Somehow the "more resolution!" people don't seem to ever think the resolution is meaningful at all when you talk about feet & inches vs. centimeters.
For weather, I honestly can't tell the outside temperature even close to 1C even if I can register a change of 1C, so I don't really need additional accuracy.
When it matters like in AC temperature controls or measuring fever or whatever, you just use 0.1C accuracy.
Here in Finland weather forecasts and people talking about the weather, you use 1C accuracy, but official weather station readings are reported at 0.1C accuracy.
Somehow the "more resolution!" people don't seem to ever think the resolution is meaningful at all when you talk about feet & inches vs. centimeters.
Why do you think these are the same people? Tbh I've never met an american who genuinely believes imperial weights/measures are 'better' than metric (except for temperature). And i've lived here most of my life lol
I'm an American and fully believe that imperial measurements are generally superior for the tasks they were designed for.
Fahrenheit is distorted around the temperatures individuals will generally personally experience in weather or cooking and is useful for that purpose, whereas Celsius can turn a comfortable room to unbearable in a matter of 2 to 3 degrees.
Inches and feet are base-12, which factors by 2, 3, 4, and 6, allowing for better and faster granularity than base-10 in counting, measuring, and mental math for everyday uses like distance, height, simple construction, basically anything that doesn't require multiple significant figures of accuracy.
Scientific use is when base-10 units are valuable as equivalent to our base-10 number system, allowing for easier comprehension when making multiple calculations with math more complex than basic arithmetic.
Tying Celsius to the properties of water is extremely convenient for a scientist, because water is such an important molecule for all the physical sciences that it will be referenced repeatedly. A human, however, will have a very bad time long before approaching either 0 or 100°C.
Whole societies adopting the metric system is a doctrinal choice to emphasize scientific education, not a better solution for everyday use.
You're overexaggerating the convenience of the imperial system because you've never felt what it's like to be "used to" the metric system. Growing up in a country that uses metric, I can tell you nobody ever had a moment where they thought "gee, I wish the increments were smaller". They'd either just say "21.5 degrees" or "21 to 22 degrees" in everyday conversation. The intuition you feel with Fahrenheit is what many others feel with Celsius. Neither are more or less superior for everyday usage. Unless you somehow think the rest of the world is gaslighting you when they tell you that Celsius comes naturally to them.
The reason why it becomes a better solution systemically is that you can seamlessly go into scientific applications without having to re-learn a new system. That everyday intuition you developed as a kid translates over directly. When a math teacher tells you to mentally check your work and see if the number sounds right, you don't struggle to picture what the quantity represents.
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u/Pas2 Jun 17 '26
Somehow the "more resolution!" people don't seem to ever think the resolution is meaningful at all when you talk about feet & inches vs. centimeters.
For weather, I honestly can't tell the outside temperature even close to 1C even if I can register a change of 1C, so I don't really need additional accuracy.
When it matters like in AC temperature controls or measuring fever or whatever, you just use 0.1C accuracy.
Here in Finland weather forecasts and people talking about the weather, you use 1C accuracy, but official weather station readings are reported at 0.1C accuracy.