this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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My point is that Fahrenheit is not like our other units of measure. 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 1760 yards or 5280 feet in a mile is ridiculous. There's no benefit to these units with arbitrary scaling factors for conversion. That lack of consistent scaling factor is the primary difference with metric, and it is also precisely why metric is superior. The image's assertion that these units are stupid is valid.
But for temperature, there are some aspects of Fahrenheit that work out nicely, and learning 32 and 212 for the freezing and boiling points of water is not that bad. It's not as nice as 0 and 100, but this difference leads to certain other temperatures being in the range of 0 and 100. My enjoyment for which temperatures fall between 0 and 100 feels about as arbitrary as your enjoyment for water being liquid within this range. At the very least, the difference here is not as clear cut as it is for other units, so I don't buy into the idea that Fahrenheit is a bad unit of measure.
To put it simply: I don't see any redeeming quality for our other units of measure, but I do for Fahrenheit. I'm not saying that Celsius is bad or that Fahrenheit is better. I'm merely saying that the phase changes of water are not enough to convince me that Fahrenheit is stupid.