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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/
This book was interesting.
Are you asking about how you reinvent the exact same meter? Well that won't happen. Our units were arbitrary, useful, widely adopted, and then rigorously defined.
The book walks you through it all. You can don't need to redo civilization exactly the same (the author even suggests some very important things to invent differently, especially in better orders)
It's one of my favorite books of all time 😁 to the point where I own a hardback of it despite being staunchly pro-just-read-books-on-my-phone
IIRC they actually printed a centimeter ruler in the back of the book as an answer to this specific problem.
What's the point of recreating our arbitrary system? It just has to be useful and universal
That's a fair point. Most likely if a group of people did some kind of Long Term Naked & Afraid experiment they'd just start with some length of particularly well-crafted cordage, call it a New Meter™ and go from there