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Comment by gog

15 hours ago

Why do you think Celsius is worse in day to day life?

Because in Celsius, 0 lets you know the water outside will likely be frozen and 100 lets you know the water in your pot is likely boiling. This is utterly useless information.

It is nowhere near as useful day to day as knowing 0°F means a very specific saltwater brine mixture will likely be frozen, and 90°F is kind of as hot as your insides. Or 96. Or 98.6 as the third revision decided.

  • I find F way more intuitive for weather. The larger scale helps. 100 is hot. 0 is quite cold. Boiling point is irrelevant. 32 freezing is the only thing that feels arbitrary.

    • Yeah and freezing point is whatever because that moves anyway and also doesn't say a lot about whether or not there will be snow

    • in celsius:

      50 hurts to the touch, your chip has likely broken and given off its black smoke 30 is good for swimming in cold water >25 is worth worrying about sun stroke. make sure to drink a lot of water 24-26 is a nice summer day 18-22 is comfortable room temperature >15 is good enough shorts weather 0-10 needs at least a light jacket <0 you have to be attentive about frost bite, but not worried -5 either wants gloves or good pockets -15 wants a sweater and jacket < -15 you should probably plug in your car -10 - -25 is good downhill skiing weather -20 - -27 is right cold, full winter gear: toque, scarf, mittens, thick socks, the whole kit and kaboodle, but still chic -30 - -40: ski version of the full winter gear, including snow pants, double socks, and good boots. both your warmest sweater and ski jacket

      ----

      its really just what you grew up with that will make sense.

      like, wtf is 72 and 54 and mid 80s? i have no backing reference to put them into scale, even after living in the states for a decade. 500, 275, 425, 150 do make sense in F for me because thats what ovens list

      1 reply →

I find that increments of 1C are too small to be useful in daily life but increments of 5C are quite big. As a result, you can't really round degrees Celsius to a multiple of 5 whereas full precision integer temperatures are too precise. So for example 15C and 17C feel like different temperatures, but each 1C step from 15C to 16C to 17C is not really useful.

In contrast, it's very reasonable to round temperature to increments of 5 degrees Fahrenheit. So for example 58F and 60F are basically the same temperature as far as my perception is concerned.

  • It's literally does not matter in day to day life. In the end you get to X degrees is cold, Y degrees is perfect and Z degrees is hot regardless of C or F.

    I grew up using C and now I'm using F, if I move to a country that uses C, I will switch again. Its meaningless.

    • This is the correct take. The better system is the one that you have intuition in - just keep using that one if building up intuition in a different system is not worth the cost to you. At least when it comes to temperature. :)

  • What are you talking about? The same can be said about 59F (15°C) and 60F (15.56°C)

    "One fahrenheit increment doesn't feel like anything"

    At least Celsius are grounded in reality, should I be worried about ice? Just check if temperature is below 0°C. But hey you may need to check if your solution of water, ice and ammonium chloride is frozen, so I just need to check if below 0F. That's probably something you do often right?

    • theyre both grounded in reality because the represent real temperature conditions.

      theyre both just arbitrary degrees though, since 0 isnt actually 0. they both have better alternatives too - Kelvin and Rankin. your criticism about freezing applies to celsius too. freezing is at a certain pressure and temperature, so both the 100 and 0 celsius only sometimes describe boiling and freezing

1990s LCD HVAC thermostats that didn’t go down to half degrees had better precision when set to °F vs °C.

There's also this famous comparison chart meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/t0lnjt/fahr...

...making the point that Fahrenheit's 0-100 range is better suited to normal day to day measurements than 0-100 Celsius. The numbers that feel easiest to communicate with are scaled nicely relative to the range of temperatures you most often want to communicate about.

  • i assume most of it is a joke?

    > It is more precise. Fahrenheit has more frequent degrees, allowing for greater resolution with analog thermometers.

    this is really about the graduation and size of the thermometer? you can print a useful line pitch as you like, and have it represent what you want, where thats a 0.25C, 3F, 10c or whathaveyou.

    everyday temperatures are pretty well centered around 0C, half the year above, the other half below, and the 10, 20, 30, and 40 increments feel quite similar to each other in severity of the season. +30 is damn hot and -30 is damn cold. +/-10 is all mildly warm or cold, with +/-20 really being where you do seasonal acitivites like swimming or skiing.

    as far as western units go, C fits fantastically for the the traditional western culture with 4 idealized seasons. I could see F being better for places outside the idealized west - eg. the american south/sun belt, the PNW, southeast asia, south america, a lot of africa, etc where the seasons are different