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Every person using their calendar is solving one simple problem in a simple way. But the real magic of the calendar is that billions of individuals use the sam

Every person using their calendar is solving one simple problem in a simple way. But the real magic of the calendar is that billions of individuals use the same calendar for the same problem and thus we can all agree what day it is, every single day. So if there's an issue with the existing calendar, then simply adjusting our calendar by an amount really no-one will notice is by far the most practical solution. Almost every industry cycles with the season; we need the calendar to track it accurately.

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
I have not broken any of that though. The article is all about trying to get 2 things to sync because of the slowing down of the earths rotation. You haven't actually described why we need to go to this effort beyond maintaining the current system. Nor why this is a practical thing to do in general beyond maintaining the current system. Loads of people accept weird times shifts all the time. The poles have 6 month days and nights. In the summer I get 3 extra hours of day light and treat 7pm as "day". We already adjust what we do by what it looks like outside. Why does the time need to "match"?
- withinboredom 5y ago
  With your calendar, wouldn't the drift eventually be so bad that the month we currently call January might be your calendar's October? When people read old stories about the fall leaves of Halloween people would think it was weird because there'd normally be snow on the ground in October, or the dead heat of summer in the southern hemisphere. And what's this about a "white Christmas?" in Spring? Keeping the time in sync with the orbit of the earth isn't just about the "here and now" but also history.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Everything hinges on our rotation around the sun - at the most fundamental level: seasons, crops, construction schedules, even military campaigns. From there on up we get holidays, sport seasons, business cycles. These things have to match up to the calendar from one year to the next or there will be chaos. If our calendar is off by a second or two a year, it's very easy to correct without confusing the general populace - most people want to spend precisely zero time thinking about calendars and orbits. Currently, only a few nerds have to worry about leap seconds and the like. And it's part of their jobs, so it's OK. In a two-calendar system, every human will have to keep track of a personal calendar and a scientific calendar. Asking people who don't care to do that - and to fix an issue we already have an almost zero-friction fix for - is a non-starter.

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago

I have not broken any of that though. The article is all about trying to get 2 things to sync because of the slowing down of the earths rotation. You haven't actually described why we need to go to this effort beyond maintaining the current system. Nor why this is a practical thing to do in general beyond maintaining the current system. Loads of people accept weird times shifts all the time. The poles have 6 month days and nights. In the summer I get 3 extra hours of day light and treat 7pm as "day". We already adjust what we do by what it looks like outside. Why does the time need to "match"?

withinboredom 5y ago
With your calendar, wouldn't the drift eventually be so bad that the month we currently call January might be your calendar's October? When people read old stories about the fall leaves of Halloween people would think it was weird because there'd normally be snow on the ground in October, or the dead heat of summer in the southern hemisphere. And what's this about a "white Christmas?" in Spring? Keeping the time in sync with the orbit of the earth isn't just about the "here and now" but also history.
FredPret 5y ago
Everything hinges on our rotation around the sun - at the most fundamental level: seasons, crops, construction schedules, even military campaigns. From there on up we get holidays, sport seasons, business cycles. These things have to match up to the calendar from one year to the next or there will be chaos. If our calendar is off by a second or two a year, it's very easy to correct without confusing the general populace - most people want to spend precisely zero time thinking about calendars and orbits. Currently, only a few nerds have to worry about leap seconds and the like. And it's part of their jobs, so it's OK. In a two-calendar system, every human will have to keep track of a personal calendar and a scientific calendar. Asking people who don't care to do that - and to fix an issue we already have an almost zero-friction fix for - is a non-starter.