LESSWRONG
LW

All of Secret_Tunnel's Comments + Replies

In memory of Thomas Schelling
Secret_Tunnel30

I'm reading through Strategy of Conflict right now and am really enjoying it. I hope he lived a good life.

Reply
Open thread, Oct. 31 - Nov. 6, 2016
Secret_Tunnel20

Whether or not water freezes has a lot of effects on the weather. When deciding whether to walk about a frozen lake the amount of days that the weather was below 0 matters. For gardering it matters whether the soil freezes.

This is a good point; using 0 as a reference point for freezing, which does have real life applications (is it going to snow? will this morning's rain cause icy roads? etc.) is much less arbitrary than how it's used on the Fahrenheit scale. I suppose boiling has cooking applications as well?

The granularity point is interesting; in the... (read more)

Reply
0Good_Burning_Plastic
Plenty of Celsius thermostats can be set to within a tenth of degree (not that I know anybody who ever sets the tenths' digit to anything other than 0 or 5).
Open thread, Oct. 31 - Nov. 6, 2016
Secret_Tunnel10

Am I crazy for thinking that Fahrenheit is a way more user-friendly system than Celsius when it comes to everyday life? 0 (very cold) to 100 (very hot) is superior to -20 (very cold) to 40 (very hot) both in having more granularity with its whole numbers and being a nice round range to deal with. Also, "Below 0" sounds way cooler (pun intended) than "Below -20."

Whenever I bring this up to any friends of mine, their immediate counterargument is "But almost every single other country in the world uses Celsius!", which obviously ... (read more)

Reply
0username2
If you want an imperial scale that is more definitely "human friendly" I would look at length. Measured in inches are things you manipulate with your hands -- 1 inch = one finger. Measured in feet are things you carry. Yards (plural) are too big to carry, bit you can measure them out by walking (1 stride = 1 yard). Or liquids, where gallons, pints, and quarts are factors of 2 separated from each other -- you break one unit into the other by (recursively) pouring into two equal sized containers, and leveling out.
1ChristianKl
Remembering that water freezes and boils and 32 degree and 212 degree is harder then remembering that it boils at 0 and 100. The great thing about those numbers is that they are objective references points. Fahrenheit defined temperature by referring to the 'average human body temperature' which isn't a physical constant in the same sense as boiling temperature of water. Today the Fahrenheit scale is also defined over when water freezes and boils but at 32 degree and 212 degree. The difference is a clear 180 which is a round number if you think in base 60, but thinking in base 10 is a lot easier than thinking in base 60. Whether or not water freezes has a lot of effects on the weather. When deciding whether to walk about a frozen lake the amount of days that the weather was below 0 matters. For gardering it matters whether the soil freezes. I can't remember a use case where I would have wanted more granularity in my temperature scale then Celsius provides. When making sure that tea I drink is at 55 degree Celsius I would however need three digits to represent the temperature. Better compatibility with other SI units also matters.
2Dagon
It's all arbitrary, and what's most comfortable is what you use most. Fahrenheit is more sensible if you only talk about weather, celcius (or kelvin) is way better if you do any energy calculations.
7turchin
I used Celsius all my life and I feel it as most natural and effective scale. If it is above 0 C I will take my umbrella. If below, I will take care about my winter shoes. I think it is more about personal adaptation than about actual usefulness of the scale.
Crony Beliefs
Secret_Tunnel30

What makes for a crony belief is how we're rewarded for it. And the problem with beliefs about climate change is that we have no way to act on them — by which I mean there are no actions we can take whose payoffs (for us as individuals) depend on whether our beliefs are true or false. The rare exception would be someone living near the Florida coast, say, who moves inland to avoid predicted floods. (Does such a person even exist?) Or maybe the owner of a hedge fund or insurance company who places bets on the future evolution of the climate. But for the re

... (read more)
Reply
Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)
Secret_Tunnel20

I have! Wish I'd gotten in on the initial astronaut selection, haha. Still, my money is on SpaceX beating them to the punch.

Reply
Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)
Secret_Tunnel30

Hey everybody! My name's Trent, and I'm a computer science student and hobbyist game developer who's been following LessWrong for a while. Finished reading the sequences about a year ago (after blazing through HPMOR and loving it) and have lurked here (and on Weird Sun Twitter...!) since then. Figured I'd make an account and get more involved in the community; reading stuff here makes me more motivated in my studies, and it's pretty entertaining either way!

I'd love to be one of the first people on Mars. Not sure how realistic that goal is or what steps I s... (read more)

Reply
2CCC
Hi, Trent! Have you heard of the Mars One project?