4 ms·

I'm not sure why you think I'm qualified to give a suitable answer to this. Did you ask the person above to explain why they aren't useful?

School-Cotton 2y ago
Okay, fair enough. I'll elaborate. Here's why I don't think they're useful: leap seconds exist to align standard time with the sun. But humans are the only ones who care about sun alignment; computers don't. And the effect of leap seconds is so microscopic that it doesn't matter to humans, especially since the alignment is inexact anyway (solar noon is never at exactly 12:00 PM on any given day except at one particular line of longitude per time zone). For getting it roughly aligned, which is what humans care about, we already have time zones with fixed, rarely-changing offsets from UTC, which I am not proposing we get rid of. Since leap seconds don't help for subjective human needs, and they _also_ don't help for computers, science, engineering etc. (if you care deeply about solar noon for some technical reason you should use something that tracks it more precisely than UTC anyway), I can't think of anything they _are_ useful for, except for saving our descendants thousands of years from now from having to change time zones when it drifts far enough to matter, which I think is a speculative and not very compelling reason. I'd happily change my opinion if I heard a good reason for keeping them, so I object to claiming that this is "hubris".
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  Thanks, that sounds quite reasonable to the untrained ear. Just wanted to say I didn't downvote the original comment, I was only trying to guess about how others were perceiving it.
- ttepasse 2y ago
  > (solar noon is never at exactly 12:00 PM on any given day except at one particular line of longitude per time zone) According to the 20. amendment the term of an US president starts at Noon, 20 Januar. Simply noon. The USA seems to interpret it as 12:00 ET and makes it ceremonial inauguration for that time, possibly also the transfer of powers. But solar noon on the steps of the Capitol seems to be at 12:18 ET, I researched back at the last inauguration. This discrepancy seems to be a great premise for a legal thriller, a political thriller, or sadly for a conspiracy theory. The latter definitely has some fertile ground. The americans should start using the Washington Monument as a solar clock for this ceremony, imo.

School-Cotton 2y ago

Okay, fair enough. I'll elaborate. Here's why I don't think they're useful: leap seconds exist to align standard time with the sun. But humans are the only ones who care about sun alignment; computers don't. And the effect of leap seconds is so microscopic that it doesn't matter to humans, especially since the alignment is inexact anyway (solar noon is never at exactly 12:00 PM on any given day except at one particular line of longitude per time zone). For getting it roughly aligned, which is what humans care about, we already have time zones with fixed, rarely-changing offsets from UTC, which I am not proposing we get rid of. Since leap seconds don't help for subjective human needs, and they _also_ don't help for computers, science, engineering etc. (if you care deeply about solar noon for some technical reason you should use something that tracks it more precisely than UTC anyway), I can't think of anything they _are_ useful for, except for saving our descendants thousands of years from now from having to change time zones when it drifts far enough to matter, which I think is a speculative and not very compelling reason. I'd happily change my opinion if I heard a good reason for keeping them, so I object to claiming that this is "hubris".

AlecSchueler 2y ago
Thanks, that sounds quite reasonable to the untrained ear. Just wanted to say I didn't downvote the original comment, I was only trying to guess about how others were perceiving it.
ttepasse 2y ago
> (solar noon is never at exactly 12:00 PM on any given day except at one particular line of longitude per time zone) According to the 20. amendment the term of an US president starts at Noon, 20 Januar. Simply noon. The USA seems to interpret it as 12:00 ET and makes it ceremonial inauguration for that time, possibly also the transfer of powers. But solar noon on the steps of the Capitol seems to be at 12:18 ET, I researched back at the last inauguration. This discrepancy seems to be a great premise for a legal thriller, a political thriller, or sadly for a conspiracy theory. The latter definitely has some fertile ground. The americans should start using the Washington Monument as a solar clock for this ceremony, imo.