the way we name the hours of the day is arbitrary, but the system serves to coordinate human activity. unless you do mostly asynchronous activities that don't i

the way we name the hours of the day is arbitrary, but the system serves to coordinate human activity. unless you do mostly asynchronous activities that don't involve coordinating with other people, you can't just decide when to start your day. there's not much point in opening your coffee shop after everyone is already at work. when people talk about renumbering the hours of the day, they are really talking about recoordinating the hours that everyone else expects to interact with each other. changing the numbers themselves is just a hack to shift everyone's schedule at once. it's easier to shift 9am to 8am than it is to get every business to change their posted hours.