16 ms·

Permanent daylight saving time? Where efforts to ‘lock the clocks’ stand

32 points by evo_9 4y ago

falcolas 4y ago
Dead in the water. Like almost anything that touches partisan politics (or bike shedding, they’re scarily similar), we’re not stuck on whether we should stop the clocks, but whether it should be on DST or standard time. And both sides of the debate have found science that backs up their opinion, and cherry picked public comments, so the deadlock continues. Even though the doing nothing is far worse than picking the wrong shed color.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  I feel like this might be a uniquely American mindset: what we have is terrible. There are better ideas, but they are not perfect, therefore we will stick with the terrible status quo. See it in our healthcare system too.
  - kunagi7 4y ago
    The clocks' problem is also replicated at the European side of the Atlantic. The current situation is terrible but opinions differ between locking the clock at standard time or daylight savings time. The EU tried to step in both 2019 and 2021 but the whole situation is quite stuck [0]. I prefer standard time since in winter using DST would mean dark skies until 9 am. But most people here seem to enjoy how in summer the sun doesn't set until 10 pm. So, whoever touches this topic will end up getting burned by either side and no one dares to change it or suggest it (for now). So the terrible status quo continues. [0] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/28/when-will-the-eu-end-seasonal-clock-changes-only-time-will-tell https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/28/when-will-the-...
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Isn't your example of legitimate differences of opinion evidence that there is no clearly better option?
  - jmull 4y ago
    > uniquely American mindset Doesn't the EU (and various other countries) still switch back and forth between standard and daylight savings time?
    - pixelesque 4y ago
      Yes. Many European countries, Canada, some Australian states/territories and New Zealand.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      The EU was supposed to end the system (countries would choose to keep either their summer or winter time zones) but it seems to have become blocked. Just the UK having left with no political desire to do anything that looks like an EU idea, combined with Irish opposition to different zones for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland may stymy it indefinitely. In the meantime, all EU countries observe a summer time that starts and ends on the same day across the EU.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I think “making perfect the enemy of good” is not a uniquely American thing. Something that does seem unusually American (although I’m sure not uniquely) is: We all agree this thing is bad, and something should be done. But the primary way to make big changes is to have one side push it and make concessions to the other side, to get it done. Nobody is willing to make concessions for something we all agree is good, so the good thing will never get done. And also, we all agree it is bad, but our solutions are different, maybe even just in name, so we can’t let it be solved because that would give the other team a W.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    Or 12 hour time when everyone else is on 24 Or Imperial measurement when everyone else is on metric Or middle endian date when...
- starkd 4y ago
  It all depends on what you are used to. Its just a standard. We have been switching between the two for decades now. Why did we adopt it to begin with?
  - falcolas 4y ago
    It’s killing people. It provides no tangible benefits in a world with artificial lights. The offset we pick won’t really matter, but stopping the switch twice yearly will save lives.
    - starkd 4y ago
      That it is killing people is difficult to show. You would need a control group. There are so many factors, there will be criticism of any such study conducted.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        The control group is the rest of the year. Plus states/nations which don't do a DST switch. And there are plenty of studies already; I highly recommend perusing them. I won't insult your intelligence by offering a lmgtfy link.
    - yucky 4y ago
      Every study I've seen on this has been complete bunk. Which makes sense because how on earth could getting 1 hour less sleep on a random Saturday once a year lead to untold numbers of deaths? It's absurd. Change your clocks and if it bothers you drink an extra glass of wine at dinner and nod off a little sooner. People that get emotional about daylight savings are an odd bunch to say the least.
- b112 4y ago
  Dead in the water. Like almost anything that touches partisan politics While true, and while I think most will agree that there are issues with US partisan politics, here's the thing... Many people actually like DST. I personally do. I don't think this is quite as clear cut as some things. It depends upon where you live (the farther north, it seems (to me) there is more support). It also depends upon whether you want light in morning or night. So to restate, I think this issue is more "people just have opinions for legit reasons", rather than typical US partisan politics.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    It’s been proven that shifting between the two time offsets kills people. Here’s one example article that discusses this. https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-deadly-2018-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-dead... Stopping this is more important than picking the right offset to stop it at.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      You switch the clocks 2x per year, or you switch every schedule that operates on them 2x per year. People would still have to deal with the change either way.
      - dontlaugh 4y ago
        1h is not enough to make up for the difference in light, yet changing the clocks is disruptive. Much better to change schedules as often and by as much as suitable in each case.
        s1artibartfast 4y ago
        So instead of changing clocks 2x, every business and school have different schedules that change >2 times per year and you think that is the better option?
- bannedbybros 4y ago
  [dead]
starkd 4y ago
Even if passed, I suspect the same complaints will be made. Time is just a standard. It all depends on what you are accustomed to.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Standard time is fine. Daylight savings time is fine. Stop switching between them. Pick one and stick with it. It's not number on the clock. It's the switching.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    You switch the clocks 2x per year, or you switch every schedule that operates on them 2x per year. People would still have to deal with the change either way.
    - sirwhinesalot 4y ago
      You don't need to change any schedule.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        Sure, it isn't mandatory , but people will want to because they don't like getting up 3 hours before dawn to take their kids to school and go to work.
        jameshart 4y ago
        I don’t like working through for hours after sunset in the middle of winter but I suck it up and do it. In northern latitudes there aren’t enough daylight hours for a full working day to be between sunrise and sunset. That’s the immutable constraint - everything else is to deal with that.
        pwinnski 4y ago
        Okay, I generally agree with you, but it's hard to see how a change (er, lack of change) of one hour on clocks suddenly results in "3 hours before dawn." The hyperbole doesn't help, IMO. Also, we see frequent posts here on HN about how schools ought to start later overall, for all students, so it seems reasonable to think that school could be made to start well after sunrise for everyone all year long.
shagie 4y ago
The wikipedia page on Permanent time observation in the United States ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_... ) has a useful table for the state level action.
jonstjohn 4y ago
I’m an advocate of UTC everywhere.
- b112 4y ago
  UTC everywhere. jonstjohn's dream is realised, in 2052, after decades of work. In a world unifying moment, religion, country divergence and politics aside, the entire planet falls into the gentle embrace of UTC. 17 seconds later, Mars declares itself UTC+1.
  - quest88 4y ago
    HA!
- tzs 4y ago
  Why? We'd still have to have time zones (except maybe it be more sensible to call them something else), and we'd still have to deal with the amount of daylight exhibiting significant seasonal variations at places that aren't close to the equator. The fact that we live on an approximately spherical world whose rotation is not tidal locked to the star it orbits, that world rotates on an axis that is not perpendicular to its orbital plane around said star, we have a biology that uses local sunrise to synchronize its internal clocks to the planet's rotation, and we have spread to occupy regions of the world that are not near its equator imposes a lower limit on the complexity of our timekeeping.
- pseudalopex 4y ago
  https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish
inciampati 4y ago
Does permanent daylight savings time seem to anyone else like a symptom of a society with a case of light-at-night induced jetlag? Why should the only visible marker of the day---noon---not be approximately noon on the clock? If we need to shift school and work start times relative to the sun, we could you know, just do that...
- ajross 4y ago
  Conversely, why should the "middle" of our daily schedule, when lunch breaks etc. are scheduled, have to coincide with the solar maximum? Modern society compresses "boring stuff" into the first half of the day and puts the fun stuff at the end. Why not give it more light? Meh. Just pick something, I guess. But this isn't an engineering problem and there's no correct solution.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Our breaks don't have to coincide with the solar maximum. We can set them at any time we want. Which is why "permanent dst" makes no sense. However, calibrating our wall time so that noon marks the high point of the sun is the obviously correct thing from setting up the system. This is why this has been done historically. What we decide as the right time to get up, have lunch, is derived from the calibration. People who live at the extreme ends of a time zone tend to adjust their day schedule accordingly.
  - jameshart 4y ago
    Took me years after moving to the US to get used to the idea that 12-1 is lunch hour, rather than 1-2.
    - inciampati 4y ago
      And also not 2:30-4...
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    >> this isn't an engineering problem and there's no correct solution. It was an engineering problem, very literally an engineer problem. Standardized time zones were needed to keep trains, the big heavy things driven by engineers, from smacking into each other at speed. Coordinating all the train station clocks wasn't done for social reasons but for safety and efficiency. Imagine trying to run a modern air transport network if every airport changed its clock a few minutes every day. Total chaos.
kixiQu 4y ago
Seems vaguely irresponsible to report on this issue solely from the political lens without noting that medical experts think it is a bad idea (with only some debate about just how bad). https://www.thensf.org/national-sleep-foundation-reiterates-support-for-permanent-standard-time/ https://www.thensf.org/national-sleep-foundation-reiterates-... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/11/1162345477/changing-our-clocks-is-a-health-hazard-just-ask-a-sleep-doctor https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/11/1162345... (linked for reporting on AASM and AMA's positions which I don't want to go find independent links for)
- olivierlacan 4y ago
  Careful, your phrasing makes it seem like you mean that making DST permanent is a bad idea. Your links argue the opposite: that making DST permanent is much healthier than switching back & forth.
  - tzs 4y ago
    They both do argue that permanent DST is a bad idea. They argue for permanent standard time.
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    The cited work is clear that if we care about health, we should not make DST permanent, but rather abolish it altogether.
  - jwestbury 4y ago
    Sleep experts largely agree that permanent DST is bad, and that if we're going to stop switching, it should be permanent standard time.
_ph_ 4y ago
I consider DST a hack to move the day-start earlier during the time of the year where the daytime is significantly longer than the night time. It is annoying, but to some extend it works - though in my eyes there are clear indications that your schedule has compensated partly for it, reducing its effect. On the other side, the time shift is quite bothersome to many and introduces a lot of efforts which translate into costs. So there are good arguments to abolish it. What I cannot get are the requests for permanent "summer time". It is an illusion, long term. Because our day-rhythm is tied to the motion of the sun. Yes, we have to get up to be at work or in school at the set time, but that time does depend on the motion of the sun. Any short time advantage from "detuning" will be compensated. As you can see in all the places where the time deviates a lot from the astronomical time at that place.
- WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  I don't think it's an illusion. While I agree that our bodies are tied to the rising and setting of the sun, we have a system in place that combats this. The need to get up for work, alarm clocks, the want of the people to have more time in the evening (i.e. get up & go to work). This has the overall effect that our day is already shifted wrt solar noon. In that case having an additional hour of sunlight in the evening in the dark summer months is more interesting than having it in the morning where most people are on auto-pilot anyway to get to their day-job.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    You are missing something: the day schedule society agreed upon derives from the average run of the sun. School doesn't start at 8 because that is some special number, but because without DST it is the value which works best. You want it to start early in the morning, but late enough that everyone is awake (at least kind of). If society switched to permanent "summer time", sooner or later school starts would shift to 9am, as in the winter 8am would be just too early.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      > sooner or later school starts would shift to 9am, as in the winter 8am would be just too early. Sounds like a good idea anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_school_later_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_school_later_movement
somewhereoutth 4y ago
During summer time we should take advantage of all the natural light available, as it is during summertime that we tend to be outdoors the most. So DST. That leaves the question of winter time - do the benefits of moving the daylight period for winter outweigh the disadvantages of clock switching twice a year?
Pigalowda 4y ago
Useless government! Maybe we can appeal to our corporate overlords and each company can decide to use it or not..
- BigCryo 4y ago
  The government at this point is basically incapable of doing anything useful for the people unless it does something good for the elites.. if it does nothing good for the elites the government will do nothing about anything
acjacobson 4y ago
I guess it's an unpopular opinion on HN, but I like switching back and forth between daylight saving and standard time twice a year. I live relatively north and I like having very long days in the summer when more daylight is available for both the morning and evening. Without DST, the sun would rise at 4am for me in the summer - what on earth am I going to do with that? I'd much rather it rise at 5am, and I get an extra hour in the evening. On the other side permanent DST would be awful in the winter because then the sun wouldn't rise for me until 9am. Maybe countries and states should choose based on how far north or south they are because that seems to be a key factor for how useful DST is? But beyond that I don't fully understand all the complaints specifically about changing. It's an hour shift twice a year? Maybe I get slightly worse sleep for a day or two but then I am fine. It's no different than changing one time zone while traveling. People travel all the time cross country or over the Atlantic or Pacific and that's a much bigger shift in time yet they're all able to cope? I don't see articles regularly decrying the health disaster of jetlag, so what is it about changing the clocks that really gets people worked up?
- eddyg 4y ago
  Like the expert said in this [0] article about how the U.S. already tried permanent Daylight Saving Time in 1970s and quickly rejected it: The best answer is to do nothing at all. The current system that begin [sic] in 2007 of starting Daylight Saving Time in March and ending it in November, is the product of decades of study and compromise. [0] https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2022/03/19/the-u-s-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-1970s-then-quickly-rejected-it https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2022/03/19/the-u-s-t...
7e 4y ago
Time zones and DST are obsolete. Is a world of smart devices, we can have 2D time zones which ensure sunrise is always at 6 a.m., by adjusting the time by a few seconds every night at 3 a.m. That’s not perceptible by humans, and gets us back to natural solar time, the way humans evolved to live.

32 points by evo_9 4y ago

Dead in the water. Like almost anything that touches partisan politics (or bike shedding, they’re scarily similar), we’re not stuck on whether we should stop the clocks, but whether it should be on DST or standard time. And both sides of the debate have found science that backs up their opinion, and cherry picked public comments, so the deadlock continues. Even though the doing nothing is far worse than picking the wrong shed color.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I feel like this might be a uniquely American mindset: what we have is terrible. There are better ideas, but they are not perfect, therefore we will stick with the terrible status quo. See it in our healthcare system too.
- kunagi7 4y ago
  The clocks' problem is also replicated at the European side of the Atlantic. The current situation is terrible but opinions differ between locking the clock at standard time or daylight savings time. The EU tried to step in both 2019 and 2021 but the whole situation is quite stuck [0]. I prefer standard time since in winter using DST would mean dark skies until 9 am. But most people here seem to enjoy how in summer the sun doesn't set until 10 pm. So, whoever touches this topic will end up getting burned by either side and no one dares to change it or suggest it (for now). So the terrible status quo continues. [0] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/28/when-will-the-eu-end-seasonal-clock-changes-only-time-will-tell https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/10/28/when-will-the-...
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Isn't your example of legitimate differences of opinion evidence that there is no clearly better option?
- jmull 4y ago
  > uniquely American mindset Doesn't the EU (and various other countries) still switch back and forth between standard and daylight savings time?
  - pixelesque 4y ago
    Yes. Many European countries, Canada, some Australian states/territories and New Zealand.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    The EU was supposed to end the system (countries would choose to keep either their summer or winter time zones) but it seems to have become blocked. Just the UK having left with no political desire to do anything that looks like an EU idea, combined with Irish opposition to different zones for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland may stymy it indefinitely. In the meantime, all EU countries observe a summer time that starts and ends on the same day across the EU.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I think “making perfect the enemy of good” is not a uniquely American thing. Something that does seem unusually American (although I’m sure not uniquely) is: We all agree this thing is bad, and something should be done. But the primary way to make big changes is to have one side push it and make concessions to the other side, to get it done. Nobody is willing to make concessions for something we all agree is good, so the good thing will never get done. And also, we all agree it is bad, but our solutions are different, maybe even just in name, so we can’t let it be solved because that would give the other team a W.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  Or 12 hour time when everyone else is on 24 Or Imperial measurement when everyone else is on metric Or middle endian date when...
starkd 4y ago
It all depends on what you are used to. Its just a standard. We have been switching between the two for decades now. Why did we adopt it to begin with?
- falcolas 4y ago
  It’s killing people. It provides no tangible benefits in a world with artificial lights. The offset we pick won’t really matter, but stopping the switch twice yearly will save lives.
  - starkd 4y ago
    That it is killing people is difficult to show. You would need a control group. There are so many factors, there will be criticism of any such study conducted.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      The control group is the rest of the year. Plus states/nations which don't do a DST switch. And there are plenty of studies already; I highly recommend perusing them. I won't insult your intelligence by offering a lmgtfy link.
  - yucky 4y ago
    Every study I've seen on this has been complete bunk. Which makes sense because how on earth could getting 1 hour less sleep on a random Saturday once a year lead to untold numbers of deaths? It's absurd. Change your clocks and if it bothers you drink an extra glass of wine at dinner and nod off a little sooner. People that get emotional about daylight savings are an odd bunch to say the least.
b112 4y ago
Dead in the water. Like almost anything that touches partisan politics While true, and while I think most will agree that there are issues with US partisan politics, here's the thing... Many people actually like DST. I personally do. I don't think this is quite as clear cut as some things. It depends upon where you live (the farther north, it seems (to me) there is more support). It also depends upon whether you want light in morning or night. So to restate, I think this issue is more "people just have opinions for legit reasons", rather than typical US partisan politics.
- falcolas 4y ago
  It’s been proven that shifting between the two time offsets kills people. Here’s one example article that discusses this. https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-deadly-2018-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-dead... Stopping this is more important than picking the right offset to stop it at.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    You switch the clocks 2x per year, or you switch every schedule that operates on them 2x per year. People would still have to deal with the change either way.
    - dontlaugh 4y ago
      1h is not enough to make up for the difference in light, yet changing the clocks is disruptive. Much better to change schedules as often and by as much as suitable in each case.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        So instead of changing clocks 2x, every business and school have different schedules that change >2 times per year and you think that is the better option?
bannedbybros 4y ago
[dead]

starkd 4y ago

Even if passed, I suspect the same complaints will be made. Time is just a standard. It all depends on what you are accustomed to.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Standard time is fine. Daylight savings time is fine. Stop switching between them. Pick one and stick with it. It's not number on the clock. It's the switching.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  You switch the clocks 2x per year, or you switch every schedule that operates on them 2x per year. People would still have to deal with the change either way.
  - sirwhinesalot 4y ago
    You don't need to change any schedule.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Sure, it isn't mandatory , but people will want to because they don't like getting up 3 hours before dawn to take their kids to school and go to work.
      - jameshart 4y ago
        I don’t like working through for hours after sunset in the middle of winter but I suck it up and do it. In northern latitudes there aren’t enough daylight hours for a full working day to be between sunrise and sunset. That’s the immutable constraint - everything else is to deal with that.
      - pwinnski 4y ago
        Okay, I generally agree with you, but it's hard to see how a change (er, lack of change) of one hour on clocks suddenly results in "3 hours before dawn." The hyperbole doesn't help, IMO. Also, we see frequent posts here on HN about how schools ought to start later overall, for all students, so it seems reasonable to think that school could be made to start well after sunrise for everyone all year long.

shagie 4y ago

The wikipedia page on Permanent time observation in the United States ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_... ) has a useful table for the state level action.

jonstjohn 4y ago

I’m an advocate of UTC everywhere.

b112 4y ago
UTC everywhere. jonstjohn's dream is realised, in 2052, after decades of work. In a world unifying moment, religion, country divergence and politics aside, the entire planet falls into the gentle embrace of UTC. 17 seconds later, Mars declares itself UTC+1.
- quest88 4y ago
  HA!
tzs 4y ago
Why? We'd still have to have time zones (except maybe it be more sensible to call them something else), and we'd still have to deal with the amount of daylight exhibiting significant seasonal variations at places that aren't close to the equator. The fact that we live on an approximately spherical world whose rotation is not tidal locked to the star it orbits, that world rotates on an axis that is not perpendicular to its orbital plane around said star, we have a biology that uses local sunrise to synchronize its internal clocks to the planet's rotation, and we have spread to occupy regions of the world that are not near its equator imposes a lower limit on the complexity of our timekeeping.
pseudalopex 4y ago
https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish

inciampati 4y ago

Does permanent daylight savings time seem to anyone else like a symptom of a society with a case of light-at-night induced jetlag? Why should the only visible marker of the day---noon---not be approximately noon on the clock? If we need to shift school and work start times relative to the sun, we could you know, just do that...

ajross 4y ago
Conversely, why should the "middle" of our daily schedule, when lunch breaks etc. are scheduled, have to coincide with the solar maximum? Modern society compresses "boring stuff" into the first half of the day and puts the fun stuff at the end. Why not give it more light? Meh. Just pick something, I guess. But this isn't an engineering problem and there's no correct solution.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Our breaks don't have to coincide with the solar maximum. We can set them at any time we want. Which is why "permanent dst" makes no sense. However, calibrating our wall time so that noon marks the high point of the sun is the obviously correct thing from setting up the system. This is why this has been done historically. What we decide as the right time to get up, have lunch, is derived from the calibration. People who live at the extreme ends of a time zone tend to adjust their day schedule accordingly.
- jameshart 4y ago
  Took me years after moving to the US to get used to the idea that 12-1 is lunch hour, rather than 1-2.
  - inciampati 4y ago
    And also not 2:30-4...
- sandworm101 4y ago
  >> this isn't an engineering problem and there's no correct solution. It was an engineering problem, very literally an engineer problem. Standardized time zones were needed to keep trains, the big heavy things driven by engineers, from smacking into each other at speed. Coordinating all the train station clocks wasn't done for social reasons but for safety and efficiency. Imagine trying to run a modern air transport network if every airport changed its clock a few minutes every day. Total chaos.

kixiQu 4y ago

Seems vaguely irresponsible to report on this issue solely from the political lens without noting that medical experts think it is a bad idea (with only some debate about just how bad). https://www.thensf.org/national-sleep-foundation-reiterates-support-for-permanent-standard-time/ https://www.thensf.org/national-sleep-foundation-reiterates-... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/11/1162345477/changing-our-clocks-is-a-health-hazard-just-ask-a-sleep-doctor https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/11/1162345... (linked for reporting on AASM and AMA's positions which I don't want to go find independent links for)

olivierlacan 4y ago
Careful, your phrasing makes it seem like you mean that making DST permanent is a bad idea. Your links argue the opposite: that making DST permanent is much healthier than switching back & forth.
- tzs 4y ago
  They both do argue that permanent DST is a bad idea. They argue for permanent standard time.
- kixiQu 4y ago
  The cited work is clear that if we care about health, we should not make DST permanent, but rather abolish it altogether.
- jwestbury 4y ago
  Sleep experts largely agree that permanent DST is bad, and that if we're going to stop switching, it should be permanent standard time.

_ph_ 4y ago

I consider DST a hack to move the day-start earlier during the time of the year where the daytime is significantly longer than the night time. It is annoying, but to some extend it works - though in my eyes there are clear indications that your schedule has compensated partly for it, reducing its effect. On the other side, the time shift is quite bothersome to many and introduces a lot of efforts which translate into costs. So there are good arguments to abolish it. What I cannot get are the requests for permanent "summer time". It is an illusion, long term. Because our day-rhythm is tied to the motion of the sun. Yes, we have to get up to be at work or in school at the set time, but that time does depend on the motion of the sun. Any short time advantage from "detuning" will be compensated. As you can see in all the places where the time deviates a lot from the astronomical time at that place.

WirelessGigabit 4y ago
I don't think it's an illusion. While I agree that our bodies are tied to the rising and setting of the sun, we have a system in place that combats this. The need to get up for work, alarm clocks, the want of the people to have more time in the evening (i.e. get up & go to work). This has the overall effect that our day is already shifted wrt solar noon. In that case having an additional hour of sunlight in the evening in the dark summer months is more interesting than having it in the morning where most people are on auto-pilot anyway to get to their day-job.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  You are missing something: the day schedule society agreed upon derives from the average run of the sun. School doesn't start at 8 because that is some special number, but because without DST it is the value which works best. You want it to start early in the morning, but late enough that everyone is awake (at least kind of). If society switched to permanent "summer time", sooner or later school starts would shift to 9am, as in the winter 8am would be just too early.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    > sooner or later school starts would shift to 9am, as in the winter 8am would be just too early. Sounds like a good idea anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_school_later_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_school_later_movement

somewhereoutth 4y ago

During summer time we should take advantage of all the natural light available, as it is during summertime that we tend to be outdoors the most. So DST. That leaves the question of winter time - do the benefits of moving the daylight period for winter outweigh the disadvantages of clock switching twice a year?

Pigalowda 4y ago

Useless government! Maybe we can appeal to our corporate overlords and each company can decide to use it or not..

BigCryo 4y ago
The government at this point is basically incapable of doing anything useful for the people unless it does something good for the elites.. if it does nothing good for the elites the government will do nothing about anything

acjacobson 4y ago

I guess it's an unpopular opinion on HN, but I like switching back and forth between daylight saving and standard time twice a year. I live relatively north and I like having very long days in the summer when more daylight is available for both the morning and evening. Without DST, the sun would rise at 4am for me in the summer - what on earth am I going to do with that? I'd much rather it rise at 5am, and I get an extra hour in the evening. On the other side permanent DST would be awful in the winter because then the sun wouldn't rise for me until 9am. Maybe countries and states should choose based on how far north or south they are because that seems to be a key factor for how useful DST is? But beyond that I don't fully understand all the complaints specifically about changing. It's an hour shift twice a year? Maybe I get slightly worse sleep for a day or two but then I am fine. It's no different than changing one time zone while traveling. People travel all the time cross country or over the Atlantic or Pacific and that's a much bigger shift in time yet they're all able to cope? I don't see articles regularly decrying the health disaster of jetlag, so what is it about changing the clocks that really gets people worked up?

eddyg 4y ago
Like the expert said in this [0] article about how the U.S. already tried permanent Daylight Saving Time in 1970s and quickly rejected it: The best answer is to do nothing at all. The current system that begin [sic] in 2007 of starting Daylight Saving Time in March and ending it in November, is the product of decades of study and compromise. [0] https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2022/03/19/the-u-s-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-1970s-then-quickly-rejected-it https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2022/03/19/the-u-s-t...

7e 4y ago

Time zones and DST are obsolete. Is a world of smart devices, we can have 2D time zones which ensure sunrise is always at 6 a.m., by adjusting the time by a few seconds every night at 3 a.m. That’s not perceptible by humans, and gets us back to natural solar time, the way humans evolved to live.