUBTLE GENIUS OF THE MODERN EUROPEAN MIND.”
Then, when the cubit comes up in conversation, you’re like “STUPID OLD KINGS, FORCING THEIR EGO-MEASUREMENTS ONTO THEIR PEOPLE. SO DUMB AND SO TYRANNICAL.”
You can interpret standardization as either convenient and useful or as “OMG YOU’RE FORCING PEOPLE TO ACCEPT YOUR FOREARM AS A MEASURMENT.” Again: you’re choosing to see the modern metric standards as useful and the ancient standards as evil and/or stupid. For some reason that I don’t understand.
To belabor the point I made in my final edit, I’m certain that the reason the king’s forearm was chosen as the template was so that THE ROYAL FAMILY WOULD FUND THE CREATION OF THE STANDARDIZATION SYSTEM. That’s pretty fucking smart, on a number of different levels. It was the true invention of standard units AND it was a brilliant way to corner the government into supporting it. And it made sure people didn’t have any choice but to start USING the standards, because otherwise they could be seen as badmouthing the king. Fucking genius.
I’m also pretty sure the standard cubits weren’t changed to fit each new monarch’s body. They just kept the standard calibration rods and maybe, like, claimed that all the kings were the same size. That didn’t really matter. The point is, the standard measurement system retained the backing of the ruling dynasty. And as for different kings and regions having different cubits, THAT didn’t matter at all. You didn’t cooperate on building projects with your neighbors, in the ancient world. You were either trading with them for commodities that weren’t measured in anything other than quantity and weight, or else you were fighting them. You never ran into any problem that could have been solved by a global standard cubit.
Just…please at least go confirm all this on the wikipedia page for the cubit. Please understand that it’s literally the opposite of “dumb king body measurement, because dumb king’s ego was big.”
Literally. The concept is literally the actual opposite of that.
Literally the first thing on wikipedia: The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.
I’m pretty sure the dude is trying to say that the measurement is not accurate. I’m not surprised that it could be accurate and standartized from one town to the next. As soon as the first dissagreement starts, it’s gonna get standartized. Otherwise it’s useless as unit.
Meter has a bonus that it doesn’t allow people to use his body parts for almost precise measurement. Actually blocks a lot of retards from saying “Nuh uh, I myself measured it, so I’m right and your ruler is wrong!”
Now when I think of it, Cubit is more or less exactly like the inch. It doesn’t match basically anyones finger, different countries had their own standard. You can and many people do use it as a measurement. Side-effect, seeing memes about Napoleon being a dwarf. XD
So you just chose to ignore all the awesome pictures on that article, showing the standard cubit bars that formed the basis of unit standardization and allowed people to start making building projects larger than two huts next to each other?
Can you explain WHY you chose to ignore that whole concept?
EDIT: Wait, you did mention the standardization of cubits, a little bit.
But it wasn’t “from one town to the next.” It was across WHOLE KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES.
Nobody collaborated on building projects with the kingdom next door until LITERALLY THE MODERN ERA. It didn’t matter that one kingdom’s cubit and/or foot standard was different from the next kingdom’s standard. People thinking Napoleon was shorter than he actually was MIGHT ACTUALLY BE THE ONLY EXAMPLE OF ANY PROBLEM EVER ARISING FROM THAT SITUATION, BEFORE THE STEAM AGE.
After the industrial revolution, sure. We absolutely did need to put the world on the same unit standard. And guess what? That’s what we did! Yes, even America. Almost all of the actual collaboration that the USA does with other nations IS done with metric units. Yeah, except for that Mars orbiter thing. That was a big fucking oof.
Look, I’m not saying we should still be using cubits. I’m saying that it BOTHERS ME when people say “pfffft, imagine being so dumb that you’d let a dead king determine how long your stuff is.”
When people say that shit, they’re taking the THING THAT IS GREAT ABOUT BOTH MODERN METRIC STANDARDIZATION AND ANCIENT CUBIT OR FOOT STANDARDIZATION AND PRETENDING THAT IT’S STUPID.
Again: it’s silly and dishonest to roast ancient cultures, because the king “forced them” to use his body parts as measurements, then turn around and praise that same standardization when it shows up as the basis of the modern SI system.
It’s silly and dishonest to cast the ancient world’s standardization methods as the primitive OPPOSITE of the modern SI system, when the modern system GREW OUT OF THE OLDER ONE.
Do you get that? Is my thesis finally becoming clear? I’m not saying “cubit good, meter bad.” I’m saying “don’t badmouth the cubit for reasons that are vastly and embarrassingly dishonest.”
Also, I don’t think anyone was ever going to keep using his actual arms and feet as measuring sticks, after the proliferation of fucking rulers. Nobody did that 4,000 years ago and nobody did that when the SI meter became standard. So there would be no danger inherent in the base unit being closer to a human-body scale.
For a Chill Dude I do love your fire! Your thesis is (was before I entered the chat) clear as day. I really don’t have much to add here. Unless this might be interesting:
There is a fun thing that arised from moving towards SI units in my country (1920). Some old information was lost from the common citizen. There was a unit Gorčius (around 4 litres). There was another unit Saikas (equals to 6 Gorčius). The funny part is that we have a saying “Gerk su saiku” which translates “Drink in moderation”. Taking it literally, it’s slightly funny knowing that the other person just suggested you to drink around 20 litres (usually alcohol is the context).
That’s HILARIOUS.
Google informs me that your language is Lithuanian. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Lithuania was one of the last holdouts in Europe, where the people preferred their pagan religions over Christianity.
Finally adopting the new “universal” religion isn’t all that different from adopting a new measurement system, when you really think about it. There were probably some funny stories about that, too. And probably some really not funny ones, too.