And instead changing the time work and other things happens depending on where you are. Would be easier to arrange meetings across the globe. Same thing applies to summertime. You may start work earlier if you want, but dont change the clocks!

  • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    causes the question “What time is it there?” to be useless/unanswerable

    That is a feature, it removes one thing to worry about.

    necessitates significant changes to the way in which normal people talk about time

    Yes, I think this is the biggest argument against. It would take a long time to get used to.

    convolutes timetables, where present

    How?

    means “days” are no longer the same as “days”

    Same as point 2.

    complicates both secular and religious law

    How?

    is a staggering inconvenience for a minimum of five billion people

    How?

    makes it near-impossible to reason about time in other parts of the world

    How? In my opinion it makes it easier.

    does not mean everybody gets up at the same time, goes to work at the same time, or goes to bed at the same time

    Yes. This is true.

    is not simpler at all

    Of course it is simpler. You have just removed a huge source of complexity. It still isn’t simple because people will still live their life at different times. But it is simpler.

    • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      means “days” are no longer the same as “days”

      Who gets to pick when “noon” is when the sun is usually above their head? Let’s assume Greenwich for posterity sake. That means a bunch of the world will spend most of their “daytime” in traditionally nighttime hours. Thus spending your day (time when the sun is up) and your day (the time when you do your work) will not intuitively mean the same thing

      complicates both secular and religious law

      Islam requires regular prayer in the direction of mecca and plenty of nations have Islamic law. At a minimum they’d have to rewrite those laws, at most it’d cause a literal schism

      is a staggering inconvenience for a minimum of five billion people

      “We changed how clocks work for almost everyone on the planet to make some nerds’ lives easier. Please go change your planners, clocks, schedules, applications, signs, etc to adjust”

      makes it near-impossible to reason about time in other parts of the world

      In most of the world, you can reasonably assume the sun goes up around 7 am and sets around 7. Obviously that changes but you can pretty reasonably assume when people will be around and doing stuff by looking at their time. In this new system you’ll need to figure out what times people do most of their activities based off of geological segments of the planet and checking what their “daytime” is. Which is already a problem timezones address

      is not simpler at all

      On a base level maybe, but after fixing all the other problems it causes the resulting system would likely be just as if not more complicated than our current time system

      • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        That means a bunch of the world will spend most of their “daytime” in traditionally nighttime hours

        No, no one would do this. You would continue living your life when the sun is up, the number on the clock would just be different.

        Islam requires regular prayer in the direction of mecca and plenty of nations have Islamic law.

        So just continue doing this based on the previous schedule? Many religions still celebrate holidays based on alternate calendars and many holidays have strange rules for when they occur. This seems like an incredibly minor issue to me?

        We changed how clocks work

        Yeah, I agree that the change would be so painful that it isn’t worth it. I am just arguing that I think the end result would be better. Not much better, but better.

        you can pretty reasonably assume when people will be around and doing stuff by looking at their time

        This seems like a very artificial problem. When will you know their time previously but not their location or relative time of day. You will still know what people are doing. Just because you add the magic number based on their location in the world before consulting their schedule instead of after doesn’t change anything. This only seems like a problem if you were magically teleported to another location underground and only have access to a clock.

        • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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          9 months ago

          I am just arguing that I think the end result would be better. Not much better, but better.

          It would be better for whichever countries near the 0 offset (eu if using utc), but massive downgrade for no real benefit for countries near +12h offset (asia pacific). This will be seen as another instance of the west flexing their global power and will take generations to adapt. But if the offset were reversed (asia pacific at 0, the west at +12h) things would go much smoother there.

          • kevincox@lemmy.ml
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            9 months ago

            I think it would be better everywhere. It may be slightly easier if your noon is close to solar noon but really other than Europe and Africa everyone would be in the same boat of having the day number roll over sometime during their waking day. This would probably be the biggest downside but seems like something that language would adapt to quickly. I live at -5 so my day would roll over at 19:00 solar time. So it isn’t like my location is immune to the day rollover issue.