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Comment by mhitza | Hacker News Reader

I'm very much the kind of person that prefers the sun extending in the afternoon than the downside waking up in the night. The current "normal" makes the days feel more easily as "lost".

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There is likely a minority of people who are not significantly affected by a lack of morning light and therefore prefer having light in the afternoon. However, the way we set our clocks must work for society as a whole, and there is an abundance of medical research demonstrating the importance of morning light.

i mean us night owls have been used to society fucking us over with their schedules for our whole lives, it's nothing new

The best part of winter for me is waking up in the dark, going to work in the dark, and driving home in the dark. I don't get affected by SAD and it's much more pleasant to me when it's not sunny.

Glad to hear that the tyranny of majority works at a societal norms level. Hopefully at some point that will be the case with democracies as well, instead of serving the privilege of few very wealthy individuals :)

I'd like to imagine a parallel universe where society has decided that given shorter days, as law, working hours must be reduced during the winter period to allow people to wakeup and leave work while the sun is still up. And for those unfortunate ones that work during night shifts the bonuses are significant for their added Vitamin D deficiency and life disruption.

The stated preference of the majority in surveys is permanent daylight time, more sunlight in the evening and less in the morning.

The revealed preference is the opposite. Most people, when given the option for flex time, will start and end work later, increasing their morning sunlight and decreasing their evening sunlight.

Voting works on stated preference, so we'll likely end up with permanent daylight time.

I see that example as the opposite, people just like to sleep in in general, and later sunrise/sunset gives them more light in the times that matter. They don't cancel out, doing both gives the best result.

You have to know ahead of time whether people value their sleep over sunlight, or sunlight over sleep, to know which version makes the most sense.

I've started to despise revealed preference for precisely this scenario. When it's applied accurately it rarely says anything normal reasoning couldn't already make abundantly apparent but it's soooo easy to inaccurately apply and then the conversation goes off the rails to focus on what the revealed preference does/doesn't say.

Why is it so hard to set our schedules instead of our clocks? Can't we just agree that school starts an hour later in winter, for instance?

Then parents who do morning routine or drop off have to come in an hour later, and their partner also wants to wake an hour later so they can stay up with the family an hour later, which means they don’t want to open the coffee shop until an hour later, so now the random commuter wants to start later so their coffee shop is open, and pretty soon it’s just as easy to say “ah screw it, we’re just going to change the clocks twice a year…”

Or, we come up with a system that actually follows the rhythms of nature, rather than forcing a standard schedule year round. Like, I get up later and go to bed earlier in the winter like pretty much every other mammal on the planet, and the 9-5 can shove it. This has nothing to do with clocks changing. Just our patterns changing.

I’d like a single, consistent way to mark time, but that shouldn’t dictate my seasonal schedule and rhythms.

> Or, we come up with a system that actually follows the rhythms of nature, rather than forcing a standard schedule year round.

The clock-driven day is one of humanity's greatest inventions. You can't build a spacefaring society on "following the rhythms of nature."

Eh, I say give it a try. Worst case we don't get to space but have a good time.

We have given it a try. It’s how most of the world worked until industrialization, and how much of the world still works (like my dad’s village in Bangladesh). It’s a recipe for poverty.

Not sure I buy the cause and effect here.

It's co-evolution. As the society advances, it develops rigid timekeeping to enable further development.

Eh, we still have timezones, and a spacefaring civilization will most likely at least use a time that matches their planet’s cycle.

I understand the sun enveloping the earth is inevitable and the fate of our species depends on shedding our earthly bonds but, I think we can conform our daily habits to our present reality without sacrificing a distant future spacefaring civilization.

Rigid timekeeping does not preclude compensation for the sun.

Parents already have to make adjustments to their schedules for when their children are out of school in the summer, right? It's not like society isn't used to parental schedules shifting based on the time of year.

One of my favorite life hacks (which really isn't a hack) is to not change my clock, go to sleep and wake up at the exact same time (solar wise, not wall clock), and just view the shift as a shift in schedules as opposed to time.

This is somewhat what it is like for me in Arizona. There is no clock change here, so I just watch my out of state meetings shift around twice a year.

Because the opposite is true. Schedules used to be earlier in the past. People simply want them later, despite stating otherwise.

It’s a majority of people who aren’t farmers and don't wake up at 6AM to feed the chickens in the dark (chickens would wake up with the sun anyways). They’ve done polls on this and it comes up to cities want permanent summer time, and farming communities don’t.

There is no absolute value of when to do things. People used to get up at 6am or even earlier. Over the past century everything became several hours later, so the opposite of the stated preference of doing everything an hour earlier.

This just seem to be another case of people tell you different things, than they do.

> They’ve done polls on this and it comes up to cities want permanent summer time, and farming communities don’t.

...and then when they actually try most of the people who said they wanted it find out that they don't actually want it.

Just go to sleep with the sun. Whatever we do to your clocks won't affect the sun.

That is too soon. I would go to sleep before kids come back from after school activities. Most of the colleagues would still be at work when I go to sleep too.

The sun won't be affected by what you set your clock to. If you want to optimize your schedule for sun exposure, you can do so. You can even travel twice a year near the poles to get sun all day everyday. Or no sun ever, if that's your jam.

Around here, that would be pretty much hibernation.

4h 40m in midwinter, 20h 20m in midsummer :D (plus nearly permanent twilight) - i suppose that might work if i was a bear that hibernates (and i believe the bears are right about this).

...so go to sleep while I'm still at the office at 4:30pm?

So change when you get up.

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