Nobody questions the logical consistency of the system, I think.
Presently, we use 24-hour time (AM/PM or otherwise), so the loss in precision is enormous going from 24 to 10.
Think about it.
A tenth of a standard hour is 6 standard minutes.
A tenth of a metric hour is 144 standard minutes, more than two standard hours.
A hundredth of a standard hour is 36 standard seconds, or half a minute. It is in the context of hours a negligible amount of time.
A hundredth of a metric hour is 14.4 standard minutes! Imagine being 0.01 metric hours late for a meeting.
So everywhere you now have to specify time to two decimal places /at least/, three to have sub-standard-minute precision.
Layer on top of this the fact that the new system has significantly fewer distinct prime factors, so you quickly run into continuing fractions. Disaster.
What? A metric hour is 144 standard minutes - or do you imagine that a day of metric hours is 1441010 = 144,000 standard minutes long?
A tenth of a metric hour is 14.4 standard minutes. A hundredth of a standard hour is 1.44 minutes. Being 0.01 metric hours late, or 1 metric minute late, is not too much more than being 1 standard limit late.
And current time is specified to 6 digits for second precision - hours, minutes, and seconds.
Don't we have the same basic criticism going from Fahrenheit to Celsius? You go from a 10 degree swing being big to ridiculously huge.
That is, arbitrary number is arbitrary, at large. Most of the "benefits" of any system won't actually be realized by most people that are using it. Consistency, on the other hand, is hugely important.
> Don't we have the same basic criticism going from Fahrenheit to Celsius?
Sure, and one shouldn’t do that either. Fahrenheit’s range (0 being the freezing point of brine, almost but not quite intolerable to a human, and 100 being roughly body temperate and also almost but not quite intolerable to a human) is far more human than Celsius’s freezing-to-boiling range.
Having never used Fahrenheit in any capacity, the math for it feels inhuman.
Having grown up in metric, the values dont feel 'inhuman' just a scale that i'm familiar with. I know that my body is usually at 37, I know that water boils at 100, i know that I don't like anything below 8c or above 40c.
>Presently, we use 24-hour time (AM/PM or otherwise), so the loss in precision is enormous going from 24 to 10.
>Think about it.
No, YOU think about it. When do you use hour-only precision today ?
When you say "I have meeting at 8" that never means "any time period between 8 and 9", that means "it starts at eight". That doesn't change with change of the length of the hour.
You'd still use hours on their own only if you mean "an hour and close to zero minutes around that hour". You'd still add minutes for anything else.
> A hundredth of a metric hour is 14.4 standard minutes! Imagine being 0.01 metric hours late for a meeting.
...no ? it's 100 seconds so ~1.66 of standard minute
Imagine being 1.66 minutes late instead of one!!! Such horror!
Presently, we use 24-hour time (AM/PM or otherwise), so the loss in precision is enormous going from 24 to 10.
Think about it.
A tenth of a standard hour is 6 standard minutes.
A tenth of a metric hour is 144 standard minutes, more than two standard hours.
A hundredth of a standard hour is 36 standard seconds, or half a minute. It is in the context of hours a negligible amount of time.
A hundredth of a metric hour is 14.4 standard minutes! Imagine being 0.01 metric hours late for a meeting.
So everywhere you now have to specify time to two decimal places /at least/, three to have sub-standard-minute precision.
Layer on top of this the fact that the new system has significantly fewer distinct prime factors, so you quickly run into continuing fractions. Disaster.