The author argues against Celsius because it 'feels' wrong? Well, I've grown up with Celsius all my life, and Farenheit just 'feels' wrong to me.
Everything is relative. The author deems 35 deg C as being "grossly hot", but that is just the average temperature to me where I live. He calls 0 degrees not even cold, but for me, that is almost unbearably cold.
Having a datum of 0 for freezing makes sense, especially for professions like flying (I used to be a pilot). Knowing that you are close to a point when water will turn from liquid to solid can be life saving, and I have no problems with using negatives to determine HOW solid.
The "intuitive" argument comes up a lot in relation to units of measure, and it just makes me wonder how people can have such lack of self awareness.
Anything that is familiar is easier, that tells you nothing about the thing itself. This seems so obvious to me I wouldn't even think of basing an argument around it. Is the concept of subjective experience that hard to imagine for some people?
I mean no disrespect in saying this, but i genuinely think Americans don't like to leave their comfort zone too often and it results in a lot of subjective bias.
I read something like 40% of Americans have never left their country, and about 10% have never left their own state. That means a great deal of them have never experienced a temperature outside of their own.
I think you may be intuitively underestimating the size of the US. I live in Arkansas, which is a fairly mid-sized state. Driving across it at highway speed (70mph/115kph) E/W or N/S takes about four hours. It’s slightly larger than England in area.
Consider someone who lives in Austin, TX. They could drive four hours in any direction and still be in Texas. The US as a whole is approximately the size of all of Europe.
Given that kind of scale, it seems illogical to say that many Americans have “never experienced a temperature outside of their own” merely because we tend to not travel internationally as often as others.
As for comfort zones - I think that’s something of a funny thing. I’ve been to Montreal a couple of times, and honestly felt more at ease there than when visiting New York City, Los Angeles, or Hawaii. There is a huge amount of diversity in terms of culture within the United States.
The other big factor is expense. My wife and I plan to visit Scotland and Italy at some point. We estimated that a week in Scotland for the two of us would cost about $7,000 - $5,000 of which is airfare alone! Consider that the median household income in the US is about $60,000 ($50,000 after federal income taxes). That week in Scotland is approximately the equivalent of two months’ income for a median household! In comparison, a round-trip flight from Heathrow to Istanbul is $330. It’s much, much cheaper for Europeans to travel internationally.
On the similar line: Americans are often said to be unknowing since they mix up European cities / countries and can’t point them out on a map. But the reverse is totally true as well. Ask Europeans where Arkansas is (or how it is pronounced;) and few will know the answer. This mostly boils down to what you learn in school and how much ‘local’ news you are exposed to. I had plenty of European geography in school and very very little US geography. Of course I’m not talking about US/European millennials as they seem to know nothing about geography at all ;-)
> never experienced a temperature outside of their own
What does that even mean? You can experience temperatures ranging from 0°F to 100°F within six months in New York City. Why would you need to travel to experience different temperatures?
> The "intuitive" argument comes up a lot in relation to units of measure, and it just makes me wonder how people can have such lack of self awareness.
As someone who has grown up with a mix of various Imperial (not US) measures and metric ones, I often find some more intuitive than others even when I am familiar with both.
The most obvious his human height. A tall man is about 6' or more. Most people are some number of inches less than that. Moreover, the inch and not the centimetre is roughly the amount at which you would casually notice two people were slightly different in height.
On the other hand, for horizontal distance, metres (or yards) make more sense than feet. To the extent that when American tell me how far away something is in feet, I just multiply by three before trying to use the info.
I think weight in stones is similarly better than either kilos or or pounds, but I am personally more familiar with kilos.
> On the other hand, for horizontal distance, metres (or yards) make more sense than feet. To the extent that when American tell me how far away something is in feet, I just multiply by three before trying to use the info.
Wouldn’t you divide (rather than multiply) by three to get the distance in yards, which would be closer to meters?
My argument is not that all measurement systems are equally ergonomic, it's that you can't reach any conclusions about ergonomics by examining your subjective experience of a system you grew up with and use every day vs. one you don't.
This is what I though would be blindingly obvious, but apparently isn't.
This, the author is a phd surely he should see his own bias here?
"I found it annoying to use negative numbers for temperatures that aren't really that cold, and then have 35℃ be grossly hot." living in Sweden i've always used 0 as the "feeling" middle point, temperatures usually ranging between -20 / +30 C, feels very natural.
That saying the task seems quite fun, would be nice to replicate it coming from a celcius background.
The temperature scale is a) rather arbitrary b) rarely converted in everyday life.
So it's the least bad american unit. If I was suddenly forced to switch from C to F I'd just adjust. It's not that bad.
The others such as distances and volumes are insane and of course not because of the units but because of being non-decimal. Example: figuring out the volume of a swimming pool given its dimensions. Which length unit would you measure the pool in, in order to have a calculation for the volume (in gallons) that doesn't require a calculator? (A: a unit that is 6.14 inches long)
It's not so much 0 that's the problem with Centigrade for weather purposes, it's the 100. 100 F is rather warm. 100 C is DEAD.
I don't have a problem with Centigrade for other stuff, but I think Fahrenheit captures the human ambient environment range better.
Disclaimer: American, where I remember the vain national attempt at metrication as a young child and still have to convert everything mentally when visiting my Australian in-laws
But I still find the 100 a useful demarcation - especially when cooking. I find it handy to know how far away my soup or tea water is away from boiling without doing complicated maths in my head.
The equivalence to the percent scale also makes it easier to conceive - i.e. if I see my kettle on the hotplate registering 75 degrees C, I immediately think "Oh, it is three quarters of the way to boiling".
You could ask: "Three quarters" of the way from WHAT temperature to boiling?
It sounds like the grandparent is trying to measure how far through the task of boiling their water is, by interpreting degrees Celsius as percentage done.
Maybe they usually make soup or tea by boiling ice cubes. (Perhaps they're Siberian?)
Are they saying that 75 degrees mean three quarters of the way from room temperature tap water to boiling water? Or are they talking about boiling an ice cube, so it's three quarters from 0 Celsius freezing?
Interpreting degrees Celsius as a percentages is not an intuitive way of measuring time elapsed to boil tap water, because 75% between freezing and boiling doesn't mean 75% of the time required to boil has elapsed, since you're starting from room temperature when you boil tap water, not freezing.
The point I'm trying to make is that if 0-100 is a useful mental range, and people seem to be arguing that it is given boiling and freezing points, then for the range of temperatures humans can reasonably occupy the scale should be as close to that range as possible.
This is different from an intuition argument. My wife, an Australian, finds nothing intuitive about 72 F as room temperature, just as I don't find anything intuitive about 22 C. You're right I'd adapt if I had to, but no one lives anywhere for very long at 72 C.
> for the range of temperatures humans can reasonably occupy the scale should be as close to that range as possible.
Why? I don't think I'll die at 110 degrees Fahrenheit and that's off the scale. And I routinely make use of things which get hotter than I can live in. I don't live in my kettle or my oven.
Sure, but you will die at 80 C, and that isn't off the scale. So which mapping is closer?
Again, I'm making my argument about weather. Clearly for other arbitrary temperatures this doesn't apply. If you're actually arguing for a single temperature scale for cooking, weather and anything else, then I think most people will end up concluding it'll be what you're most used to working with.
But surely Americans use temperature for cooking too and not just for weather, and then 100°C is boiling which is also at least somewhat useful to know.
When cooking I have never needed to know what temperature boiling water is. The fact that it's boiling is enough. Never mind that water only boils at 100°C at sea level and most Americans don't live at sea level.
Everything is relative. The author deems 35 deg C as being "grossly hot", but that is just the average temperature to me where I live. He calls 0 degrees not even cold, but for me, that is almost unbearably cold.
Having a datum of 0 for freezing makes sense, especially for professions like flying (I used to be a pilot). Knowing that you are close to a point when water will turn from liquid to solid can be life saving, and I have no problems with using negatives to determine HOW solid.