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Comment by gojomo | Hacker News Reader

I like the leap-hour once every 500 years or so idea.

But I suspect in practice, it would never be actually assessed. When it comes due, everyone alive would be more accustomed to the 'hour off' times than the 500-years-ago time, so natural tendencies to eschew change in such matters would make following-through on the promised leap-hour unlikely.

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We’re willing to shift our clocks by an hour twice a year to “save daylight,” whatever that means. Correcting for 500 years of clock drift is a far more tangible reason. It’s rather pessimistic to assume that the people of 500 years from now would be unwilling to implement this.

Correcting for clock drift is not tangible in a practical sense though. We (allegedly) have good reasons for changing our schedule twice a year. Changing it because that's how people lived 500 years ago is not any kind of reason, and I think our ancestors will just laugh at the idea when it comes time for the leap hour.

So if these leap seconds are causing problems, I don't see any reason to keep them. By the time the consequences of getting rid of them are noticeable, they will no longer be negative consequences.

I think the counter-argument is the United State's resistance to metric, despite the obvious superiority to the system.

I'll be spinning in my grave, cryogenic storage tank, or positronic simulation matrix if our ancestors 500 years' hence are still observing (and thus familiar with) "Daylight Savings Time".

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