[warmdarksea]

this is actually why i like fahrenheit the most... 0F is "really cold" and 100F is "really hot", whereas in celsius 0C is "kind of cold" and 100C is "uninhabitable". it makes sense for the 0-100 range to be reserved for temperatures frequently encountered in our habitat as humans i think...

[kccqzy]

That’s a biased view that leads to a scale only convenient for people living in particular latitudes. Now talk to someone living near the equator like Singapore, and 0F is unimaginably cold (even 40F is basically unheard of), and 100F is very hot but not extraordinarily so. Then you talk to someone living close to the arctic and the converse is true.

All this talk about 0F to 100F being frequently encountered probably reveals your local climate conditions more than it helps define a useful global standard for all humans. We should accept that humans live in more diverse conditions than we intuit and such a scale probably won’t be useful for all.

[cyral]

Now I'm imagining some kind of timezone-like temperature unit that varies around the world, and a "100 things programmers should know about ___" post about all the intricacies and special cases.

[wiml]

Ooh, and it could shift seasonally so that summer temperatures and winter temperatures can both be in the convenient range. And every locality could shift a different amount and at different times of year according to their local climate.

Next, we can look into reforming those pesky mass and volume units…

[kergonath]

I cannot wait for leap degrees.

[chrismorgan]

Where I live now (Hyderabad, India), the record low is about 45°F, the temperature will not drop below 50°F more than two or three days in a year, and the daily maximum will not drop below 100°F for at least fifty consecutive days in the summer.

[CrazyStat]

> Now talk to someone living near the equator like Singapore, and 0F is unimaginably cold (even 40F is basically unheard of), and 100F is very hot but not extraordinarily so.

Bad example--Singapore has never had a single 100F day in recorded history. The highest temperature ever recorded was 37C/98.6F. As a small island its climate is greatly moderated by the masses of water around it. It rarely gets above 90F.

The broader point about the 0-100 Fahrenheit scale being convenient for people from a certain climate is correct, of course.

[strictnein]

> That’s a biased view that leads to a scale only convenient for people living in particular latitudes

I mean, the other option is cool vs dead

> We should accept that humans live in more diverse conditions

The second most diverse range of temps in the world is smack dab in the middle of the US: South Dakota up through northern Minnesota. Most years that area experiences -40F in the winter and 110F in the summer.

[wongarsu]

Celsius maps nicely to the temperatures observed in a typical Finnish sauna. 100C is among the highest typical sauna temperatures (very relaxing in dry air), and afterwards you cool off with water around 0C

Also, having 100C as water temp for black tee and 80 for green tee is nice to remember

[al_borland]

This has always been my primary argument in favor of Fahrenheit. It makes sense for humans, which is all a majority of the population really cares about. In addition, it's more granular. Sometimes turning the thermostat up or down by 1C could be too much, where 1F is just right.

In science and math, I can see where having round numbers for commonly used temperatures would be useful, but if 0C and 100C are the only places that happens, it's not that hard to memorize 2 numbers.

[Timpanzee]

You only think it makes sense for humans because it makes sense for you, where you live the same way you feel changing a thermostat by 1F is perfect but 1C is too much: that’s true for you, not universally.

Fahrenheit functionally requires you to be biased in order for it to seem like a good system.

[al_borland]

It provides greater granularity in the range of human comfort, without descending into decimals. How is that not more useful for day-to-day human usage?

0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year.

-20C to 40C seems much more arbitrary as a way to measure the zone humans mostly live in.

I would wager that the outdoor and room temperature are an overwhelming majority of human use for temperature. It seems like it would make sense to optimize for how temperature is more commonly used at a population level.

I would say those who see Celsius as a good system are also biased, because they grew up with it and it’s what they’re used to.

[kelnos]

> 0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year.

This is just your location, and things like this vary around the world a lot. Hell, they vary in the US. To me, where I live (in the US), 0F and 100F aren't really useful as benchmarks; we don't see either of those temperatures here, ever. The normal range is more like 40F-80F (with extremes maybe down to 25F and up to 90F, but those numbers push credibility a bit).

But ok let's look at averages. Do "most humans" (whatever that means) really live within 0F to 100F? That doesn't really pass the smell test for me; there are lots of humans who live in places where it regularly exceeds 100F. And in those places I doubt it gets anywhere near 0F, with many places never getting down to even 20F. There are also lots of places that get warm, but will never see 100F, and seldom see 90F.

It's all super super arbitrary.

Having said that, I still prefer F over C, but I don't pretend there's any rational reason for it: it's just because I grew up with Fahrenheit, and no matter how hard I try, I just can't feel Celsius the same way. I feel like you maybe don't interact with too many people who grew up with Celsius; you'd probably realize they feel the same way about C as you do about F, and that there's no rational reason for it. It's just what you were trained to think and feel in, and it stuck.

[masklinn]

> 0F is cold, 100F is hot. I experience both of these temperatures outside where I live every year.

Most people never experience anywhere near 0F in their lives.

> -20C to -40C seems much more arbitrary as a way to measure the zone humans mostly live in.

The zone most humans live in does not routinely (if ever) get anywhere near -20, to say nothing of -40.

[picofarad]

I experienced 3°F in the subtropics and it is probably about 100°F outside right now. Average winter temps of 35° with only 1-7 days of actual frost, usually around christmas. (Dec 25(December 25))

[al_borland]

The -40C was a typo, should have been 40C, to mirror the 0F to 100F, rounding a bit to make it less silly. It’s been fixed now.

Millions do experience 0F, and it’s ok to not use the full range. At or around 0F is cold, as you move closer or beyond it, it’s cold. As you move closer to or beyond 100F, it’s hot. Most people would likely prefer to never deal with <0F or >100F.

[kelnos]

Millions -- hundreds of millions, even -- regularly experience -10F and 110F as well, but you've arbitrarily picked 0F-100F, so I guess their experience doesn't matter, because you prefer round numbers?

[masklinn]

> Millions do experience 0F, and it’s ok to not use the full range.

That’s not even an argument. Billions never experience freezing temperatures let alone 0F, and it’s ok to use negative numbers.

> At or around 0F is cold, as you move closer or beyond it, it’s cold.

The exact same statement can be made about 0C. Hell if you live in a subtropical area 10C is cold.

> Most people would likely prefer to never deal with <0F or >100F.

Most people would likely prefer to never deal with < 15C or > 30C.

[tdeck]

> you feel changing a thermostat by 1F is perfect but 1C is too much: that’s true for you, not universally.

I've noticed that here in Japan all the AC units seem to be adjusted by half a degree Celsius at a time, so I do think 1C is a bit much even for people who never used fahrenheit.

[kergonath]

The good thing is that there is nothing preventing anyone from adjusting their thermostat with a decikelvin precision. Or hell, even centikelvin if they’re pushing it.

[bananamogul]

Actually, 1 degree of Fahrenheit is the amount of temperature change a typical human can connect. It's a human-calibrated scale.

Though why 32F instead of 0F for frozen water...I have no idea.

[chrismorgan]

> 1 degree of Fahrenheit is the amount of temperature change a typical human can connect

Citation needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit suggests no such thing, nor have I ever heard the notion.

[Ekaros]

Because lower point is temperature of certain chemical reaction. And upper end is body temperature... Oh wait... Yeah it is bad scale.

[kelnos]

Every non-US thermostat I've seen that works in Celsius is adjustable by half-degrees, so it seems the manufacturers agree with my feeling there...

[chrismorgan]

Living in Australia and India, I have never encountered such a thermostat. But I do vaguely recall encountering a thermostat somewhere at some point that went up by twos in Fahrenheit.

I would guess you would only encounter ½°C steps on units that support both Celsius and Fahrenheit, so that they’re closer to parity. I don’t think any unit that I’ve owned has supported Fahrenheit at all.

[bigDinosaur]

I can't express just how profoundly culturally biased this is. There is absolutely nothing about Fahrenheit that 'just makes sense' to someone who grew up with Celsius instead.

Your comment about granularity is also nonsensical. I can adjust my heating by more granularity than 1C. That has literally nothing to do with the units being used.

[plibblr]

As someone who has used Celsius all my life, I actually kinda think they have a point here - where I live temperatures range from -10 to 39 in Celsius, and our home thermostats have 0.5 degree increments. Had we used Fahrenheit it would be a more human-friendly and compact-display-friendly 11-99 with little need for the fractional part.

-10.5 = 5 characters 11 = 2 characters

[vagrantJin]

Celcius is pretty intuitive actually. It takes atmospheric pressure into account, Water is pretty abundant on the surface of the planet, and life kinda depends on it. It's a remarkable substance and quite stable. I dont think theres another substance where we can see all three phases with kitchen appliances and still consume it. Equally good for bathing and drinking. I need steam to clean clothes and cook my food. Using water as a benchmark for how we measure temperature is remarkably useful.

[al_borland]

With all of those examples, the actual temperature doesn’t really matter.

For drinking and bathing, people go by feel. In the kitchen, the freezer makes water freeze, and the stovetop will make it boil into steam, but exact temperatures aren’t really relevant here either. The same goes for ironing clothes, the iron just does it.

When I think about where explicit temperatures are needed in the home, the oven and thermostat are the two things that come to mind. Water is pretty irrelevant for both of those. For cooking or frying someone may monitor meat or oil temps, but those aren’t water. A hot tub might have an actual temp on it, but those tend to be around 100F, not 100C, as they are meant for humans, not boiling.

Water is an amazing liquid, but I still struggle to see how measuring all our temperatures based on it makes sense.

[kelnos]

> For drinking and bathing, people go by feel.

Yes, and people who grew up with Celsius feel in Celsius, and people who grew up with Fahrenheit (like myself) feel in Fahrenheit.

Stop trying to make some sort of determination of what's logical or reasonable here. Neither one is more or less logical than the other for day-to-day layperson use; anyone can "feel best" in any scale if they were taught it at a young age and used solely that scale for the formative years of their lives. Hell, I bet you could make a kid feel in Kelvin if that's all they were exposed to for their childhood. Or in some made-up scale that takes your 0F-100F and compresses it inside 22-35.

[al_borland]

When I said drinking and bathing go by feel, I meant that they aren’t measuring the temperature, so the units are irrelevant.

When drawing a bath, I don’t get out a thermometer, I just stick my hand in the water and feel if it’s comfortable. C, F, or K… who cares? It doesn’t come into play.

[QuantumNomad_]

> When I think about where explicit temperatures are needed in the home, the oven and thermostat are the two things that come to mind.

But in that case in what way is for example baking a frozen pizza from the store at 400 to 425 degrees F more relatable/convenient/natural than 200 to 220 degrees C?

[al_borland]

It's not. When it comes to an oven, F and C are equally arbitrary, so it really doesn't matter. Optimize for what people use most, and let the other random uses fall as they may.

[kelnos]

You have it backward. There's no absolute truth on what's optimal for what people use most. What's optimal is just what you were reinforcement-trained to feel when you were growing up as a child. That's it.

My wife says "30C" and knows exactly how that feels, while I struggle to find a reference point. I say "86F" and know exactly how that feels. Even though she prefers C, she can feel F slightly better than I feel C, as she moved to the US when she was in her teens. (Whereas I've spent my entire life in the US, outside of business and holiday travel.)

[kergonath]

> It makes sense for humans, which is all a majority of the population really cares about.

The Celsius scale makes perfect sense to me and the vast majority of humans in the world. Much more so than the Fahrenheit scale, which I absolutely never use. That’s not really a strong argument.

[ajmurmann]

This makes sense if weather is the main focus. For things like cooking Celsius is great though.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

I am failing to understand why there would be a distinction. They all seem arbitrary set points you learn.

450F vs 230C does not feel like anything gets easier there. Maybe in some highly technical baking there are some nice deltas that appear?

[clickety_clack]

Aren’t you just remembering specific numbers though? Unless you’re trying to boil water unseen so that you can only see a thermometer, the specific 100°C mark isn't that useful.

[kelnos]

> Aren’t you just remembering specific numbers though?

That's the thing about this. It's so tiring for people to argue which temperature scale is "better". Nothing is better or worse. What's "better" is individual, and is just "what you grew up with". Because right, you're just remembering specific numbers, and remembering how those temperatures feel. (Or in the case of cooking, remembering what those temperatures do to your food.)

> Unless you’re trying to boil water unseen so that you can only see a thermometer, the specific 100°C mark isn't that useful.

Even then it's not that useful, as water doesn't really boil the way most people think it does. (And god forbid you aren't at sea level and aren't at standard temperature and pressure.)

[quickthrowman]

The temperature water boils at is irrelevant when you can just look at it to see if it’s boiling. Any stove will get it hot enough, assuming you have enough energy.

[kelnos]

Also if you set something to heat water until it's exactly 100C/212F, it probably won't be boiling when it gets there. Some bits of it might be bubbling, but it won't be what we normally think of as "boiling".

[Paracompact]

OF will still kill you faster than 100F, and most folks aren't comfortable at 50F.

It inspires the following idea: A nonlinear scale where ~72F is 0, and +X represents the same level of heat discomfort as -X represents cold discomfort.

[8note]

thats a very location dependent scale.

youd still need to include where the discomfort is measured

[arjie]

Haha, judging by my personal standards, we need to set the zero to 15 C and the 100 to 40 C. My Degrees Arjie are going to be a revolution.

[clickety_clack]

I actually came around to Fahrenheit for the exact same reason. 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold. In Celsius a large portion of people have to flip to negative numbers regularly during the normal year, and everything between 45°C and 100°C is completely unused.

[kelnos]

I dunno, temperature doesn't really work like that. As a sibling mentioned, saunas: I can sit in a 190F dry sauna for about a half hour at a time and it feels hot but nice and soothing. But I can only handle a 120F steam room for maybe 10 minutes before I need to get out of there. (Speaking of the dry sauna, if someone pours a bit of water on the stones, it near-instantly feels significantly hotter, even though the temperature hasn't changed.)

Put another way, I can sit in a 190F sauna for a half hour, but a half hour out in the sun in, say, Singapore, feels awful to me. 85F where I live now (unusual but happens), in a relatively dry climate, is bearable, while the same temperature where I grew up, in a much more humid place (where it was more common), feels gross and saps my energy.

And I can be out snowboarding in 25F weather that's calm and sunny, and feel fine in a medium-weight clothing. But add clouds and wind, at the same temperature, and it's unbearable.

And to me, based on the temperatures I usually see, 15F is waaay too cold, and 90F is waaay too hot. Sure, I guess I could round that down to 100F and up to 100F, but that just feels like being arbitrary for the sake of easy numbers.

[mmooss]

> 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold.

Food, saunas, the weather, a fever, and much more are often over 100F.

[Timpanzee]

Except 0F being “really cold” and 100F being “really hot” is a personal bias of yours based on where you’ve lived. It’s not true for everyone or everywhere.

And even if it were true, it still wouldn’t work. 100F in a dry environment is nice while, in a humid environment, 100F is awful. Same for 0F, a dry and static 0F is fine while a wet and windy 0F is killer.

[strictnein]

What's a "wet and windy" 0F? It's more or less a physical impossibility. 0F air can't hold much moisture. Also, it's not a killer.

[Timpanzee]

Experience 0F wind in central North America or Central Asia vs 0F wind on the coast and tell me it’s not different. Also, it’s killer, not a killer, as in it sucks a lot.

[TylerE]

Also for things like hvac temps Celsius is rather too coarse where as 1F is right around the perceivable difference.

[SketchySeaBeast]

There's nothing stopping the use of decimal points for Celsius. Though there's also nothing stopping decimal points in Fahrenheit, the rare instance where an imperial sub-unit doesn't make things go fucky.