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Comment by yupper32 | Hacker News Reader

> No one wants their first couple hours of the day to be darkness.

Why? What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work? Complete waste to do that in the daylight.

> Secondly, it's more dangerous for kids walking to school.

We should be pushing back school starting times anyway. If they're old enough to walk to school, then they don't need their parents to wait for them to leave before going to work, so that typical argument goes out the window.

> And lastly we use more energy since a larger part of our day is lived in the darkness for most people.

A weak argument IMO. Studies are not conclusive on the actual savings, and most of the ones that are out there say they save minimal energy. Besides, I think the mental health benefits of having more useful hours in the evening are worth the extra 0.5-1% energy usage.

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You have to understand that most people start work at 8 and many start earlier. For this majority that means they are on the road by 7:30 - which is rush hour. This means they are probably awake by 6:30 or earlier in some cases. So they already begin in the dark. Now imagine that going for even more time, until 8:30?

At least this way you get some Sunlight before you're at work and some when you're done.

I don't understand. If I'm at work, why would I care if it's light out or not? I'm not using that light for anything useful.

There are people in the world who do not work inside.

The jobs I've worked outside we started the day in the dark often times (construction, landscaping). What jobs have you worked that required perfect natural lighting the entire time? I'm assuming it's a decent minority of jobs.

So you’re saying you’re fine with them leaving work in the evening in the dark, because that’s the trade-off. Not to mention your post-work leisure time will be in darkness.

You're going to work or at work, so it's irrelevant whether it's sunny outside or not. That hour of sun sitting in morning traffic is completely wasted.

Much better to have the hour of sun after work to do things outside.

I'd rather have all my sunlight at the tail end of the day where the time is all mine, vs having to waste some of it when I'm hustling to get breakfast together and get out of the house. Better for vitamin D deficiencies since I can now do something like an after work walk in the last hour of sunlight of the day vs coming home and it being dark already.

> What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work?

Here's 1 day from last week, before DST:

5:00 AM: wake up

5:15 - 6:30: lift

6:30: breakfast, coffee, and paper on the porch, watch the sun rise.

7:15: go shower, dress, pack lunch, get ready for work

7:30: leave for work

7:50: arrive at work

2 things I enjoy, a few hours of "free time", before work. And by the way, showing up at work around 8 is more common than arriving at 9 for most corporate jobs. The tech bubble is real on this site. Guess why? Because we like having some light left in the evening/ending our day earlier, among other reasons.

> We should be pushing back school starting times anyway.

No, learning to get up early forces kids to learn to go to bed on time, that's a valuable skill that teaches discipline. If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.

> A weak argument

Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.

From what I can tell most people do not do anything other than get ready for work in the morning. Yes, there are outliers like yourself who actually utilize that daylight, but that's the minority. Most people want a later sunset.

You wake up 2 hours earlier than the average American (which apparently is about 7:09am). Things aren't and shouldn't be optimized for your abnormal sleep pattern.

> If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.

... I don't think you've met kids before. The vast majority absolutely won't learn.

> Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.

Standard time moves sunlight to the morning, when people are sleeping. Permanent DST should give people the same or more sunlight during their waking hours. You'd have the same amount, waking up at 5am and assuming you don't sleep until at least 8:30pm.

I learned when I was a kid. It took me a few days, and I made the mistake a few more times, but I eventually learned. Americans wake up before 7: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/10/11639214/how-people-around-the...

We should try to move sunrise closer to when people wake up. This does the opposite for most people, not just me.

Also, we should teach more people to get up early and go lift/exercise. We have too many fatties in this country. Making it a national habit would be a great thing.

> I learned when I was a kid.

From my experience, having experienced being a kid does not prepare you very much for the task of raising one.

I don't see the raw numbers, but the chart seems to indicate Americans waking up slightly before 7, maybe 6:50am? Not too far off from the source I found of 7:09am, and is still approximately 2 hours after you wake up.

And congrats at being disciplined. The vast vast vast majority of Americans aren't. And changing the habits of hundreds of millions of people is a pipe dream and really irrelevant to this conversation.

> Also, we should teach more people to get up early and go lift/exercise.

With permanent DST people will have more opportunities to do that in the daylight after work, as the day will be longer.

> No, learning to get up early forces kids to learn to go to bed on time, that's a valuable skill that teaches discipline. If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.

You are arguing against many well-documented studies about what school hours work best for kids to learn. "on time" is entirely based on what time you need to get up. The whole point of moving school later is for "on time" to be compatible with the hours that kids are more functional. This is not a matter of discipline; deciding you're going to be up and functional earlier does not change your body or the sun's position in the sky to be compatible with that. (If you want to argue otherwise, argue in published studies refuting the ones that exist, not in replies to this comment.)

Move school hours to start several hours later than they currently do, and then by all means encourage the discipline of getting up in time for school.

Morning is the most important time to have daylight for controlling circadian rhythm.

The good news is that there is always daylight every morning. The bad news is that some places have a few months between mornings.

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