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  • Don't play dumb. We're talking about the range of temperatures an average person experiences in their day-to-day lives.

    In winter time here, temperatures above 0 means the snow will be soggy and wet, negative temperatures means it won’t.

    This might blow your mind but you can do the same thing with Fahrenheit. Just look for the number 32 instead of 0.

    You can use all the arguments you want, the truth is either system is perfectly useful for human day-to-day use if you are used to it.

    The best system, for you, will always be the one you grew up with

    I never said otherwise and I totally agree.

    However they are different systems and they do have pros and cons. Fahrenheit is more suitable for daily life while Celsius is more suitable for science.

    • Sorry im clearly not your average person experiencing >38° on a regular basis. There are plenty of humans that exist in climates that fall entirely outside of what you Americans consider "normal". Which is why "-18 - 38 is the 'normal' range for an average person" is such an American thing to say. You took your own climate and projected it across the world.

      Personally I like to go with the system that makes the most sense for 70% of earth's surface and 64% of a human body.

      • What? -18C to 38C is a massive range. Only a very small percentage of people would experience temperatures outside that range for most the year.

        • Tell that to Germany who have now hit 42° during summer thanks to global warming. If you really think that it's a tiny minority that live in climates who experience those temperatures then you are not very well travelled. Note also that a lot of countries have a real temperature <38 but thanks to the humidity it feels >38. Farenheit is just another temperature scale. There is nothing more intuitive about it than any other scale. If we were always told the temperature in kelvin we would think that to feel the most natural.

          Just accept that we like our scales because they are familiar and not because they are better.

    • Just look for the number 32 instead of 0.

      Now you are almost arguing against yourself, I can use the same argument about body temperature, just look for 37 instead of 100

      However they are different systems and they do have pros and cons.

      And this is a pro for me where I live.

      I never said otherwise and I totally agree.

      Fahrenheit is more suitable for daily life

      These don't square.
      Celsius and farenheit is just as suitable for daily life. You learn your important reference points and go from there.

      • 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.

375 comments