5 ms·

Have you been to China? It's time zone make sense for Beijing and the coast but forces the "Chinese" of Xinjiang to do things at unnatural hours for the conveni

Have you been to China? It's time zone make sense for Beijing and the coast but forces the "Chinese" of Xinjiang to do things at unnatural hours for the convenience of the ruling elite. It's bizarre to suggest that someone in western Alaska should wake up at the same time as someone in Florida because that's what India does.

Longhanks 3y ago
No, it’s bizarre to suggest "7:00 am" should mean sunrise for everyone, regardless of their location - it’s impossible to achieve.
- teddyh 3y ago
  Well, the opposite is also not very desirable: <https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish>
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  The goal is that 12:00 is pretty close to noon, which is reasonably possible. (And even though lining up a time with morning would be significantly more annoying and need to exclude the polar circles, I still wouldn't call it "impossible".)
Muehe 3y ago
You know what? Good on them! We should all just use UTC everywhere and adjust business hours accordingly. Get rid of timezones altogether. If you want to know when the sun rises, sets, or is at its apex just look it up in a table. The former two vary unless you are very close to the equator anyway, and the latter is off by an hour for every country using "daylight saving time" for half the year. Never mind countries that span more than 1/24th of the globe but use a single timezone, and that isn't just China. Also I don't really see how this is "for the convenience of the ruling elite". I'd be willing to bet money most people in Xinjiang wouldn't have this "problem" in their top ten. Probably not even top hundred. This seems like something you get used to once and then never think about again unless you travel or have a remote meeting.
- JayPalm 3y ago
  Perhaps you haven’t heard of the Uyghur genocide by the CCP in Xinjiang. The local population very much does care about their local time zone (and language and culture, other things the Chinese government has stripped away from them). It may be one of the few places where you’ll get a different answer to the question “what time is it” depending on the ethnicity of the person you ask, and, if asked, you might get arrested for answering with the “wrong” time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time
- msla 3y ago
  > If you want to know when the sun rises, sets, or is at its apex just look it up in a table. Yes, a table. A table with time. A table that divides the world into zones with regard to time. That definitely abolishes time zones. > I'd be willing to bet money most people in Xinjiang wouldn't have this "problem" in their top ten. Yeah, it probably does rank quite a bit below the genocide. Anyway, time zones solve an important problem: People coordinate with other people close to them, but occasionally need to coordinate with other people far away. How do those far-away people know when the good times to call are? Clocks only work if you have some idea of what times mean in practice to distant people, which is greatly helped along by people setting their clocks to a local time that's known globally.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > A table that divides the world into zones with regard to time. Think about it more. How sunrise and sunset change by location and by date. A chart that covers both sunrise and sunset does not naturally have "zones", and any "zones" you try to infer would not resemble time zones at all. You're either looking at big sweeping ellipses, or you're dividing the world into hundreds of small tiles. It's not time zones.
- kingofpandora 3y ago
  It's a problem when offices have to operate according to Beijing time.
lmm 3y ago
> Have you been to China? It's time zone make sense for Beijing and the coast but forces the "Chinese" of Xinjiang to do things at unnatural hours for the convenience of the ruling elite. I've been there and it was absolutely fine - a lot better than working in the US with its mess of timezones. Sure, the times in Xinjiang are "wrong" but who cares? I'll take getting up at "11AM" or whatever over having people in different offices think the meeting is an hour earlier or later and not finding out everyone was mixed up until it happens.
- aflag 3y ago
  If they do things at different times, then they effectively live in a different timezone, but with the downside that’s much harder to know when it is that they are going to do things. With time zones you know that businesses will work roughly from 9-10am to 5-6pm that people will normally go to bed around 10pm and will wake up around 7-8am. You can just apply the conversion and know all of that. If there are no time zones, how do you convert from one time to the other?
  - lmm 3y ago
    > If they do things at different times, then they effectively live in a different timezone, but with the downside that’s much harder to know when it is that they are going to do things. It's not hard to know when you do things where you live. Some places people drive on the left, some places they drive on the right, people in different places people speak different languages, people in different places get up and go to bed at different times. When you go to Xinjiang as an outsider sure the customary times are a bit unusual but they're far from the only unusual thing about going there. > With time zones you know that businesses will work roughly from 9-10am to 5-6pm that people will normally go to bed around 10pm and will wake up around 7-8am. Not necessarily - plenty of ways to be caught out if you make that kind of assumption about a place you're not familiar with (e.g. turning up at a business when it's siesta). When going somewhere unfamiliar you're already best off looking up when your hotel/restaurant/etc. opens, and it's easy to do these days. Timezones maybe made sense when physically going to a different place was more common than having a phone/video meeting with someone in a different place. But nowadays being able to agree on the same instant in time when you're in two different places is more important and we should standardise.

Longhanks 3y ago

No, it’s bizarre to suggest "7:00 am" should mean sunrise for everyone, regardless of their location - it’s impossible to achieve.

teddyh 3y ago
Well, the opposite is also not very desirable: <https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish>
Dylan16807 3y ago
The goal is that 12:00 is pretty close to noon, which is reasonably possible. (And even though lining up a time with morning would be significantly more annoying and need to exclude the polar circles, I still wouldn't call it "impossible".)

Muehe 3y ago

You know what? Good on them! We should all just use UTC everywhere and adjust business hours accordingly. Get rid of timezones altogether. If you want to know when the sun rises, sets, or is at its apex just look it up in a table. The former two vary unless you are very close to the equator anyway, and the latter is off by an hour for every country using "daylight saving time" for half the year. Never mind countries that span more than 1/24th of the globe but use a single timezone, and that isn't just China. Also I don't really see how this is "for the convenience of the ruling elite". I'd be willing to bet money most people in Xinjiang wouldn't have this "problem" in their top ten. Probably not even top hundred. This seems like something you get used to once and then never think about again unless you travel or have a remote meeting.

JayPalm 3y ago
Perhaps you haven’t heard of the Uyghur genocide by the CCP in Xinjiang. The local population very much does care about their local time zone (and language and culture, other things the Chinese government has stripped away from them). It may be one of the few places where you’ll get a different answer to the question “what time is it” depending on the ethnicity of the person you ask, and, if asked, you might get arrested for answering with the “wrong” time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_Time
msla 3y ago
> If you want to know when the sun rises, sets, or is at its apex just look it up in a table. Yes, a table. A table with time. A table that divides the world into zones with regard to time. That definitely abolishes time zones. > I'd be willing to bet money most people in Xinjiang wouldn't have this "problem" in their top ten. Yeah, it probably does rank quite a bit below the genocide. Anyway, time zones solve an important problem: People coordinate with other people close to them, but occasionally need to coordinate with other people far away. How do those far-away people know when the good times to call are? Clocks only work if you have some idea of what times mean in practice to distant people, which is greatly helped along by people setting their clocks to a local time that's known globally.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > A table that divides the world into zones with regard to time. Think about it more. How sunrise and sunset change by location and by date. A chart that covers both sunrise and sunset does not naturally have "zones", and any "zones" you try to infer would not resemble time zones at all. You're either looking at big sweeping ellipses, or you're dividing the world into hundreds of small tiles. It's not time zones.
kingofpandora 3y ago
It's a problem when offices have to operate according to Beijing time.

lmm 3y ago

> Have you been to China? It's time zone make sense for Beijing and the coast but forces the "Chinese" of Xinjiang to do things at unnatural hours for the convenience of the ruling elite. I've been there and it was absolutely fine - a lot better than working in the US with its mess of timezones. Sure, the times in Xinjiang are "wrong" but who cares? I'll take getting up at "11AM" or whatever over having people in different offices think the meeting is an hour earlier or later and not finding out everyone was mixed up until it happens.

aflag 3y ago
If they do things at different times, then they effectively live in a different timezone, but with the downside that’s much harder to know when it is that they are going to do things. With time zones you know that businesses will work roughly from 9-10am to 5-6pm that people will normally go to bed around 10pm and will wake up around 7-8am. You can just apply the conversion and know all of that. If there are no time zones, how do you convert from one time to the other?
- lmm 3y ago
  > If they do things at different times, then they effectively live in a different timezone, but with the downside that’s much harder to know when it is that they are going to do things. It's not hard to know when you do things where you live. Some places people drive on the left, some places they drive on the right, people in different places people speak different languages, people in different places get up and go to bed at different times. When you go to Xinjiang as an outsider sure the customary times are a bit unusual but they're far from the only unusual thing about going there. > With time zones you know that businesses will work roughly from 9-10am to 5-6pm that people will normally go to bed around 10pm and will wake up around 7-8am. Not necessarily - plenty of ways to be caught out if you make that kind of assumption about a place you're not familiar with (e.g. turning up at a business when it's siesta). When going somewhere unfamiliar you're already best off looking up when your hotel/restaurant/etc. opens, and it's easy to do these days. Timezones maybe made sense when physically going to a different place was more common than having a phone/video meeting with someone in a different place. But nowadays being able to agree on the same instant in time when you're in two different places is more important and we should standardise.