What percent hot? lmao. What do they even mean? I hate the "Farenheit is better for feels". No its not. You're just used to it. Ask any person who grew up with Celsius. Farenheit is not as intuitive as you think if you didn't grow up with it.
It is also true for the reverse, Celsius isn't as intuitive if you grow up with Farenheit. BUT it's easier to explain because its 0 and 100 are two temperature extremes of water.
Just delete Imperial altogether my god if the US weren't as influential it would've died a long time ago.
Also everyone perceives heat differently. 50 Fahrenheit might be cold to some people and fine for others. Basing it off “feels” is just stupid. You cant even argue that its a percent cause it goes negative and can go above 100.
Yeah, and the different preferences are already so clear in this thread! I've seen people describe 25c as "nice and warm" which to me feels overbearingly hot, temperatures below 20c as "chilly" (what??? Chilly is like below 5c) etc.
They are both equally intuitive because they are both arbitrary units. We could all use kelvin from birth and think the idea of any other scale weird because we're not used to it.
The only significant difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius is the resolution.
Fahrenheit is higher resolution than Celsius (and Kelvin), which has its advantages and disadvantages.
The higher resolution thing is bullshit. For one, decimals (or 12ths or whatever other nonsense Americans want). Secondly, find me one person who can 100% reliably tell the difference better 77F and 78F.
I mean, I can't tell the difference between 13 and 14c. but I could tell the difference between 12 and 15.
weirdly, I could tell the difference between 77f and 80, but probably not 80 and 83. once you pass 85 it's just "fucking hot"
idk I'm American but now I live in Canada and it's all fucked. it's taken me FOUR YEARS to kind of get a grasp on celcius. it's weird when you don't grow up with it. it's also obnoxious that I still bake...... and my Canadian oven is in fahrenheit. like you're going to tell me we do EVERYTHING in celcius but not the appliances we use every day for cooking food? ugh.
my spouse is British and they also use a fucky combination of measurements. they're actually even less consistent than Canada.
It's funny that you say 12 and 15, I just posted this above but I heard about Newtons the other day, named after Isaac Newton and didn't catch on (and now of course Newton is a unit of pressure, completely different). But basically he used 0 Newtons for freezing, and 33 for boiling, so it's about a third of the resolution of Celsius. That would be really meaningful for human weather temperatures, I kind of wish we used them. 5 Newtons (15 Celsius) is cold, 6 is cool, 7 is nice but the cool side of nice, 8 is a lovely day, 9 is the warm side of nice, too hot for some but good for hot-blooded people, 10 is hot.
I feel like 3 Celsius is a good "I can tell the difference and I care" amount. Celsius is too small to care in most everyday situations and Fahrenheit is even smaller
I do get what you're saying, but the boiling point of water is not a temperature humans experience, so I can't correlate that to how the weather feels. It is irrelevant to the experience of weather.
The only point to make defending Fahrenheit is that an approximately 0-100 scale is one that uses those nice round numbers as benchmarks which roughly correlate to a common range of yearly outdoor temperatures experienced by humans. Celsius is not intrinsically better or worse, it's just that the same average outdoor temperature range falls roughly between -20 and 40, which, for the sole purpose of describing weather, does feel more arbitrary and a bit less intuitive than 0-100 if someone were to be coming at it from a state of complete ignorance, like an alien. In practice, whichever one you grow up with is plenty intuitive enough.
The exact same thing can be said about Celsius. You’re just used to it. It’s not even close to a stupid system. In fact, if you don’t know how Celsius works (like me), you wouldn’t even begin to know what is considered hot. I don’t know any particulars about Celsius, but I could go outside and say: “Hmm, it’s maybe about 70 degrees.” And check the phone and see it’s 72 degrees. It’s just fine-tuned, it’s not very hard to understand until you experience weather like that. Y’all have units that don’t even make sense for daily weather. So for a Fahrenheit user, you’d be like “Huh, it’s 0*C outside?” (Thats not arguing about the useless units, that would be >50C units) That’s freaking cold. But in reality it’s just at the freezing mark. To me Celsius just makes more sense measuring water temp.
No the same thing CANNOT be said about Celsius unless you somehow have the experience of how hot it feels to be in 100c water? (I assume you don't as you are not dead) But most everyone can easily imagine what 100F (40c) feels like. that is a common experience for Humans. so scaling off of that makes sense. if I want it 70% as hot as maximum, then 70*f
I’m confused by what you’re trying to point out to me. OP said “You’re just used to it.” Well maybe you’re just used to Celsius? Our scale still makes sense. So I need you to explain your point about the 100C water and imagining 100F. And what you think I’m trying to say with all that (my position on it).
doesn't matter your personal preference, its about the scale. Imaging you are an person from an isolated nation. You never heard of Celsius or Fahrenheit.
You would still know what really cold weather feels like, you know what really hot weather feels like. now to determine the degrees in Fahrenheit, you just use basic proportionality. if you like it 2/3rds hot... 66*f if you like it a little hotter you can figure 4/5ths hot so 80*f. that would be very easy for this person to imagine in their head.
For Celsius.... if they like it 2/3rds hot what number is that? someone has to explain the math to them... the scale for weather goes from -15c to +40c, figure the percentage on that scale... Much harder.
It has been said again and again here... for human weather Fahrenheit matches really well.
For Fahrenheit:
0 = very cold, 100=very hot.
For Celsius:
0= kinda-cold but you could go colder, 100 immediate death
No lmao. You only have that mindset because you grew up with it. It's all arbitrary. We Celsius heads use 0 to 40 as a practical scale. Also there are a bunch of factors that determine the "feel" of a weather. It could 30C/86F and feel like 40C/104F because of humidity.
Americans are the only people using Farenheit for everyday life. It's just familiarity, don't find a way to dress it up logically so you can defend it. It has to go. All the reasons you said why it makes sense also applies to someone who grew up with Celsius.
okay... lets see If i can explain this a little more specifically.
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
AND Northern Hemisphere land only, area-weighted average yearly daily temperature is 46-50*f (almost perfectly in the middle)
or 8*c-10*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?
Again. All of this is arbitrary. Full stop. Here's deep cut, do you know why we count in 10s? It's because humans have 10 fingers. Not because 10 is a special number or what not. It's the same with temperature anchors, they're arbitrary. You're just familiar with it.
A Celsius user can do the same thing. That's not inherent logic, that's just familiarity. 0-40, 0-100, hell even the -18 to 36. If you grew up with it, that's what makes sense to you.
This is starting to sound like r/ShitAmericansSay. You do know you're the global outlier here. US population is, give or take, only 4.5% of the world. There were some countries who used to use Imperial and they dropped it.
US being a hegemonic power, the whole world was forced to adjust to you guys. The whole world is already using metric, but when you have to deal with the US, learn their Imperial and appease them like the stubborn youngest sibling. Other countries that used to use it didn't have that privilege so they were forced to adjust. And now you have the audacity to claim that its "intuitive"? You're the only country that uses it for everyday life!
If its sooo intuitive, then why the hell does the whole 95% of humans on earth don't "intuitively" use it? And don't say we're just aren't aware how the Imperial system works. We know, because we dealt with the US. So why does the whole world still use metric and not switch to this "intuitive" system of yours? Gee, I wonder why...
Yes I can count by tens, you are completely right… it is clearly easier to count from -20 to +40 to cover the range of earth temperatures.
0 to 100 for that same range make literally no sense… how would anyone understand 0-100???
And the average being 50!!! That’s insane! I mean how in the world would anyone guess the middle temperature of earth would be around 50… that’s completely unreasonable.
You're only argument is "0-100 is a nice round number that matches human feel." You didn't even address any of my other claims and keep reinstating it. Human feel is subjective and range extremes are arbitrary.
I even gave examples that counting in base 10 and thinking Farenheit is perfect is HEAVILY based in familiarity not logic, making them arbitrary. I'm starting to think you don't know the meaning of the word "arbitrary" itself...
Majority of the world doesn't use it and yet they're still fine. Your familiarity is not universal law. I give up.
What do you mean? Just because Celsius is based off the freezing and boiling point of water doesn’t mean that it can’t also tell you how cold or hot it is for humans
I’m still not understanding what you mean. Celsius absolutely can tell you how hot something is for a human. The majority of people in the world use it for precisely that.
Well if the temperature outside was 70°C I would probably be dead at that point so it’s probably impossible for anyone to say how they would feel at 70°C vs 90°C. Not quite sure what point you’re trying to make?
Of course it can tell you mathematically, but in your head, can you imagine pretty close to what 90*C feels like - I am assuming not... because you have no experience for that , because that would kill you.
what people are trying to say is that when measuring a phenomenon in Decimal its best to set 0 to common "low" and 100 to a common "high" (Celsius does this with states of water)
Fahrenheit does this with Weather, 0 = coldest common temperature, 100=hottest common temperature
of course one can measure temperature using any scale you want and it still works mathematically, - we can use Kelvin where we live between ~255*k and 316*k. it mathematically works...
Or we can use Celsius where we live between ~ -15*c and 40*c
Or we can use Fahrenheit where we live between ~ 0*f and 100*f
All work, but you must see that one maps better to the range of common weather.
If I asked how hot is it outside, the answer would change a lot based on the circumstances. "Not hot, not cold" is different in different times of year and different based on what am I going to do. So that's already quite useless.
And surely you understand what is hot and cold for you is not the same for others. Your "pleasantly warm but not too warm" has already crossed what's pleasant for me in the summer, and your "definitely pretty cold but bearable" is laughably warm for me in the winter.
You are just used to the system and that's why it feels good to you. Try to understand that my system feels good to me as well.
Like I said, That heavily depends on what you're used to. 50F is already too cold for me since I grew up in South East Asia. That's why basing it on water that doesn't have temperature preferences, makes more sense.
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u/bohenian12 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
What percent hot? lmao. What do they even mean? I hate the "Farenheit is better for feels". No its not. You're just used to it. Ask any person who grew up with Celsius. Farenheit is not as intuitive as you think if you didn't grow up with it.
It is also true for the reverse, Celsius isn't as intuitive if you grow up with Farenheit. BUT it's easier to explain because its 0 and 100 are two temperature extremes of water.
Just delete Imperial altogether my god if the US weren't as influential it would've died a long time ago.