Our society has stabilized on a business schedule and sleep pattern that is asymmetrical about noon; most people stay up after 6pm and wake up after 6AM, regard

Our society has stabilized on a business schedule and sleep pattern that is asymmetrical about noon; most people stay up after 6pm and wake up after 6AM, regardless of when the sun rises and sets in their locale. If you live in the perfectly calibrated point for your time zone (such that the sun is directly at its apex exactly at noon, with the caveat that you aren't on the equator) you will experience the sun rising before 6AM for half the year, and setting before 6PM for the other half, leaving you with wasted daylight in the summer and lots of darkness during waking hours in the winter. Since a larger portion of our waking (and non-working) hours are after 6PM, the thinking goes that it is beneficial for more of the year to bias your daylight to the evening by an hour than to actually be perfectly calibrated to solar noon.