its a small advantage, but I think zero indicating when things might freeze is a more useful than "0 degrees lines up with really darned cold"
> zero indicating when things might freeze is useful
Of course it is, parent is being silly.
Picking some other non-zero random number for freezing just seems absurd to me. But that's because Centigrade is what I am familiar with.
Say pick freezing = 12, or 47?. If those numbers for freezing seem absurd to you, then consider that the only advantage that "32" has for you is that you're familiar with it. People will find reasons to defend whichever one they grew up with.
Obviously both can be adapted to. But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water.
This isn’t to say that Celsius isn’t perfectly fine and superior in most ways. I’m not insulting anyone or attempting to participate in some kind of culture war.
Celsius is obviously a better scale for determining when water freezes. But I’ve never found myself paying attention to that. Mostly because any problems that I’d worry about related to the water freezing happen well below freezing.
But if you find yourself unable to agree that one system has some inherent advantages over another, even if they don’t outweigh the disadvantages, you should step back and think a little more objectively.
Rubbish. Absolute nonsense. It's very useful.
But, each system has points where you can say that it is more convenient . You could defend Fahrenheit all day. I could counter with Celsius usefulness. "below zero" being a synonym for "below freezing" is one of those.
But you miss the context - you will defend whichever one you grew up with. You look for reasons to defend what you know. It is mere familiarity, nothing more.
Of course it does. That’s my entire point. For the intended purpose of measuring air temperature there are some advantages to Fahrenheit. Celsius is not self evidently superior in that regard. Therefore no one using Fahrenheit is going to change unless forced.
The freezing point of water is useful for some things, but I’ve never paid particular attention to 32F because almost all of the bad things I need to worry about related to freezing water happen much lower than that.
So making 32F the 0 point of the scale has few objective benefits to me.
Well, that's you, it's not me. 0F is a completely useless benchmark where I am, it never happens. And someone north of you will want a lower point. This is all parochial.
But you miss the context - you will defend whichever one you grew up with. You look for reasons to defend what you know. It is mere familiarity, nothing more.
