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Comment by mixmastamyk | Hacker News Reader

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mixmastamyk·

So instead of the time there you’d look up the sun position. Not worse just different.

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It is worse.

It changes the meaning of time that we all use to communicate.

That’s the definition of different.

I talk about morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night. Those are solar concepts and need not be related to the clock.

Edit: originally said they need to be related which is opposite of my intent

They have to be related because that’s what humans are concerned with. Timekeeping is meaningless if noon for you means the sun is up and noon for me means it’s the dead of night. What purpose does that serve? Timekeeping is all about where the sun is, because humans still have sleep/wake cycles, and most people obviously want to do things when the sun is up.

Noon to me means the sun is directly overhead. When I travel the clock time of noon changes. Noon is traditionally 12:00, but it need not be. I care about local noon because adjusting my life around the local sun is a useful thing - it is very difficult to not be awake when the sun is up and sleep at night. Even if you travel a long distance you body will want to adjust to local sun patterns over the course of a month.

Why is solar position so important compared to ability to coordinate simultaneous events across wide geographies? It would be much simpler to have a globally consistent definition of time/simultaneity and treat other things (like solar position, working hours, etc) as scheduling constraints.

We put up with crazy things in an attempt to match solar position. The meaning of time we all use is flawed when I can hop on a plane and go back to yesterday. That's quite inconsistent with the accepted definition of time as unidirectional.

I agree, though it would make New Years Eve less fun away from the prime meridian. Probably worth it.

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