10 ms·

I believe all these problems are caused by time zones, not solved by them. If the current date/day of week wasn't vaguely connected to sleep/wake cycle, we woul

by scbrg 1y ago

I believe all these problems are caused by time zones, not solved by them. If the current date/day of week wasn't vaguely connected to sleep/wake cycle, we wouldn't be conditioned to assume it was. For instance, we handle 24 hour clock (with 60 minute hours?! WTF?) fine, even if it's insane and we use the decimal system elsewhere. Because we got used to it when we grew up. Many even have the clock reset in the middle of the day, ending up with things like two hour activities spanning from eleven to one! (Don't get me started on shit like "half four" - it means different things depending on where you are, but it never means two!) Heck, there's a whole, huge country that gets by on inches and ounces and pounds and miles and whatnot - a mind boggling amount of extra mental energy required, and with the exception of some recent lapse when selecting their boss dude they seem to be doing mostly as well as (and over the previous century arguably somewhat better than) the rest of us in the thinking department. If we grew up with date/day changing in the afternoon, every kid in preschool would have it figured out already. "Early morning flight confusion" would seize to exist (except, perhaps, for the poor bastards who'd happen to live close to wherever we decided to place the prime meridian), because everybody would know what "1:20" meant, and not randomly guess at something based on when they happen to sleep.

iforgotpassword 1y ago
Yes and no, locally it would work because that's what you grew up with, but traveling, and especially communicating would be equally confusing. Currently we have that problem on globe-spanning video calls where "let's schedule another meeting tomorrow" could mean very different things. In the global utc scenario, tomorrow would still mean different things to someone growing up with "midnight" during the day vs. When you're asleep.
- arccy 1y ago
  i mentally translate tomorrow in a business meeting usually means sometime in the next 8-40 hours...
- scbrg 1y ago
  Again, I believe the problem you're talking about is caused by time zones. If you're used to date changes happening "whenever", you'd stop assuming they happen at a fixed point during the day. Any argument that starts with "Today, we're already confused about ... because we're used to date changes occurring while we sleep" is meaningless, since we wouldn't be used to date changes occurring while we sleep. The whole terminology thing would be solved by having two words; one meaning "after next sleep cycle" (which would probably be more common when speaking to people in your own geographic region), and one meaning "after next date change" (which would probably be more common when speaking to people in other geographic regions). The appearance of this second word would likely happen naturally within weeks, if not days after abolishing time zones. As usually happens with language. The argument against abolishing time zones always seems to assume that humanity would be incapable of adapting to a time zone free world. Like this would mysteriously be the first and only change in the history of mankind society couldn't adapt to.
  - iforgotpassword 1y ago
    > If you're used to date changes happening "whenever", you'd stop assuming they happen at a fixed point during the day. But that's not the case. We're not all cosmopolitans traveling the world all the time. For anyone living in a timezone where 00:00 happens when most people are asleep, there'd only be one word for tomorrow, as it'd be synonymous for "after date change" and "after the next sleep cycle". There would be no other word, because there is no need for that. Except in circles where coordinating meetings with people across the globe happens on a regular basis. But we already got that figured out by explicitly naming the time zone or using UTC. The vast majority of people don't have to deal with this, so having the date change at night is just more convenient, as it completely avoids this ambiguity in day to day life. But obviously as a nerd you get hung up on that one aspect and go "but imagine we had only one timezone, we could just say 13:00 and there'd be no ambiguity, no chance for a misunderstanding, it would be so much more efficient and coherent!" > The argument against abolishing time zones always seems to assume that humanity would be incapable of adapting to a time zone free world. Again, you need to take a step back and try to look at this from the average person's pov, not as a scientist trying to find the optimal solution for a problem 99% of people don't have. And "people would be able to adapt to this" Is a pretty weak argument. You could probably also change the clock itself so that there's 63 seconds in a minute, 59 minutes in an hour, and 195 hours in a day. I'm sure people could adapt to this. Doesn't make it a good argument. On the other hand, just imagine the sheer chaos this switchover would cause worldwide, for what, marginal gains in convenience for a miniscule amount of people. It reminds me of "that guy" who constantly wants to refactor half the codebase because something would look a little cleaner then, and if you let them, they'll end up refactoring the same part of the code over and over again every six months because they had another idea how to make it even more streamlined and elegant. And then someone else comes in wanting to implement a simple feature, but is greeted with an incomprehensible construct, while the refactoring-guy is repeatedly and excitedly reassuring them that it's "really simple and intuitive once you get the hang of it".
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  In that particular case, "another meeting tomorrow", I think my expectation is pretty much not affected by time zones. I expect it to be 24 hours from when the current meeting started, plus or minus 2-4 hours.
wpm 1y ago
You argue that any system would be easier if we had all learned it in preschool, then turn around and claim some massive, mind boggling amount of effort that must be expended by Americans to use ounces, miles, and all sort of other yucky units you might need a lot of energy to use, but Americans have been learning, alongside SI, since preschool. Just like how you don’t likely struggle with 7 day weeks of 24 hour days with 60 minute hours. So which is it?
- justinrubek 1y ago
  I don't find your argument to be coherent.

by scbrg 1y ago

iforgotpassword 1y ago

Yes and no, locally it would work because that's what you grew up with, but traveling, and especially communicating would be equally confusing. Currently we have that problem on globe-spanning video calls where "let's schedule another meeting tomorrow" could mean very different things. In the global utc scenario, tomorrow would still mean different things to someone growing up with "midnight" during the day vs. When you're asleep.

arccy 1y ago
i mentally translate tomorrow in a business meeting usually means sometime in the next 8-40 hours...
scbrg 1y ago
Again, I believe the problem you're talking about is caused by time zones. If you're used to date changes happening "whenever", you'd stop assuming they happen at a fixed point during the day. Any argument that starts with "Today, we're already confused about ... because we're used to date changes occurring while we sleep" is meaningless, since we wouldn't be used to date changes occurring while we sleep. The whole terminology thing would be solved by having two words; one meaning "after next sleep cycle" (which would probably be more common when speaking to people in your own geographic region), and one meaning "after next date change" (which would probably be more common when speaking to people in other geographic regions). The appearance of this second word would likely happen naturally within weeks, if not days after abolishing time zones. As usually happens with language. The argument against abolishing time zones always seems to assume that humanity would be incapable of adapting to a time zone free world. Like this would mysteriously be the first and only change in the history of mankind society couldn't adapt to.
- iforgotpassword 1y ago
  > If you're used to date changes happening "whenever", you'd stop assuming they happen at a fixed point during the day. But that's not the case. We're not all cosmopolitans traveling the world all the time. For anyone living in a timezone where 00:00 happens when most people are asleep, there'd only be one word for tomorrow, as it'd be synonymous for "after date change" and "after the next sleep cycle". There would be no other word, because there is no need for that. Except in circles where coordinating meetings with people across the globe happens on a regular basis. But we already got that figured out by explicitly naming the time zone or using UTC. The vast majority of people don't have to deal with this, so having the date change at night is just more convenient, as it completely avoids this ambiguity in day to day life. But obviously as a nerd you get hung up on that one aspect and go "but imagine we had only one timezone, we could just say 13:00 and there'd be no ambiguity, no chance for a misunderstanding, it would be so much more efficient and coherent!" > The argument against abolishing time zones always seems to assume that humanity would be incapable of adapting to a time zone free world. Again, you need to take a step back and try to look at this from the average person's pov, not as a scientist trying to find the optimal solution for a problem 99% of people don't have. And "people would be able to adapt to this" Is a pretty weak argument. You could probably also change the clock itself so that there's 63 seconds in a minute, 59 minutes in an hour, and 195 hours in a day. I'm sure people could adapt to this. Doesn't make it a good argument. On the other hand, just imagine the sheer chaos this switchover would cause worldwide, for what, marginal gains in convenience for a miniscule amount of people. It reminds me of "that guy" who constantly wants to refactor half the codebase because something would look a little cleaner then, and if you let them, they'll end up refactoring the same part of the code over and over again every six months because they had another idea how to make it even more streamlined and elegant. And then someone else comes in wanting to implement a simple feature, but is greeted with an incomprehensible construct, while the refactoring-guy is repeatedly and excitedly reassuring them that it's "really simple and intuitive once you get the hang of it".
Dylan16807 1y ago
In that particular case, "another meeting tomorrow", I think my expectation is pretty much not affected by time zones. I expect it to be 24 hours from when the current meeting started, plus or minus 2-4 hours.

wpm 1y ago

You argue that any system would be easier if we had all learned it in preschool, then turn around and claim some massive, mind boggling amount of effort that must be expended by Americans to use ounces, miles, and all sort of other yucky units you might need a lot of energy to use, but Americans have been learning, alongside SI, since preschool. Just like how you don’t likely struggle with 7 day weeks of 24 hour days with 60 minute hours. So which is it?

justinrubek 1y ago
I don't find your argument to be coherent.