3 ms·

This will probably get lost, but anyway. Socially we need a way to synchronize with each other and we designed our culture around calendars and clocks, synchro

This will probably get lost, but anyway. Socially we need a way to synchronize with each other and we designed our culture around calendars and clocks, synchronized to Earth revolutions - midnight. Our bodies are designed (evolved if you want) to synchronize with the sun and there the best (healthiest) waking time is at sunrise. When synchronized to midnight, sunrise time varies and that variation depends on latitude. It is simply preferable to have waking time synchronized with the sunrise. DST is one way to do that and actually quite good: it keeps clocks universally synchronized around the world allows scheduling not to consider sunrise time variations.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
> It is simply preferable to have waking time synchronized with the sunrise. This seems like a preference stated like an objective fact, unless I’ve misunderstood. I have been waking up between 11am and noon for years. The only issue I think it causes for me is it can make scheduling things with other people difficult. There was a brief period in my life when I woke up before 6am (about six months in 2016) but at no other time have I woken up at sunrise.
- friendzis 5y ago
  waking with the sunrise is preferable in the same way as not-smoking is preferable
Cogito 5y ago
What are you actually suggesting here? Say that sunrise is at a fixed time every day, for example 6am (to avoid changing the entire system too much). Well sunrise for me might be quite different to sunrise for my neighbour, especially if I live in the valley and she lives at the top of the hill. Every quarter of a degree around the globe (25km east or west, give or take) would have their clocks shifted by a minute. I guess meetings and phone calls would require a location and a time, and we would need to convert the time from wherever we are right now into the time where the meeting is taking place. The time between sunrises changes every day, would we add and subtract the extra time every day, or would we have a have an extra hour every now and then?
- friendzis 5y ago
  I'm not suggesting things here. Funnily, you use the exact same arguments against sunrise-synced time that are used against DST: coordination problems regarding "local time". As long as you have the very concept of "local time" you are going to run into some form of the problem where it is difficult to interpret what local time is and how it relates to other times. DST is just one possible difference
  - Cogito 5y ago
    To be clear I'm not arguing for or against any specific time system. In your original post you said "we designed our culture around calendars and clocks, synchronized to Earth revolutions". For me the driving principles of modern time systems seem to be (and I think this might align with what you said) - each day should have the same length - people who live or work near each other should agree on the time - the time on the clock should correspond to the position of the sun, locally All three principles are important, but the third definitely takes a back seat in many places/lattitudes. You seem to be suggesting the third should be the most important. Do you think the others are important as well, or are you suggesting that we change our culture so that they are not important to us anymore?
    - friendzis 5y ago
      The core thing I am saying is that our circadian rhythm naturally tends to clock to sunrise and syncing our lives with sunrise is the healthiest option. Actually performing that is a bit problematic on various fronts, mostly related to the way we do timekeeping. Agreeing on location data is relatively easy (with day-to-day precision), because we have well-defined units of distance and reference points. Agreeing on time is likewise difficult, because we have neither: both length-of-daylight and start-of-daylight tend to vary by location and time (heh, recursion). The time on the clock (the way it works today) cannot really correspond to position of the sun: the further you stray from equator, the less defined this relationship becomes, until you cross polar circles where this relationship breaks completely. People agreeing on time *only* locally is not really helpful with close international relationships. Essentially, there is no good way around this. Time references like "at sunset" or "a year from now" are just not universally defined. We could base our time references on universally coordinated time which would require local time reference adjustments (work starts at 8:00 in location A, but at 13:00 at location B), or we could keep time references consistent in local, but adjust the meaning of local time. It is the same in the end - you need some logic and context to work out what "at sunset" means. And this is my gripe with anti-DST. DST is not problematic. If anything, DST is easy, because DST adjustments happen in large chunks and therefore errors in DST handling usually become apparent quick. What if we did DST in 1 minute increments and northern regions had a total of 6 hours DST shift? It would be much harder to spot handling errors, but the underlying mechanism would still be the same. The problem is not clocks or timekeeping itself, but rather how we communicate and synchronize what an ill-defined time reference actually means.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

> It is simply preferable to have waking time synchronized with the sunrise. This seems like a preference stated like an objective fact, unless I’ve misunderstood. I have been waking up between 11am and noon for years. The only issue I think it causes for me is it can make scheduling things with other people difficult. There was a brief period in my life when I woke up before 6am (about six months in 2016) but at no other time have I woken up at sunrise.

friendzis 5y ago
waking with the sunrise is preferable in the same way as not-smoking is preferable

Cogito 5y ago

What are you actually suggesting here? Say that sunrise is at a fixed time every day, for example 6am (to avoid changing the entire system too much). Well sunrise for me might be quite different to sunrise for my neighbour, especially if I live in the valley and she lives at the top of the hill. Every quarter of a degree around the globe (25km east or west, give or take) would have their clocks shifted by a minute. I guess meetings and phone calls would require a location and a time, and we would need to convert the time from wherever we are right now into the time where the meeting is taking place. The time between sunrises changes every day, would we add and subtract the extra time every day, or would we have a have an extra hour every now and then?

friendzis 5y ago
I'm not suggesting things here. Funnily, you use the exact same arguments against sunrise-synced time that are used against DST: coordination problems regarding "local time". As long as you have the very concept of "local time" you are going to run into some form of the problem where it is difficult to interpret what local time is and how it relates to other times. DST is just one possible difference
- Cogito 5y ago
  To be clear I'm not arguing for or against any specific time system. In your original post you said "we designed our culture around calendars and clocks, synchronized to Earth revolutions". For me the driving principles of modern time systems seem to be (and I think this might align with what you said) - each day should have the same length - people who live or work near each other should agree on the time - the time on the clock should correspond to the position of the sun, locally All three principles are important, but the third definitely takes a back seat in many places/lattitudes. You seem to be suggesting the third should be the most important. Do you think the others are important as well, or are you suggesting that we change our culture so that they are not important to us anymore?
  - friendzis 5y ago
    The core thing I am saying is that our circadian rhythm naturally tends to clock to sunrise and syncing our lives with sunrise is the healthiest option. Actually performing that is a bit problematic on various fronts, mostly related to the way we do timekeeping. Agreeing on location data is relatively easy (with day-to-day precision), because we have well-defined units of distance and reference points. Agreeing on time is likewise difficult, because we have neither: both length-of-daylight and start-of-daylight tend to vary by location and time (heh, recursion). The time on the clock (the way it works today) cannot really correspond to position of the sun: the further you stray from equator, the less defined this relationship becomes, until you cross polar circles where this relationship breaks completely. People agreeing on time *only* locally is not really helpful with close international relationships. Essentially, there is no good way around this. Time references like "at sunset" or "a year from now" are just not universally defined. We could base our time references on universally coordinated time which would require local time reference adjustments (work starts at 8:00 in location A, but at 13:00 at location B), or we could keep time references consistent in local, but adjust the meaning of local time. It is the same in the end - you need some logic and context to work out what "at sunset" means. And this is my gripe with anti-DST. DST is not problematic. If anything, DST is easy, because DST adjustments happen in large chunks and therefore errors in DST handling usually become apparent quick. What if we did DST in 1 minute increments and northern regions had a total of 6 hours DST shift? It would be much harder to spot handling errors, but the underlying mechanism would still be the same. The problem is not clocks or timekeeping itself, but rather how we communicate and synchronize what an ill-defined time reference actually means.