• Mrs_deWinter@feddit.org
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    4 months ago

    If that was true outsiders should be able to use Fahrenheit without much explanation. I’ve never got a clue what the °F values mean, I always have to use a converter. It’s really not as intuitive as people who grew up with it seem to believe.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      If that was true outsiders should be able to use Fahrenheit without much explanation. I’ve never got a clue what the °F values mean, I always have to use a converter. It’s really not as intuitive as people who grew up with it seem to believe.

      because it’s all relative, and you need to actually know how the temperatures relate to the things you’re experiencing? I’m going to hazard a guess and say you’re comfortable with using celsius? Oops cognitive bias. You would have to test this on someone who doesn’t understand temperature yet. It just so happens that here in the US, it pretty conveniently lines up with those figures for us.

      • Mrs_deWinter@feddit.org
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        4 months ago

        If your example cannot be proven on any existing person I’d argue it’s hardly relevant to our reality.

        °F most definitely isn’t intuitive enough for people who aren’t accustomed to it to use. If it is more intuitive at all, it’s not to any meaningful degree.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 months ago

          If your example cannot be proven on any existing person I’d argue it’s hardly relevant to our reality.

          possibly? Arguably you could still make the case that the existing range of 0-100f is more pleasant, and arguably nicer to use. But you would have to either find someone uniquely adapted to both systems, or you would have to do a lot of independent study on how humans interact with numbers and ranges of numbers. In order to find a specific answer it’s going to be quite hard.

          intuition is bullshit anyway, it’s highly predicated on previous experience and an existing knowledge base, so i feel like that’s kind of arguing “well a race car driver drives good, so why don’t normal drivers drive good” kind of territory if you arent careful.

          • Mrs_deWinter@feddit.org
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            4 months ago

            Yeah, which is why most people here in favor of Celcius argue that Fahrenheit isn’t, in fact, more intuitive and therefore more suited to describe the weather. Both are arbitrary, both can be learned and used very easily, the only difference is what you’re used to.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 months ago

              yeah, but i think arguing that celsius is “more intuitive” when the one primary advantage outside of science is that it lines up with water relatively nicely compared to fahrenheit, is like, ok.

              32f and 212f and 0c and 100c aren’t really all that substantially different as far as the general use case goes.

                • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  4 months ago

                  which is why most people here in favor of Celcius argue that Fahrenheit isn’t, in fact, more intuitive and therefore more suited to describe the weather.

                  hmm.

                  • Mrs_deWinter@feddit.org
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                    4 months ago

                    “Fahrenheit isn’t more intuitive” doesn’t not mean “Celcius is more intuitive”. You’re mistaken if you think that’s what’s being argued here.

                    Neither one is intuitive. Intuition isn’t a useful metric here anyway. After all we could ask: Which one is more intuitive - kilometers or miles? Kilograms or pounds? Do we have to change how me measure time (base 12) to a base 10 as well, would that be more intuitive?

                    Answer is no. All those units have to be learned and filled with experience anyway. Nobody can interpret temperature scales intuitively, neither Fahrenheit nor Celsius.

                    Fahrenheit simply has no advantage over Celcius. And it doesn’t have to. Some people are used to it, so keep using it by all means. Don’t argue that it’s superior and we’re all good.