3 ms·

Noon is the only stable, visible marker. You don't see midnight. Unless you're at the equator sunrise and sunset will always shift. 12 is totally arbitrary. We

Noon is the only stable, visible marker. You don't see midnight. Unless you're at the equator sunrise and sunset will always shift. 12 is totally arbitrary. We could use a decimal clock. That's all historical. But because noon is when the sun is highest, most people can look at the light quality outside and know immediately what time of day it is. Many cultures eat lunch at different times than noon. Some modern cultures even like to completely skip lunch. And I agree. The coordination problem is impossibly large and annoying. So just skip it. Don't shift clocks around to try to coordinate. Give businesses and schools more ability to set and change their hours. Why on earth and sun should we use this arbitrary artifact of a failed attempt to drive social coordination (daylight savings) as the new normal?

crazygringo 4y ago
> most people can look at the light quality outside and know immediately what time of day it is Most people really can't. Not only do most people simply not pay enough attention, but it varies dramatically by month the further you get from the equator. The light at 3 pm in August is totally different from 3 pm light in November. > Give businesses and schools more ability to set and change their hours. You're missing the fact that they effectively can't. Business hours are set around school hours, because employees have children. School hours are set around business hours, because of parents' jobs. Not to mention train schedules, airlines schedules, and everything. The only way we can change it is all at once, and the only way to ensure everyone follows is to change the clock itself. Not to mention changing every clock is so much easier than changing every single calendar event everywhere, because we already have systems for the former, but not for the latter. Timekeeping is just a tool designed to benefit humans, it's not divine. We can use it as a tool to implement coordination changes that result in a net societal benefit around when we experience daylight. Why wouldn't we use it for that? The fact that solar noon is then at 12:37 pm instead of 11:37 am for somebody somewhere is nearly irrelevant compared to that.
pwinnski 4y ago
"The coordination problem is impossibly large and annoying." Therefore, here's an impossibly large and annoying solution, demonstrating that fact. Most things work in lock-step with other things, so even though business already have limitless ability to set their own hours, they tend to set very, very similar hours because there's no point in being closed when people expect you to be open, and not much point in being open when people expect you to be closed. "But because noon is when the sun is highest, most people can look at the light quality outside and know immediately what time of day it is." Where, exactly, is noon when the sun is highest? Chicago, Illinois, and Regina, Saskatchewan, are in the same time zone. When the clock ticks noon, is that the apex for both of them? Or to avoid crossing international borders, is the sun at the highest for both Indianapolis, Indiana, and Bangor, Maine? Bangor today had a sunrise at 05:55, and expects sunset at at 17:35. Indianapolis, on the other hand, had sunrise at 07:02, and expects sunset at 18:47. They are in the same time zone, and yet solar events are more than an hour different. Today, "solar noon" is 11:45 in Bangor, but 12:54 in Indianapolis. Adjusting Indianapolis back an hour to bring noon closer to solar noon would put it at 10:45 in Bangor! "The sun is highest in the sky in the middle of the day" is approximately true, but can be off by more than the one-hour adjustment for Daylight Saving Time, so it is clearly not precisely true, whether we shift by an hour or not. The continental USA is 2800 miles wide, and even splitting it into four time zones doesn't make things make good sense for every location. But hey, it could be worse: China is more than 3100 miles wide, and uses a single time zone! * This isn't aimed at you, but I always check this when comparing two cities, because it's fun: Indianapolis gets between 9:21 and 14:59 hours of daylight, December to June, while Bangor gets from 8:48 to 15:35 hours of daylight.

crazygringo 4y ago

> most people can look at the light quality outside and know immediately what time of day it is Most people really can't. Not only do most people simply not pay enough attention, but it varies dramatically by month the further you get from the equator. The light at 3 pm in August is totally different from 3 pm light in November. > Give businesses and schools more ability to set and change their hours. You're missing the fact that they effectively can't. Business hours are set around school hours, because employees have children. School hours are set around business hours, because of parents' jobs. Not to mention train schedules, airlines schedules, and everything. The only way we can change it is all at once, and the only way to ensure everyone follows is to change the clock itself. Not to mention changing every clock is so much easier than changing every single calendar event everywhere, because we already have systems for the former, but not for the latter. Timekeeping is just a tool designed to benefit humans, it's not divine. We can use it as a tool to implement coordination changes that result in a net societal benefit around when we experience daylight. Why wouldn't we use it for that? The fact that solar noon is then at 12:37 pm instead of 11:37 am for somebody somewhere is nearly irrelevant compared to that.

pwinnski 4y ago

"The coordination problem is impossibly large and annoying." Therefore, here's an impossibly large and annoying solution, demonstrating that fact. Most things work in lock-step with other things, so even though business already have limitless ability to set their own hours, they tend to set very, very similar hours because there's no point in being closed when people expect you to be open, and not much point in being open when people expect you to be closed. "But because noon is when the sun is highest, most people can look at the light quality outside and know immediately what time of day it is." Where, exactly, is noon when the sun is highest? Chicago, Illinois, and Regina, Saskatchewan, are in the same time zone. When the clock ticks noon, is that the apex for both of them? Or to avoid crossing international borders, is the sun at the highest for both Indianapolis, Indiana, and Bangor, Maine? Bangor today had a sunrise at 05:55, and expects sunset at at 17:35. Indianapolis, on the other hand, had sunrise at 07:02, and expects sunset at 18:47. They are in the same time zone, and yet solar events are more than an hour different. Today, "solar noon" is 11:45 in Bangor, but 12:54 in Indianapolis. Adjusting Indianapolis back an hour to bring noon closer to solar noon would put it at 10:45 in Bangor! "The sun is highest in the sky in the middle of the day" is approximately true, but can be off by more than the one-hour adjustment for Daylight Saving Time, so it is clearly not precisely true, whether we shift by an hour or not. The continental USA is 2800 miles wide, and even splitting it into four time zones doesn't make things make good sense for every location. But hey, it could be worse: China is more than 3100 miles wide, and uses a single time zone! * This isn't aimed at you, but I always check this when comparing two cities, because it's fun: Indianapolis gets between 9:21 and 14:59 hours of daylight, December to June, while Bangor gets from 8:48 to 15:35 hours of daylight.