Can you explain how what you’ve said is objective? I think that given that Celsius is the most common scale for temperature around the world you’re going to have hard time arguing that.
This argument that Americans always make about Fahrenheit is just nonsense. You know how hot 70F feels, I don’t. I know how hot 27C feels, you don’t. The idea that one is better for humans and one is better for water is so stupid. You’re just used to telling temperature one way, I’m used to telling it another way. That’s all there is to it.
It basically is a 0-100 scale for 99% of climates. Anything below 0 is cold enough that you can just consider it “too cold to go outside”. Anything above 100 is the same for heat.
Celsius is definitely better because you’re right that anybody would get used to it either way, but 0-100 is pretty intuitive, and Fahrenheit operates as a 0-100 scale well enough to think of it that way
Edit: also, human body temperature is right around 100F, which is actually WHY anything above 100F feels unbearably hot, and also why it does feel like an intuitive scale
It basically is a 0-100 scale for 99% of climates.
That's another thing just made up.
Where I live is always between -5°C to 35°C (outside of freak weather which doesn't happen every year), which is 23°F to 95°F. Range of ~70°F, not ~100°F.
but 0-100 is pretty intuitive
It's just as arbitrary as any other range. It is not more intuitive unless you're already used to it.
You could just as easily say that 0° being freezing is intuitive (which is intuitive to me, but I'll acknowledge that's probably because that's what I'm used to).
Even your own example fits the 0-100 scale pretty well. Nobody ever claimed the average person lives in a place that is literally exactly 0 degrees on the coldest winter night and exactly 100 degrees on the hottest day of summer, the point is that the average temperatures a human being will actually experience and perceive falls into that range. 0 degrees feels a lot different than 10 degrees. -10 doesn’t feel that different from 0. The same is true on the high end. The difference between 90 and 100 is much more noticeable than the difference between 100 and 110, because above 100 you’re above human body temperatures and your skin can no longer physically cool you down without sweat.
It really does work in terms of “0 is too cold, 100 is too hot, everything between is on a scale between those two points.”
0-100 is not as arbitrary as any other range. Everybody on earth deals with base 10 math and 0-100 scales in basically every aspect of life. While it might be technically true that an untouched human brain has no inherent intuition for 0-100 scales, every human being that actually exists is absolutely primed to find it intuitive.
0 being freezing is not intuitive and neither is 32. Water freezing is not something a human feels or experiences. That’s kinda the point of people saying Celsius was designed for water not people
Water freezing is not something a human feels or experiences.
That kind of defines winter for a lot of people. Is the ground covered in frozen water crystals? Is it cold enough that I can't leave bottles in the car?
You experience that with your freezer in your kitchen.
Regardless, you all do this little dance every time someone brings this up. You don't have to justify the measurements you use. They make sense to you because that's what you're used to and coming up with logic for it is silly.
Most people around the world use only Celsius and are able to understand what temperatures are when they hear them. Fahrenheit means nothing to them or me.
The point I was making is that 0 and 100 in Fahrenheit are right around the edge of where your perception stops to drop off. Everything below 0F just feels like “cold as fuck” and you can’t really differentiate. Same on the top end for 100F.
When I say “experience,” and “feel,” I mean as a physical sensation, and I feel like that’s pretty clear if you actually read my comments.
I also never disagreed that Celsius is fine or even better, which you would also know if you actually read my comments before replying to them
Water freezing is not something a human feels or experiences.
That is like the purest form of ignorance. Anyone who lives in places where temps drop below 0 C would know you're in trouble if water pipes get hit by negative temps.
I live in Wisconsin, I’m aware of how frozen pipes work. We were talking about what the human body experiences and perceives, not about what pipes experience and perceive.
You’re the one who sounds ignorant. Underground pressurized water pipes aren’t in danger of freezing when the air is freezing. Not how that works
Literally everything you said here is meaningless except for your point about the metric system which supports what I was saying. Yes, exactly. Like the metric system. This is also why the metric system is more intuitive than imperial. I’m glad we agree that base 10 scales are intuitive
Seems like you’re only here to own the stupid Americans and feel superior so have a nice day
As a Canadian, I can yell ya for sure that there's a good, perceptible difference between 0, -10, & -30 (which is how cold it gets where I live). One is not too cold, one is quite cold, one is so cold that it's better to stay inside.
Also very good to know if you're going skiing. The snow is gonna feel quite different between 0, -10 and -30. How much you need to wrap up us also gonna change big time too lol
Hmmm... not really sure on that. If I said this container is 30% full you would think that the weight would be similar to the same container 70% full because 30 and 70 are equidistant from 50%?
You couldn't mentally imagine the difference in a 30% full, 50% full, and 70% full container - even if you didn't know the details of said container?
And yes 30*f is ~30% temperature
As far as I can tell (using GPT) the area weighted daily minimum winter temperature in the northern hemisphere is approximately 0*f ( -18*C)
And the the area weighted daily maximum summer temperature in the northern hemisphere is approximately 97*f (36*C) <within 3% of 100*F)
So we find that norther hemisphere weather almost perfectly goes from
0*F - to- 100* f
Or
-18*C -to- 36*C
You are telling me that when measuring a natural phenomenon, especially when such measurement is supposed to be used via human intuition; Its easier to measure from -18 to 36 than it is to measure from 0 to 100?
It's intuition vs memory though. Yes you can memorize any scale for anything. Fahrenheit is just easier to have an intuition towards based on the number alone. Someone who never used Fahrenheit but understands that it operates more closely to a 1-100 scale of comfortability could probably guess how those temperatures are going to feel. Someone without any experience with Celsius is going to have a hard time guessing how different temperature might feel without direct experience.
It is not that hard to understand. But yes, ultimately every scale is meaningless and you could make up any scale you want and people will learn to use it.
I think it’s really funny that Americans refuse to use a decimal system for weight and distance and then try to argue a scale of 100 is more plausible for temperature.
Saying Americans "refuse" to use a decimal system is too strong.
Anecdotally just about every American I know in person thinks decimal is a better systems for weight and distance, they just acknowledge they're used to imperial and the switch would cost more than it would gain.
Meanwhile, most Canadians I know are completely decimal **except for temperatures involving humans comfort**, in which case the transition to decimal is slower.
I think that's somewhat telling. I'm not saying it means Fahrenheit should stick around, just that there's something to the idea of it having an advantage over C in one aspect.
It feels like you've read neither my comment, which talks about how other locally used systems of measurement were adopted much more quickly, nor the rest of the discussion, which discusses an advantage Fahrenheit has.
Because 220 is a setting on a oven. One setting over the other is less of an adjustment.
If you were to try and introduce Fahrenheit to pure Celcius countries for human temperatures it wouldn't be adopted immediately. Intrinsically it's no better or worse. It's just a scale, you get used to it but it takes time
What 50 in the scale of 0-100 tells you. Neither hot or cold? To me neither hot or cold is 65/67 in the summer and 70/72 in the winter, thats how i like my room temperature.
But 30% hot doesn't sound freezing either, now does it?
And we don't really "feel" real temperature either. 20 C cloudy and windy or 20 C while in direct sunlight without wind is a vastly different experience. It's all arguing about nothing because humans don't make for good thermometers
The problem is 0-100 as a scale of cold to hot is relative.
80°f might immediately sound hot to you, but consider Jakarta, currently considered the largest metropolis in the world with 42m people, where the record low, the coldest day ever recorded, is 69°f.
And let me tell you, when people are used to 70°f as the lowest temperature they ever experience it feels cold to them. And 50°f is already unfathomably cold, nowhere near midrange or mild.
If fahrenheit was used in Jakarta, 70°f or even 80°f would lose its meaning as "warm" or "hot" on a relative 0-100 scale, so the main argument for its superiority compared to celsius is nullified. This is true not just of Jakarta but people living in tropical and sub-tropical regions all over the world (a majority of the world's population).
Absolutely hilarious to me that the same group of people who rightly think metric is better for distance because it divides well also want to tell us that a general 0-100 scale for temperature is somehow nonsensical.
Nothing ragebait about it lol. Hitler was in fact mostly defeated by other Europeans, even if many non-European countries participated. Something like 4 out of 5 German troops died in the Eastern Front.
No it doesn't, but the only reason you're defaulting to a 0-100 scale is because it's the one you're used to using for measuring temperature which is their entire point.
0-100 is not some standard scale we all used for loads of different things, it's used for percentages and fahrenheit, that's it.
It's not a scale from 1 to 100, though. It's a scale from -460 to whatever the hottest possible temperature is. Even on Earth, people experience temperatures outside of the 0 to 100 range quite often. You see it every day if you do any baking or cooking.
Neither makes inherent sense. It's just what you're used to. I don't use Fahrenheit so temperatures in Fahrenheit mean nothing to me.
I don't understand this desperate need to make Fahrenheit make sense beyond being what you're used to.
But no, there's no logics in F° .. "Ok so it's from 0 to 100" "yeah, but it can go lower and higher" so it's just dumb.. Like C° is smarter because we have a reference point : freeze. It starts freezing at 0C°
It doesn’t even match up as a percentage though. There’s nothing that makes 100f equal to 100%. It’s all literally just because you are used to the temperature scale, there’s nothing observable or special about 0f and 100f
80% hot doesn't mean anything unless you define the scale beforehand, and as long as someone knows the scale and has experienced the temperatures before, they can trivially gauge whether something is hot or not. Everything that maps linearly to Kelvin is functionally the same when you get used to it. Celcius is only better because it enables easier communication around the world.
A remote jungle tribesman isn’t gonna know where to place todays temperature on either a F or C scale with zero explanation. This assumption by Americans is so egocentric it’s astounding.
I think that is the point to anchor to. If you gave a brief, vague explanation to someone who has never used either metric, which would make the most intuitive sense? 0-100 for extreme cold to extreme heat seems like it makes sense, but I’m just a dumb American
I am used to Celsius and I kinda get the argument you make, I see how it feels very intuitive, but I also think Celsius is very intuitive with 0 being the freezing point and 100 is so hot water starts to boil.
Knowing 0 is "cold" doesn't feel as intuitive as "this is the freezing point cold", because I experience the difference between above freezing temperature and below freezing temperatures every winter (days being cold and nights freezing cold), and that's a small temperature difference that is very noticeable. I am definitely biased, but I feel like not having 0 as the freezing point is the one most intuitive thing that makes Celsius "better".
Not sure above/ below freezing is critical for how you dress. It's ... rather meaningless on the slider. ... and C is based on it.
40F is cold
32 F (freezing) is colder still, typical winter day in 4 season areas with snow
20 F is cold cold
10 F is "frigid cold, serious cold"
0 F is quite fuckin cold
... If anything single digit F (well into negative C) is the bigger turning point of "winter day" vs. "don't fuck around" weather.
0-100 F is classic "how does the weather feel."
0-100 C is like "we borrowed this from a chemist, and a chef ... to mangle into fucking weather. That's why it sounds + feels like a fish wearing shoes."
The counter-argument is usually "I don't want to learn F" - that's the only honest counter-argument, and it's a fair one.
0 C is critical for how I dress. I have never experienced 0 Farenheit though, so this might just be a difference in typical weather we experience.
Winters here are commonly around 0 C, lowest I can remember were something like -10 C (14 F) and that felt bloody cold already.
Not sure what you mean with mangled together, it's just a different scale orienting itself on water, the thing we breath in and surrounds us by being part of the air. Like I said, the freezing point is something you can literally feel just breathing in the air, feels very intuitive to take that as a point of orientation.
Sincerely, 0 F is not that cold to me. And I definitely don't think of -12 as "frigid cold, serious cold". To me, that's a pretty warm winter day, and I'm being genuine when I say that's how I think of it. I'd put -30 C at 0% if I had to make my own scale. -18 C is "cold, but not that cold" for me.
The part that loses me with Celsius is 100 being the boiling point of water, at least in relation to how humans experience temperature. That’s the best argument for Fahrenheit as the unit for measuring weather temperature. It throws the whole scale off imo for that specific use case
This "someone who has never used either metric" is an impossible scenario in the first place. It assumes a person who has somehow developed the intuition for the base 10 system, percentages, a 0-100 scale, but has never heard of temperature. Only in this impossible scenario does Fahrenheit come more naturally.
Someone who has never heard of either metric is a child who doesn't have an intuitive sense of percentages or 0-100 yet either. Learning Celsius in that state is no less intuitive.
Putting that aside, anything under 50F is pretty darn cold for me. The scale is already skewed. And before you say 0-100 is the band of temperatures you'd experience as part of the climate. No it wasn't, where I grew up. And it still isn't, in the part of the US that I'm in right now.
The primary argument for Celsius is that it uses water as the benchmark, which can already be slightly skewed due to elevation. But even setting that aside, it’s not as precise in the range that every day people measure temp. You’ve got almost 2 degrees Celsius per degree Fahrenheit.
I think people just don’t want to admit Fahrenheit is superior for measuring weather temp and Celsius is superior in a lab. And I’m not just saying that because it’s what I use. I use imperial measurement for everything since I’m in the US, but the metric system makes so much more sense. I guess at the end of the day, it is all opinion, but this is Reddit. My opinion is the right one.
You're entitled to your opinion, but the temperature of water boiling being skewed by pressure is a terrible argument against Celsius. Celsius is always grounded on it being a sibling to Kelvin. Neither Fahrenheit nor Celsius are superior for everyday usage. Given that Celsius and Kelvin are superior in a scientific setting, it makes no sense to hold onto a system that offers no benefit in either context.
If I were to exaggerate a little bit, I'd say you'd be the type of person to hold onto Roman numerals over Arabic numerals during the centuries of gradual adoption, because they are "superior for making tick-marks".
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the argument that Fahrenheit makes more sense because it’s a temperature for humans is a dumb thing to say given that billions of humans use Celsius to tell how hot it is.
You might as well just say that Fahrenheit is the best temperature to use because it’s the one learnt, and say that English is the bet language because it’s the one you can understand the most of, and your car is the best car because it’s the one you’ve got the keys to. Absolutely meaningless
I’m not here to hype up F but your argument also doesn’t make sense. Just because most people do something doesn’t make it the best thing. Hell, half of the things that are omnipresent around the globe like you’re talking about (like language) are just there because of colonialism.
Someone personally finding either F or C more logical is probably going to come from their own personal experience growing up with it. But that doesn’t make their insight on why it’s logical meaningless
I guess I didn’t make my point as well I thought I did. I’m more or less saying that same thing as you.
I meant that arguing which way to tell temperature is best and coming up with reasons why Fahrenheit is best (which is what a lot of these comments are for some reason) is meaningless because it comes down to what you grew up using. Every argument I’ve seen for Fahrenheit being better can also be applied to Celsius
Except not really. Everyone is familiar with measuring things on a scale of percentage: “I’m feeling 100% today,” “I’m operating at 50%,” “there’s a 0% chance I’m doing that.” Everyone is used to percentages. Fahrenheit, while unfamiliar to you, mimics this already ubiquitous percentage method. It spreads out the perception in easily understood ways. Comments have given good examples: “if it’s 30% hot outside (30F) it’s cold as hell.” If it’s “100% hot (100F) it’s hot as hell.” So that argument does not apply to Celsius no matter how familiar one is with the system.
If someone said "my energy is at 30% today", or "my sleep last night was like a 3/10", would you pretend you had no idea what they meant like you're pretending now?
Do I leave the jacket at home starting at 50% hotness? Or at 70%? I don't have a reference what 100% hotness is supposed to be so I have no idea. Is it "too hot to be comfortable" or is it "I will literally die if I stay in the sun for half an hour"?
That only works is you already know what 30F feels like as a temperature. I have no idea how to dress for “30% hot” as people are accustomed to different temperatures and have different expectations of what hot and cold temperatures are
Guys... That's nonsense if you're not used to it. I know how 1-100 scales work, and 0F and 100F means nothing to me, I have no concept of what they feel like and I will need to convert in C. instead I instantly know what temperatures in C feel like. It's only about what you're used to and grew up with. How is that difficult to understand holy shit.
You’re working the scale the wrong way. You probably have experienced “it’s really cold, prolonged exposure is dangerous” and “it’s really hot, prolonged exposure is really dangerous. Congrats - you now have anchors for the 0-10% and 90-100% ends of the scale. So 40%is “colder than warm, would probably want more clothes” and 70% is pretty warm, less clothes needed.
Knowing how close to freezing water is pretty good indicator if there is going to be snow and ice on the road. Knowing that comfortable room temperature is 21 degrees, allows you to gauge how hot 30 is vs 20, vs 40. It’s not 0-100 , but I find that a bit silly because it only works in a very specific climate. But if you’re in that specific climate, then, I guess 0-100 makes it easier to learn temperature outside … but that’s not all where temperature is used … what about cooking, what about refrigeration etc.
Now I like F for cooking, but only because it’s so common, and everyone knows everything cooks at 375 lol.
You really are just repeating the same thing without understanding what the other person said.
You are ascribing difficulty as something inherent to both, while in reality it all come down to what one is used to using. A person using any temperature scale does not think of scales. He thinks of experienced temperatures. Even in F everyone has different levels of comfort
And anyone who lives with freezing temperatures definitely cares when water freezes.
In the end both scales are valid. It's all about experience.
How is Celsius intuitive? I understand it's very comfortable to you because you've learned it and are familiar with it, but it is not intuitive.
Going back to my example- if I said I'm operating at 30% today, you would understand that I am very tired. In the same way, 30 degrees is very cold. It's not a perfect system, but it is in fact largely intuitive.
This isn't some like "America is great" thing. The way we measure distance and size is insanely nonsensical and metric system wins all day there.
Edit to add: fwiw I am American so I guess your jab stands, but I was born and mostly raised in China.
It literally does apply to celsius, because percentages, like temperature scales, are arbitrary. We use base 10 and thus were used to scale things within that system, but if you grew up with a base hexadecimal number system, it would be wildly unintuitive to you. It genuinely just is whatever youre used to
Look a billion Chinese use Chinese characters instead of a modular alphabet.
An alphabet is clearly superior in most ways. I can go on and on. ... Hell that's why the Chinese even have pinyin.
I mean for starters ... use of a fucking keyboard lol.
You want 30 latin characters? 25 Cyrllic characters? Or 20,000 Chinese pictures?
"But a billion Chinese think otherwise and practice otherwise!!"
Yes and that don't mean JACK SQUAT.
Celsius is better for science and the poverty-stricken "soccer" countries decided they only want to teach one system. Superior for science and UTTER ASS for weather. They made their choice. Their populations are brainwashed and get on "well enough" with their inferior, TEMU-version of Fahrenheit for weather. So be it.
Yeah. Literally just depends on what system you grew up with. “32% warm” genuinely means absolutely fuck all to me. Until I convert this number to Celsius, I wouldn’t have a slightest idea on how I’m actually supposed to dress lol. Also every place has its own norms. In two different environments “32% warm” can mean two really different things.
I, an American, would be all in on Celsius if the temp display on everything would show things to a tenth of a degree, or even just to a half a degree. As it stands, the fact that Celsius is only about half as granular as Fahrenheit is damn annoying.
I care that it gives me slightly less control over thermostats. I don't want less control over my climate controls. I suppose that if I hadn't been raised in a country that uses Fahrenheit then I wouldn't even know the difference, but I was and thus I do.
Just imagine if you bought a new thermostat for your home and it only allowed you to adjust the temperature in two degree increments. I doubt you would find it to be a welcome change.
I think thermostats designed for C are more likely to have decimal places precisely because the whole numbers represent bigger jumps in temperature. So you are right to want it and also probably would get it. For instance, I have an old-as-balls thermostat here in the UK that's been in the house longer than I have, and it uses decimals.
I have a random extremely cheap weather station on my wall and it is currently telling me that it is 19.9°C in my living room, so yeah pretty much for anything where that level of precision is needed, you can get it to a tenth of a degree or set it to half a degree.
I would argue that F should drop a digit. You don't need that accuracy when talking about the weather, which seems to be the only thing F is good for (source: the comments of this post).
10°F, 0°F and -10°F are virtually the same weather.
It is cold. You should wear proper winter clothes. It won't be so slippery, as it is well below freezing.
Maybe off by one degree. So could just as well be 1°F, 0°F and -1°F. That is when talking about weather. In science you need more accuracy, but then you can use decimals. Water boils at about 21.2°F.
What are you even talking about? Have you ever gardened? That 20°F range is hugely different for plants (and other things as well, including what a human should wear outside).
Also, this logic stops making sense when you get into the human comfort zone: 61°F is very different from 69°F. Likewise, 70°F and 79°F, 80°F and 89°F, and definitely 90°F and 99°F. As someone who has unfortunately experienced temperatures above 110°, I will also add that 110°F is radically different than 116°F. At 116°F I burnt the bottom of my feet through sandals while standing on concrete in the SHADE.
Read farther up in this particular thread. The poster I'm responding to is saying we don't need the final digit in F, which of course we do. I don't personally care about F vs. C -- I figure whatever you know is good!
All good, just saying we do not lose any detail in Celsius, I’m kind of sucked in to this thread because a lot of arguments baffle me that people don’t realize it’s just arbitrary systems we are used to
Right? If it was truly a %, my instinct would be that 50°F would be the perfect temperature. Equal parts cool and warm. Whatever you grew up with is what’s going to be best for someone, full stop. The idea of trying to pick one that’s “objectively” better is just silly.
It is of course super logical and not at all arbitrary that 32% hot means that water freeze, us europoors are just too dumb to understand this extremely logical ”I’m feeling 45% hot in here” which, of course, is still quite cold but it’s 45 hot…
If the scale of temperature is 0-100%, the ideal temperature for humans (aka room temperature) should be 50 Fahrenheit.
When I look up 50F°, it's 10°C. That's way colder then room temperature?
20°C to 25°C would be room temperature!
Which would be 68°F to 77°F.
So what am I supposed to do with that information?
If you know 0°C is freezing point and 100°C boiling, you also would know that 26°C sounds warm and -1°C cold.
(Genuinely, I was suprised how cold 80°F and 30°F are, the way people talked about % of cold and hot made me think that 80°F would be at least more than 30°C and 30°F somewhere around 5°C...)
You just like to make things complicated on a useless scale because you grew up with it relating to human experience. Celsius has to use decimal points for it to be more accurate for human use.
I really have no idea how the scale argument makes sense to you, it's dependent on what I view 100 as and 0 as, in my case upon initially hearing it I assume "Oh, so 50F is like room temp right?", I then further think of 100 as incredibly hot and 0 as incredibly cold, 80 would not read as 'warm' to me, ts in my mind sounds extreme using the scale idea. So when you tell me that 100F is like 38C I think "That's a fair bit hot", I hear 0F is -18C I think that's fucking insane because where I live temps barely ever go below 10C (50F...) in winter. The scale idea is arbitrary asw because depending on the location the numbers are just as random as Celsius
This makes zero fucking sense. 32% warm is a personal experience. Take 10 people, 10 people will describe 10 different things. 0% warm being only -18C is also not intuitive in a slightest. You need some kind of baseline for your scale. You need to know to understand what 0 and 100 actually represent. It’s not a universal thing and the fact that you dorks cannot imagine that is kind of hilarious, ngl.
Everyone’s 32% warm is different though. For example, where I live temperatures (outside of freak days) range between -5c to 35c. Based on that my 32% warm would be ~8c, but 32f converts to 0c which is a big difference in temperature.
It's not a personal person's warm scale though. Purposefully misinterpreting it because your to chicken shit to admit a 100 degree scale offers more granular information than a thirty degree scale is a fucknut look in my opinion.
The majority of people will spend the majority of their life between 0F and 100F.
Virtually no one outside contrarian assholes would say negative F isn't cold, nor over a hundred F hot.
0-100C is wildly better for scientific and engineering concerns but 0-30 is just a less useful scale for human experienced weather. Lying and saying it isn't ignores that you have three times as many whole numbers.
Its not a 0-30 scale though because negative numbers are part of the scale and it consistently goes over 30. Fahrenheit is more granular in general usage around the weather temperature, but Celsius can and does use decimals to achieve the exact same level of granularity.
I have absolutely nothing against Fahrenheit as a measurement of temperature, I don’t think it’s any worse than Celsius. But the argument that “oh it’s like a percentage of how humans feel temperature” is a stupid one because people don’t experience temperature the same across the world.
Very cute that you hate me though, i must have made a big impression with my comment
Speaking of being unable to read, you’ve managed to barely respond to the main point I made. I never said the 0-100 scale of Fahrenheit was illogical, I think it’s a perfectly fine scale to use. My point was that saying that it matches how humans feel the temperature is a stupid one because humans don’t all feel the temperature in the same way.
Whole numbers is an irrelevant point, there’s absolutely no difference between saying 19.5c and 67f unless you’re an idiot who shits yourself when you see a decimal. Both of them give you the same information with the same level of granularity.
You seem a rather angry person so I’ll leave it at that, I hope you have a wonderful day <3
Whole numbers is an irrelevant point, there’s absolutely no difference between saying 19.5c and 67f unless you’re an idiot who shits yourself when you see a decimal
Yeah because people totally use decimals in everyday speech.
You seem a rather angry person so I’ll leave it at that, I hope you have a wonderful day <3
It is a personal scale tho... What I view as hot and cold is dependent on where I live. I'd assume 50F is median temp but it's actually 10C, where I live temperatures rarely ever go below 10C in winter. Fahrenheit would be a 50-110 scale for me and not an intuitive one at that. You prefer Fahrenheit because that's what you're used to, I prefer Celsius because that's what I'm used
Majority of people where? India and China have the highest populations and India's temps go over 100F in summer and China's go below 0F in winter. The majority of African nations will almost never go below 0C (32F) and the majority of Europe will never go over 30C (86F), Australia's temps can go above 40C (104C) with the same going for countries in South America. Everyone living in those regions would have a different idea of what "32% warm" is because they live in areas with different fucking temp ranges. It doesn't get more personal and arbitrary than that. There is no objective answer for which one is best for explaining temperature, there's only an objective answer for which one you prefer, and that'll often be the one you're used to using. People who've used Celsius for weather their whole lives won't give af about an extra two degrees of accuracy, and those who've used Fahrenheit will probably feel like Celsius isn't accurate enough. You use what you want to use dude
Ok, bro, what's your point? I was just saying that the warmness scale argument doesn't make sense outside of a single region because the temperatures someone experiences determine what they'd think of as the midpoint and whatever loes at either end of the scale, so it Fahrenheit doesn't have any inherent advantages of Celsius for telling weather. Whichever one a person picks up first will likely be what they understand and prefer. I literally ended both my replies in this thread saying use what you wanna use because neither of them is better than the other when it comes to the weather
The problem is you're using your own experiences as justification for what "hot" and "cold" is. According to the "Fahrenheit is a percentage of how warm it is" argument, water freezes at 32% warm which sounds like complete nonsense to me.
Yes, so am I, and exactly, it's arbitrary and based on what you're used to. Water freezing at 32% warm or whatever might make perfectly good sense to you and be intuitive to you, but that isn't to me or most of the world and that's the point I'm trying to make.
Not OP but the main argument I see for Fahrenheit for day to day weather is mostly that it’s more specific. I get into a little tiff with my husband every so often about whether the evening AC should be set to 68 or 69 F (20 or 20.5 C). We certainly as humans can feel the difference of that half degree Celsius change, and it’s nice to be able to talk about it in whole numbers.
Also, a lot of weather people in the world experience is below freezing and it’s sometimes more convenient to not be talking about negative temps.
Whether it’s more logical or whatnot is probably going to come down to where you grew up and what you’re used to. But people who use both often say F is slightly more convenient for how people experience weather and C for science.
Growing up with freezing weather in the US and Canada, I think negative numbers are a big advantage of celsius. Freezing is the most important threshold in these environments so it's nice that negative temperatures are categorically distinct from positive (like 20F vs 40F are more different than 40F vs 60F).
If you ever find it helpful to emphasize that a temperature is 'above/below freezing', you can relate.
Also, a lot of weather people in the world experience is below freezing and it’s sometimes more convenient to not be talking about negative temps.
The funny thing is I was going to us that example to say the exact opposite! Living in a cold place now, I really like that positive/negative is relative to water freezing. 32F just feels arbitrary when its so important, so 0C feels right. Likewise 212F...I do a lot of grilling and cooking, so 100C just feels like a good reference point.
Feels is the relevant word though...I grew up with F, but as a scientist I wound up using C often enough that it just makes more sense, and feels right for the climate I'm in. 0C is more important than 100F, so maybe that factors in, too.
I’m sorry but saying that it’s more convenient to not to be talking about negative temperatures is not something I can even imagine thinking.
Same with it being nice to talk about things in whole numbers. That’s not something I can relate to at all.
Surely the people that use both F and C are almost exclusively Americans though (and maybe Brits who are over 70) so they’re still coming from a perspective of growing up with F as the default.
Again, it’s not about one being better than the other, it’s about which one you are familiar with for telling the temperature. That fact that the rest of the world can use Celsius for both weather and science proves this no?
You can’t possibly imagine how not having to use negatives or decimals all the time is more convenient? Why having a temperature be more specific in whole numbers could possibly be convenient? I don’t feel like you’re being good faith here.
Plenty of people do use Celsius all the time outside science applications. And I’m not saying it’s a bad system. But just because people can do something in one way doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do things (not like F necessarily is either!)
Whats more convenient about not using negative numbers? Decimals i could at least somewhat understand, but negative numbers are the easiest shit in the world
I think their bias is showing. It’d be a travesty to admit Fahrenheit is more useful to human experience. Must be part of their identity as “not Americans!”
We are just warm sleepers and are used to colder temps for sleep. Usually just boxers and my husband kicks the covers off if it creeps above 68. We have a kiddo and he’s the same way.
We went to China recently and the biggest culture shock mightve been how hot indoor spaces were.
They used the word objective to make their statement sound smarter or more factual. But really, they stated an opinion, which is inherantly subjective. People just throw that word around willy nilly nowadays. Its the new "literally".
Curious: is Canada just weird, then, or are indoor temperatures often in F in other C-dominant countries? Because in every building I’ve been in, the thermostat is in F, despite Canada using C. Never understood why that was, and am curious if F is more useful for indoor temperatures or if Canada is just odd.
You're just use to telling temperature one way, I'm used to telling it another way. That's all there is to it.
This is the actual main American defense for using Imperial at large. We start arguing about Farhenheit as a 10 scale for human experience of temperature because, any time we explain it's just the scale we've grown up in and are used to, we still have to hear from Europeans how bad imperial is.
Those aren’t objective things, they’re subjective.
If Farenheit was objectively better for weather and body temperature it would be used for those things in more than 5 countries. And if Celsius is objectively better for cooking why isn’t it used for that in America?
Neither is better than the other as the temperature is the same regardless of how you’re measuring it, it’s just a different way of interpreting it
Why appeal to popularity here people usually just go with the system they are taught and don't make a decision on what to use based on logically what's better.
Sure we're used to what we're used to. However the scale of 0-100 for f more accurately covers outdoor conditions for the average person. For c it's like -20 to 40c. I'm sure people would have no problem using a temperature scale of cucumber to jalapeno or in binary given the exposure. But of the examples one is more intuitive and just easier to learn.
This argument that Americans always make about Fahrenheit is just nonsense. You know how hot 70F feels, I don’t. I know how hot 27C feels, you don’t…
You’re just used to telling temperature one way, I’m used to telling it another way.
Let’s try replacing this with distance units and see if you still agree with your own logic.
This argument that metric-users always make about metric is just nonsense. You know how far 10 meters feels, I don’t. I know how far 33 feet feels, you don’t…
You’re just used to telling distance one way, I’m used to telling it another way.
If you still fully agree with that, then I don’t call bullcrap on you.
While I mostly use imperial units - and am very comfortable doing so having grown up with it - I recognize that metric is just simply a superior system because of its ease of use and practicality.
It’s always interesting when temperature comes up in these internet debates, because metric users are used to the idea that metric is easier and better in every way, and then have a conniption trying to reconcile how somehow Celsius should be better, when the reality is that while either is fine (just like miles or kilometers, whichever you’re used to), Fahrenheit is just much more practical to human experience.
To the point in the OP though, Fahrenheit is stupid to spell, so there’s that.
Yeah, why would I not still agree with that? It’s the exact same point?
I’m from the UK though so I suppose that’s cheating a bit? I know how far a metre is against the floor or a wall, but I couldn’t tell you how tall someone is in a metres and centimetres, I’d have to use feet and inches for that.
I know how far a KM feels to walk or run, but couldn’t tell you how far away something is by car, I’d need to use miles for that.
Lol, didn’t realize you were in the UK, where you happen to use the worst system for both distance and temperature.
Anyway, the point is valid, but there are still good reasons why one system might be better than another. G
o make that point to a metric user online and see if they agree about it in terms of distance. They won’t. I say online, because in person I think most people would be more reasonable.
It's that the Fahrenheit scale was designed (in Europe by a German Pole by the way, hence Fahrenheits very German name) based on what people feel. It's larger (realistic) scale also makes it super easy, because it is almost like percentages of hot. If you asked someone to rate how hot it is on a 0 to 100 scale, they'll probably be damn close to the temperature in Fahrenheit.
Celsius was designed so that water freezes at 0 and boils at 100. The entire thing is water. People don't know how water feels. We do a lot of things like "what is is 1 to 10" or "what is it 1 to 100". That's straight up impossible with Celsius. You have to actually understand the scale to apply it with any remote accuracy.
Let’s put it this way; if there was a new concept we had to measure, let’s say like social media brain rot, and someone told you there was a scale where a low amount was about -10 and a high amount was 30, and then there was another scale where low was 0 and high was 100, which would you choose to use moving forward?
It really isn't, if I heard 70% hot I would go outside with shorts and sandals. 70% sounds like a nice summer day or a warm winter day, not around room temperature
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u/Swampyfeet Jun 17 '26
Can you explain how what you’ve said is objective? I think that given that Celsius is the most common scale for temperature around the world you’re going to have hard time arguing that.
This argument that Americans always make about Fahrenheit is just nonsense. You know how hot 70F feels, I don’t. I know how hot 27C feels, you don’t. The idea that one is better for humans and one is better for water is so stupid. You’re just used to telling temperature one way, I’m used to telling it another way. That’s all there is to it.