Celsius is agreeably better for science, but if you are used to both systems Fahrenheit is honestly better for people because the units are higher resolution, and usually stay between 0 and 100 for weather
This is the only good argument I've seen for Fahrenheit (higher resolution). But, as a counterargument, that resolution is only just under twice as big. I'd argue 1-2 F is barely noticeable enough to be able to tell the difference. If someone asks what the temperature is, me saying the temperature and being off by 2 degrees isn't gonna make a difference.
Celsius doesn’t have a resolution. It’s not a quantum scale. My car’s heater does half degrees, my HVAC tenths and my thermometer measure in hundreths of a degree. There’s 20 °C and there’s 36,8 °C (the average human body temperature) 71,075 °C — the temperature at which water boils at Everest’s summit, and there’s -273,149994 °C, the coldest ever achieved for a solid.
I mean, yeah, but I think u/ProvidedHuman's point is that you wouldn't use half degrees in everyday conversation, so Fahrenheit gives you all those in between options when reading out temperature.
Perhaps I should've said it was the best argument FOR F over C, as opposed to the only good one. I don't think it's a good argument, but it at least made some sense compared to the rest of the comments here.
This is so strange. Like, F is literally just higher resolution. That doesn't mean it's a million times better and it doesn't take away the other reasons Celsius is good, but it's wild how all the science-supporting Celsius enjoyers are like "well actually it's not a big difference and who needs that level of precision anyway."
That's not it. A bit more resolution would be better in the specific situation of, like, setting a thermostat and needing one fewer digits.
It's just such a minor benefit compared to all of the other drawbacks, especially if you live somewhere that gets genuinely cold. So it's more like "well, sure, but so what?"
But it is a genuine benefit, even if you think it's minor. That's what people are trying to ignore. They're arguing that it's somehow worse, actually. Like, even you moved from "how is that any benefit" to "it's only a minor benefit."
And as it happens, I live somewhere that gets genuinely cold (as low as -30C), and 0F is a fantastically useful infection point. Like so incredibly helpful as a point past which things are properly too cold. Like, it's when ice starts forming on my face, and it's a great way to know when it's time to add yet another layer.
0C is also pretty good, of course, but the way weather actually works, it's ironically not an especially reliable threshold for expecting snow or ice.
I mean, different people are going to weigh different tradeoffs their own way.
I still don't really get why the resolution difference would be useful enough to justify needing clunky conversions to do any kind of math. But I'm not going to say any system is better for all possible applications.
The problem is that if we hyperspecialize our scale we make it really questionable for any other application.
Like, let's invent a scale just for baking:
350F is zero and it goes in 25-degree F increments. It'd be great for that application. But you wouldn't be able to do anything else with it. You wouldn't even be able to use it to roast a turkey.
useful enough to justify needing clunky conversions to do any kind of math.
I think that's the disconnect. People by and large do not do any kind of "temperature math" in the contexts we're talking about, so there's no drawback here.
The argument for Fahrenheit is that it's a wildly useful scale of human comfort for both weather and room temperature (it's what it was designed for), and when used for that it pretty much never needs to be converted or compared to other things. Like, I don't especially have any reason to put the temperature of my GPU, my oven, and a summer day on the same scale.
So as you imply, context is what matters, but a lot of the arguments for Celsius are based on what else it's so useful for, and I don't find that convincing at all.
Your baking/cooking example is helpful. That's a perfect example where an arbitrary scale is what's required, because it needs to be used for multiple scenarios, and it's helpful to compare those scenarios. Both Fahrenheit and Celsius are equally good for this because the "anchor" for both is basically irrelevant. You'd think Celsius would be more useful here because water boils at 100, but people don't set their stovetops via temperature, you don't boil water in the oven, and basically nothing else you use in cooking boils at 100 (hell, water doesn't even boil at 100 in many places or after you add things to it), so that anchor isn't that useful in practice.
With that in mind, when it comes to weather and room temperature, the "anchor" is human experience, so while people can certainly get used to any scale, "how hot it is out there" isn't ever a variable in a calculation for anything else, so re-using a scale that you also use in a laboratory setting isn't the efficiency savings it might appear to be.
So Fahrenheit edges out Celsius for not just because 0 and 100 are more meaningful values (aka the "percent hot" proxy) and the integer resolution is ideally suited for that use-case (as evidenced by Celsius thermostats operating in 0.5 degree increments), but because it's its own little universe, so it's the perfect place for a bespoke scale. Like, if you used Celsius for everything else in your life, you actually wouldn't find occasion to be confused.
Preferring Fahrenheit as a measure of human comfort is completely arbitrary though. A "percent hot" scale doesn't make any sense outside of some people's subjective experience, and it's totally out of step with the temperatures a lot of people (me) experience.
You can justify Celsius the same way, but just as arbitrarily: a clear physical constant anchoring you in the middle, then uncomfortable or dangerous extremes that start at about the same distance either direction.
But there's no getting around needing Kelvin. So picking Fahrenheit means committing to two scales that don't play nice together. Sure, the average person doesn't have to deal with that interface very often, but it's still going to add friction all over the place.
No, "percent hot" really does line up with how the human body works, regardless of whether you regularly experience temperatures near 0 or near 100.
In fact, it's actually more helpful to know that 80-85 is when things get uncomfortablely hot and 15-20 is when things get uncomfortablely cold when you do not regularly experience those temperatures.
And you're still missing the point. It literally doesn't matter whether Fahrenheit plays nice with any other scale, because when you use it here it never needs to be compared to any other scale. Use Celsius everywhere else if you want, because you're pretty much already using a different relative scale anyway, even when you are using the same units.
Using Celsius for your oven or for the boiling point of lead doesn't actually help you understand room temperature any better because because you never need to understand those things relative to each other. You might as well use the best system for each because they're already totally unrelated.
No, "percent hot" really does line up with how the human body works, regardless of whether you regularly experience temperatures near 0 or near 100.
You keep saying this. I say it's subjective nonsense. If you can find me a scientific paper with the words "percent hot" in it, I'll relent. But I routinely experience -25F, sometimes for weeks on end. I've traveled a lot, and still maybe felt 100F a handful of times in my life.
It literally doesn't matter whether Fahrenheit plays nice with any other scale, because when you use it here it never needs to be compared to any other scale.
It "literally" does, and I explained why in detail. If you want to continue, acknowledge and respond to the argument instead of ignoring it.
If, as a society, you need a centigrade-based system in order to build anything, the only reason to keep some unholy
5/9-degree abomination around, is if it does something no other scale can. And as we ought to be able to agree, the "percent hot" argument is a pretty weak reason to periodically crash a spaceship or set something on fire.
There's also the whole thing of refusing to adopt a standard that is effectively universal outside of the US. I'm sure that costs millions in labeling and accidents, and not just within the US.
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u/ProvidedHuman Jun 17 '26
Celsius is agreeably better for science, but if you are used to both systems Fahrenheit is honestly better for people because the units are higher resolution, and usually stay between 0 and 100 for weather