That “better reference to human interaction” argument just doesn’t hold any water though. The claim that using imperial means you are closer to nature is ludicrous and also horrendously US defaultist. Much of continental Europe was fully metric when people were still so much “closer to nature” and barely anything “was computer” yet, except for some room filling mainframes. Yet people here had no issue with all those metric units.
While imperial is absolutely atrocious at engineering and at scientific applications, SI units work perfectly fine for human reference interactions. Are there tiny differences, that give maybe imperial an edge in some circumstances? Possibly? In a way that it actually matters? Hardly.
This is certainly the case for °C vs °F. Anything finer than °C is below the precision of everyday thermometers and also hard to percept. While increments larger than that can be easily measured and are also perceptible. All relevant environmental temperatures are merely 2 digits, with boiling water at 100. That’s perfectly adjusted to human interaction and reference. Most people don’t need finer “granularity” in everyday life but if they do, they simply include the first position after the comma. This is optional and completely frictionless “ganularity”, when you need it.
I am not saying that Fahrenheit is necessarily worse. It is one of the few imperial units that don’t suck. But it is also not meaningfully better either, just different.
That “better reference to human interaction” argument just doesn’t hold any water though. The claim that using imperial means you are closer to nature is ludicrous and also horrendously US defaultist. Much of continental Europe was fully metric when people were still so much “closer to nature” and barely anything “was computer” yet, except for some room filling mainframes. Yet people here had no issue with all those metric units.
While imperial is absolutely atrocious at engineering and at scientific applications, SI units work perfectly fine for human reference interactions. Are there tiny differences, that give maybe imperial an edge in some circumstances? Possibly? In a way that it actually matters? Hardly.
This is certainly the case for °C vs °F. Anything finer than °C is below the precision of everyday thermometers and also hard to percept. While increments larger than that can be easily measured and are also perceptible. All relevant environmental temperatures are merely 2 digits, with boiling water at 100. That’s perfectly adjusted to human interaction and reference. Most people don’t need finer “granularity” in everyday life but if they do, they simply include the first position after the comma. This is optional and completely frictionless “ganularity”, when you need it.
I am not saying that Fahrenheit is necessarily worse. It is one of the few imperial units that don’t suck. But it is also not meaningfully better either, just different.