Let's stop counting centuries • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#391

Post by _gabe_ » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

lye wrote: post #364

creeble wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. For ambient temp, F is twice as accurate in the same number of digits. It also reflects human experience better; 100F is damn hot, and 0F is damn cold. Celsius is for chemists.

There's very little difference between e.g. +25°C and +26°C, not sure why you would need event more accuracy in day to day life. There are decimals if you require that for some reason. Celsius works significantly better in cold climates for reasons mentioned in another comment.

If that’s the case why do the Celsius thermostats I used while on vacation in Canada use 0.5C increments? The decimals are used, because the change between 25C and 26C is actually pretty big :)

In my old apartment, the difference between 73F and 74F was enough to make me quite cold or hot. And that’s a difference of about 0.5C. I’m not arguing that Farenheit is better, but I definitely do prefer it for setting my thermostat (which is a day to day thing) , but then again I grew up using it so that could be why I prefer it too.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#392

Post by ajuc » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

_gabe_ wrote: post #391

lye wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's very little difference between e.g. +25°C and +26°C, not sure why you would need event more accuracy in day to day life. There are decimals if you require that for some reason. Celsius works significantly better in cold climates for reasons mentioned in another comment.

If that’s the case why do the Celsius thermostats I used while on vacation in Canada use 0.5C increments? The decimals are used, because the change between 25C and 26C is actually pretty big :) In my old apartment, the difference between 73F and 74F was enough to make me quite cold or hot. And that’s a difference of about 0.5C. I’m not arguing that Farenheit is better, but I definitely do prefer it for setting my the…

> If that’s the case why do the Celsius thermostats I used while on vacation in Canada use 0.5C increments?

Probably because they were made for US and changed the labels? I've never seen a thermostat with 0.5 C increments in Europe.

> the change between 25C and 26C is actually pretty big

I would maybe be able to tell you if it's 23 or 27, certainly I can't tell 1 C difference.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#393

Post by happyraul » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

lye wrote: post #371

zdragnar wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll want winter tires on well before the air temperature hits freezing for water. Forecasts aren't that predictable, and bridges (no earth heat sink underneath) will ice over before roads do. 40 F is a good time for getting winter tires on. As someone who lives in a humid, wet area that goes from -40 at night in winter to 100+ F in summer, I also vastly prefer Fahrenheit. The difference between 60, 70, 80 and 90 i…

Well, it's been working fine for me for about 15 years, let's agree to disagree here. I would still find it easier to remember to change the tires at +1°C than whatever the hell it comes down to in Fahrenheit. I too live in a region with 80 (Celsius) degree yearly variation (sometimes more; the maximum yearly difference I've lived through is about 90 degrees IIRC: -45 in January to +43 in July), and Fahrenheit makes…

Winter tyres are less to do with freezing water and more to do with the way the tire compound in summer tires hardens/loses elasticity and therefore grip in lower temperatures, around 7 degrees Celsius.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#394

Post by SkeuomorphicBee » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

jonathan_landy wrote: post #317

swyx wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oooor we can slowly migrate towards sensibility as we did celsius and centimeters

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

For me the best feature of Celsius, the one that makes it much better for weather, is the zero on the freezing point of water. Everything changes in life when water start to freeze, roads get slippery, pipes burst, crops die. So it is important that such a crucial threshold is represented numerically in the scale. In other words, going from 5 to -5 in Fahrenheit is just getting 10° colder, nothing special, while going from 2 to -2 in Celsius is a huge change in your daily life.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#395

Post by bonzini » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #382

bonzini wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't make the convention. The 17th century started on January 1, 1701 and ended on December 31, 1800. That's because the purported year of the birth of Christ was the "first year of the lord", or AD 1, and that's when the first century started. In turn that's because at the time Latin had a word for nothing but not a word for zero, so you couldn't count years starting at zero. That also means that those old enoug…

Only American Christians say 'year of our lord' after the date, if that's what that means to you and is how you want to think of it that's fine, but be aware nobody else is doing that, even though they're working in AD/BC.

"Year of the lord" (not "our" lord, please double check what I wrote) is the literal translation of Anno Domini and it's the reason why years are counted from one instead of zero. I quoted the expression, wrote "lord" in lowercase and added "purported" to make it clear that the religious reference was only for historical reasons, I don't know what else I could have done. If I wanted to imbue some religious meaning I probably would have said "Jesus" or "the Christ".

I am also not American and not a native English speaker. In fact Latin languages say in expanded form "après Jésus-Christ", "dopo Cristo", "despues de Cristo" (abbreviation is only used in writing), so even speakers who are not religious very much know the reference even if they couldn't care less. We're stuck with it.

I agree that it's more of a "who wants to be a millionaire" quirk than something that actually matters, but this case of correcting someone was one of the few cases where it matters.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#396

Post by Tainnor » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #153

kergonath wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d say revolutions that created large modern states would be among them. The Russian revolution as well. And the Chinese one. It’s quite difficult to make sense of the late 20th century (yes, I know) without them. Or the early 21th.

Agreed, and it doesn't mean memorizing a date as folks here keep mentioning. The nearest decade is fine in most cases.

do you remember the decade of the Treaty of Westfalia? Because if you live in central Europe, that's at least as important as the American Revolution.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#397

Post by adolph » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

The issue, of course, is that “counted centuries” are off by one from how we normally interact with dates—the 13th century starts in AD 1201.

The author misses. The author would like to skip some significant interpretive steps, chiefly when our dynamically typed language uses number words or characters in different contexts. Suggested reading is about the differences between and use cases of nominal, ordinal, cardinal, interval and ratio.

https://www.statisticshowto.com/probability-and-statistics/s...

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#398

Post by Tainnor » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:37 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #126

Dalewyn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that matter, a lot of historical dates we consider important are only important to us because A) we're westerners and B) we got them drilled into us by textbooks and classes. The remaining majority of the world (the west is a minority) sincerely couldn't care less about the American or French or Industrial Revolutions or Columbus (re)discovering America or the Hundred Years War or the Black Death or the Fall of R…

Appeal to ignorance and anti-intellectualism, congrats.

Your problem is that, instead of encouraging people to learn, you're just dismissing people who don't know one very specific historical fact as "uneducated". People in Europe generally know that America is a democracy and many probably also know that it was the first modern one, but to an average European it doesn't matter that much that it happened in the 1770s as opposed to, say, the 1650s.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#399

Post by rootusrootus » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:41 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #352

jonathan_landy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

95% of the world uses Celcius without problems because they're used to it. You'd either also be fine with it or you belong to a sub-5th percentile which couldn't figure it out, take your pick.

> sub-5th percentile which couldn't figure it out

Ironic, given that one of the prime arguments in favor of metric is that it is easier.

Why do non-US people even care? And do y'all care that you are wrong? The US has recognized the SI. Citizens continue to use measurements they are comfortable with, and it does not hurt anyone. We are also not the only nation that has adopted SI but not made it mandatory. The UK is an obvious example.

Again, I'm back to 'why does anyone else even give a shit'? Aren't there more interesting things to ponder?

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#400

Post by rootusrootus » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:45 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #347

beachy wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Celsius is nearly useless. That's like ... your opinion man. Personally I like knowing that water boils at exactly 100 degrees.

You just use one thing and you’ll learn it. When I was a kid my country changed from archaic 12 point “wind levels” to m/s. It took everybody a few weeks to adjust but it wasn’t hard. It was a bit harder for me after moving to America to adjust to Fahrenheit, but as you experience a temperature, and are told it is so many Fahrenheit, you’ll just learn it. I have no idea at what temperature water boils in F simply bec…

> only for the reason that everyone else is using it

That is an honest answer, which is refreshing. Beside that, there is not really any particular reason that the US has to make SI mandatory. We adopted SI nearly 50 years ago, we just did not make it mandatory. The US has a bit of national identity which leans towards rebelling, so making SI mandatory would probably be contentions anyway. And it's just not worth the argument, since it buys us very little of actual value.