Did I understand correctly that the author advocates for daylight saving time because it enables some leisurely team activities to take place in daylight? How about individuals whose health...
Did I understand correctly that the author advocates for daylight saving time because it enables some leisurely team activities to take place in daylight? How about individuals whose health deteriorates from having to wake up in darkness, arguably a much larger group of people (this could even be all people, albeit for some the negative effects are greater)?
Oh that's right, I managed to miss it upon first glance: "I guess it literally kills people --- but the upside is a big deal!" So.. killing people is not really a big deal? And they aren't sure if...
Oh that's right, I managed to miss it upon first glance: "I guess it literally kills people --- but the upside is a big deal!"
So.. killing people is not really a big deal? And they aren't sure if cars are a big enough deal that we should accept the collateral casualties, but being able to do a team activity after working hours in daylight definitely is? Someone should probably do less team activities and get more sleep to recover some of their lost reasoning ability - assuming they used to have some, of course.
This is probably pretty uncharitable, but my perception is that the type of person who writes a blog post in this vein probably isn't the type of person who actually has to deal with any of the...
This is probably pretty uncharitable, but my perception is that the type of person who writes a blog post in this vein probably isn't the type of person who actually has to deal with any of the unpleasantness of DST changes. It's pretty telling the first thing he talks about in his post is how it's annoying that his ultimate frisbee team doesn't start earlier because some of his teammates work 9-5s.
I personally hate the clock changes, working graveyard already makes it tough to see any amount of daylight; and the clock change robs me of what little I usually do see.
Yep, he's definitely keeping alive the "Let them eat cake" school of "thought".
It's pretty telling the first thing he talks about in his post is how it's annoying that his ultimate frisbee team doesn't start earlier because some of his teammates work 9-5s.
Yep, he's definitely keeping alive the "Let them eat cake" school of "thought".
What about individuals whose health deteriorates from having to work during all of the daylight hours? You're not going to come up with a solution that works for everyone or even most people. We...
What about individuals whose health deteriorates from having to work during all of the daylight hours?
You're not going to come up with a solution that works for everyone or even most people. We do so much hand wringing about this thing that's mostly a slight annoyance to most people. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with daylight savings, but also if I HAD to choose, I'd prefer to do away with it, just because of the two days of confusion per year it causes, and this same endless discussion it brings up that we have to have every year.
As far as personal preference of whether it's better to wake up in darkness, or drive home in darkness, I don't really care. It kinda sucks either way, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. I'd imagine most people are in the same boat, and some people feel strongly one way or another. I doubt there's an overwhelming consensus either way.
When it comes to achieving a regular circadian rhythm without pain, we have to receive light when we wake up (bright, daylight level light). Not receiving much in the evening is important too, but...
What about individuals whose health deteriorates from having to work during all of the daylight hours?
When it comes to achieving a regular circadian rhythm without pain, we have to receive light when we wake up (bright, daylight level light). Not receiving much in the evening is important too, but not nearly as important.
Insomnia is an incredibly common and debilitating condition - much more debilitating than not being able to go golfing a few more times per year.
How many people are waking up before dawn regularly in summer? And not just before sunrise, but early enough that their health is impacted. I definitely don't think it's a large group of people...
How many people are waking up before dawn regularly in summer? And not just before sunrise, but early enough that their health is impacted. I definitely don't think it's a large group of people and definitely not "all people."
Obviously it makes more sense in some places than others (more important the farther you are from the equator) but in general I think daylight savings is great.
Globally, lots of people - and entire nations - are having to get up in darkness significantly more often within one year when DST is used vs. if it isn't. This, as well as the need to shift our...
Globally, lots of people - and entire nations - are having to get up in darkness significantly more often within one year when DST is used vs. if it isn't. This, as well as the need to shift our circadian rhythm twice annually, damage our health. The affected group is definitely larger than the group of people who participate in such team activities that must be carried out in daylight - and out of this group, for most people the activities won't take place 7 days a week, every week.
I guess I'm not convinced that there are significant, widespread negative health impacts from having to get up an hour earlier according to the sun. What about everyone that is able to sleep an...
I guess I'm not convinced that there are significant, widespread negative health impacts from having to get up an hour earlier according to the sun.
What about everyone that is able to sleep an hour longer in the morning because the sun isn't coming up at 4 in the morning, and they aren't bring woken up by the light and noise as the day starts?
The claim that deaths increase significantly around the traditions is a myth. You can see the results here that mortality increases slightly the week after spring transition, but it is also higher in the week before transition. There is a decent increase in mortality the Sunday after the autumn transition (~4%), but this day is actually an hour longer (also ~4%) so the rate is the same.
The effects of losing an hour of sleep are much much greater than those of the actual different time, and the gain of an hour at the end of summer actually had a beneficial effect.
Where I live, I get 5 months of dark mornings (and evenings) that affect my circadian rhythm negatively, and then another 6 weeks annually due to DST. Every spring, as soon as it's finally...
I guess I'm not convinced that there are significant, widespread negative health impacts from having to get up an hour earlier according to the sun.
Where I live, I get 5 months of dark mornings (and evenings) that affect my circadian rhythm negatively, and then another 6 weeks annually due to DST. Every spring, as soon as it's finally starting to lift and I feel like I survived and can start living again, the clocks are artificially moved so that I have to suffer 3 more weeks. Each fall, I have to start tolerating the situation 3 weeks sooner than I would if it weren't for DST.
And yet, I didn't realise the real effects or their scope and scale until I learned to take better care of my health overall. I used to have an irregular sleep rhythm, go to sleep way too late most days, sleep too little, eat whenever and whatever, take naps during the day due to insomnia and poor quality sleep, etc. Once I fixed all that, a few things became clear:
I need more sleep than I thought to retain baseline health.
Being able to wake up on time without routinely experiencing stress spikes means I have to be able to fall asleep in the right time the night before.
Most importantly: being able to fall asleep in the right time means I have to receive daylight grade bright light first thing after waking up in the morning, in the right time. (And of course, ideally a slow gradual shift from dark to light before waking up.) This is what actually paces the circadian clock. I sort of hate using Andrew Huberman as a reference, but this is one thing he is actually knowledgeable about. Realising how light exposure and its timing affect circadian rhythm has let me fix my sleep for good, for the first time in my life.
I am able to survive the winter months only because I happen to be privileged enough to sit in front of a medical grade therapy light for 60 minutes or more, every single morning before work. Most people can't do that, especially if we also get the 7-9 hours of sleep that most people need to stay healthy.
Obviously, the dark months will still be dark, no matter what. Even for me, with my therapy lamp, the lifting of the chronic stress that comes from being surrounded by natural darkness in the morning is a major improvement when it finally happens. Making things worse by adding 2X3 weeks of artificial misery is utterly shitty and cannot be excused by some people's desire to go golfing after work a couple of times during those weeks.
What about everyone that is able to sleep an hour longer in the morning because the sun isn't coming up at 4 in the morning, and they aren't bring woken up by the light and noise as the day starts?
Curtains, my friend.
The effects of losing an hour of sleep are much much greater than those of the actual different time, and the gain of an hour at the end of summer actually had a beneficial effect.
I know you're referring to the death toll, but I'll just comment based on my experience: a regular, unchanging circadian rhythm is extremely important to our health. These days I also follow a regular meal schedule (which then also helps with the sleep rhythm), and I've tested different timings to see which one is the best for me. Every time I change it, my body takes at least four weeks to adapt fully. Every time we go from DST to normal or the other way around, I have to dedicate extra time every day to recover from added stress and adapt to the change, for a couple weeks or so.
In the past I simply didn't notice these effects because I had so many other poor health habits muddying the waters.
I know someone who works with the Save Standard Time non-profit and while I started as a "all Daylight Saving time" person I was persuaded. So here: https://savestandardtime.com/ For anyone else...
I know someone who works with the Save Standard Time non-profit and while I started as a "all Daylight Saving time" person I was persuaded. So here:
I probably lean more towards pDST, but honestly, I just want us to pick one and stick with it! But yeah, thanks for sharing. Just a brief look at that site, especially the pics of various places...
I probably lean more towards pDST, but honestly, I just want us to pick one and stick with it!
But yeah, thanks for sharing. Just a brief look at that site, especially the pics of various places starting the day in darkness at 7-8am, several of which aren't even far North, is pretty convincing.
The map on that was pretty revealing. I'm in one of the (apparently few) areas with significant late sunrises even under standard time. My thought was always "you don't see the sun in the morning...
The map on that was pretty revealing. I'm in one of the (apparently few) areas with significant late sunrises even under standard time. My thought was always "you don't see the sun in the morning during winter anyways, so you at least see it in the evening", which I see isn't true for most people.
Standard still sucks here, but it seems like the majority of people would benefit, and I'd appreciate not changing at least.
Where I am on the West Coast of Canada, if we stuck with Standard Time year around the sun would rise at 4:21AM on June 21, likely causing it to be hot outside by 7AM during the summer. I don't...
Where I am on the West Coast of Canada, if we stuck with Standard Time year around the sun would rise at 4:21AM on June 21, likely causing it to be hot outside by 7AM during the summer. I don't want this at all. Nothing more useless than sun at 4:30AM, but those sunsets at 10PM during summer now are glorious!
Do you know why 8 am was chosen as the cutoff for "good" vs. "bad"? I don't disagree that light in the morning is important, but 8 am seems rather arbitrary, and as it is now, I'm waking up in...
Do you know why 8 am was chosen as the cutoff for "good" vs. "bad"?
I don't disagree that light in the morning is important, but 8 am seems rather arbitrary, and as it is now, I'm waking up in darkness, and it's dark when I'm done work, so it just sucks all around for me compared to 2 days ago when I at least got to spend some time outside with my kid after work.
I'd still rather permanent Standard Time than what we have now, but I'm not convinced that having the sun rise at 4am in the middle of summer is better than having the sun rise after 8 am in the winter.
I'm not sure, perhaps because 8 is the point at which most people are at school/work? But I don't recall if I read something more specific in the research.
I'm not sure, perhaps because 8 is the point at which most people are at school/work? But I don't recall if I read something more specific in the research.
Hot take, buf I'd honestly prefer to establish the other extreme: Just abolish timezones alltogether and stick to UTC. If I think locally - what do I care wether my noon is 12;00, 17:00 or 8:00?...
Hot take, buf I'd honestly prefer to establish the other extreme: Just abolish timezones alltogether and stick to UTC. If I think locally - what do I care wether my noon is 12;00, 17:00 or 8:00? Local activities will have regional schedules. Maybe on this side of the world businesses open at 08:00, and on the other side of the worls they open at 20:00. But any international activity becomes sooo much easier all of a sudden. No more converting between timezones, no more changing clocks when travelling, and no more communication issues when scheduling cross-timezone videocalls.
In a way it seems like the logical next step to me. There was a time when each town had its own time, often offset by just a couple of minutes. Some day with faster long distance travel via trains the need for standardization arose and timezones were established. And that was long before the level of internationalization we've experienced in the last couple of decades. So why stick to an outdated system when we could just have one standard for everyone?
I actually don't think it makes time easier internationally because you now have the same number for time but you have entirely different expectations of what that number means. I know what time...
I actually don't think it makes time easier internationally because you now have the same number for time but you have entirely different expectations of what that number means. I know what time my international call at 0500 starts but I have no idea if that's a reasonable hour to schedule that call and will still have to convert to be sure that it isn't in the middle of the night or overlapping with lunch or daily prayers.
I suspect most people would keep their local time for their convenience anyway, or would keep converting to that "local time". I'm not sure most people have to work across time zones every day and that the UTC is somehow better for them.
That's a transition problem though. Just like for most of the world it's unintuitive to think in miles but U.S.-Americans can't fathom thinking in kilometers. Or how my grandparents kept...
I suspect most people would keep their local time for their convenience anyway
That's a transition problem though. Just like for most of the world it's unintuitive to think in miles but U.S.-Americans can't fathom thinking in kilometers. Or how my grandparents kept converting prices into our prior currency for quite a while to gain an intuitive understanding of how much something costs.
Unless everyone keeps converting for the other reasons I mentioned. I think that's what I'm saying. If you only really use local time most of the time then you're never really going to get used to...
Unless everyone keeps converting for the other reasons I mentioned. I think that's what I'm saying. If you only really use local time most of the time then you're never really going to get used to universal time And will always use your local equivalent. It would only be the people who frequently engage internationally who are wanting it to be easier and not have to figure out time zones.
That's just my guess though.
In addition to what the other commenter said, another unwanted effect of your proposal is that the date rolls over in the middle of the day for many people. Suddenly you can no longer say “let's...
In addition to what the other commenter said, another unwanted effect of your proposal is that the date rolls over in the middle of the day for many people. Suddenly you can no longer say “let's meet on Tuesday” because “Tuesday” now encompasses an evening, a night and the following morning.
Someone proposes that. Immediately, other nations begin to complain: "that's Eurocentrism! Why does the UK get special treatment?" The Americans propose EST as the the timezone. The Chinese, BST....
Someone proposes that. Immediately, other nations begin to complain: "that's Eurocentrism! Why does the UK get special treatment?"
The Americans propose EST as the the timezone. The Chinese, BST. The Japanese, JST. Gavin Newsom proposes PST, and vows to defy any attempts to destroy.
In the end, the only thing anyone can agree on is, is to not use the other country's timezone as default. And now you have Time Zones 2 electric boogaloo.
Hmm, if at all it's only perceived as special treatment due to historical context though. Without timezones it's just an arbitrary number that's assigned to a time if day. Which orientation the...
Hmm, if at all it's only perceived as special treatment due to historical context though. Without timezones it's just an arbitrary number that's assigned to a time if day. Which orientation the earth has when the wraparound happens in effect doesn't matter as long as it's consistent. And it would get rid of the date line, which is much closer to special treatment of britain, as it creates a bunch of problems but is located far away from their perspective.
Also the discussion has been had already. UTC is not british time, but the result of universal time standardization. Any timezone and any localization of timestamps is defined relative to UTC already. The process has been done years ago, and all the named countries have agreed to the standard already.
Historical artifact or not, it doesn’t change the fact that people across the world are use to waking up at 7am or 8am, not 5pm or 1am. China tried this, and unlike an international agreement, the...
Historical artifact or not, it doesn’t change the fact that people across the world are use to waking up at 7am or 8am, not 5pm or 1am.
China tried this, and unlike an international agreement, the Chinese government has the sovereignty to enforce a single timezone. What happens in practice? Local people still use the local timezone, even if it doesn’t exist de jure.
UTC is already an accepted standard and can be used for the international scheduling purposes you describe currently without abolishing local time zones. There is absolutely zero advantage (and a...
UTC is already an accepted standard and can be used for the international scheduling purposes you describe currently without abolishing local time zones. There is absolutely zero advantage (and a bevy of disadvantages) to abolishing local time zones and forcing people to talk about time using UTC exclusively even in non-international contexts, even if it were possible to force people to do so practically (it's not).
Abolishing time zones brings many benefits, I hope. It also:
causes the question "What time is it there?" to be useless/unanswerable
necessitates significant changes to the way in which normal people talk about time
convolutes timetables, where present
means "days" are no longer the same as "days"
complicates both secular and religious law
is a staggering inconvenience for a minimum of five billion people
makes it near-impossible to reason about time in other parts of the world
does not mean everybody gets up at the same time, goes to work at the same time, or goes to bed at the same time
is not simpler.
As long as humans live in more than one part of the world, solar time is always going to be subjective. Abolishing time zones only exacerbates this problem.
All that’d do is create more confusion. There’s only a 2 hour difference between the westernmost and easternmost points of India. This means, all places are at most an hour away from the standard...
All that’d do is create more confusion.
There’s only a 2 hour difference between the westernmost and easternmost points of India. This means, all places are at most an hour away from the standard time. Even so, farmers in the easternmost regions set their clocks to the local time.
Now imagine that at the global scale. You’d also lose all intuitive meaning of the time as soon as you travelled.
Isn't is crazy that we would rather shift time about to appease capitalists rather than just do away with the system. Much like the article this statement is part in jest and part serious. In the...
Isn't is crazy that we would rather shift time about to appease capitalists rather than just do away with the system. Much like the article this statement is part in jest and part serious. In the end it doesn't matter what you think about daylight saving time because you are living in capitalism so ya know just do whatever helps you with the whole thing.
edit: I remember iv seen this site. Its the rationalists and they are meant to be super suss.
What system that replaces capitalism would prevent the controversy about whether to have daylight earlier or later in the day? Even in a totally socialist country with worker owned production,...
What system that replaces capitalism would prevent the controversy about whether to have daylight earlier or later in the day? Even in a totally socialist country with worker owned production, this would still be a problem.
Well for a start people could decide for themselves whether they want it or not and not be forced for whatever reason to observe something that doesn't really make send. judging by how much of the...
Well for a start people could decide for themselves whether they want it or not and not be forced for whatever reason to observe something that doesn't really make send. judging by how much of the planet doesn't follow it we can assume that most people aren't for it. I base this on the wikipedia map that shows its predominantly the global north that observes it.
So whatever system that would replace capitalism would at least offer a choice and ideally wouldn't be lobbied by financially motivated parties.
For those who are choosing to engage with this, note the domain. The chances of finding a, dare I say it, “rational” argument here are close enough to zero as to make no practical difference.
For those who are choosing to engage with this, note the domain. The chances of finding a, dare I say it, “rational” argument here are close enough to zero as to make no practical difference.
Here's what I don't get about the standard-daylight time shift: Wouldn't a person living on the far east edge of a time zone is basically living the "spring forward" experience compared to someone...
Here's what I don't get about the standard-daylight time shift:
Wouldn't a person living on the far east edge of a time zone is basically living the "spring forward" experience compared to someone on the far west edge during standard time? Is there any data showing that people on the extreme edges of a time zone suffer compared to those in the middle? And people closer to the poles are obviously getting a much greater change depending on the season in any case.
I get why people don't like changing time twice a year, and that there can be jet-laggy health consequences to that, I just don't get why it would matter if we picked constant standard vs constant daylight savings.
A significant amount of people are strongly for standard time and a significant amount are strongly for daylight savings only, and there’s not really any reconciling it as you can see from this...
I just don't get why it would matter if we picked constant standard vs constant daylight savings.
A significant amount of people are strongly for standard time and a significant amount are strongly for daylight savings only, and there’s not really any reconciling it as you can see from this thread.
Did I understand correctly that the author advocates for daylight saving time because it enables some leisurely team activities to take place in daylight? How about individuals whose health deteriorates from having to wake up in darkness, arguably a much larger group of people (this could even be all people, albeit for some the negative effects are greater)?
Seems myopic and poorly considered.
Well they handwave that away in the second paragraph so there's that question answered. I guess.
Yes.
Oh that's right, I managed to miss it upon first glance: "I guess it literally kills people --- but the upside is a big deal!"
So.. killing people is not really a big deal? And they aren't sure if cars are a big enough deal that we should accept the collateral casualties, but being able to do a team activity after working hours in daylight definitely is? Someone should probably do less team activities and get more sleep to recover some of their lost reasoning ability - assuming they used to have some, of course.
This is probably pretty uncharitable, but my perception is that the type of person who writes a blog post in this vein probably isn't the type of person who actually has to deal with any of the unpleasantness of DST changes. It's pretty telling the first thing he talks about in his post is how it's annoying that his ultimate frisbee team doesn't start earlier because some of his teammates work 9-5s.
I personally hate the clock changes, working graveyard already makes it tough to see any amount of daylight; and the clock change robs me of what little I usually do see.
Yep, he's definitely keeping alive the "Let them eat cake" school of "thought".
What about individuals whose health deteriorates from having to work during all of the daylight hours?
You're not going to come up with a solution that works for everyone or even most people. We do so much hand wringing about this thing that's mostly a slight annoyance to most people. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with daylight savings, but also if I HAD to choose, I'd prefer to do away with it, just because of the two days of confusion per year it causes, and this same endless discussion it brings up that we have to have every year.
As far as personal preference of whether it's better to wake up in darkness, or drive home in darkness, I don't really care. It kinda sucks either way, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. I'd imagine most people are in the same boat, and some people feel strongly one way or another. I doubt there's an overwhelming consensus either way.
When it comes to achieving a regular circadian rhythm without pain, we have to receive light when we wake up (bright, daylight level light). Not receiving much in the evening is important too, but not nearly as important.
Insomnia is an incredibly common and debilitating condition - much more debilitating than not being able to go golfing a few more times per year.
More info in my other comment.
How many people are waking up before dawn regularly in summer? And not just before sunrise, but early enough that their health is impacted. I definitely don't think it's a large group of people and definitely not "all people."
Obviously it makes more sense in some places than others (more important the farther you are from the equator) but in general I think daylight savings is great.
Globally, lots of people - and entire nations - are having to get up in darkness significantly more often within one year when DST is used vs. if it isn't. This, as well as the need to shift our circadian rhythm twice annually, damage our health. The affected group is definitely larger than the group of people who participate in such team activities that must be carried out in daylight - and out of this group, for most people the activities won't take place 7 days a week, every week.
I guess I'm not convinced that there are significant, widespread negative health impacts from having to get up an hour earlier according to the sun.
What about everyone that is able to sleep an hour longer in the morning because the sun isn't coming up at 4 in the morning, and they aren't bring woken up by the light and noise as the day starts?
The claim that deaths increase significantly around the traditions is a myth. You can see the results here that mortality increases slightly the week after spring transition, but it is also higher in the week before transition. There is a decent increase in mortality the Sunday after the autumn transition (~4%), but this day is actually an hour longer (also ~4%) so the rate is the same.
The effects of losing an hour of sleep are much much greater than those of the actual different time, and the gain of an hour at the end of summer actually had a beneficial effect.
Where I live, I get 5 months of dark mornings (and evenings) that affect my circadian rhythm negatively, and then another 6 weeks annually due to DST. Every spring, as soon as it's finally starting to lift and I feel like I survived and can start living again, the clocks are artificially moved so that I have to suffer 3 more weeks. Each fall, I have to start tolerating the situation 3 weeks sooner than I would if it weren't for DST.
And yet, I didn't realise the real effects or their scope and scale until I learned to take better care of my health overall. I used to have an irregular sleep rhythm, go to sleep way too late most days, sleep too little, eat whenever and whatever, take naps during the day due to insomnia and poor quality sleep, etc. Once I fixed all that, a few things became clear:
I am able to survive the winter months only because I happen to be privileged enough to sit in front of a medical grade therapy light for 60 minutes or more, every single morning before work. Most people can't do that, especially if we also get the 7-9 hours of sleep that most people need to stay healthy.
Obviously, the dark months will still be dark, no matter what. Even for me, with my therapy lamp, the lifting of the chronic stress that comes from being surrounded by natural darkness in the morning is a major improvement when it finally happens. Making things worse by adding 2X3 weeks of artificial misery is utterly shitty and cannot be excused by some people's desire to go golfing after work a couple of times during those weeks.
Curtains, my friend.
I know you're referring to the death toll, but I'll just comment based on my experience: a regular, unchanging circadian rhythm is extremely important to our health. These days I also follow a regular meal schedule (which then also helps with the sleep rhythm), and I've tested different timings to see which one is the best for me. Every time I change it, my body takes at least four weeks to adapt fully. Every time we go from DST to normal or the other way around, I have to dedicate extra time every day to recover from added stress and adapt to the change, for a couple weeks or so.
In the past I simply didn't notice these effects because I had so many other poor health habits muddying the waters.
I get like 1-2 hours of somewhat-darkness in summer, does it count? :P
I know someone who works with the Save Standard Time non-profit and while I started as a "all Daylight Saving time" person I was persuaded. So here:
https://savestandardtime.com/
For anyone else curious. I found the data very persuasive vs my own anecdotal experience.
I probably lean more towards pDST, but honestly, I just want us to pick one and stick with it!
But yeah, thanks for sharing. Just a brief look at that site, especially the pics of various places starting the day in darkness at 7-8am, several of which aren't even far North, is pretty convincing.
Permanent Standard Time it is!
I absolutely was pro permanent daylight saving time as well until reading through all the data. Like I said, it was very persuasive!
The map on that was pretty revealing. I'm in one of the (apparently few) areas with significant late sunrises even under standard time. My thought was always "you don't see the sun in the morning during winter anyways, so you at least see it in the evening", which I see isn't true for most people.
Standard still sucks here, but it seems like the majority of people would benefit, and I'd appreciate not changing at least.
Where I am on the West Coast of Canada, if we stuck with Standard Time year around the sun would rise at 4:21AM on June 21, likely causing it to be hot outside by 7AM during the summer. I don't want this at all. Nothing more useless than sun at 4:30AM, but those sunsets at 10PM during summer now are glorious!
Do you know why 8 am was chosen as the cutoff for "good" vs. "bad"?
I don't disagree that light in the morning is important, but 8 am seems rather arbitrary, and as it is now, I'm waking up in darkness, and it's dark when I'm done work, so it just sucks all around for me compared to 2 days ago when I at least got to spend some time outside with my kid after work.
I'd still rather permanent Standard Time than what we have now, but I'm not convinced that having the sun rise at 4am in the middle of summer is better than having the sun rise after 8 am in the winter.
I'm not sure, perhaps because 8 is the point at which most people are at school/work? But I don't recall if I read something more specific in the research.
Hot take, buf I'd honestly prefer to establish the other extreme: Just abolish timezones alltogether and stick to UTC. If I think locally - what do I care wether my noon is 12;00, 17:00 or 8:00? Local activities will have regional schedules. Maybe on this side of the world businesses open at 08:00, and on the other side of the worls they open at 20:00. But any international activity becomes sooo much easier all of a sudden. No more converting between timezones, no more changing clocks when travelling, and no more communication issues when scheduling cross-timezone videocalls.
In a way it seems like the logical next step to me. There was a time when each town had its own time, often offset by just a couple of minutes. Some day with faster long distance travel via trains the need for standardization arose and timezones were established. And that was long before the level of internationalization we've experienced in the last couple of decades. So why stick to an outdated system when we could just have one standard for everyone?
I actually don't think it makes time easier internationally because you now have the same number for time but you have entirely different expectations of what that number means. I know what time my international call at 0500 starts but I have no idea if that's a reasonable hour to schedule that call and will still have to convert to be sure that it isn't in the middle of the night or overlapping with lunch or daily prayers.
I suspect most people would keep their local time for their convenience anyway, or would keep converting to that "local time". I'm not sure most people have to work across time zones every day and that the UTC is somehow better for them.
That's a transition problem though. Just like for most of the world it's unintuitive to think in miles but U.S.-Americans can't fathom thinking in kilometers. Or how my grandparents kept converting prices into our prior currency for quite a while to gain an intuitive understanding of how much something costs.
Unless everyone keeps converting for the other reasons I mentioned. I think that's what I'm saying. If you only really use local time most of the time then you're never really going to get used to universal time And will always use your local equivalent. It would only be the people who frequently engage internationally who are wanting it to be easier and not have to figure out time zones.
That's just my guess though.
In addition to what the other commenter said, another unwanted effect of your proposal is that the date rolls over in the middle of the day for many people. Suddenly you can no longer say “let's meet on Tuesday” because “Tuesday” now encompasses an evening, a night and the following morning.
Someone proposes that. Immediately, other nations begin to complain: "that's Eurocentrism! Why does the UK get special treatment?"
The Americans propose EST as the the timezone. The Chinese, BST. The Japanese, JST. Gavin Newsom proposes PST, and vows to defy any attempts to destroy.
In the end, the only thing anyone can agree on is, is to not use the other country's timezone as default. And now you have Time Zones 2 electric boogaloo.
Not happening.
Hmm, if at all it's only perceived as special treatment due to historical context though. Without timezones it's just an arbitrary number that's assigned to a time if day. Which orientation the earth has when the wraparound happens in effect doesn't matter as long as it's consistent. And it would get rid of the date line, which is much closer to special treatment of britain, as it creates a bunch of problems but is located far away from their perspective.
Also the discussion has been had already. UTC is not british time, but the result of universal time standardization. Any timezone and any localization of timestamps is defined relative to UTC already. The process has been done years ago, and all the named countries have agreed to the standard already.
Historical artifact or not, it doesn’t change the fact that people across the world are use to waking up at 7am or 8am, not 5pm or 1am.
China tried this, and unlike an international agreement, the Chinese government has the sovereignty to enforce a single timezone. What happens in practice? Local people still use the local timezone, even if it doesn’t exist de jure.
UTC is already an accepted standard and can be used for the international scheduling purposes you describe currently without abolishing local time zones. There is absolutely zero advantage (and a bevy of disadvantages) to abolishing local time zones and forcing people to talk about time using UTC exclusively even in non-international contexts, even if it were possible to force people to do so practically (it's not).
you might want to read https://qntm.org/abolish
This won't work and is a bad idea.
To quote the "in summary" portion as a tl;dr:
All that’d do is create more confusion.
There’s only a 2 hour difference between the westernmost and easternmost points of India. This means, all places are at most an hour away from the standard time. Even so, farmers in the easternmost regions set their clocks to the local time.
Now imagine that at the global scale. You’d also lose all intuitive meaning of the time as soon as you travelled.
Isn't is crazy that we would rather shift time about to appease capitalists rather than just do away with the system. Much like the article this statement is part in jest and part serious. In the end it doesn't matter what you think about daylight saving time because you are living in capitalism so ya know just do whatever helps you with the whole thing.
edit: I remember iv seen this site. Its the rationalists and they are meant to be super suss.
What system that replaces capitalism would prevent the controversy about whether to have daylight earlier or later in the day? Even in a totally socialist country with worker owned production, this would still be a problem.
Well for a start people could decide for themselves whether they want it or not and not be forced for whatever reason to observe something that doesn't really make send. judging by how much of the planet doesn't follow it we can assume that most people aren't for it. I base this on the wikipedia map that shows its predominantly the global north that observes it.
So whatever system that would replace capitalism would at least offer a choice and ideally wouldn't be lobbied by financially motivated parties.
An argument for the beauty that should be appreciated of the fact that daylight savings exists, solving an awful co-ordination problem
For those who are choosing to engage with this, note the domain. The chances of finding a, dare I say it, “rational” argument here are close enough to zero as to make no practical difference.
Here's what I don't get about the standard-daylight time shift:
Wouldn't a person living on the far east edge of a time zone is basically living the "spring forward" experience compared to someone on the far west edge during standard time? Is there any data showing that people on the extreme edges of a time zone suffer compared to those in the middle? And people closer to the poles are obviously getting a much greater change depending on the season in any case.
I get why people don't like changing time twice a year, and that there can be jet-laggy health consequences to that, I just don't get why it would matter if we picked constant standard vs constant daylight savings.
A significant amount of people are strongly for standard time and a significant amount are strongly for daylight savings only, and there’s not really any reconciling it as you can see from this thread.
Split the difference!
I have a pretty strong preference for sunlight in the afternoon/evening but I'm willing to compromise :)