Comment by gjulianm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gjulianm | Hacker News Reader

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I've seen the temperature argument and it never has made sense to me. What does "very cold" and "very hot" mean? For me living in Spain, 40º is "very hot", but I've seen people living in northern countries complaining about 30º. Viceversa with "cold".

The only reason Fahrenheit looks like "a human scale" is because you're used to it. At least Celsius has clear reference points (everybody knows how cold is "freezing water" and how hot is "boiling water").

> Doesn't it make sense for some things to divide by 3 and 4, like a year, so that a season is 3 months long, instead of 2.5 months long (as in the old 10-month year system, ending in December)?

Programmers all around the world would first hate you for changing things, and then love you for making a consistent dating system.

But, seriously now, dates are a bit of a difficult system to change. You want to be able to refer to past dates without too much confusion, and also there are outside restrictions such as the length of a year compared to a day (not many integer divisors of 365 days).

I moved from a Fahrenheit country to a Celsius country, and let me tell you that knowing 0° was freezing and 100° was boiling did not help me decided whether I should put on a jacket when it's 17° outside.

(I now know how to interpret Celsius, but it involved memorising certain fixed points. The "30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cold, 0 is ice" rhyme is a good one.)

And if I moved to a Fahrenheit country I wouldn't know what to wear when it's 60 degrees. That's the point, that both scales need some "getting used to". Fahrenheit is no more natural than Celsius in that regard, and also has the issue of not having reference points.

0F is the brine freezing point. The 100 is better - originally thought as human body temperature, now it's a mild fever.

As opposed to what? I put on a jacket at 19°C. That's 66.2 Fahrenheit. How does it help?

My point is that everyone saying "Celsius is so easy, look at how logical it is!" are missing the point that you still have to memorize a bunch of temperatures. Nobody in their right mind is going to say "Well, it's 20% of the way between water freezing and boiling, so I'll wear long sleeves but no jacket today".

Both celsius and fahrenheit are completely arbitrary, just use whichever one everyone around you is using and you'll be alright. You'll internalise the scale eventually.

It's the one part of the metric system that isn't innately superior to imperial/customary

Celsius does the same thing but with 5 cadence; what you explain is a habit - 70 Frankenstein being 21 science is just as helpful.

For me how it works - 0 is freezing point, 36 is body temperature (you learn that around 4-5y of age), and it's imprinted heavily. Half your body temp is about to begin feeling cold (in general). Picked body temp as it is 100F (originally 100F was meant to be the body temperature)

Fahrenheit (the man) was himself a physicist... he invented the mercury thermometer. That's pretty scientific.

So calling it "Frankenstein and Science" is a little silly, especially when we have an absolute scientific scale (Kelvin).

Actually, nobody complains that we use both Celsius and Kelvin, so what problem is there with a third scale for people, if the former two are for industry and science respectively?

>So calling it "Frankenstein and Science" is a little silly, especially when we have an absolute scientific scale (Kelvin).

That was unnecessary, an obvious joke about both, and how people feel about them, etc. C and K scale the same way, so C is just an offset K (or vise versa). Both C and F are arbitrary, of course - zero (as developer) being the phase change of the water does make more sense to me; again arbitrary.

> I now know how to interpret Celsius, but it involved memorising certain fixed points

But that's literally the argument given for Fahrenheit.

My point is that everyone saying "Celsius is so easy, look at how logical it is!" are missing the point that you still have to memorize a bunch of temperatures. Nobody in their right mind is going to say "Well, it's 20% of the way between water freezing and boiling, so I'll wear long sleeves but no jacket today".

So you agree that the argument for it "feeling more natural" is actually, "I've already memorised a number"?

No really. The "comfortability" points are basically separated by 10 degrees F, with only 32 degrees F being the special one.

Then again 17 is pretty close to temperature you are entirely unsure if you use jacket or not. On other hand it is pretty pleasant summer temperature. On other if it is windy it might not be so nice.

very hot - about 35.5C or so, when you cannot dissipate heat with sweating. 30C is just uncomfortable but totally fine.

Also an year is not even 365days.

> very hot - about 35.5C or so, when you cannot dissipate heat with sweating. 30C is just uncomfortable but totally fine.

That's not only subjective but also depends on humidity. 34º with high humidity can feel far hotter than 38º in dry weather.

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