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Are the Americans Awake?

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Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#101

Post by jlg23 »

izzydata wrote: post #84
yuck39 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually liked the one time zone system in China when I lived there. It made scheduling work across different cities a little more convenient, and I didn't mind that the sunrise/sunset didn't always exactly line up to what I am accustomed to.

I can understand not exactly lining up, but considering how large the country is and how Beijing is so far east it seems like people in the west would have the sun rise at 2:00 or the sunsetting at 14:00. I don't know this for certain I'm just curious how not lined up it can get at the most extremes.

As long I am not working the same hours as people in the far east of China, I would not really care about what the clock reads at sunset: I'd just get up around sunrise at n o'clock, spend my hours at work and finally go to bed at m o clock. The only difference between n=6, m=22 or n=22,m=14 is habituation. We're used to the former.

But it would definitely screw up cultural references, e.g.: a "5pm tea" then can only be understood with a broader cultural context: "UK, 5pm is late in the 2nd half of the working day for them".

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#103

Post by wongarsu »

dylan604 wrote: post #97
wongarsu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is. Just because it doesn't appear on common clocks doesn't mean it isn't a valid time. To quote page 15 of ISO 8601:2004 (the newest version available on libgen): > hour is represented by two digits from [00] to [24]. The representation of the hour by [24] is only allowed to indicate the end of a calendar day And Page 17: > NOTE 1 Midnight will normally be represented as [00:00] or [24:00]. > NOTE 2…

Note 3 is just wrong. 00:00 is the start of the next day. Otherwise, your previous day would now be 24hours + 1second. "representations" is just allowing people to do things incorrectly and having everyone else accept them.

It's not an extra second, a clock might go 23:59:59 - 00:00:00 - 00:00:01 or 23:59:59 - 24:00:00 - 00:00:01. Both are equivalent and have the same meaning, with the only difference that 00:00:00 belongs to the new day and 24:00:00 belongs to the old day (despite both being the exact same moment in time). Of course clocks choose the former for simplicity, but for stating the end of an interval 24:00 can be clearer and preferred.

24:00 has no duration, it's only an instant in time. The same could be said about 11:34 of course, as long as you assume 11:34 to mean 11:34:00.0000000000000000000000 and not the interval from 11:34 to just before 11:35.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#104

Post by loudmax »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #75
throwaway09223 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we have one timezone? Why not have one worldwide timezone? The sun rises and sets at different times according to both latitude and longitude. Timezones only handle longitudinal daylight adjustments. We already deal with plenty of incongruity around daylight. Why not embrace the variability and let go of the idea that we can predict daylight based on the hour alone? Let people localize the time to disco…

Won't people just end up coming up with their own pseudo time zones anyways? If I'm in New York and I'm calling someone in Seattle, aren't I gonna have to just mentally subtract 3 or so hours anyways?

Yes. There's no getting around the fact that the sun rises and sets around the world at different times. What we do instead is get rid of the assumption that everybody works 9am to 5pm local time.

It does require a different way of thinking about time zones. It sounds complicated because it's unfamiliar, but if we ever make the transition, the system would be simpler, less ambiguous, and easier to reason about.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#105

Post by ghostpepper »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #55
nntwozz wrote: post #49

My doctor said I should sleep until I feel rested, there is no arbitrary number.

Doctors say a lot of stupid stuff like "cartilage can't be repaired, it doesn't matter how much sugar you eat for tooth health, lifting weights is bad", etc. The number is 7-9 hours. The funny thing is that if you get 5 regularly, you won't feel tired, you will just be slow, sick a lot, and unable to put on muscle mass.

Speak for yourself - when I get less than 6 hours for more than a few days in a row I am very tired by about 3PM.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#106

Post by msla »

Sankozi wrote: post #81
justrealist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about the concrete thing you're suggesting — making people 4 timezones away wake up early just to be aligned with bureaucrats! Eliminating timezones on its own does not make people wake up before dawn. Consolidating timezones while not forcing people into unnatural wake/sleep cycles accomplishes nothing. You still would have to figure out when people in SF wake up!

Why do you think it accomplishes nothing? Benefits just from communication perspective are enough to consider single timezone. > You still would have to figure out when people in SF wake up! Exactly! It is argument against multiple TZs not for it.

https://qntm.org/abolish

TL;DR:

People won't wake up at local midnight because the clock says 07:00.

People won't wake up at local sunrise no matter what the clock says.

People will wake up when the people they coordinate with wake up.

If they can't change their clocks to reflect that, the hours they keep will be very unpredictable to outsiders.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#107

Post by delecti »

JJMcJ wrote: post #62
delecti wrote: post #43

I'm perplexed at the implication that we "decided" to have the number of time zones that we do, rather than just acknowledging the reality that the US is a fairly big country. It's cheating a bit with Alaska in the picture, but the US spans about twice the degrees of longitude as Europe, and it would still be solidly "wider" even if you limit to the lower 48 states.

Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, also. Hardly cheating. They are part of the United States.

Apologies, because I was very unclear with my wording. I didn't mean to imply anything about areas outside the lower 48 being "less American", just that the total population outside the lower 48 is such a small fraction of the total. The US has bases and embassies all around the world which are full of people who are just as American as anyone, but if [1] this article is to be believed, over 99% of Americans are in the lower 48.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiguous_United_States

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#108

Post by sjm »

sandworm101 wrote: post #74

>> I consider awake to mean from 8AM to 12AM, you are getting at least 8 hours of sleep, right? Must be nice to be a millionaire who works from home then stays up late every night. Is this Charlie sheen's jingle-writing character from 2 1/2 men? The rest of the working population gets up long before 8am. Work starts at 8am. School starts at 8am. Most people I know, at least those with jobs/kids, set their alarms for…

Not the millionaire part, but yeah it is nice. I work to live, not live to work, and your military job sounds horrible, so I'll pass :)

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#109

Post by Vvector »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #67
cvoss wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's also the decision to use hour-aligned timezones. Why not half hours? Why not two hours? It's very much a conscious decision.

Why have time zones at all, and not simply recognize that day and night occur at different times in different places? This part wasn't a conscious decision, because the reference frame of time and orbital mechanics were discovered long after the practice of timekeeping. We may have a similar problem on a galactic scale some day.

The primary issue is when the day changes in the middle of the local day. Assume everyone adopts UTC. Then in California, midnight will happen at 5pm local time.

  * Friday UTC 2300 = local time 4pm PST  - This is Friday
  * Saturday UTC 0100 = local time 6pm PST  - Is this Saturday?
  * Saturday UTC 2300 = local time 4pm PST next day  - This is still Saturday?
When would Saturday afternoon be? We'd have to change our vocabulary, and I don't see that worth it.

Re: Are the Americans Awake?

#110

Post by [deleted] »

delecti wrote: post #43

I'm perplexed at the implication that we "decided" to have the number of time zones that we do, rather than just acknowledging the reality that the US is a fairly big country. It's cheating a bit with Alaska in the picture, but the US spans about twice the degrees of longitude as Europe, and it would still be solidly "wider" even if you limit to the lower 48 states.

[deleted]
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