4 ms·

Using UTC for everything strikes me as attempting to apply thinking that's convenient for machines to humans. In the vast majority of cases, the most salient p

Using UTC for everything strikes me as attempting to apply thinking that's convenient for machines to humans. In the vast majority of cases, the most salient property of a timestamp, for humans, is what point it occurred in the 24-hour day/night cycle (and, secondarily, where it occurred in the 7-day week cycle). Local time is an approximation of exactly that 24-hour cycle; the local time anywhere is approximately the elapsed time since the last solar midnight in that location. (Yes, it's not perfect, because in some places local time has a persistent offset from solar time, or even one that changes twice a year, but it's close enough). UTC is an approximation of the elapsed time since the last solar midnight in England. Most people don't live in England, so this just isn't relevant most of the time. If we all used UTC, sure, people living in one place would get used to the new correspondence to solar time; someone who spends all their time in Arizona would quickly get used to the fact that they now eat dinner at 12:00 UTC instead of 7pm. But it would make traveling more tedious: you'd have to re-learn the mapping every new place you went. It'd also make communicating with people abroad more difficult. If someone tells you "I went to bed at 08:00 last night", you have to know that in New Zealand that means they're an early riser or were sick; in New York it means they had a wild party and in Poland it means they worked the night shift. There are a few cases where having a shared absolute time reference is useful; for example, scheduling meetings with people in many different countries, but in those cases people tend to spontaneously settle on a time standard and it doesn't cause many problems in practice. And even in many of those cases, the local solar time is still relevant (you wouldn't want to schedule a meeting for someone around their solar midnight), so you have to have some way of expressing it anyway.

tgma 1y ago
Right. The 7-day week cycle is also completely arbitrary, perhaps the most arbitrary of all time duration units, but having something of that nature has proven useful. The 7-day week originated in ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Babylon, around the 3rd millennium BCE. It was tied to the observation of seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each day was associated with one of these "planets," a system later adopted and refined by other cultures. The Babylonians passed this concept to the Jews, who formalized it in their religious practices, linking it to the biblical creation story in Genesis, where God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, the Sabbath. This Jewish tradition influenced the structure of the week in the Western world. The Romans also adopted the 7-day cycle by the 1st century CE, replacing their earlier 8-day market cycle (nundinae). They named the days after their gods, aligned with the celestial bodies: dies Solis (Sun), dies Lunae (Moon), dies Martis (Mars), dies Mercurii (Mercury), dies Iovis (Jupiter), dies Veneris (Venus), and dies Saturni (Saturn). These names persist in Romance languages (e.g., French: lundi for Moon, mardi for Mars). The 7-day week spread through the Roman Empire and was cemented by Christianity, especially after Emperor Constantine made Sunday a day of rest in 321 CE. Other cultures, like the ancient Egyptians and early Chinese, had different cycles, but the 7-day week became dominant globally due to Western influence, trade, and colonization. It’s not perfectly aligned with natural cycles—365.25 days in a year don’t divide evenly by 7—but its cultural and religious roots have made it a near-universal standard.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  It is not just convention it seams also to be a somewhat natural unit for humans. Each time some try to change it, people get sick.
  - kweingar 1y ago
    Is it natural, or have we just adapted to it? Maybe if we had always had 10-day weeks, we'd get sick if we switched to 7.
  - justahuman74 1y ago
    What do the symptoms look like?
    - uldos 1y ago
      The symptoms could be connected to emptyer wallets, because on workdays people earn, on weekends people spend. It would take time and shifting of minds to adapt countrys economics to, for example, three day weekend.
  - davidcalloway 1y ago
    This cannot be right. I've known multiple people in my life whose working shifts do not correspond to the seven-day week. I know of no illness from which they suffer.
  - quantified 1y ago
    People get sick when it's changed. People get sick when it's unchanged. No other primate cares a whit. No other animal cares a whit. Citations would be very useful here, otherwise it sounds like another random thing from minds unknown.
praash 1y ago
> someone who spends all their time in Arizona would quickly get used to the fact that they now eat dinner at 12:00 UTC instead of 7pm. But it would make traveling more tedious: you'd have to re-learn the mapping every new place you went. Following local times won't spare you from having to learn local culture anyway, such as Spanish dinner times ranging around 21-23.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  That’s true, but you still have to know much less information. In most cultures, most people eat the main evening meal somewhere between 18h and 23h; Southern Europe tends later in that range than most places, whereas the US tends earlier. This is still a lot simpler than each longitude having its own unique offset that can range anywhere from -12 to 12. If you visit Spain as a tourist and eat at 19:00 local time every day, you’ll be slightly out of sync with the locals but you aren’t going to cause any huge drama. If you never even learned the fact that Spanish people eat later, you’d still basically be fine. So knowing that cultural fact about Spain isn’t absolutely essential the way it would be to learn the offset of each place in a world without time zones.
ravenical 1y ago
Also, thanks to daylight savings, the current time in England is 1 hour off UTC, so for 6 months of the year it's not even a good estimate for that.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  Not the solar time.

tgma 1y ago

Right. The 7-day week cycle is also completely arbitrary, perhaps the most arbitrary of all time duration units, but having something of that nature has proven useful. The 7-day week originated in ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Babylon, around the 3rd millennium BCE. It was tied to the observation of seven celestial bodies visible to the naked eye: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each day was associated with one of these "planets," a system later adopted and refined by other cultures. The Babylonians passed this concept to the Jews, who formalized it in their religious practices, linking it to the biblical creation story in Genesis, where God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, the Sabbath. This Jewish tradition influenced the structure of the week in the Western world. The Romans also adopted the 7-day cycle by the 1st century CE, replacing their earlier 8-day market cycle (nundinae). They named the days after their gods, aligned with the celestial bodies: dies Solis (Sun), dies Lunae (Moon), dies Martis (Mars), dies Mercurii (Mercury), dies Iovis (Jupiter), dies Veneris (Venus), and dies Saturni (Saturn). These names persist in Romance languages (e.g., French: lundi for Moon, mardi for Mars). The 7-day week spread through the Roman Empire and was cemented by Christianity, especially after Emperor Constantine made Sunday a day of rest in 321 CE. Other cultures, like the ancient Egyptians and early Chinese, had different cycles, but the 7-day week became dominant globally due to Western influence, trade, and colonization. It’s not perfectly aligned with natural cycles—365.25 days in a year don’t divide evenly by 7—but its cultural and religious roots have made it a near-universal standard.

1718627440 1y ago
It is not just convention it seams also to be a somewhat natural unit for humans. Each time some try to change it, people get sick.
- kweingar 1y ago
  Is it natural, or have we just adapted to it? Maybe if we had always had 10-day weeks, we'd get sick if we switched to 7.
- justahuman74 1y ago
  What do the symptoms look like?
  - uldos 1y ago
    The symptoms could be connected to emptyer wallets, because on workdays people earn, on weekends people spend. It would take time and shifting of minds to adapt countrys economics to, for example, three day weekend.
- davidcalloway 1y ago
  This cannot be right. I've known multiple people in my life whose working shifts do not correspond to the seven-day week. I know of no illness from which they suffer.
- quantified 1y ago
  People get sick when it's changed. People get sick when it's unchanged. No other primate cares a whit. No other animal cares a whit. Citations would be very useful here, otherwise it sounds like another random thing from minds unknown.

praash 1y ago

> someone who spends all their time in Arizona would quickly get used to the fact that they now eat dinner at 12:00 UTC instead of 7pm. But it would make traveling more tedious: you'd have to re-learn the mapping every new place you went. Following local times won't spare you from having to learn local culture anyway, such as Spanish dinner times ranging around 21-23.

School-Cotton 1y ago
That’s true, but you still have to know much less information. In most cultures, most people eat the main evening meal somewhere between 18h and 23h; Southern Europe tends later in that range than most places, whereas the US tends earlier. This is still a lot simpler than each longitude having its own unique offset that can range anywhere from -12 to 12. If you visit Spain as a tourist and eat at 19:00 local time every day, you’ll be slightly out of sync with the locals but you aren’t going to cause any huge drama. If you never even learned the fact that Spanish people eat later, you’d still basically be fine. So knowing that cultural fact about Spain isn’t absolutely essential the way it would be to learn the offset of each place in a world without time zones.

ravenical 1y ago

Also, thanks to daylight savings, the current time in England is 1 hour off UTC, so for 6 months of the year it's not even a good estimate for that.

School-Cotton 1y ago
Not the solar time.