>>1731463There's two reasons why non-stainless is superior.
First is that the elements that make steel stainless are softer than iron, making the steel softer.
The second is a bit more complicated and related to how steel looks at an atomar level. If you don't understand, don't worry - unless you're a mechanical or chemical engineer like I am, you'll never need this.
Basically, there are three cristalline structures steel can have, ferritic (which pure iron has at room temperature), austenitic (which pure iron has at red heat) and martensitic (which is created if you quench redhot steel, effectively freezing the atoms in the position they have in austenite, but forcing them into the bonds they have in ferrite, creating a denser and harder structure).
Of these, only austenite is stainless. However, in martensite, you have the smallest angles between bonds. Due to this, martensite allows for much sharper edges.
Martensite is also more flexible, while austenite and ferrite are plastic, meaning that if you deform a stainless knife, it'll be more likely to stay deformed than a non-stainless blade.
TL;DR: carbon steel allows for sharper edges that stay sharp longer.
>inb4 X cheap carbon knife is worse than Y expensive stainless knifeObviously, quality depends on more than just the amount of Cr or V in the steel. However, if you take any knife, melt it down, add alloy components to make it stainless and reforge it, it'll be worse than before.
Also, wool blankets are not a meme. I'm getting tired of writing this all the time, but that graph the shills post when advertising their synthetic sleeping bags is based on measurements on soaked wool with all lanolin washed out. I know, because when I was at uni, I did measurements on that topic as well. With the moisture content an unwashed (still containing lanolin) blanket will get even during a heavy rain, it'll only lose a miniscule amount of insulation, unlike cotton or simple synthetics.
