• Ook the Librarian
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      11 year ago

      It’s the only way this meme makes sense. It’s a complaint that humans don’t like the average of the temperates that produce the feelings of extreme hot and extreme cold. You’d have to change math, change physiology, or lose linearity.

      • @[email protected]
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        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        Nonlinear measures are used for

        1. Brightness of lights
        2. Loudness of noises
        3. Magnitude of earthquakes

        Why not temperature?

          • @[email protected]
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            fedilink
            English
            11 year ago

            Actually, earthquake magnitude can be projected to negative numbers. It’s well defined but it stops describing earthquakes. For instance, a -3 magnitude earthquake is the energy released by a cat knocking your cell phone off of a nightstand. (see page 290 of this book). Pretty sure the others are also logarithmic scales which are well-defined for any negative number. It just so happens that those negative numbers don’t describe anything we care to describe with those scales.

            • Ook the Librarian
              link
              11 year ago

              That negative number comes from taking a logarithm of a number less than one. Not from a negative scalar.