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  • [–] 24 points 3 months ago

    I am so tired of this claim, it just feels that way because you are used to it, just as C feels easier to use for describing temperatures for me as I am used to that.

    It is a completely subjective definition, that you can't judge objetively.

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  • [–] 50 points 3 months ago* (39 children)

    I don't understand how this is the case. I feel like it would only be perceived as being true by growing up with the system. Like i guess I don't know where you grew up so I shouldn't really make this assertion but I feel like most people from countries that use Celsius have probably never thought "hey I think it's weird that 30 degrees is considered really hot."

    I guess you could make the same argument that people living in the United States don't complain about water boiling at 212 degrees but that also doesn't address the compatibility issue

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago

    He literally designed the scale around common temperatures.

    Common temperatures in some places. And also just because it is scaled this way doesn't mean it is better. It serves the exact same purpose as any other way to measure temperature.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Also having a nice scale from 0 to 100 as "really fucking cold" and "really fucking hot" is arguably easier to understand.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Only if you grew up with it.

    0°c being the freezing temp of water makes a lot more sense to me than 32°F and so I can easily work around the scale of temperature using Celsius easier than I ever could Fahrenheit

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (30 children)

    It’s pretty much just 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot as far as weather goes. Besides that it feels pretty arbitrary. I’m a metric stan, but I do still think Fahrenheit is pretty good for talking about the weather.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 months ago (29 children)

    That's pretty damn subjective lol. At least the zero point (something important to people living in countries where it falls down to that) gives off useful info.

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (27 children)

    I mean the zero point of Celsius isn't a vibe in the same way as "pretty cold, pretty hot" or however people describe Fahrenheit. It actually means something to real life that it gets to zero or goes negative. 100C is for most people much less useful tbf.

    But mainly it's about what you're used ofc. I just hate the nonsense thing about Fahrenheit being better that is about vibes alone

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    The comparison was to "pretty cold for a human". That's a lot more vibey than "it's when water freezes". That's at least something solid (heh).

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago* (11 children)

    What specific thing does it mean that would relate to your real, daily life?

    The scale of values is just better for human experience in F. It has more integer values in the range of values humans experience.

    Huh? What does that even mean and why it has to specifically be integer values??

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I guess you don't live anywhere where it snows then. Knowing whether water freezes at sea level is very impactful since a majority of people on the planet live pretty close to sea level, knowing when my blood freezes seems really useless.

    Also no one uses decimals with C° unless it's a medical situation or similar. There's so many factors that you can't tell the difference between 17° and 18° anyway, regardless of F° or C°

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    What a myopic reply. Since you didn't say otherwise I'll assume I was correct regarding your location.

    Snow is created in the air, not ground level.

    Yes, and where does it go? You are aware there is water on the ground as well, which freezes, which makes a big difference in your day-to-day life.

    Knowing when you’ll die is pretty damn important.

    You'll die of exposure long before your blood freezes but sure

    They’re both arbitrary and situationally useful points.

    I disagree that both are arbitrary, 0C° is when water freezes at sea level, 100C° is when it boils. I'll grant you that 100 is a bit arbitrary but it's a nice round number. Freezing at 32F° however, that is arbitrary. I don't see how F° is situationally useful in any way compared to C°.

    You want to argue having more precision with no extra effort is now bad? If you’re using two numbers anyway, why would you not want the extra precision?

    There is no meaningful point in having more precision when the numbers you use are bracketed by nonsense. I don't care that 1F° is "smaller" than 1C° because it would never affect me.

    You’re only arguing to defend Celsius, for some weird reason. You can’t admit there’s any advantage to F that you need to make up stupid excuses for C. You aren’t arguing in good faith. Come back when you’re willing to.

    Talk about the pot calling the kettle black haha. I have provided a good reason for using C°, as far as I can tell you don't have anything other than "I'm used to F° therefore its better"

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    It didn’t say something that relates to my real daily life, only something real.

    I was commenting on this:

    "It’s pretty much just 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot as far as weather goes. Besides that it feels pretty arbitrary. I’m a metric stan, but I do still think Fahrenheit is pretty good for talking about the weather."

    That's what I'm referring to with this:

    "I mean the zero point of Celsius isn’t a vibe in the same way as “pretty cold, pretty hot” "

    The freezing point of water at sea level isn’t exactly useful unless we’re working with water at sea level.

    I'm not sure if you're joking but knowing if the roads will be frozen or if it's gonna snow is pretty useful lol

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    You are really grasping at straws. Next you're going to say they're salting the falling snow in the US so it's perfect for knowing that temp too lmao

    you’re arbitrarily ignoring the utility of F

    I just don't understand the utility over C. It sorta feeling like cold or hot doesn't make all that much sense to me, it's so vague

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I'm not insisting on them. When did I say I was? Is this discussion not on ease of use? Does not needing to use decimals not make it easier to use? Yes, you can use decimals, but it saves on writing and space if we don't need them. It's easier. If you can't admit that that is an advantage then you're not arguing in good faith.

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  • [–] 32 points 3 months ago (12 children)

    Fahrenheit is demonstrably better for describing temperature as experienced by a human.

    I used to say this exact thing. I decided to be scientific about it and test it by learning Celsius and trying it for a few months.

    I have not gone back. It has been seven years. All my devices are still reporting Celsius to me.

    I was enjoying the process just because of the novelty of learning a new temperature scale, but when I experienced my first winter with Celsius I knew I’d never go back.

    0 being freezing is so much more useful than you’d think. 23°F doesn’t really mean anything to me, but -5°C means “as far below freezing as 5°C is above freezing.” It inherently provides context without having to do math.

    Also, the degrees being “larger” makes them more meaningful and thus easier to learn.

    If you want to try what I did, here are some useful steps. First, this rhyme: “30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is chilly, 0 is ice.”

    More importantly, here’s the heuristic I came up with: memorize the 10s. So 10°C = 50°F, 20°C = 68°F, 30°C = 86°F (easy to remember 68 and 86 because they’re reversed). Then memorize the 5s. You can always find them because they’re 9°F off from the 10s. 25°C = 77°F for example.

    Once you have those points memorized, you can go up and down from them using 2°F per 1°C. It’s really 1.8, but since at most you’ll be 2°C away from a certain value, the most you’ll ever be off is 0.4°F. So if the weather app tells you it’s 22°C, you start at 68°F and add 4 to get to 72°F (it is actually 71.6 but who cares?). If it says 23°C, you start at 77°F and subtract 4 to get 73°F (actually 73.4, but again who cares?).

    I used this heuristic until I didn’t really need it anymore. I still use it if someone asks me the temperature, because I live in the US and no one knows Celsius. So I quickly convert and give them their Fahrenheit value. But at this point I don’t really need to do so personally.

    And like I said, I much prefer Celsius even for describing weather. It has really taught me how arbitrary both scales are. A co-worker of mine said, “Yeah but 100° sounds hot.” I replied, “The first time a colleague in India told me it was 40° outside, that sounded hot.” I didn’t need to convert it (didn’t bother memorizing that value because I never see it where I live), it just sounded hot because I knew the scale. (It’s 104°F for the record.)

    But as I touched on, I was shocked by how much the freezing point being zero mattered. It makes sub-freezing temperature values so useful. I hadn’t expected that, growing up I knew 32°F was freezing and was so used to that nonsense that I didn’t realize what I was missing until I experienced it.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I never used F, but as a discalculic person, i am glad i don't have because it's harder to memorize, while C is just "Uuh 0 is ice, 100 is boiling water" and i don't need to remember anything crazy or do any math

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  • [–] 28 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Fahrenheit is demonstrably better for describing temperature as experienced by a human.

    It's just not though. F uses a wider range of numbers to describe common outside air temperature, but more numbers =/= better.

    I've lived in both F and C countries and farenheit is not easier, more intuitive, more sensible or better in any way. A number is a number. The extra precision of F is not super useful - no one can really feel a 1F difference. The freezing point of water does make a huge difference, so knowing above/below zero C is useful, but above/below 32F is no harder.

    This argument that F is somehow more suitable for human temperatures is something you see online, but as someone comfortable with both i can say there is functionally no difference, except that metric is compatible with the rest of the world.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I strongly disagree on one key point:

    no one can really feel a 1F difference

    Yes I can. Changing my thermostat by a single degree can be very impactful on my comfort. And on the "too warm side" each additional degree is noticeably less comfortable.

    Days with highs of 68F, 69F, and 70F and comparable humidity all feel different to me. Sure, there are more factors at play but holding the rest equal, 1F differences are noticeable.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (16 children)

    Which units are best doesn't matter: the point is, nobody else uses standard units anymore, apart from a couple oddball countries, and only one of them - North Korea - isn't trying to extricate itself from it.

    Everybody else tries to be a part of the world's technical and scientific communities by speaking the same language, but of course America has to be different. Because of course it does... And it's tiring if you ask me.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Norms may be dumb but they make everybody's lives easier when everybody follows them.

    As for temperature specifically, there's nothing inherently better in Celsius or Fahrenheit. It's just a choice. The only unit that is superior to all of them is the Kelvin because it has a true zero, but it's not commonly used in everyday settings.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    "demonstrably better"
    Well go on then, I would like you to demonstrate to me how it is better.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    The argument is that since the numbers between 0 and 100 are sacred, as proponents of both metric and imperial temperature scales agree, that the system that centers that range more evenly over the range of temperatures experienced by humans is preferable, and wastes less numeric precision on common temperatures.

    This is flawed because it turns out that 1) people can comfortably use a wide enough range of numbers that it doesn't matter and the value of the system you are used to far outweighs the saved handful of syllables and 2) people don't communicate about weather colloquially with enough precision or accuracy for any possible advantage to actually matter.

    There are only two reasons to use one system over the other, and they're both consistency. Consistency with the rest of the world, and consistency with itself.
    Everyone else uses metric, so we should too. It also uses a system, as opposed to a combination of every 14th century tradespersons system.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago

    It is demonstrably not. You are more familiar with it, and you loathe decimals, so you are of the personal opinion that it is. But that is all it is, your personal opinion about it.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    It’s interesting to me that the only people who advocate for Fahrenheit over Celsius in any circumstances are those who grew up using it, whereas those who prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit are from both places where Celsius and Fahrenheit are used. I’m yet to see an example of someone saying “I grew up with Celsius but Fahrenheit is so much better because…”

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