alt Hacker NewsYou only think it makes sense for humans because it makes sense for you, where you live the same way you feel changing a thermostat by 1F is perfect but 1C is too much: that’s true for you, not universally.
Fahrenheit functionally requires you to be biased in order for it to seem like a good system.
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Every non-US thermostat I've seen that works in Celsius is adjustable by half-degrees, so it seems the manufacturers agree with my feeling there...
> you feel changing a thermostat by 1F is perfect but 1C is too much: that’s true for you, not universally.
I've noticed that here in Japan all the AC units seem to be adjusted by half a degree Celsius at a time, so I do think 1C is a bit much even for people who never used fahrenheit.
It provides greater granularity in the range of human comfort, without descending into decimals. How is that not more useful for day-to-day human usage?
0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year.
-20C to 40C seems much more arbitrary as a way to measure the zone humans mostly live in.
I would wager that the outdoor and room temperature are an overwhelming majority of human use for temperature. It seems like it would make sense to optimize for how temperature is more commonly used at a population level.
I would say those who see Celsius as a good system are also biased, because they grew up with it and it’s what they’re used to.
Actually, 1 degree of Fahrenheit is the amount of temperature change a typical human can connect. It's a human-calibrated scale.
Though why 32F instead of 0F for frozen water...I have no idea.