Wikipedia defines common sense as “knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument”
Try to avoid using this topic to express niche or unpopular opinions (they’re a dime a dozen) but instead consider provable intuitive facts.
that putting the thermostat up higher will heat the house up quicker (edit: I have in mind a bog standard UK home thermostat)
that sugary sweets make kids act “hyper”
that the moon’s apparent size is due to how close it is to earth (same for seasons and the sun)
that your base metabolic rate slows as you age and is primarily responsible for you putting weight on in middle age
In the case of inverter air conditioning it might make a small difference at it won’t throttle down as it approaches the intended, not commanded, target.
If you have a 2 stage furnace, this may actually be a thing.
Same with electric range/ovens.
Is this true?? I always assumed that electric ranges simply had a variable duty cycle controlled by the knob. That would mean that if you want to get a pot up to a specific temperature, the fastest way is to set the knob to high until you reach the temperature, then reduce the knob to the desired temperature.
This is different from how an HVAC works, where you set an actual temperature and the HVAC runs until that temperature is reached.
But I could be totally wrong about how electric ranges work.
I did a test on mine using two burners and an infrared thermometer: Starting cold, I turned one burner to medium and another to high, and measured them as they heated up. They heated at the same rate until the medium burner reached its target temperature.
Interesting… if that’s true, then you can know what temperature each setting on the knob is.
I wonder if this is true for all electric ranges?
Is this not true?
No. At least, it’s not the general cause of ‘middle age spread’.
The base metabolic rate refers to how your individual cells respire when at rest. And a brain cell in 20 year old respires much the same way as a brain cell in a 45 year old. Same for all other organs. There is a gradual decline but it’s on the order a single percents.
Organs and tissue at rest respire at different rates, so some of the change people notice is due to change in body composition. Muscle at rest burns twice the calories as fat however this is still only a minor contribution.
Base metabolic rate doesn’t vary much at all. The vast difference in daily calories consumed as one ages is general activity level.
Overall metabolic rate = base rate (varies a little on body composition) + calories burned in general activity (varies a lot)
People typically are less active between 20 and 40. This is not just sport but also lifestyle. People become more efficient in their habits as they age. They drive instead of biking or walking. They sit in the sun on holiday with nice food and wine rather than dancing all night. Etc
Lifestyle choice is the primary cause of excess calorie intake and ‘middle age spread’. Not “my metabolism that I can’t do anything about”.
Do you happen to have a source for that? Coz I have witnessed kids act like a horde of wild monkeys on crack right after eating dessert on multiple occasions.
I listed it because it’s one of the things I would sworn by too having seen it first hand. However when you conduct a double blind experiment, kids still get excited at parties / treats / days out / when their friends are over when there’s no sugar in the treats.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/medical-myths-does-sugar-make-children-hyperactive
In otherwords as parents we massively underestimate how excited or crazy kids can get just because they’re excited and not because of something in their bloodstream…
The claim and evidence here are not logically consistent.
It’s like saying “cyanide won’t make you dead” because, look “people still get dead from falling and crocodiles, even if there’s no cyanide around”.
no, it’s not. it’s a meta analysis of multiple double blind studies. multiple
if you did the same with cyanide you would be able to conclude that “taking cyanide and being dead is positively correlated” even if there were other causes of death. in this wide summary of multiple double blind experiements, there is no correlation between sugar intake and child behaviour. that’s not to say kids don’t act up and get hyper, but it’s other causes, most signficantly parents just underestimate how hard kids find it to regulate themselves when having treats of any sort (non-sugar included) or being in a party atmosphere with friends.