this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Fahrenheit is better.
0 is real cold, 100 is real hot. How much sense does that make? Lots.
What the fuck is Celsius? Maybe if you are doing chemistry it is better. 0 is kind of cold but not really, 40 is real hot, 80 is unsued in practice, 100 is when water boils. Great, that'll come in real handy the next time I need to find out whether it is boiling-water temperature or not outside. How much sense does that make? 0. Which is the right number to use for roughly the bottom of the scale.
For everything else, the US's medieval "how many hogsheads in a farthing" units are far inferior, I will 100% agree. Fahrenheit is better though. If you disagree then why not just use Kelvin, that's even more chemically accurate and even less related to human relevant temperatures which is the goal I guess.
Despite the downvotes, you are absolutely correct.
Let’s all start out agreeing that units of measurement (distance, length, weight, etc.) in the US is absolutely idiotic. I will back up every European who says this, 100%. Miles, inches, pounds, pints, quarts, fractions; it’s a mess. Objectively, if I remove all my cultural biases (I’m American) metric is just better. A lot better. No question.
And when we are talking about scientific pursuit, and probably cooking too, Celsius is a great unit of measure.
But ambient temperature, the temperature of the environment, Fahrenheit is better. It covers the range of human experience and neatly ties it to a 1-100 scale. It’s a “how hot is it” scale. Celsius’ -18 – 38 degrees just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when describing the temperatures you will experience during 99% of your time on earth. Further, Celsius’ units are slightly too big to useful, I’ve seen weather reports in Europe say the expected temperature to a 10th of a degree, while Fahrenheit is granular enough not to need to.
Metrics base ten is great when it comes to distance and weight. And it accurately allows for relative comparison (ten meters is twice that of five.) But ambient temperature does not work like that; 20 degrees is not twice that of 10, and the base 10 units doesn’t effectively exist for temperature.
To all those who will downvote me, I get it. You’re very used to being on the objectively right side of sanity re: units of measurement and rightfully so. But I ask you to set aside your cultural bias and muscle memory for a moment and objectively think about what range of measurement makes more sense for ambient temperature and ambient temperature only.
Put another way, with Celsius, one has to be accustomed to the possible range of values. With Fahrenheit, most people understand 1-100 intuitively.
A temperature scale from 0-100 for me implies that the perfect temperature for most people would be right in the middle at 50F. If 0 is too cold and 100 too hot, 5 should be just right, and it ain’t.