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Comment by esperent | Hacker News Reader

I moved from a cold climate to a tropical climate and let me assure you there's no human universal understanding of what's comfortably hot or cold, definitely not to the point of putting a percentage on it. I can walk around in a T-shirt and shorts at 17C (62f) while locals will be wrapping up in scarves and talking about how freezing it is. Meanwhile they'll be fairly comfortable at 35C (95f), at least if the humidity isn't high, and I'll be stuck in with the AC blasting.

So in other words Fahrenheit is a western centric measurement (or at least, temperature climate centric), while Celsius is universal.

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The subjective experience doesn’t really matter because many places in the US will experience a 100 degree F range over an entire year. So it’s not the “comfortable range” but the actual range you’ll get in many parts of the US (whether you like it or not).

Right, but "room temperature" is pretty universal everywhere because we are going with the "average human" rather than "outliers exist and maybe feel differently"

No it's not. Room temperature in tropical countries is often 26-30C.

I work in the food industry and this whole "room temperature" thing is a major bugbear for me actually because when so much food dates markings are designed around a room temperature of ~22C, it's a big health and safety issue for people (and shops, warehouses, restaurants) who don't know that and happily store the goods up to the date marking at 30C. Deciding that room temperature ~=22C and basing worldwide food safety on that is absolutely Western centric.

Obviously people here are not stupid and don't store meat etc. past when it's gone bad. But I've often bought e.g. oils from suppliers and it's clear that it's on the edge of rancidity even though it's got a year+ to go on the date because it's been stored at "room temperature".

> Right, but "room temperature" is pretty universal everywhere

Yes. And it is between 16 °C and 30 °C. (depending if the test room has AC or not).

But as you say: it is pretty universal everywhere.

The US has the widest range of temperatures of any country. Locations can vary by >50°C in a 24 hour period. Extreme temperatures are familiar to Americans and their society is well-adapted to it.

Calling Fahrenheit "western centric" is nonsensical. Every other country has a narrower temperature range that fits within the US temperature range.

> The US has the widest range of temperatures of any country

I assure you it does not. But I guess American Exceptionalism makes you want to believe that so go ahead.

A 5s google search suggests the country with the widest range is probably Russia.

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