Let me explain. Anything below 0F is really cold for a human, and anything above 100F is really hot. The Fahrenheit scale was built around human biology.
0C isn’t even that cold, and 100C is literally instant death. Thus, Celsius is less applicable to the human experience and more applicable to the physical properties of water. The typical range of human scale temperatures is like -10 to 40 degrees on the Celsius scale? Makes no sense.
Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans, because absolute zero is completely outside our frame of reference.
So it’s easily demonstrable that Fahrenheit is how people feel, Celsius is how water feels, and Kelvin is how molecules feel.
Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill, and any challenges to my position will result in increasingly large walls of text until you have conceded the point 😤
main arguments from below
Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
the intuition is learned and not natural.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
Final edit: Well, I got what I asked for. I think I ended up making some pretty irrefutable points with these two last ones though. Once again, math saves the day. If somebody wants to continue the discussion make another thread and tag me because this is a bit much for science memes.
further arguments
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
the end is nigh
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
I would not mind if you were to expand
My argument is actually pretty simple, but people could always challenge these assertions, in which case it would get more complicated.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not. Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
But Fahrenheit is the temperature scale of the proletariat, the working man, the average Joe. And I’m here for it.
-10C or 10C: Pretty comfortable
-20C or 20C: Starting to feel bit cold or hot
-30C or 30C: Uncomfortably cold or hot
-40C or 40C: Almost painfully cold or hot
How exactly is -40F to 104F better than that for human purposes?
Where are you from that 10C is pretty comfortable and 20C is getting hot? Greetings from the middle east :)
'murican being 'murican. That’s why nobody likes you people.
Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans, because absolute zero is completely outside our frame of reference.
Celsius is literally Kelvin + 273.
Anything below 0F is really cold for a human
Anything below 10F is really cold for a human too, and so is anything below -10F what’s your point?
100C is literally instant death.
While commonly between 80 and 100, finnish sauna temperatures up to 110°c are not unheard of.
Very hot, but definitely not even close to instant death.
While commonly between 80 and 100, finnish sauna temperatures up to 110°c are not unheard of.
Very hot, but definitely not even close to instant death.
Really? My whole thesis paper about how humans immediately explode into a million pieces when they reach 100 degrees Celsius is completely ruined. How will I ever recover?
Anything below 10F is really cold for a human too, and so is anything below -10F what’s your point?
My point is self evident, you’re willfully ignoring it.
My point is self evident, you’re willfully ignoring it.
No it isn’t. No I am not. In fact that argument is quite a big sign there’s no actual evidence.
I am not trying to say Celsius is better than Farenheit. I however don’t agree with your argument that F is somehow more suited to humans.It is simply a question of which one you are used to, and have built up an internal system of references to. Just as you feel your references are self evident, I feel the same about Celsius.
I have admittedly expounded at length in this thread already. If my point isn’t obvious, I’m not sure how.
Maybe I explained it slightly better here.
spoiler
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
Are you high or some shit?
Yes, but that’s beside the point
I have admittedly expounded at length in this thread already. If my point isn’t obvious, I’m not sure how.
It’s because you are trying to prove your subjective experience is better than some other subjective experiences.
It’s just simply not how it works, it might be best to you, but refusing to accept that others subjective experiences differing from yours are valid is frankly narrow minded.
You are making subjective arguments and acting like they are objective cold hard facts.
The typical range of human scale temperatures is like -10 to 40 degrees on the Celsius scale? Makes no sense.
But it makes so much sense though. Because it’s anchored around the freezing and boiling points of water, which is a universal experience we can all relate to. 0°C outside? It’s freezing.
Fahrenheit as “the human scale” is what makes no fucking sense. You end up with the same exact problem where your specific range of “human scale temperatures” does not line up with 0-100°F at all. But it’s also not anchored to water’s behavior. So it just ends up being arbitrary.
But it makes so much sense though. Because it’s anchored around the freezing and boiling points of water, which is a universal experience we can all relate to. 0°C outside? It’s freezing.
It does make sense. But no, I cannot personally relate to being H2O and freezing into a block of ice or evaporating into the air.
As a human, I can relate to when I feel cold, and when I feel hot. And a scale where I feel hot at 30 degrees and cold at -10 is not even remotely intuitive.
You end up with the same exact problem where your specific range of “human scale temperatures” does not line up with 0-100°F at all.
Human scale temperatures do line up with 0-100 on the Fahrenheit scale. Certainly much better than 0-100 on the Celsius scale. How are you even disputing that???
It’s all learned behaviour. If you grew up with F that makes total sense and C sounds ridiculous. If you grew up with C that’s totally intuitive for anyone, just as much as F, so using a scale that has no point outside of the weather sounds dumb. Neither system is more intuitive by any means. Both systems ave benefits and downsides.
Whenever I talk to americans and they use F I need to convert it because I grew up with C and that just makes more sense to me, even if I know the “0-100 F is according to human experience” thing. Like sure, 80F is hot, but how hot is it? Oh 27C that’s hot but not extreme.
Arguing one or the other is superior is not only pointless but also just silly
wait 80f is 27c? That’s not hot at all
But no, I cannot personally relate
And there we have it. You are not used to the system, so you can’t personally relate to it. Which is a perfectly acceptable opinion to hold. The problem is that you make a lot of claims about a system you are not as familiar with, most notably that it isn’t useful for what it is actually being used for by the majority of humans.
So when my neighbors mother from another climate came to visit during the summer, I was wearing shorts and t-shirts but she a winter jacket. According to whos experience did Fahrenheit match the human experience? It’s very variable and cannot be made to fit everyone. That water freezes at 0 is just as arbitrary but at least it’s an experience/observation anyone can share. If it’s 0°C outside puddles will freeze. Is it warmer or colder than when ice and snow melts is as good a reference as any, and to me having grown up with it, it feels superior because it’s what I’m used to.
Weird because you’re made of mostly water. Like 70 something percent.
The Fahrenheit scale was built around human biology.
Nope, it was built around the highest and lowest extremes some dude could create in his room. Not based on human biology in the slightest. Don’t repeat this false information.
0C isn’t even that cold, and 100C is literally instant death.
Yeah, but counter argument, who gives a shit? The “meme” doesn’t say anything remotely close to “from 0 to 100”. I don’t know why you are under the impression that these scales become inaccurate if you leave the 0-100 range. I live in a region that frequents -40C to +40C over a year- that’s centered on zero, so it’s already better for “how humans feel” than being centered on 32 and pretending there is some cosmic/celestial/god ordained reason for it.
Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans…
Still no one giving a shit- the “meme” doesn’t remotely even suggest anything related to this.
Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill
I don’t know why you sign this off with “I’m an obnoxious twat”, but I’m perfectly happy with using the block function if the threat is real.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not.
I don’t want to fight about this I just think it’s actually true, and I also think Europeans get insanely defensive about stuff like this for no reason.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
true.
Celsius […] do not.
false.
Europeans get insanely defensive about stuff like this for no reason.
Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill, and any challenges to my position will result in increasingly large walls of text until you have conceded the point 😤
…
Thoughts?
spoiler
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
copy pasting now are we? here was my response to the same copied comment:
but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way.
As you might imagine I completely disagree.
For my purposes 20’s, 30’s, negative 10’s and so on is perfectly good, and I would describe my purposes as human.
Again, this is based on your, and my, learned reference points. Of course you feel the scale of the farenheit is better suited for describing your life, those are your learned reference points.
I have my own learned reference points based on the Celsius scale I grew up with and, suprise suprise, to me they’re superior.
copy pasting now are we?
You replied to me on multiple different threads, so I didn’t realize you were the same person. Generally if you’re serious about a debate, it’s best to keep things to one comment chain. Otherwise you’re just kinda yelling at somebody.
well, it explains why your argument wasn’t very tied into the argument you replied to.
You’ve provided zero proof of either statement.
Unlike Americans, celsius and kelvin users are not afraid of decimals, which fullfills all your graularity needs if you have them. But mostly it isn’t even needed because you literally cannot feel the difference.
I grew up with celcius and to me it feels more applicable to the human experience. It literally only depends on which one you’re more used to, idk why people feel the need to come up with these weird unnecessary “explanations”.
That is a large amount of text to say “I am used to fahrenheit therefore it makes sense to me, and now I will proceed to claim it is the only system that shows how humans feel”.
I like watching people dying in this hill, more power to you. I don’t necessarily agree, but telling people it’s negative anything just to say it’s pretty cold is indeed less intuitive to me (and kids don’t even know negatives until a bit older).
Only thing is, 100 doesn’t need to be anyone’s scale, with C I think of it more like a scale from 10 to 40, especially since I live in California, and F is more a scale from 50 to 110. It’d probably help if F really was based on human temps, with 100 being the average temp whenever you measure, instead of 96 to 98.
(An aside, neither are ratio scales. 0 in both cases are arbitrary and a temp of 100 isn’t twice as hot as 50. Only Kelvin is like that, which makes it my favorite even if it’s never intuitive, haha)
Did it never occur to you that Celsius is basically Kelvin with the zero point moved to human reference?
Human reference because >50% of our body is water. We are essentially water bags.
Yeah, I know. It still moves the zero point and forces it out of ratio, but I prefer it. I know both F and C since I have to use both regularly. F is set to C, too, I think. F = 1.8c + 36, I think?
No, it just moves the zero point, no ratio change: 0°C = 273,15 K / just a simple addition/subtraction.
Colloquially you can also ignore the 0,15 and make it even simpler.
Oh yeah, you’re right, it’s just Kelvin on a F scale. I shouldn’t look at formulas at 2am when I should be sleeping, lol
When I was a kid, I learned about negative numbers pretty early on. It was a perfectly normal part of life, since the temp was in the negative a lot of the year. Made sense to me. Temp is below zero? Water is solid. . Temp above zero? Water is liquid. Fahrenheit doesn’t make much sense to me, inherently, because I don’t have an integral frame of reference, built over decades of familiarity. Celcius on the other hand, it just makes sense!
Sure, negatives aren’t hard, nor are decimals. But I should remind you we’re talking about a population that wouldn’t buy a third-pounder hamburger because they thought a quarter-pounder was more. Fractions are covered pretty early on, too!
Joking aside, if F actually was based on something specific and measurable, it’d also make sense. Then it’s just a matter of what you got used to. Granted, human temps vary, so you can’t just make 100 the human temp and 0 the temp a human dies, so that’s an impossibity. (Water can vary too under circumstances if I remember right, but not quite as much or as unpredictable as some human based metric).
An aside, neither are ratio scales. 0 in both cases are arbitrary and a temp of 100 isn’t twice as hot as 50. Only Kelvin is like that, which makes it my favorite even if it’s never intuitive, haha
Huh, TIL. That’s actually pretty cool. Kelvin moving up the rankings 😅
Haha, I teach statistics and it’s usually a tough one walk on. You need a natural zero for ratios, even if the concept is a little weird (like 0 height). 2m is twice 1m, etc. My go to with interval (the non ratio continuous metric) tends to be likart scales. Or yelp stars, or any other arbitrary zero. I do mention temps, though
Makes sense. I always knew Kelvin started at absolute zero, but I don’t think I had ever heard of a ratio scale. I’m sure it has some kind of statistical implications about how you can analyze the data right?
Yeah, something like that. Scales of measurement is mostly a formality in undergrad but it does determine eventually what you can and can’t do with that scale.
Only Kelvin is like that
False. Rankine is too.
I didn’t find any others in a quick glance at the wiki, but it would be easy to imagine a scale like 0 at absolute zero, and 100 at the freezing point of water or something.
Never heard of Rankine, but it sounds like a Kelvin with a similar conversation to F (9/5, or 1.8, only inverse). Description suggestions as much, too. If I told students about it when talking about ratio scales, though, pretty sure it’d be a tad too much. Most haven’t even heard of Kelvin!
Looks like you made the mistake of posting this when the European downvote gang was awake.
I just got absolutely obliterated. Believe it or not, I got up to +10 on that initial comment at one point. I think if I had formally presented my argument initially, it may have gone better.
I just didn’t realize that mentioning Celsius was going to set off this kind of reaction. It’s so weird the things that different cultures hold sacred.
Lol I’ve got burned by it before too
