Comment on temperature
eldain@feddit.nl 7 months agoA) So is Celsius, you do everything in double digits until you turn on your oven. B) If 50F was actually room temperature (the middle of too hot and too cold), I could agree. The fact that is is not means for me the intuition is learned and not natural. And that I have to learn a few anchorpoints to convert my own intuition when I ever visit the US.
imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Idk how your A relates to mine, if anything that’s more about the frame of reference, not the granularity. Let me try to clarify.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference (I will concede that at least it’s better than being in triple digits all the time like Kelvin)
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
accideath@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Your point about intuition is moot, imo, because if you didn’t grow up with F it’s just as unintuitive as C is to you.
When you’re used to it the usage of decimals and negative numbers is neither complicated nor unintuitive because you’ve learned to know this intuitively for your whole life.
I could argue, that freezing temps outside being below 0 are unintuitive because it’s obvious to me that negative temps mean it’s literally freezing cold. That’s intuitive for me because I‘ be used that my entire life. Same as room temperature being 20°C. It just makes sense to me because I‘ve always know it that way.
Your “intuitive anchor points” 32 or 66 or whatever are completely nonsensical and unintuitive to someone whose brain is wired in Celsius. Because we don’t think in -18 to 38 but rather -20 to 40, if you want to think of it like that (or -40 to 20 I suppose, if you live somewhere where it’s colder). But in all honesty, in my day to day life, I don’t think about that, because I just know what a celsius value means intuitively.
Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average American, not the average person.
imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I don’t think you’re taking into account that the average person is really bad at math. There’s a lot of people around the world that are illiterate.
Anything can be intuitive if you’re intelligent enough. But when something is described as intuitive, that implies that it can be easily understood. Put it this way, if F is 1/10 difficulty, C is 2/10 and Kelvin is 5/10.
Would you also argue that Kelvin is intuitive?
Just because Celsius works perfectly fine doesn’t mean that Fahrenheit doesn’t make more intuitive sense.
reev@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I’m sorry, but if you go out on a cold day and see a barrel of water with ice on the top, you immediately know it’s freezing cold and we’re in the negatives. Water freezing being 0 is a solid, objective anchor point.
“When it feels cold” will vary from someone that lives in a generally warm climate to someone that lives in a colder climate but water will freeze at 0. That means the warm and cold people can base their range around that and intuitively understand how far or above or below 0 the extreme hot or cold areas are. Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
accideath@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That might be true but only if you live in a climate that actually has temperatures from about 0-100F. If you don’t (which most people don’t), it’s just as arbitrary. If you live somewhere it’s freezing regularly, it’s good to know if the roads will be icy (below 0°C) or not (above 0°C). If you live somewhere where it’s regularly above 100F and rarely below 50F, that scale doesn’t really work intuitively either, anymore.
And of course Kelvin isn’t intuitive but that’s because it isn’t centered around anything within the human experience. Frozen and boiling water are within the human experience however. And again, if you’d have only ever used K, it’d come just as easy to you as F does now.