this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (30 children)

It’s always worth bringing this out again at times like these, while the US trots out the same old excuses for their lack of progress that every other country that used to have old measurements has made.

“It’s fine”.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (15 children)

I'm in agreement with everything except temperature. I'm not saying that Celsius is bad, but I do think that using the phase changes of water as the sole point of comparison is a bad argument.

For most people, the interaction with temperature is through the weather, and I don't think Celsius is inherently better for that. I like that in Fahrenheit 0 is a cold winter's day, and 100 is a hot summer's day. I find that more relevant in day-to-day life than the phase changes of water. The big argument I see for preferring Celsius is that everybody else is doing it, so we may as well jump in.

However, in regards to the other systems of measurement, metric is best. The imperial system was nice when manufacturing measuring tools was difficult, so using easily divisible numbers allowed for easier creation of accurate measuring devices. But it has been quite some time since that was a reasonable argument (and that's only really relevant for some of the units anyway).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I like that in Fahrenheit 0 is a cold winter's day, and 100 is a hot summer's day.

Fahrenheit fans always say stuff like this, but it just doesn't work. 100 isn't too bad in that respect, but 0 is just insane. If you want it to be equivalent, 0 °F would be 0 °C. Because there's no way that -18 °C is as cold as 38 °C is hot.

Besides that, knowing about things like snow or ice outside, whether your fridge is likely to cause some stuff to frost over, etc., or whether the thing you're cooking has reached boiling point are all just as valid things for your day-to-day experience.

But besides all that, SI is a package deal. You use Fahrenheit and now you've got to redefine all the other units that are derived from the Kelvin, because now you're suddenly using Rankine.

[–] pishadoot 1 points 1 month ago

I hard disagree with one of your positions; I think 0 F is cold but 100 F is insane. I assume we grew up in different climates. I say this only to make the point that it's subjective, but 0-100 is still the range of what people generally find tolerable.

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