Never ask:

• The USA why it has so many prisoners
• Saudi Arabia why they’re holding foreign worker’s passports
• China why the number of executions is a state secret

Eh, people didn’t stop studying but the corporate capture of our governments undercut our educational institutions. People still study, but the resources devoted to structured foundational learning (ie. public schools) are now devoted to wealth extraction (eg. shortform video platforms).

Come on kids, lets learn all about how ivermectin enemas will cure your acne! [after this ad break]

I mean theres no objectivity to the way we describe the universe anyway

• Our society has arbitrarily landed on a base ten numbering system. This colors how we measure, but it could have just as easily been any other historical numbering system (12/20/4/60…)
• The length of a meter was chosen by the French based on the size of Earth at that time and relative to Paris. That obviously doesn’t work if you try to account for earth’s gradual shedding of mass or gaining mass via meteors
• The length of a second was defined as a fraction of earth’s daily rotation even though the rotation speed is slowing over time
• We have thousands of names for specific frequencies of visible light but don’t really bother for the other 99.9965% of the electromagnetic spectrum
• We still use classic binomial nomenclature for naming animals even though the whole system of taxonomic rank has basically been abandoned by biologists because evolution is too messy to classify

We basically just do things the way someone in the distant past decided to do things (though we’ve gotten better at defining them via natural constants).

The most clear, “rational” way to observe the universe would be with Planck units (ie. describing the universe within the bounds of our current theories of special relativity, quantum mechanics and gravity). But even that could be upended if we were to further develop/prove our physics theories. An alien race might show up and think our system based around discrete Planck lengths is primitive and quaint.

Edit: and no pun intended with heated but it’s coincidentally fitting to the conversation 😁

My bad, don’t use Kelvin all that often 😂

Just joking around, but setting a scale is just a matter of fixing zero and choosing the size of your degree. So -50º would be halfway to absolute zero and 0º can be any reference point you want.

Lmao no disrespect intended but I hope you take a break for some self care, we’re on a meme post and I’m pitching a hypothetical temperature scale that will see zero implementation or adoption ever. I think it’s fun to play with and debate but there’s no need to get heated about it

☝️😬 Metric-stans when you suggest a theoretical tweak to Centigrade that makes it align closer with human-scale temps while preserving the decimal nature.

My main point is that we spend 90% of our lives wandering around in a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Every day we care about how we should dress or what precipitation to expect or what the high/low might be overnight or checking our apartment thermostat…

The general population only spends a fraction of that time caring about the temperature of anything else (look at a recipe->plug in the baking temp->move on). In a universe where we spent all our time measuring astrological bodies I would probably be arguing for the scale to be normalized around 100ºSol.

I boil water probably 2x per day and I have never once cared about the actual temperature of that reaction. If I dunk my hand in water at 85ºC or 99ºC its gonna hurt like fuck either way. A scale based around horse blood would probably be more tangible because I can actually tell when the mammal blood in my meat-sack body is feeling a few degrees cold/warm.

Stapling a scale solely to pure, scientific, idealized, elemental reactions is silly Enlightenment dogma. Unless we plan on using my theoretical scale for millions of years of human evolution, average body temp is nearly as constant.

I’ll agree to a single universal scale but only on the condition that -100º=0ºK

Hell, in my apartment there’s a room especially for making it very hot and humid. Even above 100c, and I still don’t boil. Weird, huh?

And I bet that room has its own thermostat, fuel, and doesn’t reach that temperature without human input. How often is the average human stepping into a sauna that it needs to be considered on a common use scale? The hottest recorded temperature on earth is 56°C, why would our daily scale need to be pegged 78% higher than that?

Endothermic refers to the ability of the organism to regulate it’s temperature, not just the ability to generate heat

Exactly! So we have 8.3 billion self-adjusting thermostats set to [nearly] the same target no matter their environment. Unlike the freezing temp, water’s boiling point can vary wildly on Earth. If I forget to check the altitude I could mistakenly think my boiling teapot is at 100°C instead of 68°C.

Home cooking usually depends way more on your ingredients and the quirks of your appliances than your target temp. Maybe your kitchen is a little more humid today and this batch of cookies is more chewy than yesterday. That’s why many recipes give hints on target texture or look (crispy, soft, golden brown…). But yes if you want a very specific outcome you’ll care much more about temp accuracy.

Celsius is great for engineering because Things Happen™️ when water starts boiling or freezing. But most people aren’t engineering daily. Cooking temps generally dont require much precision and there are too many niche break points to easily factor: safe meat temps, refrigeration temps, oil smoke points, Maillard reaction, etc… Our chefs are basically screwed no matter what.

That leaves measuring weather as the most universal daily application. Celsius is not great because the temp outside your door is going to be between mid -20º and mid 40º. It’s nice to have water freezing at 0º (snow, frost, ice) but thats the only interesting break point. You could just as easily set 100º to be the temperature of the sun and have the same daily experience.

Humans are endothermic, which means being somewhere hotter than us is Not Good™️. That would be very nice to set as a breaking point for weather purposes, but unfortunately the danger varies wildly with humidity/airflow/personal tempature regulation/hydration/etc… If we set the triple digit break to indicate an unsafe body temp then we at least can approximate the danger and get a little bonus medical utility.

Mean body temp varies slightly based on several factors:

So set 100º to be one standard deviation over and its perfect for daily use. Checkmate Celciusts

Hot take: the best temperature scale would have 0º be water freeze point and 100º be human body temp. Fahrenheit is already supposed to be that but nobody gives a shit about a saline solution freeze point and they fucked up the human body temp.

This is a joke but honestly not that far off