5 ms·

"Just shifted by 273" To be clear, I don't have strong feelings. Obviously in a lot of science/engineering fields we use Celsius degrees a lot. But we also us

by ghaff 7d ago

"Just shifted by 273" To be clear, I don't have strong feelings. Obviously in a lot of science/engineering fields we use Celsius degrees a lot. But we also us Kelvin absolute scale a lot which would be ridiculous for day-to-day usage. I am used to Fahrenheit but it is also a finer scale and a nice round number for boiling is largely irrelevant for the vast majority of purposes. Yes, knowing the freezing point of water can be important but memorizing one simple number probably isn't a huge stretch especially that the reality differs based on a number of factors. Arguably, knowing that 0 degrees F means fricking cold is sort of a higher latitudes bias but I'm not sure the degree to which Celsius simplifies.

Xirdus 7d ago
The problem with "0F is fricking cold" is that so is 5F, and 10F, and even 15F to many people; and the difference between, say, -10F and +10F is pretty much none for practical purposes. Whereas knowing whether it was +1C or -1C during the night can have major impact on road safety. With literally everything else about those two scales being a matter of preference and getting used to, this is the only objective difference with real world impact. Very tiny impact but still. Focusing on this one thing is the only way to answer the question of which is better with anything other than "whichever you're used to, it doesn't matter whatsoever". And if you focus on this one thing, then by the slightest of margins, Celsius is objectively better.
- ghaff 6d ago
  <Slightest of margins As someone who lives in a northern US state, there are so many other factors that affect winter road safety that aren't a binary above/below freezing temperature at sea level. I'm not really going to argue against Celsius but F is a very workable scale that has some (minor) benefits at human scale.
  - Xirdus 6d ago
    As far as I can tell, literally every single benefit of Fahrenheits I've ever heard of boils down to being used to dealing with numbers around 100 but not around -30. I have yet to hear about any such benefit that isn't 100% attributable in its entirety to being taught °F before °C at school. All those other reasons are exactly why I said the difference is minimal. But that minimal difference is not zero. If you add every single such difference that exists between °C and °F, of which there's literally just one, then Celsius very clearly comes ahead, although by an amount way too small to matter. Black ice is always dangerous. No matter how many other dangerous road conditions you can come up with, black ice is still one of them. And black ice happens exactly when the temperature crosses 32°F boundary multiple times. It's far more important to know if it was 31°F than to know if it was 30°F.

by ghaff 7d ago

Xirdus 7d ago

The problem with "0F is fricking cold" is that so is 5F, and 10F, and even 15F to many people; and the difference between, say, -10F and +10F is pretty much none for practical purposes. Whereas knowing whether it was +1C or -1C during the night can have major impact on road safety. With literally everything else about those two scales being a matter of preference and getting used to, this is the only objective difference with real world impact. Very tiny impact but still. Focusing on this one thing is the only way to answer the question of which is better with anything other than "whichever you're used to, it doesn't matter whatsoever". And if you focus on this one thing, then by the slightest of margins, Celsius is objectively better.

ghaff 6d ago
<Slightest of margins As someone who lives in a northern US state, there are so many other factors that affect winter road safety that aren't a binary above/below freezing temperature at sea level. I'm not really going to argue against Celsius but F is a very workable scale that has some (minor) benefits at human scale.
- Xirdus 6d ago
  As far as I can tell, literally every single benefit of Fahrenheits I've ever heard of boils down to being used to dealing with numbers around 100 but not around -30. I have yet to hear about any such benefit that isn't 100% attributable in its entirety to being taught °F before °C at school. All those other reasons are exactly why I said the difference is minimal. But that minimal difference is not zero. If you add every single such difference that exists between °C and °F, of which there's literally just one, then Celsius very clearly comes ahead, although by an amount way too small to matter. Black ice is always dangerous. No matter how many other dangerous road conditions you can come up with, black ice is still one of them. And black ice happens exactly when the temperature crosses 32°F boundary multiple times. It's far more important to know if it was 31°F than to know if it was 30°F.