An argument for Farenheit.
Why Fahrenheit is Better than Celsius
Astute reader wargut responded to yesterday’s observation about the Fahrenheit scale being affine-ish with the following incorrect assertion:
“ Seriously, guys, your system is bullsh~t.
”
It’s…
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Celsius seems more practical:
0° — I've got ice for my whisky.
100° — I've got water for my coffee.
See, the problem with this article is that it starts with a false premise: That there will ever be a leg for Fahrenheit to stand on other than dumb old American Exceptionalism.
Water boils at 100, steaks are made at 200 and at 25 I don't have to wear a jacket to go outside. The fuck's the problem here?
the us is literally an entire nation of measurement hipsters
Fahrenheit and imperial units. Just… don't.
By the way, microbes die at temperatures above 60°C and go into hibernation at temperatures below 6°C
NO FOOD PRESERVATION IS NOT IMPORTANT TO DAILY LIFE NORMAL PEOPLE NEVER EAT
+Dustin Wyatt Dustin, I am with you on this, Fahrenheit is way easier to intuit than Celsius.  And while we are on rant time I want someone to tell the idiot TV weather people we do not need to know what the temperature "feels like".  Wind chill is okay, and the actual thermometer reading (in Fahrenheit of course), but what is this crap of a new category, for what  it "feels like"?  If we continue down that road we should have a whole list of "feels like" categories starting with:
If you are outside and buck naked it will feel like _.
If you just got off the plane from LA and don't follow the weather forecasts it will feel like __.
If you were born and raised in Siberia, it will feel like _.
If you actually have a winter coat on and zipped up it will feel like _.
Thank you for your indulgence. Â Feels better now.
LLP
#getaloadofthisguy Â
So wait…the argument basically boils down to "this is how I've always done it"? Â Because the "intuitive" dimension he's talking about is basically just a matter of experience. Â
I have never lived in a place where only Fahrenheit was available, and was raised with metric temperature as standard. Â I am incapable of intuitively understanding temperatures in Fahrenheit except in cooking (and even then, it's just an arbitrary number on a dial). Â
Granted, the same is true of intuitive understandings of Celsius, but then if they're identical in that regard the convenience of conversion is a big selling point, surely? Â How do American anti-metricians not see this?
Yeah, that was my take, and I'm all about Fahrenheit.
And I was with you until you took it to "So everybody should go Celsius."
#notalltemperaturescales
If the whole went Metric, there would be no more wars or traffic accidents.
That's not quite what I meant, though I personally do think the advantages of Celsius outweigh the disadvantages of changing.
Arguments that sit on a foundation of Fahrenheit is objectively better just don't work because the familiarity/intuitiveness factor is basically the same as "I've always done it this way" and in terms of objective practicality Celsius has the advantage in several respects.
"I like it better because it has finer resolution within everyday temperatures" and other subjective arguments are fine. Â These are just personal convenience/aesthetics, and while there are practical reasons why everyone should know Celsius there's no particular reason why either should be used for everyday purposes. Â Anti-metricists go further than that though and go to great lengths to find objective arguments against metric measures of all kinds, which seems a bit irrational.
The argument is for conservation of digits, not what you're used to.
And yet the argument is "having temperature be in 'the 70s' and 'the 80s' is easier to understand" despite that meaning that the latter digit is wasted for being too precise to matter to anyone ever.
Anyway, people sure do get het up about petty shit.
0F — very cold. 10F — very cold. 20F — very cold. 30F — very cold. 40F — cold. 50F — tolerably cold. 60F — tolerable. 70F — tolerable. 80F — hot. 90F — hot. 100F — hot. 110F — intolerably hot.
Compare/contrast.
0C — very cold. 10C — cold. 20C — tolerable. 30C — hot. 40C — intolerably hot. 50C — hottest liquid you can drink.
One is an instantly understandable human-discernible scale. The other is huge expanses of nonsense information punctuated by meaninglessness.
Just think. If people can argue about arbitrary (and they are all arbitrary) units of measurement, then, we'll never solve any of the real political problems. Just never will. We just like to bicker, we might as well admit the truth.
+Brian Renninger I can't believe you think that, and just can't disagree more. 😉
Either scale is arbitrary (as is Kelvin, if a bit less so). While it's nice to have one that slots neatly into the other physical dimensions, the great benefit comes from everyone using the same one. With two or more systems you incur the extra costs of having to make more versions of stuff, and the costs of occasional mix-ups and mistakes.
Of course, most of that extra cost is incurred by the users of the minority system (Farenheit in this case). That of course creates additional pressure on the minority system users to change. Most of us never have to deal with Farenheit (and rarely or never with either of the two imperial measurement systems either) so we need not worry about it either way.
every time someone mentions Fahrenheit I kind of block my mind… Of course I was introduced to the system back in elementary school and every time I try to remember how to go from one unit to the other I get frustrated… I mean its useless in my country and so does in most of the world.
Pffft
+Hjalti Leifsson America isn't on Farenheit because of american exceptionalism.  America is on Farenheit because 99% of voting public already know Farenheit and never have to deal with Celsius and don't have to do conversions that often and :effort: + :caring:.  It's just not on people's radar.
+LL Pete You say, "I'm with you on this".  I don't agree with this argument.  Just because I post something doesn't mean I'm saying LOOK AT THIS TRUE THING, it just means that I found it interesting in some manner.
+Kevyn Winkless The argument is about the (real) cognitive load of digits beyond the first having meaning with regards to comfort.  The argument is not "I'm not used to this".
+Dustin Wyatt Dustin, I'm with you on this.  When I wrote in my first comment that, "I'm with you on this," I only meant that I too found it interesting in some matter. Â
I certainly don't agree with the argument either. Â I might agree with the conclusion but not with the argument because I would have presented it in a somewhat different way. Â
Also, I know exactly what you mean and I would never assume that you are posting something as a TRUE THING.  I have on occasion reposted a photo that I wasn't sure whether it was photoshopped or not.  It was cute or interesting  for some reason or other but I certainly would not want my readers to assume that I was saying LOOK AT THIS TRUE THING. Â
I'm glad we are on the same page here.
LLPÂ
I was raised with, and think in, Celcius. However, I have a personal soft spot for "primitive capable" measuring systems; systems that do not require advanced tool usage to estimate/calibrate. Farenheit fits with this: want 200, boil some water; want 100, stick your fingure in it; want 0, well, you can calibrate to it, but why…
It's calibration points are a little wonky, but the material for a rough estimate is readily available.
Similarly, I didn't like imperial until I started doing carpentry. Division into twelfths (2*2*3) gives a wide range of easily "eye-ballable" values.
+Dustin Wyatt​ Yes, I know that's what was intended, but unfortunately it's a rationalization since if you're familiar with it Celsius works the same way:
Single digits? Cold, jacket gloves and hat needed.
Teens? Chilly, wear a light jacket.
20s? Comfortable
30s? Uncomfortably hot
40s? Stay out of the sun and stay hydrated.
He appears to be making an argument about cognitive loading, but it only works because he doesn't make any comparison. Ultimately it boils down to saying he's so familiar with Fahrenheit he only needs to know the temperature within 10 degrees to have a good idea what it means in concrete terms.
+Jeff Cave​ Yes, the fact that imperial measures (incl F) are easy to "eyeball" is probably the strongest practical argument for retaining them. For serious work you usually need precise measurement anyway, for which metric offers some advantages in terms of mental arithmatic, but if what you need is to go from raw human experience to an estimate that can be communicated imperial units are very useful. Again, it may be a matter of experience, but I think the way imperial's fractions go together do in fact lend themselves to quite good "eyeball precision" for certain purposes.
+Kevyn Winkless "…he only needs to know the temperature within 10 degrees to have a good idea what it means in concrete terms."
Yes, that's the authors exact point! Â At least for many humans, you're glossing over significant temperature differences when you use 10 degree ranges of Celsius temperatures.
Being "used to" Celsius or Farenheit doesn't bear on the accuracy of the authors argument. Â The fact remains that in Farenheit a single digit pinpoints a range of temperatures that are similar-enough in comfort levels. Â The ranges specified by single digits in Celsius span much wider ranges of temperatures that span more ranges of human comfort.
This is an extremely weak argument for using Farenheit as the official measurement system. Â It is an argument we can ignore. Â We should use the metric system in America. Â Long live Celsius.
It is still an accurate argument.
+Dustin Wyatt Except, as I illustrated above, the "cognitive load" argument is absolute bullshit because the F scale changes too quickly relative to the human experience of temperature. It's (oh the irony) C which is the more "human scale" precisely because 21 is appreciably and noticeably different to 22 (for example).
I'm a no apologies Fahrenheit guy and my argument boils down to an emotional you can't teach an old dog new tricks give me that old time religion and we've always done it this way so why try to fix what ain't broke.Â
LLP
+Shannon Roy I'm not sure you illustrated anything other than what your opinion of what are useful ranges to have.
I mean, you made some assertions, but I don't think you made your case. Â I find the ranges you discount as "nonsense" to be critical ranges of human comfort.
Maybe I'm an outlier, but if you want to convince me you'll have to make a case for most people, in most circumstances, not caring about the increased number of ranges.
+Dustin Wyatt​​​ So your argument — like the writer's — is "I'm used to X and therefore [pseudoscientific babble]".
Ask people who are equally proficient in both, and have lived where both are used to the exclusion of the other.
Everyone I know in that category (50+ people, including myself) prefers C precisely because it gives you information where F does not because of F's imprecision relative to temperature differences humans can actually detect.
+Shannon Roy No, my argument is that my comfort level when it is from 20F-29F (or whatever) compared to when it is between 30F-39F (or whatever) is detectably different and information about this comfort level is contained in the first digit of the Fahrenheit temperature.  This information is lost in the first digit of a Celsius temperature reading.
This is an inarguable fact. Â To argue with this fact is to argue that the sun orbits the earth and that 7 comes after 11.
Furthermore my argument is that this is useful information to have in the first digit of the temperature to some portion of the population to some varying level of (almost assuredly insignifcant) importance.
I am not arguing that this additional usefulness is important enough that it would take more than a second to get to the not-caring point. Â I am not arguing that this additional benefit of F is anything but a teardrop in the rain of reasons to discard F. Â
I think you're arguing that the only people who care about the additional (inarguable) resolution of that first digit when compared to C are people who are used to it. Â Plausible. Â Even likely. Â Also irrelevant to my argument.
To accuse me of pseudo-scientific babble and then present your anecdote as evidence is quite the precious line of argument!
+Dustin Wyatt What a coincidence that the cutoff point is exactly at 30°. Good thing it isn't at 29.4° or 31° or your argument in favour of the scale would have fallen flat.
+Dustin Wyatt If I'd said "I find" — rather like you starting your argument with "my comfort level…" — then certainly your accusation of anecdote as argument would hold.
Lucky I didn't say that, then, eh? I even gave you my sample size!
By the way, the "(inarguable) resolution" of the "first digit" is that pseudo-science babble I was talking about. It's literally meaningless, because as several people have pointed out to you already, unless there is a human-perceptible difference between 79F and 80F, or 19F and 20F, or even 99F and 100F — and countless studies show there isn't — then the whole argument is bunkum.
+Shannon RoyÂ
What you and +Jan Moren object to doesn't really qualify as pseudoscience, it's (if, for a moment we accept that it's…something), it would just be a flawed argument, which is something that happens all of the time without it being pseudoscience.
Now on to what you actually object to. Â Of course there is not an actual detectable difference between 29 and 30 degrees. I mean really? Â You think that's what I was actually claiming? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
I'm not sure why you would think I would claim otherwise. Â I was merely trying to restate in as many ways as I could this fact about the resolution of a degree because I can't understand where we disagree. Â Or rather, I can't understand why you can't see that we don't disagree except for the difference or importance of "it's what he's used to".
Anyway, I usually bow out of an argument about silly stuff when people start reading each others arguments in the least charitable way or when I can't think of another way to express my argument.
Actually, I re-read my previous comment and I apologize, it does sound like that is what I was claiming!
It's a result of too much copy/paste editing. Â Sorry!
+Dustin Wyatt  I'm afraid I don't follow you:
my comfort level when it is from 20F-29F (or whatever) compared to when it is between 30F-39F (or whatever) is detectably different
But this is true within Celsius too – your comfort level 20C-29C is going to be detectably different than from 30C-39C. Â While it's true that 21C and 28C are markedly different compared to 21F and 28F this strikes me as a feature rather than a bug: it means that going from experience to a number is as easy as going from a number to experience. Â IE we can (with familiarity) more reliably guess where in a decad the actual temperature falls.Â
Likewise here:
_ for many humans, you're glossing over significant temperature differences when you use 10 degree ranges of Celsius temperatures._
I'm not sure that's true. Â "Many humans" live in places where the temperature variation over the course of the day is around 10 degrees C, so it works just fine as a ballpark estimate of "hows the weather" as I illustrated in my example previously. Â For cooking, a Celsius decad is a useful rule of thumb. For health, 1 degree F differences in body temperature are nearly undetectable by humans even by comparison, whereas C differences can be (slightly) more easily sensed. Â Granted, in an indoor environment variation within just a few degrees C can cause feuds in home and office, but that's sort of a special use case I would have thought.
And of course, in any use case you can find situations where a particular level of precision is useful or useless – for example, I know that at a hot spring bath if the water temperature is under 43C I'll be OK, but 43C or higher I have trouble tolerating. Â In essence, most of the value of temperature measurement in everyday life is in establishing thresholds, and I don't really see any benefit to one over the other since every system is arbitrary. Â
I argue hard, +Dustin Wyatt — but none of it is with malice! And I do follow you for a reason! 🙂 Cheers!