Waqas on Warpcast

Waqas pfp

Americans are right about measuring temperature in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius.

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Diñero pfp

I don't understand why. Celsius is easier to comprehend

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Waqas pfp

It's not really. F provides higher resolution and human beings are pretty sensitive to temperature.

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shazow pfp

it's 3 sigfigs either way, C provides higher resolution

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Waqas pfp

How? Freezing point in Fahrenheit: 32°F Freezing point in Celsius: 0°C Boiling point in Fahrenheit: 212°F Boiling point in Celsius: 100°C 212 – 32 = 180 100 – 0 = 100

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shazow pfp

there's this crazy thing called decimals

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Waqas pfp

Lol yes. But much research shows humans aren't that good at judging small decimal differences. Hence the higher resolution provided by F in terms of integers is useful.

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shazow pfp

So more resolution is good, but more more resolution is bad? I dunno, I'm starting to think Fahrenheit has too much resolution and that 2 sigfigs is more appropriate because humans aren't good at judging small differences. 🙃 I honestly think it's a silly vibes-based meme that doesn't hold up in practice. I've switched between the two systems back and forth, my partner has too as we've lived in different countries. It's all just cope to hang on to a bizarre 32-indexed counting system instead of going to 0-indexed.

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Waqas pfp

What I am trying to say is that it's harder to imagine the difference between. 22.7778 C and 23.3333 C than the difference between 73 F and 74 F. It's just how human brains work, we round off things.

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shazow pfp

Nah, it's harder to imagine the difference between 69.8F and 71.6F than between 21C and 22C. It's just how human brains work. Also why on earth did y'all decide that 70s is a sweet spot for some reason?

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Waqas pfp

That's just silly. I chose 70s because that's the avg temperature right now. I used to live in Karachi where temp ranged from 10 to 45 C. That's a diff of 35 for what is actually a very large range when it comes to how the human body perceives it. The same range is 63 in F, almost doubling the integers we use to represent this range, also making is much easier to communicate the smaller and more accurate differences. To use C with decimal points to communicate weather info is just stupid and makes C pointless. Most science uses K. C is for people who like useless consistency.

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Waqas pfp

What I mean is that C was created with water freezing and boiling as a benchmark, and it feels consistent and nice to have these two whole numbers. But F was created with the human body as a benchmark. This is reflected in their use. C was never centered around humans, after invention of K, C became obsolete. F, due to being centered around human perception of temperature, remains relevant.

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shazow pfp

That's the point though: You use precision when you need precision. It's a revisionist to argue that F was cleverly designed to be "centered around humans" when the range was chosen with bad science and vibes. From the freezing of brine to "I guess around 90F is human temperature" (before we knew better). I've had this debate dozens of times and I've genuinely looked for studies that have a conclusive argument one way or the other, but there's only three conclusive effects I've found: 1. Above all, people are very good at adapting to whatever tools they have (often better than the tools are at adapting to humans). The argument that "human brains simply are only good at X scale" is not a real factor here. 2. Familiarity wins. We could have an even worse scale than F and people will fight to the death over it because they grew up with it. 3. Big numbers do have big number effects. 115 is somewhat implicitly scarier than 46. Whether that's better or not depends on what narrative we're selling.

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Waqas pfp

Well now you're having that debate one more time but this time with someone who used C his whole life, resisted using C for first 3 years after moving to the US and called Americans stupid, and then finally caved seeing the use. So if I am going to the park and see my weather app, if it says it's going to be 71 during certain hours, that means it's going to be 71 avg, that it will be 70 at certain moments and 72 at certain. So that gives me a range. That for me is the main variable in making the decision to wear a spring jacket or not, because for me 71 is a good average temperature when my body feels pleasant and not chilly. I feel kinda chilly when it's 69 average, so I take my jacket. If I make the wrong decision I either have to lug around a jacket or feel slightly chilly. When I used C, it was harder to make this decision because the weather app would report 21 for 69 and 22 for 71, making the decision less accurate ultimately esp considering both 21 and 22 are avgs. When I was in Karachi, I didn't

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Waqas pfp

Have to make decisions like this because the weather was always warm and there was no decision to make except how to avoid heat. Hence it worked till it worked.

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shazow pfp

Fun fact: the weather app on my phone is 5c off from the temperature in my back yard for most of the day. The difference in temperature from the front yard and back yard is more than 2c. Humidity and shade/sun change the perceived temperature by more than 10c sometimes. If you ever lived in SF, walking 15 minutes over a hill can be a 25F temperature swing. Again, I believe you that you've developed a workable lifestyle with the units you chose, but I don't believe that the planet is better off with everyone using F and I don't believe we're better off with there being two units.

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