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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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Whatever. Metric is better in pretty much every other way, but Fahrenheit is demonstrably better for describing temperature as experienced by a human.
I don't understand how this is the case. I feel like it would only be perceived as being true by growing up with the system. Like i guess I don't know where you grew up so I shouldn't really make this assertion but I feel like most people from countries that use Celsius have probably never thought "hey I think it's weird that 30 degrees is considered really hot."
I guess you could make the same argument that people living in the United States don't complain about water boiling at 212 degrees but that also doesn't address the compatibility issue
It’s pretty much just 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot as far as weather goes. Besides that it feels pretty arbitrary. I’m a metric stan, but I do still think Fahrenheit is pretty good for talking about the weather.
That's pretty damn subjective lol. At least the zero point (something important to people living in countries where it falls down to that) gives off useful info.
All numbers are arbitrary until you relate them to reality. This whole debate is fucking stupid vibe checks on how people feel about meaningless numbers, because the temperature is the temperature whether it's -40 or 233, or 420.
I mean the zero point of Celsius isn't a vibe in the same way as "pretty cold, pretty hot" or however people describe Fahrenheit. It actually means something to real life that it gets to zero or goes negative. 100C is for most people much less useful tbf.
But mainly it's about what you're used ofc. I just hate the nonsense thing about Fahrenheit being better that is about vibes alone
0 in F also means something very specific. Celsius isn't any better at that. If you want something that actually means 0 at 0 then use Kelvin. If you aren't, both have an equal basis in reality.
The scale of values is just better for human experience in F. It has more integer values in the range of values humans experience.
What specific thing does it mean that would relate to your real, daily life?
Huh? What does that even mean and why it has to specifically be integer values??
Why are you insisting on integers? Why are you scared of decimals? They are perfectly easy to use and provides a much wider range of scale than your arbitrary 0-100 scale does.
I'm not insisting on them. When did I say I was? Is this discussion not on ease of use? Does not needing to use decimals not make it easier to use? Yes, you can use decimals, but it saves on writing and space if we don't need them. It's easier. If you can't admit that that is an advantage then you're not arguing in good faith.
I won't argue which is better. But the human body thing has truth to it. He literally designed the scale around common temperatures. 100 was supposed to be human body temperature (he ended up being a little off, but close). And the 0 on the scale was found by just adding ice to salt until it stopped getting colder IIRC.
Common temperatures in some places. And also just because it is scaled this way doesn't mean it is better. It serves the exact same purpose as any other way to measure temperature.
Also having a nice scale from 0 to 100 as "really fucking cold" and "really fucking hot" is arguably easier to understand.
Only if you grew up with it.
0°c being the freezing temp of water makes a lot more sense to me than 32°F and so I can easily work around the scale of temperature using Celsius easier than I ever could Fahrenheit
Well... I didnt grow up with Fahrenheit and don't use it but it makes sense to me 🤷♂️
I used to say this exact thing. I decided to be scientific about it and test it by learning Celsius and trying it for a few months.
I have not gone back. It has been seven years. All my devices are still reporting Celsius to me.
I was enjoying the process just because of the novelty of learning a new temperature scale, but when I experienced my first winter with Celsius I knew I’d never go back.
0 being freezing is so much more useful than you’d think. 23°F doesn’t really mean anything to me, but -5°C means “as far below freezing as 5°C is above freezing.” It inherently provides context without having to do math.
Also, the degrees being “larger” makes them more meaningful and thus easier to learn.
If you want to try what I did, here are some useful steps. First, this rhyme: “30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is chilly, 0 is ice.”
More importantly, here’s the heuristic I came up with: memorize the 10s. So 10°C = 50°F, 20°C = 68°F, 30°C = 86°F (easy to remember 68 and 86 because they’re reversed). Then memorize the 5s. You can always find them because they’re 9°F off from the 10s. 25°C = 77°F for example.
Once you have those points memorized, you can go up and down from them using 2°F per 1°C. It’s really 1.8, but since at most you’ll be 2°C away from a certain value, the most you’ll ever be off is 0.4°F. So if the weather app tells you it’s 22°C, you start at 68°F and add 4 to get to 72°F (it is actually 71.6 but who cares?). If it says 23°C, you start at 77°F and subtract 4 to get 73°F (actually 73.4, but again who cares?).
I used this heuristic until I didn’t really need it anymore. I still use it if someone asks me the temperature, because I live in the US and no one knows Celsius. So I quickly convert and give them their Fahrenheit value. But at this point I don’t really need to do so personally.
And like I said, I much prefer Celsius even for describing weather. It has really taught me how arbitrary both scales are. A co-worker of mine said, “Yeah but 100° sounds hot.” I replied, “The first time a colleague in India told me it was 40° outside, that sounded hot.” I didn’t need to convert it (didn’t bother memorizing that value because I never see it where I live), it just sounded hot because I knew the scale. (It’s 104°F for the record.)
But as I touched on, I was shocked by how much the freezing point being zero mattered. It makes sub-freezing temperature values so useful. I hadn’t expected that, growing up I knew 32°F was freezing and was so used to that nonsense that I didn’t realize what I was missing until I experienced it.
I never used F, but as a discalculic person, i am glad i don't have because it's harder to memorize, while C is just "Uuh 0 is ice, 100 is boiling water" and i don't need to remember anything crazy or do any math
Considering the inconsequential nature of small talk, "Well, water isn't boiling, but it isn't freezing either" should be an acceptable answer to "how's the weather where you are?".
I don't see your point, anyway, you are rather bold to assume i do small talks
Same, it's also nice because I really don't notice 1 degree F, but 1 C feels meaningful
It's just not though. F uses a wider range of numbers to describe common outside air temperature, but more numbers =/= better.
I've lived in both F and C countries and farenheit is not easier, more intuitive, more sensible or better in any way. A number is a number. The extra precision of F is not super useful - no one can really feel a 1F difference. The freezing point of water does make a huge difference, so knowing above/below zero C is useful, but above/below 32F is no harder.
This argument that F is somehow more suitable for human temperatures is something you see online, but as someone comfortable with both i can say there is functionally no difference, except that metric is compatible with the rest of the world.
I strongly disagree on one key point:
Yes I can. Changing my thermostat by a single degree can be very impactful on my comfort. And on the "too warm side" each additional degree is noticeably less comfortable.
Days with highs of 68F, 69F, and 70F and comparable humidity all feel different to me. Sure, there are more factors at play but holding the rest equal, 1F differences are noticeable.
Also they always forget that on modern digital thermometers, we have decimals, which means that the F scale doesn't really have a wider range to describe common outside air temperature at all.
It's just arbitrary numbers. It only seems better to you because you grew up with it.
It is demonstrably not. You are more familiar with it, and you loathe decimals, so you are of the personal opinion that it is. But that is all it is, your personal opinion about it.
Which units are best doesn't matter: the point is, nobody else uses standard units anymore, apart from a couple oddball countries, and only one of them - North Korea - isn't trying to extricate itself from it.
Everybody else tries to be a part of the world's technical and scientific communities by speaking the same language, but of course America has to be different. Because of course it does... And it's tiring if you ask me.
America does speaks metric, especially the technical and scientific communities. They just also speak standard.
Don't other countries get on Americans for not speaking more than one language? Why is that now a detriment?
Well they shouldn't. It's harmful.
Don’t forget another area where metric is somehow thriving; the inner cities in the US.
Edit: ya’ll need to lighten up.
And I agree with you, fully, except for temperature. “If everyone was jumping off a bridge”, right?
The scale is stupid and I don’t give a fuck if it’s the “norm”. The norm is dumb.
Norms may be dumb but they make everybody's lives easier when everybody follows them.
As for temperature specifically, there's nothing inherently better in Celsius or Fahrenheit. It's just a choice. The only unit that is superior to all of them is the Kelvin because it has a true zero, but it's not commonly used in everyday settings.
But there is something inherently better in Fahrenheit! 0 is fucking cold. 100 is goddamn hot. It’s a measure that makes sense to the perception of us, human beings.
0 in Celsius is a little cooler than brisk, and 100 means you’ve been dead for a while. It’s a dumb system for humans to use.
Yet somehow Celsius seems to speak to everybody outside the United States just fine.
0 means water freezing, 100 means water boiling. This is actually quite helpful to know instinctively.
US scientists also use metric.
I dunno - I had to buy a mattress bed and sheets in feet in Thailand. We don’t even do that in America.
And the steel tube was sold in inches, meters and millimeters ¯_(ツ)_/¯
The argument is that since the numbers between 0 and 100 are sacred, as proponents of both metric and imperial temperature scales agree, that the system that centers that range more evenly over the range of temperatures experienced by humans is preferable, and wastes less numeric precision on common temperatures.
This is flawed because it turns out that 1) people can comfortably use a wide enough range of numbers that it doesn't matter and the value of the system you are used to far outweighs the saved handful of syllables and 2) people don't communicate about weather colloquially with enough precision or accuracy for any possible advantage to actually matter.
There are only two reasons to use one system over the other, and they're both consistency. Consistency with the rest of the world, and consistency with itself.
Everyone else uses metric, so we should too. It also uses a system, as opposed to a combination of every 14th century tradespersons system.
With Celsius, you can't walk outside and exclaim in horror "It's a hundred and 20 fucking degrees!". "It's in the negatives." doesn't carry any weight either.
It’s interesting to me that the only people who advocate for Fahrenheit over Celsius in any circumstances are those who grew up using it, whereas those who prefer Celsius over Fahrenheit are from both places where Celsius and Fahrenheit are used. I’m yet to see an example of someone saying “I grew up with Celsius but Fahrenheit is so much better because…”
This is such an elegant observation.
You probably just grew up with elegant observations.
so do it
I'm an American with a tenuous grasp of the C scale and even I know this is BS.
Why tho?
"demonstrably"? You don't have the self-reflection capacity to realize that you only think it's better because that's what is used wherever you happen to live? And to realize that it's the exact same for everybody on the planet?