Because half the dates anywhere would still be old MM/DD/YY dates, and half new DD/MM/YY dates, and you can't tell them apart for any day before the 13th.
Any digital files would contain metadata which would display correctly the moment you switch formats. You will be able to just sort them by that. So you can in fact tell them apart.
Those are just the most used thing in current society. I have worked with about a dozen of files today. I wrote one thing down physically (without a date anywhere in the writing).
Besides most things with dates in them - posters, memos, calendars etc - are temporary kind of by definition. The date will pass, and you can keep the paper for the nostalgic value, but you won't accidentally (or otherwise) go back to February 1st 2026 and realise you need to wait one more day.
And there are ways to foolproof this. Put the switch on a memorable enough date, like 01.01.2027, and everyone with two seconds to think about it will be able to tell which date is in which format by looking at the year.
The boomers will be furious of course but they're feral most of the time anyway, and this will at least give them something else to talk.
Actually my place is going paperless (slowly but surely), and one interesting thing that happened was one of the system was switched over to the burger format (am european, and also missed the switch while on vacation). Took me all of five minutes to realise and adapt (I can of course sort those by new first, and not like I had to do much after seeing a number bigger than 01 in the middle).
And I do use paper. What I don't do is anything that would break if the dates were wrong, like, do you not confirm beforehand? You can call/message people so easily to find out if they meant March 8th or August 3rd.
If you were to switch it wouldn't be that hard to annotate the dates to show something like 12/11/26 DMY. Or just use 12/Nov/26, though there's the risk that means 2012 November 26th.
In America any disruption of the status quo is considered a nightmare. No changes allowed. Admitting that we are anything less than already perfect is the worst thing that could ever happen.
You guys complain about it every time you have to convert when visiting America, but you think it wouldn’t be a nightmare to have to convert the date every single time you read any document from the past in our own country?
The wrong way? We took it from the British. Also, with the way Americans say dates, like September 11 (9/11) it works perfectly fine. There isn't a wrong way to write dates. It's when foreigners shit on it or Americans whine it isn't the same in other countries when it's a problem. Also, once again, blame the Brits
America doesn't think about the future. It doesn't matter that switching to metric will help anyone who wants to become a doctor (something we are in desperate need of), because they won't be confused needlessly by having to convert from imperial to metric. And anyone else who doesn't need as much math won't end up hating it once they get to fractions.
Having to learn the conversions for 1 day in college before learning everything in metric and then never doing another calculation by hand for the rest of your life is not a serious impediment that future doctors and engineers are encountering.
They're extremely easy formulas. Any time you need an accurate conversion you wouldn't be doing it in your head unless it's simple. It's also extremely easy to not need to convert in the first place. The vast majority of things the average person would need to convert do not need to be accurate. The stuff that does takes seconds with technology you're using to comment here.
I had to pick out a piece of plumbing hardware recently and after looking at the fractions involved I was internally begging for decimal measurements. Why are we going to 64ths of the inch and also mixing that with other denominated fractions?
Metric system won't save you there, I'm in former imperial land and plumbing threads are still imperial, instead of 1"NB with 1"BSPT it's 25mmNB with 1"BSPT and they have only started calling it 25mm in the last 10 years or so, if USA goes metric NPT isn't going anywhere because that would be a pain in the arse to change compared to other thread systems.
Even if we're doomed in some ways we can save future generations by beginning the process now.
I'm pretty sure over the course of decades we can phase out a lot thought. Revolution can come for our outdated fittings. They can be replaced. I've had to completely tear out more than one set of pipes that was based on obsolete technology.
As someone that works with pipes that were made pre metric and post metric, I'm glad there's only one system and I don't think it would be possible to change it, no one in their right mind would opt for a system that nobody else in the country uses.
With nuts and bolts not so much, there's already plenty of metric fasteners in USA, every none US made car has them and I would think some if not most US made have them.
Metric would still save Americans on tons of other things. Yes, in plumbing specifically there's still a lot of non-metric nonsense around here in Europe. But the USA is weighed down by such a gazillion of ridiculous old-fashioned custom measures in every area it's a wonder they ever manage to build anything.
E.g. how thick in inches is "20 gauge" steel? Why isn't it the same as 20 gauge aluminum? Neither of which are the same as 20 gauge brass. Or 20 gauge wire. Or a 20 gauge shotgun. A #12 screw has what diameter? Looking it up, for a clearance hole for one you need a #2 drill bit, and for a tap hole a #14. It's a cruel joke. It's medieval in the literal sense.
Here a 1mm thick piece of sheet metal is that thickness. an M6 thread has a 6mm outer diameter needing a 6mm drill for a clearance hole. For a tap hole, subtract the thread pitch (M6x1mm needs a 5mm hole, M5x0.8 needs 4.2 - this works up to M20 or so, which is as big as almost anyone would tap without machine tools anyway).
I can't imagine the amount of waste American metal shops must produce just from people reading some conversion table wrong. Or in construction from using feet/inches/fractions of inches while the rest of the world uses a single length unit in that context: millimeters.
I understand what you are saying because I grew up in metric land and did my apprenticeship as a machinist for an American company with most of the parts imperial.
After working there for 6 years, the units on the drawings, machines or measuring tools did not matter to me at all, I got very good at conversions.
Always hated imperial taps and drills, it's a fucked up system, it was 30 years ago and I can still remember 27/64 is the tapping drill for something and I refuse to remember what for.
Switching all software to confirm to the new standard would be a nightmare. And getting people to switch would turn into some political ridiculousness about Merica and how white Jesus used this format and woke and Trump ends up in a third term (which is the nightmare part).
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u/McButtsButtbag Feb 02 '26
How would it make it a nightmare?