At first sight I agree, it might seem counterintuitive. But you have to consider the logic where it came from in photography.
It helps you easily balance against known black-body temperatures, so if light-bulb lit set of 2800K, you want to achieve correct white, you set the white 'balance' to 2800K.
If common daylight temperature is 5000-5500K +/- in Central Europe midday, you will set your white-balance to roughly this, and you don't even have to search for any white object in your scene, or bring grey-card along. You don't need to do any math.
It is intuitive for the given purpose :- ).