Well, mostly. You still need to use Kelvin so you don’t get negative numbers for sciencing, but using them simultaneously for both day-to-day and science is nowhere near as common. Most people just want to know what to wear, and using Celsius loses a lot of the fidelity that Fahrenheit gives. This is after I spent 2 years only looking up the weather in Celsius so that I could get a feel for each degree of difference, and ended up just getting frustrated at how the same degree temperature in Celsius could feel drastically different to me when it’s actually a 2-3 degree difference in Fahrenheit.
Also, FWIW, British people love to use Fahrenheit when it’s over 100 degrees because it ‘feels hotter’ to say that than ‘37’, but they also love using Celsius when it’s below freezing, as it ‘feels colder’ to say negative numbers instead of numbers in their teens or twenties. It’s more psychology than anything, but Fahrenheit still definitely has its practical uses, and I’m not ditching it anytime soon.
We can ditch feet/yards/miles though. Meters definitely make more sense in that regard.
Your point about Kelvin true, you still need to do some converting, but as I said, the day to day use ultimately depends if you were raised using either.
Using me as an example, I completely understand that 1015C outside is freezing, 2227 is okay, 30~36 is hot and 40+ is scalding.
You could make this same point about fahrenheit and both are true, I have no ideia what 100F feels like, or 10 or 40 or 160.
I wouldn’t get outside without a heavy coat, we don’t have temperatures below 0 where I live, if you think that by “freezing” I meant ice and snow, that would be incorrect
How is this supposed to be considered using the metric system? If you tell someone that you weigh 80kg and he doesn’t have a clue what you mean, then you’re not really using the metric system, are you?
other people aren’t going to do the math in their head
That’s on them
them == everybody in this case. Practically, nobody is going to do what you suggest - instead, non-metric users will ask metric users to do the conversion for them. And why should we be responsible for doing the work when they are the ones who refuse to use the system that 96% of the world has adopted?
Also, another issue with what you’re suggesting is that people have to memorize several conversion factors as well. Inherently, you only have to be able to convert inches -> cm and pounds -> kg, but unless you want to do even more math in your head, you also have to remember feet -> cm, yards -> cm, miles -> cm, square feet -> square meters, cubic feet -> cubic meters (phew, that’s just all the length conversions), pounds -> kg, ounces -> grams, pounds -> grams, cups -> grams (for every fluid you might want to measure), litres -> gallons, litres -> pints, etc.
Or you could just go through the one-time effort of actually using the metric system so you don’t have to carry this mental burden with you everywhere you go…
This comment is bizarre to me. Is 35 mph fast or slow? Because it is the same as 55 kph ( km/h ).
55 km/h is an odd speed though it is true. Most towns in Canada for example, the default speed limit is 50 km/h. Highway speeds are more like 100 km/h.
The metric system is fine in a lab. But, in terms of basic human living the imperial system, which wasn’t designed so much as developed over years of usage, is simply superior. It works better and is generally more convenient and flexible.
Metric has been legally “preferred” in the US since 1975. We just don’t use it.
Also while I was looking up that year I came across this wild factoid:
In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested artifacts from France that could be used to adopt the metric system in the United States, and Joseph Dombey was sent from France with a standard kilogram. Before reaching the United States, Dombey’s ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates, and he died in captivity on Montserrat.
I’m a machinist, I don’t get to choose my units. We use standard and try to avoid metric dimensioning like the plague. The difference between .005 inches and .005 millimeters is literally an order of magnitude.
Engineer here, I just use whatever’s convenient. It’s handy to know both.
That said, I did confuse a poor coworker of mine this week when I was using bar for tank pressure and psi for the safety reliefs. That’s totally on me though.
To be clear this was a conversation over the phone, not a tech review or something. And I was explicitly naming the units, it was just jumping all around that had him confused.
Official documentation and programs should always be explicitly clear on what units are being used, especially pressure.
A few years ago I started using Celsius in my everyday life. It’s been pretty easy, just remember that C scales twice as fast as F, and 32F=0C and you’re set for conversations. It helps to be quick with math, but finding it difficult may make it easier to convince other people to use it instead of F near you. To acclimate yourself you’ll want to change the settings on your phone to use C by default.
I haven’t switched over to m in everyday use, because all the roadsigns are in Mph and doing that conversion while driving is bad juju.
I’m thinking of rewriting all my recepies in grams and liters. If I can figure out how to get our stupidly-over-designed-yet-entirely-jank oven to use C, that’d be good too. If we had one with a bimetalic strip and a knob I’d be able to just print one with the new temperature scale.
Honestly, temperature (in terms of weather preparedness, not cooking) makes WAY more sense with Fahrenheit. Largely the only temperatures you care about are 0 to 100 and generally you feel a good difference in temp every 10 degrees F.
Almost everything else I prefer metric. But that’s one where Celsius is just terrible.
Tread lightly my friend. I already won the Fahrenheit vs. Celsius debate a few months ago, but non-Americans are insanely defensive about the metric system and won’t accept the truth.
I’ll transcribe my best arguments because that thread was an absolute shitshow and it’s hard to find my comment even with the direct link. Almost all of my most downvoted comments on Lemmy came during my defense of the Fahrenheit temperature scale, and I’m weirdly proud of that fact.
Fahrenheit Supremacy GangCelsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer. One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever. You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference 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. >the intuition is learned and not natural. 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 — It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18. When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers. This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature. — >Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas. Sure, water is a really good system and it works well. And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside. Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in. You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
You 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 farenheit 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).
The increments of 10f doesn’t make sense at all, though seems to be a common perception among people who prefer fahrenheit
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.
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.
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.
as if that logic can’t be applied to every unit system on earth.
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.
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.
Why do yanks insist picking such idiotic numbers when they speak in metric, seriously wtf is -18 to 38? If those were realistic temperatures, surely you realize it would be -20 to 40, no?
-20, or any negative c, is rare to most ff the worlds population so your comment is dumb on two fronts.
No need to be a dumb cunt mate. -18C to 38C is the closest you’d get to the 0-100F range I mentioned earlier. It’s a stupid-ass interval. Just as stupid as 5280 feet in a mile for instance.
Why use negatives at all? There’s a perfectly good temperature scale that largely doesn’t need negatives, is conceptually similar to the base 10 construction of other SI units, and is more precise than Celsius.
Negative C is absolutely common what the fuck are you talking about. Canada, Russia, the US, some deserts. Several countries experience regular highs in the 0Cs during winter months and therefore negative lows. Someone should get out more.
No need to be a dumb cunt mate. -18C to 38C is the closest you’d get to the 0-100F range I mentioned earlier. It’s a stupid-ass interval. Just as stupid as 5280 feet in a mile
Yeah, and people in metric round the exact same as they do in f. You think the hot parts of the US don’t hit 122 or something equally arbitrary? When talking range, anyone who isn’t unhinged approximates to the nearest whole number.
Why use negatives at all? There’s a perfectly good temperature scale that largely doesn’t need negatives, is conceptually similar to the base 10 construction of other SI units, and is more precise than Celsius.
Why the fuck not? It makes literally no difference. Some people like freezing to be at a focal point of a scale, and some based on this thread have some bizarre fear of negatives. Either preference is equally arbitrary and neither is objectively right.
Negative C is absolutely common what the fuck are you talking about. Canada, Russia, the US, some deserts. Several countries experience regular highs in the 0Cs during winter months and therefore negative lows. Someone should get out more.
A few degrees is common. Most populous county in the world is India, how common do you think it is there? Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico etc etc etc. it’s a minority of countries that experience anything substantially below zero c. You know, I’ve been to literal mt Everest base camp, lived in western pa and been to the winter Olympics in South Korea and still have never seen -20C. Does it exist? Obviously, but for day to day ease of use for like 80% of the worlds population it’s irrelevant.
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.
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 in houston right, it’s 90°f - if I want to comunnicate 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Yes, as we both know, there aren’t any Americans who struggle with a low credit score and end up with insurmountable debt…??? Credit is reliant on debt and negatives, and people get screwed by their lack of understanding it every single day. Same with the lottery, except with big numbers and percentages. America is profoundly dysfunctional and it’s frequently the people who are bad at math that get exploited.
What’s funny is the person who brought up arguments FOR Fahrenheit over Celsius to me that I hadn’t considered is actually a Brit. They lived in England and the US and your explanation here is very similar to theirs.
That’s a poor argument, though, when the justification for utilizing volume, mass, and distance is because it is very “base 10”-y and is easily divisible and understood.
Celsius absolutely is shit for that.
I could use your logic to justify why imperial units are better for length, for example, but we all know it’s a bit fucked. Celsius is absolutely fucked for temperature regarding human comfort and is imprecise.
Replying again because you’ve edited your comment and added another paragraph.
Your edit asserts that Celsius is “absolutely fucked” regarding temperature for human comfort… which is an utterly bizarre argument to make because it only makes sense to people who are used to Fahrenheit and have an intuitive sense of what 72F means to them, but have no intuitive sense of what 22C means
I’m not entirely sure that you’re not just trolling now.
No negative numbers needed for most cases, 0-100 scale for the extremes MOST people need to care about with relative “feels like” every 10 degrees (but realistically every 5 is distinguishable, even smaller amounts depending). Ez pz.
IDK why you’re so defensive about Celsius lol. It’s okay to admit when an SI unit has a poor application. Your ONLY defense for it is “well people can get used to it” which is the exact same reason I could say “well you could just get used to feet, inches, yards, miles, pounds, ounces, fluid ounces, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc” - it’s a shit argument for both.
But oh that’s right this is Lemmy where “america bad” for everything.
Right, so…once again, your argument is that you feel that Fahrenheit makes more sense, because that’s what you’re used to
I never said that C is better because people can get used to it, you’re just making that up. I said that the system people are used to is inherently going to be the one that makes the most intuitive sense to them, and that applies to both C and F.
The rest of what you said applies equally to any system of measurement.
I don’t understand why you’re so angry about this?
So, uh, no? In fact within the “human spectrum” you generally care at least somewhat about every tick of the number. So it’s actually more useful for people.
Because I doubt you can feel the difference between 71f and 72f. But it’s possible to notice the difference between 21 and 22, although you’re pretty picky if you do.
I dunno, it’d probably be better but there’s nothing stopping people from using metric in places where it makes sense. I write most of my recipes in grams because it makes them easier to multiply or divide.
At the same time, the most common thing people use units for is a point of reference, and it really makes no difference whether your point of reference is metric or traditional units.
That’s fine right up to when you’re complaining about the temperature to an american.
But I am an American. To learn Celsius I came up with a quick heuristic to do “accurate enough” conversions for the months between switching off Fahrenheit and getting to the point where I knew Celsius well enough.
So I can pretty quickly go from Celsius to Fahrenheit for my ignorant compatriots.
Edit: For anyone downvoting me, if it’s because I called people who don’t know Celsius “ignorant,” please understand I’m using this definition: “lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about a particular thing.”
Not this one: “lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated,” nor this one: “discourteous or rude.”
We are all ignorant about things we don’t know about. No shame in ignorance, it’s the default state of all living beings!
It’s here Sunshine. And it’s been the law, for what 50 years now?
So go to the store and buy a 2 liter of your favorite soda pop, 454g of butter, 2 1/4kilos of potatoes, a half kilo of tomatoes, and a 750ml bottle of whisk(e)y. Then get out your wrenches and use the 10mm to tighten that wobbly leg on that chair. Oh, your 10mm wrench is missing too? Well, do you have a 160mm adjustable wrench? No? I have one here in my tool box use that one.
Oh, you want it in your car? You either just need to read the other scale printed on the speedometer or just push a button. Instant metric system.
The metric system is here. You use it and your too blind to see it…Most 'Muricans are either trying too hard to be edgy or they are just dumb I guess.
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