this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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So you're saying that 0 and 100 aren't intuitively obvious? I find that really strange when it's doing a better job keeping to base 10 than the metric system in this particular use case.
For Celsius, 0 is freezing cold and 100 is boiling hot - that's intuitive too.
I have literally never felt 0°F in my life and couldn't tell you how cold it is, just that it's very cold. I believe everyone has a rough understanding how 0°C and 100°C feel though.
It is intuitive, and that's fine. Having the same intuition around human comfort zones is also fine. One measurement system can't really cover everything.
People tend not to want to live in places where it's routinely under 0F or over 100F. You'll tolerate it, but you won't like it. It's a very natural range of human comfort.
the numbers may be, but if you asked me to tell you what they feel like i would have to convert them to celsius first. where i live temperatures are generally between -30 and +30, and i could tell you in an instant what I would wear for a given temperature in that range. 50F though? no clue. since it's right between 0 and 100 i guess it would be just right, temperature wise, so t-shirt and long pants?
Can you remember that at temperatures near 0F and 100F, you need to take special precautions when going outside? The rest is a matter of getting used to what the numbers mean, but those are very intuitive danger points.
-18 is such an arbitrary place for "special precautions". at 0, I know to start driving more carefully since the roads ice up. at -15, i know to wear long johns. at +15, i know to start using a thinner jacket. at -30, i know to use a thick hat and wax on my cheeks to prevent the blood vessels from rupturing. at +30, I know to use a large hat and sun cream on my cheeks to prevent them from burning.
see, that's what i'm saying. having a scale that starts at "it really doesn't matter" makes it hard to use for everyday things.
why would i stop? there's only one place in the world that uses another scale, and it's dangerous for me to even travel there.
What if it was 99f? Or 1f? Would your scientific "damn this bitch hot out here" change to something else?
When it comes to a single number on a scale, whatever you grew up with will be more "obvious". 100F doesn't give me any more information than 38C does. The whole "base 10" thing only matters if you are actually doing some math to that number.
Base 10 makes it much easier to remember.
When was the last time you did math related to temperature?
For day to day use, it's just a single number, no one is doing any conversions, etc, with the number. That was my point. There's nothing to remember. Do you forget what 72F feels like? Do you have to scale it in your head?
Kelvin is used for math pretty regularly. Rankine was too.
100F definitely gives more insight as to the temperature. It's a 100/100. That's as hot as a person can really tolerate. If you understand percentages or how to rate things on a scale of 1-10, you understand fahrenheit.
There's large chunks of the world proving that false every day. For the geographically impared, the simple fact that Phoenix has existed for longer than air conditioning, proves that statement false.
And 0F as the low point is equally as useless.
That's why I used the qualifier "really" and in another comment I mentioned "in average temperate climates" If you were more familiar with statistics you would understand how means and outliers work. Just like someone can score a movie an 11/10 or a -1/10, it is possible for the weather to exceed 100F or drop below 0F. Just not typical.
And while I didn't say it specifically, 0F is similarly the average lowest temperature a person can tolerate/expect before beginning to experience problems.
Hypothermia can be a problem in temperatures as high as 50F. 0F is a meaningless number, outside of purely subjective "it's cold" uses.
"Can be" Yeah if you're submerged in 50F water you will succumb to hypothermia due to the specific heat of water.
But we're not discussing swimming pool temperatures, we're discussing air temperatures. You are not actively in danger of imminent hypothermia at 50F air temp like you are at 0F air temp.
But of course you know that already. You're not here arguing in good faith, you just want to sling shit at people that have a better understanding of the world than you. If you want to use Celsius for everything, go ahead. No one cares. But the intelligent world will keep using both.
Lol
No, they're not. I couldn't tell what those numbers mean even if you asked, but I can tell what 0°C outside feels, and what 100°C sauna feels. I can also tell that 21°C is a nice ambient temperature for chilling, and 15-20°C is ideal for most outdoor sports.
Yeah sure those are not necessarily nice round numbers, but I've used the scale all my life so it's intuitive to me, same as the Fahrentrash is intuitive to you
No, that's not how this works.
You understand the concept of a scale. If I asked you to rate something on a scale of 1-10, you know what i mean. It has nothing to do with intuitiveness. If I asked you to rate something on a scale of 7-23, you'd know what I mean, even though the numbers are different than what you're used to.
So if I said it was 100F outside, you'd know that's very uncomfortably hot, as hot as a normal person can really tolerate, because you'd recognize it as the high end of the scale.
Everyone can understand fahrenheit, some people just try really hard not to.
If you'd say it is 100F outside, I wouldn't know what you mean because I have no concept of Fahrenheit. Is 100F actually hot? What is that in Celsius? Do you mean hot as in "better to wear light clothes" or "Do not set a foot outside or you will melt"?
What does it mean "as hot as a normal person can really tolerate"? What about a abnormal person?
It gives nothing of information. Just a rough indication of what it might be. Which isn't useful at all.
Do you understand the base-10 numerical system? Do you understand percentages? Congratulations, you understand fahrenheit. You can no longer honestly say, on the internet or otherwise, that fahrenheit is meaningless to you. You are now a fahrenheit understander, whether you like it or not.
Also, your second statement answers your first question. When I say "as hot as a normal person can tolerate" i do not mean "wear light clothes", I mean "as hot as a normal person can tolerate". Thats why i said "as hot as a normal person can tolerate". Happy to clear that up you for you.
Abnormalities/outliers are not something on which we should base standards of measurements.
You keep saying this but it still doesn't make any sense. 50% heat would be average middle of the pack nice? And "as hot as normal person can tolerate" is full of shit because neither you or I have no concept of what "normal person can tolerate", as the normal depends on your geography. And this is quite a good reason why claiming "Fahrenheit is how human feels" is just idiotic as it relies both on a specific climate and having learned that scale growing up.
I swear you Americans can get so fucking stupid on this topic, it's like claiming that Finnish is the most intuitive language because it's the language of how love (average love, excluding outliers obviously) feels
You really don't understand what reference points are. The scale is useless without reference points, and I'm not accustomed to them while I have very clear ones for Celsius.
Sure I can understand that 100F feels very hot, but if I was outside in that temperature I couldn't tell you an estimate in Fahrenheit how hot it feels
0 and 100 aren't just "very cold" and "very hot". They are potentially dangerously so, and you need to take extra precautions at temperatures beyond those limits. You don't necessarily have to understand it beyond that.
It is pretty funny how your supposed completely intuitive human feeling system needs to have all these disclaimers added to it whenever you try to explain it. Perhaps it is only intuitive because you are used to it after all?
Three sentences is a lot of disclaimers to you? Really?
The reference points are 0 and 100! You don't have to get accustomed to them, they are the same reference points used by the entire base-10 numerical system. It is a percentage.
And yes, you could step out into 100F degree heat and accurately estimate the temperature. Is it the hottest day of summer? Are you beginning to experience symptoms of heat fatigue? Are you saying to yourself "This is one of the hottest days I have ever experienced", all the same stuff you'd think if you stepped outside into 37.8C weather. Then it's probably close to the high end of the scale, i.e. 100F.
Okay so you're making lot of weird assumptions here. I don't know how hot weather 37°C feels, other than that for me 30+ is absolute hell. I've never experienced heatwave that bad for what I remember. Hottest summer days here are just about 30°C, and it's miserable.
Reference point means that I'm able to easily understand what that temperature is.
I can easily understand 100°C though, sauna is getting too hot and I should open window and chill down with feeding the fire.
For 0-30 I can easily understand how I should dress outside, and 0°C is easy to understand because just above it and I know it's going to be wet and slippery if there was negatives before it, and below 0 is slippery if there was positives earlier.
What is intuitive to you is totally a subjective experience based on your earlier experiences and what you're used to use to measure temperatures.
Lmao your sauna is not clearing 100C, that's well past the point at which saunas can become hazardous to your health. If you genuinely run your sauna that hot then start looking into competitions because you're gonna blow all those professionals out of the water.
Also I'm not making any assumptions here. That's just you trying to grasp at straws to save your failing argument. You don't know what 37C feels like? Weird, I know what 100F feels like. I guess fahrenheit is just more intuitive than Celsius (by your logic, anyway).
Also, all you've done is list a bunch of understandings about Celsius that depend entirely on experience and prior knowledge. "Above 0 is like this, below is like that, I know how to dress for 0-30" This is all stuff you had to be taught/learn, the exact opposite of intuitive.
But I can say to someone unfamiliar with either system "Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale of hot how it is outside" and they know almost everything they need to know about fahrenheit.
In International Sauna Championships the sauna was heated to 110°C. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sauna_Championships?wprov=sfla1
Dry sauna at 100°C is not terribly hot feeling, but then again I don't like dry sauna. In those competitions the sauna was NOT dry, but water thrown onto the rocks every 30sec. That's actual hell to be in
Exactly. Because that is required to understand what the numbers mean. Congratulations for understanding what I said while completely missing the point
Fahrenheit is none of that. It requires prior knowledge and understanding where the scale lies. By your logic, 50°F should be perfectly nice ambient temperature, but in reality it's plenty cold enough for hypothermia
What makes you think humans, an endothermic species, desires exactly 50% thermal energy? We enjoy the 70F region because we are warm blooded mammals.
"In International Sauna Championships the sauna was heated to 110°C" Yeah. And 2 people collapsed, 1 died from it. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-10912578 A 5-time champion who had excellent tolerance.
"Exactly. Because that is required to understand what the numbers mean (in celsius)"
Exactly, because fahrenheit doesn't require such a random set of arbitrary associations. Congratulations for understanding what I said while trying so hard to miss the point.
Look, you can argue all you want. The fact is that both systems have their applications. I don't believe you genuinely disagree with this statement. I think you're just here because you want to sling shit at people that are different than you. Nothing you say will make Celsius better at determining ambient temperature, nothing you say will make fahrenheit better for use in a lab. Get over it.
I dunno, man. You’ve been driving home this idea that Fahrenheit is a scale and therefore great for intuiting ambient temperature, you can’t just turn around and be all ‘Well OBVIOUSLY 50% isn’t the neutral point.’
In any scale where 0 is dangerously low and 10 is dangerously high, 5 would be a happy medium.
That's simply not how scales work. You'll figure it out someday.
It’s how useful scales work.
But well done on the Herculean effort you’ve put forth in demonstrating your general ignorance.
They aren't. And fahrenheit is not a 0-100 scale. It is just the scale you picked out of it in order to make some kind of sense out of the non-intuitive system which it is.