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The Waste of Daylight

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Re: The Waste of Daylight

#241

Post by ako »

mrfusion wrote: post #186
bloak wrote: post #151

As I see it, in the summer there's plenty of daylight so it doesn't matter very much how you set your clock, but in the winter it does matter: children would be cycling to school in the dark if you moved the clocks forward (and they'd be cycling back from school in the dark if you moved the clocks back). Therefore, if you want to abolish the clock changes, which seems like an excellent idea to me, the safe and conser…

It seems like the children going to school in the dark is the main counterargument. Could schools just start later in the winter or have reduced hours? Or could we add street lighting?

Yes, and when winter schedule starts, children will stay in a bed an hour longer, and in springtime, children will have to get up an hour earlier again. What have you gained? Nothing.

You've actually made things worse, because now some people get up earlier/later than others, creating confusion amongst people that need to align their schedules.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#242

Post by Thorrez »

globular-toast wrote: post #115
Thorrez wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting we eliminate (go permanent standard time) and have people change their alarms 1 hour earlier in the summer? Does that mean you also go to bed 1 hour earlier in the summer? If you go to bed earlier, you have less evening time to enjoy. Also adjusting your entire schedule (your alarm, your bedtime) twice a year would be very disruptive.

You've just described exactly what DST is.

No. With DST, the clocks have their times change, but I still wake up when the clocks say 8am and start work at 9am every day. (example)

With the hypothetical I was describing, the clocks never have their times change, but I get up at 8am in the winter and 7am in the summer, while starting work at 9am every day. This means in the summer I have 1 extra hour to do stuff in the morning before work, and 1 less hour to do stuff in the evening after work (assuming I go to bed 1 hour earlier to have a consistent amount of sleep).

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#243

Post by samus »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #213
rjmunro wrote: post #169

Moving around what we call the hours of the day is a really stupid way to change habits. Why not do this for other unit's of measurement? People travel at 70mph on highways, have accidents and die. Lets make 1 mile only 1200m instead of 1600m, now when the speed limit is 70mph, people will really be travelling at 84kph instead of 112kph, so less will die. It's utterly absurd. Just post a 50mph limit. If you want peop…

How do you legislate that things happen an hour earlier when you don’t legislate when they happen in the first place?

For stuff that you really care about, you pass regulations that public institutions have to follow. This takes care of stuff like school hours, counter opening times, mass transport time tables and the like. The rest of society either adapts or doesn't care. Some businesses, especially if they are outdoors-related, already have different opening hours in summer and winter. It really doesn't have to be legislated on a large scale.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#244

Post by eru »

another-dave wrote: post #207
eru wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only bad thing about time changes is adapting to different sleeping hours. Cross time zone collaboration is made harder. Mostly, I am aware of the DST shenanigans in my local jurisdiction, but keeping track of other people's DST is an extra hassle. Just not mucking with the clocks is easier. > It's not different from the jetlag that they subject themselves to willfully. Just because you are willing to indulge i…

Wouldn't cross TZ collaboration be even harder of each individual business was possibly changing their operating hours though, especially if they ended up choosing different start/end dates

Maybe.

What I've seen in practice, is that when working in Australia we had recurring meetings set in California local time. So those moved around 2h during the year.

When people change their hours, they usually tell you. When they change to DST, they just assume you know.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#245

Post by dahart »

throw0101a wrote: post #239
dahart wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you checked on SRBR's position paper citations yet? We've talked several times about how quite a few citations they use to justify claiming that DST has negative health effects are coming from research that does not study DST, and how the position paper is just speculating that DST outcomes might share the same results. Except they don't admit they're speculating, they claim it's "strong" evidence. Are you not y…

Nope. Every time DST comes up people say " I like daylight when I leave the office ". Which is fine. And I like not having to wear a mask… but I do it anyway because I don't want to spend the energy reading the papers, so I'll just trust the experts. My province passed some DST legislation last fall—put forward by some random legislator without any consultations AFAICT—and the experts weighed in after the fact: * htt…

You’re comparing daylight to not spreading a disease? Really?

It’s disingenuous to compare disease research for which there is volumes of direct evidence to daylight research for which is very little research, and the research is indirect - which the SRBR plainly admits, when you read beyond the abstract. This is one way they’re misleading you, by leaving the uncertainty out of the abstracts and conclusions. You’re doing yourself a disservice if care about this at all and you’re really not reading past the abstract. And I know you care about this a little.

How do you arrive at the claim “most” societies agree with SRBR? I’ve seen two of them, SRBR and AASM. Do you have a survey of all the societies that have studied DST? Most scientists agree that the appeal to authority argument is a fallacy.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#246

Post by dahart »

throw0101a wrote: post #238
dahart wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I do not have time/desire to crawl down this specific rabbit hole It seems weird to say this when you've posted dozens of times on this topic with many, many links and quotes to the arguments that support your position. Are you not at all curious about whether the abstracts and conclusions are actually true?

Because I've collected a link here and a link there over the course of ~2 years: which basically is four time changes. There's always a smattering of news reports that link to various places each time that happens. From last fall: * https://twitter.com/ChronobioCanada/status/13161222923180687... So the end result may be 'large', but it's only a modest amount of effort that snowballs. > Are you not at all curious abou…

It still seems weird. You’re repeating the conclusions forcefully and often as if they’re true. You’re taking more time to post than it would take to read the entire position paper in detail and check all the references. This is clearly a topic you care about, but you’re pretending and framing it as though it’s something you can’t be bothered to investigate, after investigating. You’ve mentioned IPCC twice in comments to me, but you’ve never posted quotes from IPCC abstracts or conclusions to Hacker News. Since you're actively participating in SRBR's advocacy, I’m confused about your story.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#247

Post by throw0101a »

dahart wrote: post #245
throw0101a wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Every time DST comes up people say " I like daylight when I leave the office ". Which is fine. And I like not having to wear a mask… but I do it anyway because I don't want to spend the energy reading the papers, so I'll just trust the experts. My province passed some DST legislation last fall—put forward by some random legislator without any consultations AFAICT—and the experts weighed in after the fact: * htt…

You’re comparing daylight to not spreading a disease? Really? It’s disingenuous to compare disease research for which there is volumes of direct evidence to daylight research for which is very little research, and the research is indirect - which the SRBR plainly admits, when you read beyond the abstract. This is one way they’re misleading you, by leaving the uncertainty out of the abstracts and conclusions. You’re d…

If you wish to spend your time scouring journals for opposing views go right ahead. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of groups that probably study this issue:

* https://srbr.org/about-us/other-societies/

It's probably a good place to start.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#248

Post by dahart »

throw0101a wrote: post #247
dahart wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re comparing daylight to not spreading a disease? Really? It’s disingenuous to compare disease research for which there is volumes of direct evidence to daylight research for which is very little research, and the research is indirect - which the SRBR plainly admits, when you read beyond the abstract. This is one way they’re misleading you, by leaving the uncertainty out of the abstracts and conclusions. You’re d…

If you wish to spend your time scouring journals for opposing views go right ahead. Here's a (non-exhaustive) list of groups that probably study this issue: * https://srbr.org/about-us/other-societies/ It's probably a good place to start.

Thank you for the list, I will do a little poking around just for our conversation 8 months from now. ;)

The very first publication I found in 2 minutes following links randomly, from the starting place you provided says:

“Repeatedly, [Social Jet Lag] has been found to be a risk factor for higher body mass index (BMI) or even obesity, depressive symptoms, and for behaviour that is hazardous to health, such as smoking and poor dietary habits (for a review see [15]). The effects found by Borisenkov et al. (2017) [14] correspond to a statistically small to medium effect size (r = 0.2).

Roenneberg, Winnebeck, et al. [8] however recently claimed that this effect was “biologically large”. While that may be true, such a claim is unjustified so long as we lack information about the practical meaningfulness of differences in SJL on an interval scale” [1] (emphasis mine)

This is exactly what I’ve been saying. The health claims of DST are being exaggerated. I don’t have any problem with their conclusion that perennial Standard Time seems to have “higher” support than perennial Daylight Savings, based on the available and indirect evidence, but SRBR and others calling it conclusive and “strong” is not something that either the science nor most scientists agree with. Your claim that there’s strong consensus isn’t true.

[1] https://www.mdpi.com/2624-5175/2/1/3/htm

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#249

Post by lostapathy »

asoneth wrote: post #223
rjmunro wrote: post #169

Moving around what we call the hours of the day is a really stupid way to change habits. Why not do this for other unit's of measurement? People travel at 70mph on highways, have accidents and die. Lets make 1 mile only 1200m instead of 1600m, now when the speed limit is 70mph, people will really be travelling at 84kph instead of 112kph, so less will die. It's utterly absurd. Just post a 50mph limit. If you want peop…

Coordinating a mass schedule change at a specific point in time is just a different method of implementing daylight-savings time. Between the two, changing wall clocks seems like the simpler of the two options, but either is fine.

All kinds of businesses have seasonal hours already, and without any coordination or need to make everyone change their clocks.

Re: The Waste of Daylight

#250

Post by asoneth »

lostapathy wrote: post #249
asoneth wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coordinating a mass schedule change at a specific point in time is just a different method of implementing daylight-savings time. Between the two, changing wall clocks seems like the simpler of the two options, but either is fine.

All kinds of businesses have seasonal hours already, and without any coordination or need to make everyone change their clocks.

I agree with you that allowing each organization to make their own seasonal shifts requires less coordination and is simpler in many ways.

Just to be clear, I was responding to the parent poster who suggested we "just legislate that things start earlier at a certain time of year" as an alternate implementation of a coordinated schedule change. Among the various coordinated approaches that I can think of, changing clocks seems like the least bad.

And there is undoubtedly some utility in a coordinated approach given how intertwined our lives are. But whether it's worth the additional cost? I don't know. Trying to get my kids to school on time this Monday was more difficult than usual, but at the same time I can't actually shift my work day earlier unless the schools also start earlier.

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