4 ms·

I recognize that my position is uncommon, but I am in favor of what I call "2-DST" (two minus DST), a position which recognizes that DST is fundamentally backwa

I recognize that my position is uncommon, but I am in favor of what I call "2-DST" (two minus DST), a position which recognizes that DST is fundamentally backwards. Fewer daylight hours in the winter means we should turn the clocks forward in the winter, not the summer! "2-DST" is permanent daylight savings, except we additionally set the clocks an hour forward for the winter (just like we do now, in March). More opportunity for sunlight. More outdoor activity in the evenings. Less electricity. Less crime. Better for most businesses and most people.

scrollaway 7y ago
I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static. Must be a US thing, what with all its timezones. China has a single timezone, and doesn't observe DST. Do you think that means people in the extreme west of china have to wake up at the exact same time as people in Beijing? In fact, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time), the Xinjiang region of China has two timezones used concurrently. I guess people just wake up twice: Once at 7am, and again at 7am two hours later :) Anyway my point is, you could have the US go on a single timezone and stop observing DST. Ok, well, you don't have to open your business at 8am across the country… if your new TZ is based on Austin TX, you just open at 8am in Austin, 7am in NYC and 10am in LA. Want to give your employees more daylight in winter? Shift business hours by an hour.
- davchana 7y ago
  Yes, I agree. Keep the clock time all the same all year round; but businesses & government offices should change timings like 8-5 in Winter & 7-4 in Summer (Numbers just an example). When I was a kid in Punjab India, our schools used to shift the timings by one hour in April & September; means duration of school stays same, but it is more aligned to Solar Time twice a year. Summers like 7am-2pm; Winters 8am-3pm.
- imron 7y ago
  > the Xinjiang region of China has two timezones used concurrently And it's a complete mess. If you think daylight savings is complicated, wait until two geographically distant regions are on the same time but a different time. > Want to give your employees more daylight in winter? Rarely is it the employers wanting this, it is the employees.
- benrbray 7y ago
  I agree in principle, but if the goal really is to give working people more daylight to enjoy, it's not really practical for something like this to happen bottom up. Businesses' open hours more often than not depend on the open hours of their suppliers and their customers. Not really possible to make a local change and expect everyone to follow. Much easier if everyone changes simultaneously.
- sturgill 7y ago
  I’m a big fan of everyone in the world just using UTC and calling it a day. A meeting at 0700 is exactly what you think it means. But I also never expect it to happen.
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    It's not as good idea as you may thing: * https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish Okay, it's "1700Z" and you're at work: are the folks at the Singapore office in yet? If New York's business hours are 14-22Z, what are Berlin's? Bangalore's? Tokyo's? Seattle's? At least with timezones you can do some simple +/- math and see if you end up in the typical '9-5L' range: * https://everytimezone.com https://everytimezone.com But with only-UTC (as much I set my servers to it), you still have to keep a table of business hours.
    - moooo99 7y ago
      Keeping track of the buisness hours of a specific office is way easier than keeping track of their timezone, business hours and then convert your local time to their time to see if they're actually open.
      - christianmann 7y ago
        Maybe so, but you can pretty reasonably assume that most people are awake and active at 1:00 PM in their time zone.
        moooo99 7y ago
        You can. But especially if you don't have frequent contact with other timezones it is very hard to keep track about how far they are ahead or behind your local time. This gets even harder with DST. While this might be easy if you're just in different US timezones, but it gets increasingly harder with larger distances.
    - beobab 7y ago
      You still have to know exactly the same amount of information to know if someone is working or not, but you only have to know one piece of information per moment, because "what time is it now?" is the same for everyone. If everyone has the same frame of reference, you don't get coordinate translation errors. Going to work on Tuesday and coming home on Wednesday will be the new norm for about a third of the world.
- gpvos 7y ago
  > I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static. The entire reason we have summer/winter time is that changing the time is easier than changing business hours.
  - dooom 7y ago
    Why would changing business hours be so complicated?
    - gpvos 7y ago
      There are thousands of businesses involved. Also, work contracts.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    Uh, changing business hours is pretty simple, you know. Over here business hours routinely change during holidays for examples (various businesses open/close later or earlier depending on their client and employee needs). If it's easy for two weeks I don't see why it'd be harder for six months.
gyrgtyn 7y ago
we disagree
- benrbray 7y ago
  Who? Why? I said I didn't really expect anyone to agree with me. I'm interested in discussing the pros and cons.
James_Henry 7y ago
You'll also have more car accidents, heart attacks, sleep deprivation, etc. People, especially adolescents, should be able to sleep in more and given societies current 9-5 scheduling, the sooner the sun goes down (by the clock) the more sleep that people generally get.
- benrbray 7y ago
  Anecdotally: in places like Michigan where it's dark by 6pm in the winters, darkness really has no correlation with sleeping hours. "2-DST" would actually make it easier for working people to align their sleep schedule with the daylight.
  - James_Henry 7y ago
    "2-DST" would make it so that people have to get up much earlier in the day though, right? From my experience, in places up north people find it harder to wake up early in the winter because the morning darkness (I'm sure the cold doesn't help either).
    - lutorm 7y ago
      At high latitudes, it doesn't get light until so late that you will reasonably never wake up in daylight in the winter. But moving the light later would make it more likely that you can get out and actually see some light as opposed to going to work when it's dark and getting out when it's dark again.
      - James_Henry 7y ago
        It's not about waking up in daylight. It's about a large chuck of the population waking up earlier than is healthy. When you have research showing that the western edge of a timezone is worse off health- and sleep-wise, it is clear that a policy pushing people to get up earlier is not good.
- benrbray 7y ago
  Additionally, the OP seems to indicate the increased accidents are due to issues we have adjusting to the time change. You can certainly argue we should get rid of the time change altogether, but 2-DST would have the same time changes as our current system. Maybe there's an increased risk of traffic accidents as a result of increased evening activity. But I'd argue that's a problem with our society's unhealthy dependence on cars, rather than with 2-DST.
tlb 7y ago
Suppose you're running a business that requires physical presense for 8 hours/day, but the hours don't have to align with anyone else's. Can you propose a formula that, given sunrise & sunset times, gives optimum work hours?
samplatt 7y ago
I've been proposing this for ages, under the name "Nighttime Savings", which doesn't make sense, but doesn't make any less sense than "Daylight Savings".

scrollaway 7y ago

I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static. Must be a US thing, what with all its timezones. China has a single timezone, and doesn't observe DST. Do you think that means people in the extreme west of china have to wake up at the exact same time as people in Beijing? In fact, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time), the Xinjiang region of China has two timezones used concurrently. I guess people just wake up twice: Once at 7am, and again at 7am two hours later :) Anyway my point is, you could have the US go on a single timezone and stop observing DST. Ok, well, you don't have to open your business at 8am across the country… if your new TZ is based on Austin TX, you just open at 8am in Austin, 7am in NYC and 10am in LA. Want to give your employees more daylight in winter? Shift business hours by an hour.

davchana 7y ago
Yes, I agree. Keep the clock time all the same all year round; but businesses & government offices should change timings like 8-5 in Winter & 7-4 in Summer (Numbers just an example). When I was a kid in Punjab India, our schools used to shift the timings by one hour in April & September; means duration of school stays same, but it is more aligned to Solar Time twice a year. Summers like 7am-2pm; Winters 8am-3pm.
imron 7y ago
> the Xinjiang region of China has two timezones used concurrently And it's a complete mess. If you think daylight savings is complicated, wait until two geographically distant regions are on the same time but a different time. > Want to give your employees more daylight in winter? Rarely is it the employers wanting this, it is the employees.
benrbray 7y ago
I agree in principle, but if the goal really is to give working people more daylight to enjoy, it's not really practical for something like this to happen bottom up. Businesses' open hours more often than not depend on the open hours of their suppliers and their customers. Not really possible to make a local change and expect everyone to follow. Much easier if everyone changes simultaneously.
sturgill 7y ago
I’m a big fan of everyone in the world just using UTC and calling it a day. A meeting at 0700 is exactly what you think it means. But I also never expect it to happen.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  It's not as good idea as you may thing: * https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish Okay, it's "1700Z" and you're at work: are the folks at the Singapore office in yet? If New York's business hours are 14-22Z, what are Berlin's? Bangalore's? Tokyo's? Seattle's? At least with timezones you can do some simple +/- math and see if you end up in the typical '9-5L' range: * https://everytimezone.com https://everytimezone.com But with only-UTC (as much I set my servers to it), you still have to keep a table of business hours.
  - moooo99 7y ago
    Keeping track of the buisness hours of a specific office is way easier than keeping track of their timezone, business hours and then convert your local time to their time to see if they're actually open.
    - christianmann 7y ago
      Maybe so, but you can pretty reasonably assume that most people are awake and active at 1:00 PM in their time zone.
      - moooo99 7y ago
        You can. But especially if you don't have frequent contact with other timezones it is very hard to keep track about how far they are ahead or behind your local time. This gets even harder with DST. While this might be easy if you're just in different US timezones, but it gets increasingly harder with larger distances.
  - beobab 7y ago
    You still have to know exactly the same amount of information to know if someone is working or not, but you only have to know one piece of information per moment, because "what time is it now?" is the same for everyone. If everyone has the same frame of reference, you don't get coordinate translation errors. Going to work on Tuesday and coming home on Wednesday will be the new norm for about a third of the world.
gpvos 7y ago
> I always find these arguments kind of weird. Whether we turn or stop turning the clocks forwards/backwards doesn't mean we have to keep business hours the exact same, or even keep them static. The entire reason we have summer/winter time is that changing the time is easier than changing business hours.
- dooom 7y ago
  Why would changing business hours be so complicated?
  - gpvos 7y ago
    There are thousands of businesses involved. Also, work contracts.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  Uh, changing business hours is pretty simple, you know. Over here business hours routinely change during holidays for examples (various businesses open/close later or earlier depending on their client and employee needs). If it's easy for two weeks I don't see why it'd be harder for six months.

gyrgtyn 7y ago

we disagree

benrbray 7y ago
Who? Why? I said I didn't really expect anyone to agree with me. I'm interested in discussing the pros and cons.

James_Henry 7y ago

You'll also have more car accidents, heart attacks, sleep deprivation, etc. People, especially adolescents, should be able to sleep in more and given societies current 9-5 scheduling, the sooner the sun goes down (by the clock) the more sleep that people generally get.

benrbray 7y ago
Anecdotally: in places like Michigan where it's dark by 6pm in the winters, darkness really has no correlation with sleeping hours. "2-DST" would actually make it easier for working people to align their sleep schedule with the daylight.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  "2-DST" would make it so that people have to get up much earlier in the day though, right? From my experience, in places up north people find it harder to wake up early in the winter because the morning darkness (I'm sure the cold doesn't help either).
  - lutorm 7y ago
    At high latitudes, it doesn't get light until so late that you will reasonably never wake up in daylight in the winter. But moving the light later would make it more likely that you can get out and actually see some light as opposed to going to work when it's dark and getting out when it's dark again.
    - James_Henry 7y ago
      It's not about waking up in daylight. It's about a large chuck of the population waking up earlier than is healthy. When you have research showing that the western edge of a timezone is worse off health- and sleep-wise, it is clear that a policy pushing people to get up earlier is not good.
benrbray 7y ago
Additionally, the OP seems to indicate the increased accidents are due to issues we have adjusting to the time change. You can certainly argue we should get rid of the time change altogether, but 2-DST would have the same time changes as our current system. Maybe there's an increased risk of traffic accidents as a result of increased evening activity. But I'd argue that's a problem with our society's unhealthy dependence on cars, rather than with 2-DST.

tlb 7y ago

Suppose you're running a business that requires physical presense for 8 hours/day, but the hours don't have to align with anyone else's. Can you propose a formula that, given sunrise & sunset times, gives optimum work hours?

samplatt 7y ago

I've been proposing this for ages, under the name "Nighttime Savings", which doesn't make sense, but doesn't make any less sense than "Daylight Savings".