
In Defense of Daylight Saving Time - chat
https://slate.com/technology/2019/03/in-defense-daylight-saving-time.html
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frankus
I'm ambivalent about DST as a concept (see e.g. here:
[https://leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-
dst/](https://leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/)), but I feel like
proponents of this scheme haven't really thought it through.

"Permanent daylight time" is no different from just getting rid of time
changes and shifting one time zone to the East. And of course the whole point
of having time zones is so that can be somewhat close to the middle of the day
at noon (and that "midnight" isn't too much before or after the middle of the
night).

The end result of this is that instead of saying "Oh my god I can't believe
it's getting dark and it's only 4:30!", we'll quickly adapt and find ourselves
saying "Oh my god I can't believe it's getting dark and it's only 5:30!".

This would also mean waking up before dawn throughout most of the winter for
most people in moderately northern latitudes with conventional schedules,
which is likely to be terrible for sleep health.

And yes, it's possible to adjust work and school schedules to be better in
line with people's natural sleep rhythms, but then why not just do _that_ and
leave our timezones alone?

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OldSchoolJohnny
How ironic that this article (which was actually written in the spring and
goes to great lengths to explain why people are mistaking DST for standard
time) was posted here in the fall just after the switch to winter time; some
master level trolling posting this here now.

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skokage
>I have no doubt that some Americans legitimately dislike DST—not just the
change of clocks, but the redistribution of sunlight from morning to
afternoon.

I don't really feel like most people complain about the specific time the sun
sets, as much as they are complaining about the disruption to their circadian
cycle. I dislike the short days during winter, but changing the time the sun
sets an hour forward or backward isn't ultimately going to create more hours
of sunlight during the day.

What i will say however, after a year of living in a country now that doesn't
observe DST, is i greatly appreciate not having a disruption to my sleep
cycles in either direction. My dog also appreciate not having the disruption
to his daily routine either. I adjusted to just waking up when the sun rises,
wanting to go to sleep within a few hours of the sun setting, and when it's
cold outside and the days are shorter i find myself wanting to spend more time
inside sleeping anyways.

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Balanceinfinity
"two states eventually opted out: Hawaii and Arizona. Hawaii abandoned the law
in 1967 because, well, it just didn’t make sense. One of the benefits of
Daylight Saving Time is that there’s more daylight in the evening. But in
Hawaii, the sun rises and sets at about the same time every day, TIME reports"

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ncmncm
Arguments about the merits of sunshine earlier in the morning or sunshine
later into the afternoon are a distraction. Some like one, the rest like the
other. They will never agree, but some will adjust their own schedule to their
own needs. As a society, we could make jobs accommodate different needs.

The essence of DST is polititians drunk on the power to legislate sunrise and
sunset, primal forces of the universe. Why do we extend them that power? When
will we take it away?

~~~
gpvos
It started with the introduction of time zones, which are really quite a
reasonable idea and have more advantages than disadvantages. And they need to
be regulated somehow, and politics is how we do that. No need to take that
power away. We should however make our system such that politicians work for
the advantage of the people, not for other interests.

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sparrish
Each year our family braces for the impact of time change on both my wife and
I and our kids. It takes weeks to get back to 'normal'. Light/dark/whatever...
it's too impactful on sleep, moods, and health.

Set and leave it alone, for the love of the family!

~~~
ako
How do deal with traveling across different time zones, this is basically the
same thing?

~~~
gabrielmoshe
I've found that traveling is distinctly different (within the United States)
because the sun is still coming up at approximately the same local hour. Of
course this can vary by more than an hour if you travel between opposite edges
of a time zone, but somehow traveling is also less jarring to me than the DST
shift.

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jml7c5
>The media’s inability to articulate the proposition’s purpose may have led to
voter bewilderment, as illustrated in the CBS article, which features a
California resident who asserts: “I don’t like Daylight Saving Time. It
disrupts me every fall.” Given that DST begins in the spring, this Californian
probably meant to assail Standard Time but inadvertently contributed to anti-
DST fervor.

There's nothing incorrect here, as the existence of a time switch to Daylight
Savings Time necessitates a jump back to Standard Time. The individual is
basically saying "I don't like [the switch to] Daylight Saving Time."

The rest of the article ignores that store hours etc. are changeable, and that
those hours do not change infrequently. Some places have both summer and
winter hours already.

Going daylight savings time all year round because we're too lazy to bother
with changing store hours is absurd. Why in god's name would we decide that
noon, when the sun is at its highest point, is not 12PM? To highlight the
absurdity, imagine explaining this to kids 100 years from now: "well, 13:00
corresponds to solar noon because a century ago people in the United States
decided it made more sense to shift all our time zones one over rather than
change work hours. That's why our time zone has the word 'Daylight' in instead
of just being called Pacific Time."

(A note: I am aware that solar noon does not exactly correspond to 12:00 PM
due to the peculiarities of Earth's orbit, but being off by up to 16 minutes
isn't that bad, particularly as the variation is centered around 12:00 PM. And
yes, as you move closer to the edge of a time zone the offset between solar
noon and 12:00 PM grows, but there is generally an attempt made to correspond
with solar noon.)

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tzs
Why should I care about when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky? The
Sun being at its highest point in the sky has no biological significance that
I know of.

The arrival of morning light, on the other hand, is used to regulate our
circadian rhythms. Thus, it makes a lot more sense to anchor our schedules for
most activities to when the Sun rises, not when it peaks.

~~~
jml7c5
The choice of what 12:00 signifies has no bearing on where wake/sleep is
anchored. If California decided to switch to Eastern time, people would just
end up setting the average work day in the state from 11:00 - 19:00 (Eastern
time), and people would wake up at 10:00 (Eastern time).

~~~
ncmncm
Indeed, all of China runs on Beijing time. Out west, the sun comes up at 10
AM, in summer. In Winter, at 2 PM.

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mayneack
As a bike commuter, I'm pretty happy to be back on standard time. Light is
much more valuable to me on my morning commute as it also makes things warmer.

~~~
randyrand
What about commuting home in the dark? That’s what I have to do and it sucks.

~~~
tzs
If there isn't enough daylight during part of the year to allow for both
morning and evening commutes to be in the light, it probably makes more sense
to give the light to the morning commute.

The morning commute is not only adults going to work. It's also kids heading
to school, many on foot or bike.

The evening commute, on the other hand, is mostly adults coming home from
work. School days are significantly shorter than adult work days, so the
school kids are home by around 2-4 PM, before the evening commute starts.

Thus, if you only have enough daylight for one of them, you'll benefit more
people by using that light for the morning commute.

~~~
randyrand
Over 40% of kids do extra-ciriculars. We also need to factor in errands,
hangouts, etc, that are done after school.

Similarly, there are more adults than children and Adults/parents commute at
more dangerous busy times. "Think of the children" should only go so far.

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tdburn
Make the switch to DST permanent. Much better having longer days in the
summer, which also helps not having to fight against light telling your body
to not go to bed. This switch messes people up so bad for days or weeks

~~~
tzs
Unless you can also convince businesses and schools to open later in the
winter, permanent DST is terrible then at higher latitudes.

In the Seattle area, for instance, under permanent DST sunrise could be as
late as a few minutes before 9 AM. That puts a lot of people out traveling as
much as 2 hours before sunrise.

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ikeyany
How is that any worse than what you have now, where no one gets to see the sun
after work until March?

~~~
tzs
Morning tends to be more concentrated. You've got people going to work, kids
walking or biking to school, people taking their dogs out for the first walk
of the day, deliveries starting, people heading out to shop for things they'll
need that day, and things like that.

Evening isn't as concentrated, because there is much more variation in when
people come back than in when they go out.

If we only can do one of them in the light, morning probably makes the most
sense because of it having more traffic volume and more traffic diversity.

~~~
ikeyany
Is it actually true that 6:30am is more concentrated than 5:30pm?

