4 ms·

It is what you are used to for both of you. you could make your own measurement system and it would work fine once you get used to it - until you need to commun

• ghaff 10mo ago
  A big part of it is certainly what you're used to. The other part, which I'm sympathetic to, is that for human scale everyday things, Fahrenheit 0 degrees lines up with really darned cold, 100 degrees with really hot outside of an oven, and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius. And while Celsius degree size is indeed widely used in engineering calculations, you're often using Kelvin as the absolute temperature scale. (Which does use Celsius degree increments of course.)
  • bryanlarsen 10mo ago
    > and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius. And then they'll argue that the inch is more convenient than the centimeter because it's twice as large. That's backwards. Fractions of an inch are in far more common usage than fractions of a centigrade. Ideal might be both a smaller inch and a smaller centigrade, but between the two a smaller inch is more helpful than a smaller centigrade.
  • graemep 10mo ago
    0 lines up with freezing point is very intuitive.
    • bluGill 10mo ago
      Perhaps, but useless for most purposes. You need to know how think of a coat to wear and you need a mental map from some number to some coat. It doesn't matter what the scale is, just that you have that map.
      • graemep 10mo ago
        I agree its having the mental map that matters but my intention was to disagree with the parent comment's claim that Fahrenheit is more appropriate to the "human scale of things". its a small advantage, but I think zero indicating when things might freeze is a more useful than "0 degrees lines up with really darned cold"
        • SideburnsOfDoom 10mo ago
          To me, below zero Centigrade lines up with "really darned cold". It's all subjective. > zero indicating when things might freeze is useful Of course it is, parent is being silly. Picking some other non-zero random number for freezing just seems absurd to me. But that's because Centigrade is what I am familiar with. Say pick freezing = 12, or 47?. If those numbers for freezing seem absurd to you, then consider that the only advantage that "32" has for you is that you're familiar with it. People will find reasons to defend whichever one they grew up with.
          • sarchertech 10mo ago
            The argument is that a scale that generally falls between 0-100 is inherently slightly more convenient than that that generally falls between -17 and 37. Obviously both can be adapted to. But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water. This isn’t to say that Celsius isn’t perfectly fine and superior in most ways. I’m not insulting anyone or attempting to participate in some kind of culture war. Celsius is obviously a better scale for determining when water freezes. But I’ve never found myself paying attention to that. Mostly because any problems that I’d worry about related to the water freezing happen well below freezing. But if you find yourself unable to agree that one system has some inherent advantages over another, even if they don’t outweigh the disadvantages, you should step back and think a little more objectively.
            • 10mo ago
  • Symbiote 10mo ago
    This is just your familiarity. Someone from the tropics might say 8°F is really darned cold, or 15°F, or whatever.