this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (7 children)

All DST and time zones should be removed and we should only have one global time. People in different locations would just get up at different times on the clock. Communication about times would get so much easier, communication about schedules would get so much easier. "The same time every week" would have an actual meaning all year around regardless of any notions about getting up later relative to local sunrise in the darker time of the year.

[โ€“] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This solves making the statement "let's meet at 5" be more clear globally, but doesn't solve the actual confusion. Person A getting up hours before normal, being in the middle of person B's day, and being when person C would go to bed still happens. All it does is destroy any frame of reference and make travel more difficult. You would still need a chart to know if any time was actually during waking or business hours at each location on earth.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It would reduce the problem to its essential complexity. Obviously if you coordinate with people from all over the world you need to check availability anyway, but at least that would be as easy as saying "Are you free at time x?" to everyone and not "Are you free at time x+offset that is different for every participant?"

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's still the same problem, just instead of saying that's midnight here, it changes to that's functionally midnight here.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Lots of people in your own time zone do not get up or sleep at the "standard times" for that time zone anyway. Time zones do not solve the issue you mention.

[โ€“] netburnr -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

After about 2 days you won't need a chart to know the time offset does to someone's waking hours. Unless of course you have a learning disability.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I have to look up the difference for every time zone not adjacent to my own now, I don't expect I'd remember France's preferred hours any more than I remember the time difference.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And right now you can go look at a map of time zones. Time zones are no where near the issue that date formats are

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I agree that date formats other than ISO8601 ones are bad too but time zones, particularly combined with DST, wider time zones than standard and DST going the other way on the southern hemisphere are much, much more complicated than trying to figure out date formats.

[โ€“] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Communication about times would get so much easier, communication about schedules would get so much easier.

Except that it wouldn't. It would make communication about time a culture sensitive topic. Sure, the exact time of day in relation to the position of the sun might get lost with our current system, but if someone tells you "I've slept til 12am" at least you know it was somewhat around noon. Under your new system you'd always have to consider where someone lives.

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ahem. Oops.

But in a way that's a good example for what I meant. You and me communicate time both in reference to the time of day, not a virtual time of the planet that means something else to everyone depending on location, and you easily could spot my mistake.

So let's just say I did that on purpose.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is being able to communicate about stuff like that casually, where you do not mean a specific time anyway, really worth the giant pile of pain that time zones add to actual scheduling?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean what's more important to you, being able drop the info about time zones when scheduling international meetings, or preserving humanities ability to communicate time respectively to the actual time of day?

I've lived in three countries so far and never actually had trouble scheduling anything. The concept of time of day on the other hand is pretty prevalent in my daily life.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I suspect the language would change for those scenarios, so maybe you would say "I slept until midday" rather than "I slept until 12pm".

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

It is easy to remember, the am/pm system works the way that doesn't make sense (10am,11am,12pm...10pm,11pm,12am) unless you mentally substitute 0 for every 12.

[โ€“] Sunrosa 1 points 1 year ago

The position of the sun is already not exact relative to the time. Check when the sun rises and sets for you. Very random times. The further away from the equator you are the fuckier they get.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I think it would have worked better if it hadn't tried to decimalize time too.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I totally agree. It's not like the ~7-1700 time for my sunlight hours is super intuitive. If it was 23-11, I'd be fine after a few months, and a lot of problems would be solved.

[โ€“] Sunrosa 2 points 1 year ago

I got multiple of my friends on GMT/UTC and it's the best thing ever. Time is guaranteed and simple with them.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[โ€“] Feathercrown 1 points 1 year ago

Their workdays still conform to 9-5 ish though which is not ideal