Xandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ on Nostr: So given all the above, what in the everloving fuck does it mean to say that a sound ...

So given all the above, what in the everloving fuck does it mean to say that a sound is 80 dB loud? That doesn't seem like multiplying or dividing by a number, but measuring some physical quantity!

It turns out that it's often convenient to express some quantity (that is, a number with units attached; 3 is a number, but 3 miles is a quantity) as some number of decibels greater or smaller than some *reference*.