Eli5: Can you become resistant to cold and hot weather at the same time? Or would a higher tolerance of one of the two automatically make your body more susceptible to the other?
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Acclimatization to hot or cold temperatures is a real and proven phenomenon, but it doesn’t work two ways at the same time. Swimmers who specialize in cold water, such as those who swim the English Channel, acclimate by not only swimming in icy water several times a week but also living in cold houses and generally avoiding any warmth.
The philosopher John Locke had this (pretty easily accomplished) thought experiment where you’d take one hand and stick it in a bucket of cold water, and one hand and stick it in a bucket of hot water. You later take your hands out of their respective buckets and submerge them in a bucket of lukewarm water — the hand that was in the cold water is going to feel hot, and the hand that was in the hot water was going to feel cold. Another philosopher, George Berkeley, took from this that “hot” and “cold” are qualities that belong to you, not the water.
If you spend more time in cold weather you’ll feel hotter in hot weather, and vice versa. If you live somewhere with two extremes like I do, then you’ll know the phenomenon 10°C (50°F) — when it gets down to 10°C in the fall, everyone puts on a light jacket. When it goes up to 10°C in the spring, everyone’s out in their t-shirts.
Like Berkeley suggested, relative “temperature” as you experience it is a property of your mind. Hot and cold are going to be exacerbated not only by your previous experiences relative to those temperatures, it’ll also feel hotter or colder based on your own perception. Not to say that temperature itself as a property of matter doesn’t literally exist — I wouldn’t advise jumping into a volcano to demonstrate a triumph of “mind over matter” — but your perception of temperature is a big, big part of your tolerance. You could conceivably become more tolerant of both, it’s just a matter of willpower. Hell, you could maybe even become one of those Buddhist monks who can literally just raise or lower their body temperature at will.
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