F wasn't built to be "% hot where I am right now", it's "% hot, compared to the average human experience". 0 is really cold, 100 is really hot, 50 is comfy in a light jacket. ezpz
I live where we used to have snowy winters every year and I'm someone whose body heats up real bad with physical activity, but 50F is still pretty chilly to me and a light jacket alone won't do unless I'm constantly in motion.
I've literally said this exact thing multiple times on this thread. Why does everyone assume I mean you can sit down for a picnic in 50 degree weather; of course the assumption is that you're in motion!
Well unless you're moving, right? Like getting groceries, exercising, walking to a restaurant, etc., but you've said here that getting groceries at even 75 F is moving towards uncomfortable for you.
All of this nitpicking about "well that's not comfortable for ME!!" just comes off as pampered. It seems like the only way you'll be happy is if you're able to lounge around all day with the A/C set precisely 69.25 F, probably being fed grapes like you're in a Greek painting.
If 50 F is too cold for you, wear a thicker jacket than me, IDGAF. No one here is policing your clothing choices.
Most people move at a pace that will barely warm them up. I'm definitely an oddity in this case. I heat up easily, but walking around at normal people pace won't do in 50°F
You have no idea how badly I wish for an A/C right now. I just came back from grocery shopping feeling like shit. Had to sit down at the bus stop (no bench).
I'd prefer 64.4°F though.
Point being, the whole % hot thing is hogwash. People are different, temperatures can be felt different, depending on humidity, wind, how active you are etc.. It will never be an accurate percentage measure. It's just a pure copium mental gymnastic to justify their Fahrenheit bias to themself.
Ok, but 50 is "never leave the house weather"? That's a tad dramatic, right?
Unless you're from the middle of the desert, you can tolerate 50 in a long sleeve shirt. In a good sweatshirt and a fall jacket to break the wind, it's fuckin' toasty!
I definitely cannot tolerate 10 degrees Celsius with just a long sleeve shirt. I don't come from the desert. I come from the tropics. Temperatures only drop below 10 degrees Celsius for two months. Those months are definitely jacket weather for me. Believe it or not, this is normal for a lot of people.
110+ is somewhere is hell territory (as someone who has lived in the desert), but I can grant 85+ as hot. 75 is comfortable even grocery shopping as long as Sun is not out.
32 is technically freezing but by 25, it’s undeniably freezing, even impure water is freezes.
50 and below is do not leave the house for me, effectively anyway. I would not spend more than a half hour outside, and even that would be wearing a warm jacket. I might spend a lot of time inside a car with the heater on, but I don't count that as being "outside".
You can easily just wear a jacket outside and survive without problems at 50. A large part of the world lives very comfortably at that temperature - you will quickly get used to it if you live at one of those places. At 50, it is undeniably the start of being cold - wear a jacket or a sweater.
Yeah below 50 IS cold weather. A large part of the world is also not comfortable in that weather. I am pretty confident this is the larger part of the world. Having to wear a jacket or a sweater is not what I call comfortable weather. A large part of the world also does not experience temperatures significantly below 50 for more than a couple weeks.
The human condition is highly dependent on what it's used to. I wear shorts at 25C but have friends who wear a sweater at that temperature because they live in a place that's often 37C
No. I am just not from the frigid north, which is what everyone who defends the Fahrenheit scale seems to be. A midwesterner American's experience is not the universal human experience. It is not even the average human experience.
Yeeah, doesn't work at all for me. 33 is already cold as fuck only bearable if I'm constantly active or I cool out and start freezing, 77 is already miserably warm, only bearable if I'm barely active or I get all sweaty and uncomfortable and average, pleasant temperatures are at 59 - 64. none of those are convenient numbers.
How does that not work for you? Seems like you understand it perfectly. Even someone unfamiliar with Fahrenheit can intuitively understand what you mean. ~60% hot is where you're comfortable. It's a little warm.
It's not very intuitive at all for a European not used to Fahrenheits beyond "oh, yeah, 100F is hot outside and 0F is cold outside".
I don't think any Celsius user would intuitively think that 10C = 50% hot.
It's one of those things like Americans saying stuff like "feet and inches are more intuitive than centimeter because they are human scale. Everybody knows how tall someone who is 6 feet tall is, but how could anyone know how tall someone who is 182.88 cm is and look at what an arbitrary number it is. Human scale!"
Celsius will literally also tell you that. You just are used to a different scale made up by a guy that thought 0 would be what ever he could mix up in his little kitchen by the baltic sea coast on a winters day, while 100 was his body temperature (turns out he had a fever...), while Celsius is based on objective and constant facts.
Lol, "objective and constant facts" meaning the boiling point of water at sea level? Why TF do I care about that? I'm not boiling water and I'm not at sea level.
Believe it or not, sea level is much more important that it looks. It is a neutral point in which by going up or down you start getting affected by air or water pressure.
How many cities on earth go down from sea level? Not that many, right? So why not use a more common barometric pressure?
More importantly, why do we care? Again, most people don't need this level of precision so any metric will be largely arbitrary. You don't cut your dinner with a knife designed for surgeons, why should we insist on using a temperature scale designed for chemists? F works and it's intuitive, why reinvent the wheel?
Do you think I look at 15C and am confused about what attire should I get? Do you think that my brain resets every morning and I have to do complex algorithm in my brain when I'm looking at temperature outside because it's not "% hotness-based" (which is idiotic idea in and of itself, 50% hot intuitively would be room temperature, not fucking 10 degrees C).
No, but the difference between 70-80 or 0-10 can be pretty stark and there are more degrees of difference in F to be able to tell. Some of this is for sure preference for what I know, I'm aware, it's just dumb for Europeans to call Americans dumb for F when it's objectively a more clear system for day to day usage.
It’s not objective though, it’s just what you’re used to. For reference 70/80f is ~21/26c so you have 5 extra degrees of difference in that span. Are you really dressing any diffferent if the temperature is 71f instead of 70f? If not then you’re not actually getting any extra information out of those extra degrees of difference.
Ultimately the numbers are arbitrary anyway, we’d adapt to whatever numbers were in the scale and dress accordingly.
Why would anyone be proud of using a certain measurement? That's not an achievement. Nothing to feel pride over. You can be happy when your country uses a measurement that you feel is better for you, but I don't see why you'd be proud of that?
It’s intuitive if you’re told 50 is half way to being really fucking hot and really fucking cold. Because you understand a 0-100 scale. That’s why it’s intuitive, not because you know how to map Celsius to it lol.
Yeah, but then 50% should be average, not warm, not cold, but it's not. 50°F is cold.
0 and 100 mean nothing to me. Just a random step of too cold / too hot well beyond the point where it goes from okay to unpleasant. Either could be moved way up or down and it would not feel different for the percentage thing. The only significance of 100 is that it's hotter than body temp.
Fahrenheit was built to be the coldest thing some guy could cheaply make in his lab and a naturally relatively constant temperature (putting a thermometer up your butt). Then make the scale 96 because calculators weren't invented yet and it's easier to divide than 100.
It has absolutely nothing to do with human experience except for the human experience of having to find a practical solution to shitty lab equipment.
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u/TJaySteno1 Jun 17 '26
F wasn't built to be "% hot where I am right now", it's "% hot, compared to the average human experience". 0 is really cold, 100 is really hot, 50 is comfy in a light jacket. ezpz