4 ms·
> That's impossible to achieve across all latitudes and longitudes, and it's totally arbitrary and has zero benefit. > Solar noon matters to precisely nobody.
by jmwilson 6y ago
> That's impossible to achieve across all latitudes and longitudes, and it's totally arbitrary and has zero benefit.
> Solar noon matters to precisely nobody. No one is looking at the sky to tell time.
That's why the OP said "about when the sun is highest" not "exactly when the sun is highest". And it matters if you like the idea of midday being at, well, the middle of the day. Deliberately adding another ~4% error on top of whatever is there because of arbitrary time zone boundaries, and things begin to add up and eventually you end up like Spain.
> People want sunlight after work. They don't want to be depressed because they finish the day and it's dark outside.
To state the obvious, changing the clocks doesn't change the amount of daylight available. As another commenter said, if we've learned anything from the pandemic, maybe it's that we can be flexible about work hours instead of warping our sense of time and the rhythm of the day because managers and office workers can't fathom the idea of seasonal work hours.
- pseudalopex 6y agoI understand why some people want more light in the morning. I understand why some people want more light in the evening. I don't understand why anyone would care when solar noon is.
- Talanes 6y agoBecause it's the traditional marker for midday. You said yourself that different people want light at different times of day, so trying to accommodate people's needs like that will always fail someone. Why not skew as close to traditional time as feasible, if all we need to do is agree on one standard?
- echelon 6y agoMore people want it later. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/poll-74-percent-of-americans-want-to-end-daylight-saving-time-but-keep-later-sunsets-300549400.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/poll-74-percent-of-...
- pseudalopex 6y agoYou seem to assume people's preferences are monotonic and average to solar time. Most people want more light in the evening. And most people say light before or after work is better than neither.
- Talanes 6y agoMy assumption is that individual people's preferences are an insignificantly small data point compared to thousands of years of solar-based time schemes that our ancestors seemed to get by just fine with.
- tlb 6y agoI think you can ignore data from before electric lighting.
- pseudalopex 6y agoMost of our ancestors didn't work fixed hours in artificial light.