Tell me that you are American without telling me you are American
Americans always regurgite the "Fahrenheit is how people feel" nonsense, but it is just that: nonsense. Americans are familiar with fahrenheit so they think that it is more inituitive than other systems, but unsurprisingly people who are used to celsius have no problems using it to measure "how people feel" and will think it is a very inituitive system.
Can confirm. Moved from the US to Canada and maybe a year of using Celcius revealed to me just how fucking stupid and convoluted Fahrenheit is. My dad spent three weeks out here and started using Celcius on his phone. Now I only use Fahrenheit when dealing with fevers or temping cases of suspiciously overripe produce.
Fellow Americans. Celcius is superior and more intuitive for those who take a moment to adjust to it. It is okay to accept this as fact without developing an inferiority complex. USA not always #1. USA quite often not #1 and that is okay. It is okay for USA to not be #1 without developing an inferiority complex.
Both are equally arbitrary. You just have to know a handful of temperatures that you use in your day to day life either way.
Celsius being based on water makes it the most intuitive of the three imo.
It is really easy to map onto human feel though. 0-100 pretty accurately maps onto our minimum and maximum realistically survivable temps, long-term, and the middle temperatures of those are the most comfortable. It's far more round, when it comes to describing human preference and survivability, than Celsius is.
I bet a lot more people know what 0°C feels like than 0°F. One is freezing point, one is a completely arbitrary temperature which only gets called "the lowest you'll experience" as a post hoc rationalisation of Fahrenheit. Most people will never experience anything that cold, some people experience colder.
I even bet more people know what 100°C feels like than 100°F. One is accidentally getting scalded by boiling water, the other is a completely arbitrary temperature which is quite hot but not even the hottest you'll experience in America.
I wanna say that with this logic 50 should be right around the most comfortable temp.. But for most people it's closer to 70.
I'll try to explain how easily mappable Celsius is to people as well.
-40 to +40.. -40 being extremely cold, and +40 being extremely hot. 21c is the equivalent of 70f.
It's all the same stuff. Just matters what you're used to.
No it doesn't, unfortunately.
What makes 0F (-18C) special? How do you estimate survivability at such temperature? If I'd be out on the street naked, I would die there in a matter of minutes. At the same time, there is plenty of places where winter temperatures go -40F (-40C) and even below, yet people very much survive and live there.
Similar with 100F (38C). There are places with higher temps in the summer, up to 120F (49C) in some places, yet people survive. Still, if you're not equipped with anything, 100F (38C) will burn you alive.
All that not to mention that 50F (10C) is actually cold, not comfortable.
Fahrenheit is only intuitive and "feeling-descriptive" because you're used to it. From a person born in Celsius country, it's really not less intuitive. I know I can be comfortable in my birthday suit at around 25C. Less than 20 is chilly, less than 10 - cold, less than 0 - freezing. More than 30 is hot, more than 40 is deadly.
Nah, it doesn't make any sense, and isn't deep or insightful at all.
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.
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.
100C is literally instant death.
Laughs in Finnish (while sipping beer in a 100C Sauna)
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.
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".
Fuck Fahrenheit.
All my homies hate fahrenheit.
Kelvin is for scientists.
Celsius is for people.
Fahrenheit is a translation layer between Celsius and Americans. All their weather stations have been Celsius for ages, it's a societal decision to use an arbitrary unit instead. The "69F censoring" which turned out to be a rounding artefact illustrated that nicely. Their government could change that, power to them that they decide not to 🤷♂️
fahrenheit is literally defined by celsius at this point, afaik celsius is literally the official standard of the united states but everyone just.. keeps using fahrenheit anyways
Reading these comments, my spiteful genie wish is to invent and proliferate a log base 10 scale, something like earthquake magnitudes or decibels. Y'all hate F or C? Welcome T, where 1 equals 1 Kelvin, 2 equals 10 Kelvin, 3 equals 100 Kelvin, 4 equals 1000 Kelvin, and so on.
It's easy! Humans live somewhere around 3, as does boiling and freezing, while the sun is between a 4 and a 5 at the surface and the core is closer to an 8.
With Celsius it's all nice and round numbers unlike the mess called fahrenheit:
0°C—black ice, snow, be careful on the road and you probably want to wear gloves and a hat
0...10°C—a bit chilly, but you can leave your hat home
10...20°C—pleasant, but not quite tee-and-shorts yet
20...30°C—nice summer weather
30...40°C—holy crap it's hot!
40...50°C—are you fucking kidding me?
50+°C—my proteins are starting to denature...
100°C—good sauna
110°C—finns think it's a good sauna
120+°C—finns think it's getting a bit too hot in the sauna. Italians tend to vaporize in sauna (speaking from experience)
...
0...-10°C—a pleasant winter weather
-10...-20°C—getting a bit frosty
-20...-30°C—finns think it's a pleasant winter weather
-40°C—vodka freezes. Russians and finns agree it's getting a bit frosty
-50°C—getting a little hard to start your Uazik in the morning in Siberia due to engine oil solidifying
-60°C—researchers in Antarctica all agree it's getting a bit frosty and someone should close the window
-60c - Canadians consider putting on a hoodie
Celsius can be used in place of all three, the others cannot.
The freezing point of water is also a great place to zero the scale.
i love this idea that water is completely irrelevant to humans, as if it's not like 60% of our mass and vital to living
yeah no let's base the temperature scale around what some english dude felt was comfortable
But it doesn't really make sense, it's just some nonsense that sounds clever
How very American.
I suppose it is how people feel, just, y'know, the roughly 4-5% of people who happen to already use that temperature scale. Shocker, that.
Most people are inherently biased towards their chosen system. A "water scale" doesn't make sense to fahrenheit users, and a "human scale" is dismissed as even existing by the Celsius users. But hey, if you want to fight, have at it. It's annoying and pointless, but that's what the internet is for.
Converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius is quite easy. All you need to do is:
import math
import random
import time
def obtain_temperature_scale():
temperature_scales = ["Fahrenheit", "Celsius", "Kelvin", "Rankine", "Réaumur", "Newton", "Delisle", "Rømer"]
return random.choice(temperature_scales)
def create_cryptic_prompts():
cryptic_prompts = [
"Unveil the hidden truth within the scorching embers.",
"Decode the whispers of the arctic winds.",
"Unravel the enigma of thermal equilibrium.",
"Unlock the secrets of the thermometric realm."
]
return random.choice(cryptic_prompts)
def await_user_input(prompt):
print(prompt)
return float(input("Enter the temperature value: "))
def dramatic_pause():
print("Calculating...")
time.sleep(random.uniform(1.5, 3.5))
def convert_to_celsius(fahrenheit):
return (fahrenheit - 32) * (5/9)
def main():
temperature_scale = obtain_temperature_scale()
if temperature_scale == "Fahrenheit":
cryptic_prompt = create_cryptic_prompts()
fahrenheit_temp = await_user_input(cryptic_prompt)
dramatic_pause()
celsius_temp = convert_to_celsius(fahrenheit_temp)
print(f"The temperature in Celsius is: {celsius_temp:.2f}°C")
else:
print("This program only accepts Fahrenheit temperatures.")
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
The thing about Fahrenheit is kinda wrong. 0 is when salt water freezes, and 100 was supposedly measured by a woman's body temperature when she was sick.
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