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Comment by ape4 | Hacker News Reader

There is a trend to move to permanent daylight savings time in some places. I understand wanting to avoid the twice annual time changes but why "permanent daylight savings time" - why not "permanent time"

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Our society has stabilized on a business schedule and sleep pattern that is asymmetrical about noon; most people stay up after 6pm and wake up after 6AM, regardless of when the sun rises and sets in their locale. If you live in the perfectly calibrated point for your time zone (such that the sun is directly at its apex exactly at noon, with the caveat that you aren't on the equator) you will experience the sun rising before 6AM for half the year, and setting before 6PM for the other half, leaving you with wasted daylight in the summer and lots of darkness during waking hours in the winter. Since a larger portion of our waking (and non-working) hours are after 6PM, the thinking goes that it is beneficial for more of the year to bias your daylight to the evening by an hour than to actually be perfectly calibrated to solar noon.

> most people stay up after 6pm and wake up after 6AM, regardless of when the sun rises and sets in their locale

ok, but how is daylight time better? Just open and close stores at the times people are awake and active.

DST exists because, politically, culturally, psychologically, it's easier to change time, than it is to change 9am - 5pm to 8am - 4pm.

I would wager it's a combination of psychological factors: most people in the northern hemisphere prefer summer to winter, and falling back an hour in the fall in combination with the shorter days in general means that most people waking up hours before sunrise, which is unpleasant.

(Shorter winter hours are universally unpleasant, so it's not obvious there's a good answer regardless.)

Falling back in fall means that there is more light in the morning and less in the afternoon, the opposite of what you were saying.

You’re right. Oops.

In Eastern Canada (Montreal for instance) when we go back to normal time the sun will set at around 4:30pm which is depressing to say the least. I think most people would rather have an extra hour during the evening than in the morning.

Yeah, in Scotland we actually pretty much universally dislike the “return to winter time” change (that’s coming up). Perm summer time please. :)

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