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army1987 comments on Terminology suggestion: Say "degrees utility" instead of "utils" to prompt affine thinking - Less Wrong
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Also time (there's the Big Bang, but no-one uses it as the zero in everyday usage); for broader values of “everyday”, voltage and energy, too.
This all reminds me of torsors.
That's true. People don't seem to mess those up as often as "utils". I wonder why?
Hypothesis: For energy and voltage, it's becaue these are mostly only used by people who know what they're talking about in the first place. For time, it's because we usually measure time as "12:00", etc.; the only people saying "the time is 5 seconds" are people who know what they're doing.
...except that explanation doesn't quite work, because it doesn't explain years. But then, with years we usually use a bare number... hm, this is sounding pretty contrived.
Better hypothesis: Time is familiar enough that people know not to do that, utility isn't.
(OTOH, people saying stuff like “X is twice as hot as Y” when X is 80 °C and Y is 40 °C aren't totally unheard of.)
An advantage of using Fahrenheit -- the zero is clearly arbitrary! :)