Comment on Everyday, as an American
bigschnitz@lemmy.world 3 months agoYou certainly didn’t win any arguments with those claims.
0-100f is not anywhere close to the scale people see in the weather anywhere most people live. Taking where I’ve ever lived as an example:
- Melbourne ~ 30-120 f vs 0-45c,
- Gladstone QLD ~40-120f vs 5-45c,
- Pilbara ~65-130f vs 15c-50c,
- Dubai ~55-120f vs 20c-45c,
- Houston TX ~ 30-120f vs 0-45c,
- Pittsburg PA ~10-90 vs -15-30c. The most iimportant number with respect to the weather is freezing, it’s handy knowing if you’re dealing with ice. The standard range for where people live is not -40 degrees, something like 2/3 of the world live between the tropics and will never see freezing or below. The -40 number makes sense if you live in Alaska or Siberia and maybe even somewhere like Minnesota, but certainly not to someone in India or Indonesia…
Neither scale is relative to cooking (which isequally arbitrary for both), though metric is easier for things like brewing 80°C tea since you need 4/5th a cup boiling water and 1/5 a cup and no thermometer.
The “feel” of the weather is hugely impacted by humidity which is why every forecast has a “feels like” measure and why 90°f in Dubai is lovely but 90°f in Houston is miserable. The increments of 10f doesn’t make sense at all, though seems to be a common perception among people who prefer fahrenheit
The comment about farnehiegjt being more granular would be true in an alternative universe where decimals don’t exist, but not in this one.
Americans literally like farenheit more because it’s familiar, any other rationalisation is nonsense. Both measures make perfect sense after you’ve taken the time to learn them and use them daily (I know this firsthand).
imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
What doesn’t make sense about it? You can tell another person it’s in the 30s outside, and you have efficiently communicated more information than is possible when using Celsius. You’d have to say it’s between 4 and negative 1, which is just lame. And this remains true across every temperature, because of a variety of factors which I explained above.
In every climate which you mentioned above, it’s easier to communicate how hot or cold it is outside using Fahrenheit. This is because all of the numbers being used are non-negative integers (aka natural numbers). Even the triple digit ones are one-ten or one-twenty.
I wonder why mathematicians named them that? Possibly because they come naturally? Unlike negative one point seven.
shylosx@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They will defend Celsius being used for everyday weather reporting with their last breath with their ONLY fallback being “well you’re just used to fahrenheit durrrrrrr” as if that logic can’t be applied to every unit system on earth.
bigschnitz@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Mate that’s my whole point. I grew up Celsius in Australia and use Farenheit day to day now. They are literally interchangable once you learn. It takes a month or two to get used of using them and beyond that, the literal only difference in difficulty of use is that it takes about ten seconds longer to calculate a green tea brew in f, which has no bearing on the weather anyway. All of the arguments above are garbage, as they are garbage when the exact same, inverted arguments are made by metric proponents.
shylosx@lemmy.world 3 months ago
All measurements scales are interchangeable once you learn - that’s not the point of this particular thread of comments. It’s “what’s most useful comparatively given the SI penchant for base 10”. The answer isn’t a temperature scale that, for day to day human concern, is not -18 to 38 - that’s fucking stupid.
imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Yeah. I’ve had some time to ruminate and I think part of it stems from the impossibility of them not using Celsius in their lives. Like, they’re not going to singlehandedly make their country start using Fahrenheit, so accepting it as better would just create cognitive dissonance.
bigschnitz@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It doesn’t tell you anything that Celsius can’t with a 5 degree swing. This the absolute peak of arbitrary, both 5s and 10s are easy scales to work with. Your example of between 4 and negative one is deranged. I’m houston right, it’s 90°f - if I want to counicate that to my yankee girlfriend I’d say “babe it’s 90° outside, might get up to one hundred” and so far, you’re right this is easy to articulate. If I want to communicate that same information to my mum, I’d say “hey it’s 30° outside, might get up to 35°”. Both cases convey information with the same accuracy, both cases I haven’t mentioned humidity, which for actual temperature feel has a way higher influence then 5 degrees, the extra information I’d gain by strictly converting 31-37.8°C is junk data, the farenheit measure is approximated to begin with and because of a humidity swing carries a huge variability in actual “feel” anyway. I tried to explain this above and clearly failed, as your response doesn’t touch on this at all and just insists that people who think in metric don’t default to easy to work with numbers.
The only place with negative integers was Pittsburg, so that point doesn’t make sense for the rest and even if it was, your argument is insane. Saying negative 5 is no harder than saying 25, plus having negatives where snow and ice come into play makes it obvious when to be careful outside. I mean your argument here just makes no sense, if there is some added complexity to saying “negative” then it is surely comparable to having to remember a random number of 32. Literal kindergardeners understand negative numbers. Neither this or remembering the 32 number add any meaningful complexity and certainly have 0 impact on anyone’s actual use of either scale.
imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Literal adults have trouble with negative numbers. I can’t do this all over again, sorry and have a nice day. Hopefully it’s somewhere in the 80s wherever you are
bigschnitz@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Mate I have to reply to that, because it’s such an insane claim - the US, the only country that doesn’t use °C, has this huge reliance on a monstrously complex credit system (obviously the entire concept of credit is reliant on the concept of debt and negatives). It’s flat out insane to suggest that the same people who live and function with such a credit system conceptually struggle with the fundamentals negative numbers. It’s a mind boggling claim.
Anyway, have a good one.