this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Don't you think it makes sense for the date to change while ~everyone is asleep?
International light-speed communication is what we internet dwellers are used to but it's not most people's experience. Most people rarely talk to people from another continent.
Tilde as natural language punctuation, meaning "roughly" or "approximately". I like it.
Oh don't get me wrong, I see how it makes sense. I'm just saying that 1) it is arbitrary nonetheless and 2) it doesn't outweigh the benefits that could be gained by using a single global timezone. Incidence angle of solar radiation is hardly something most people need or even want to track beyond a certain degree (dawn, noon, dusk, midnight), and the times that would coincide with at your latitude and longitude can be easily learned.
I guess I disagree about the benefits of a single global timezone. We already have that for technology to use - the unix timestamp. All potential benefits of a unified timezone could be (and are) gained by having software convert times to whichever timezone you need.
Maybe I'm missing something. What do you think the benefits would be?
A unix timestamp is an offset to a UTC date, not a timezone. But fair enough, there is UTC. It's not used by default however, except by scientists and programmers maybe.
Removing ambiguity from casual language. Currently when you state a time you are almost always implying your local timezone applies, which might be unknown information to the recipient, especially with written sources like these comments here. With everybody using the same timezone instead you would always make an unambiguous statement about the specific time by default.
In most people's everyday life that's really rare. And when it does happen it's usually clarified. In more automated contexts (e.g. a scheduled YouTube premiere) the software converts it automatically - the author inputs the date and time in their own timezone, and viewer sees the converted date and time in their own timezone.
When it does happen it reminds us that the date and time falls on a different time of day for different participants.
22:00, midday.
Person A: "Meet me here tomorrow at 01:00"
Person B: "Sure no problem"
... three hours later ...
Person A: "Ugh, I told him to be here at 01:00, where is he?"
... 24 hours later ...
Person B: "Ugh, he told me to come here at 01:00, where is he?"
My point exactly though, this is a whole lot of complexity we could just get rid of by using a single timezone, with the added benefit of that working without any automation or clarification. Next Tuesday 14:00? Same time for everybody, regardless of locality. Everyone will know what part of the solar day that is for them by habit.
The complexity of coordinating different solar cycles is there either way and unavoidable. So why not use the simpler system?
Yes, semantic drift in these terms would be unavoidable, but I still see the long-term benefits to clarity outweighing the short-term costs in it.
I can respect your position but I don't think you could ever change my mind. The date can't change in the middle of the day. I can't accept that.
Fair enough, I still think you'd get used to it if it were to happen.