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Comment by marssaxman | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad we're agreed that changing the clocks twice a year is a bad idea, but I don't understand why we should abandon Daylight Savings Time by adopting it permanently. What's so wrong with Standard Time?

Oh, well: whether we put the clocks back or leave them permanently off-by-one, either is better than changing them around over and over.

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The reason for permanent daylight savings (versus permanent standard) is to provide for later sunsets in the winter. By clock time, the sun would be rising later (after 8am in many places) but setting later as well giving people some late afternoon or evening sun. Which is better is ultimately subjective, you get short days in the winter regardless when you live far enough north.

The late sunrise can be more dangerous with a lot more people traveling in the dark (especially if there's mixed vehicle, bike, and pedestrian traffic, like around schools). So that's also something to consider, and a drawback to this particular choice.

Morning commutes are way less worse than afternoon ones so it makes sense to prioritize later daylight.

> Which is better is ultimately subjective

Most folks subjectively prefer having light after work because that's when it's more fun to do stuff. Unfortunately, the health impacts are (objectively!) worse under permanent daylight saving time.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7954020/ https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/prevention-wellness/s... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6436388/ (I've heard there's been some debate on this one, though the association positions stay the same)

Most people also prefer to wake up a bit after the sun rises. Daylight Savings approximates having the sun come up at the same time each day. People do not want to wake up in the dark.

If you wake up in the dark you are ensured to use the maximum amount of daylight possible. You also have the added benefit of being able to sleep until you need to get up instead of being woken up early by the sun.

Most people just go to sleep at a time such that they get enough sleep and they get up some time after sunrise. Our bodies naturally wake up with the sun. The modern clock defined world messes with our biology, and daylight savings helps correct this mismatch. Before people had clocks or times they had to show up to work, they would just get up with the sun.

It just doesn’t work. It starts getting light around 4-5am in the summer and 8am in the winter where I live

I do live far enough north, which is probably part of the reason "daylight savings" strikes me as a bit silly: no arrangement of clocks can work around the fact that there's not enough sunlight for all we want to do in a winter day. Both getting up before dawn and leaving work after sunset are undesirable, but during midwinter you can't avoid either one. I figure you might as well just learn to deal with the darkness, and if you can't, move south until you have enough daylight you don't need to "save" it!

The “savings” in “daylight savings” doesn’t refer to the winter part of the schedule. It refers to the summer part, where daylight that occurs during typical “sleeping” hours is “saved” by shifting the clocks so it occurs in the evening instead.

Oh, well, that's even more absurd in the north; in summertime the sun rises long before one wants to get up and lingers well after the day is done. What's to be saved? We have an irritating superabundance of daylight. Blackout curtains are often not enough.

The golf industry prefers daylight savings: https://gbej.org/golf-industry-fights-to-preserve-daylight-s...

So do restaurants.

Why do you think it's a bad idea ?

What's the downside other than having to take a minute to update your microwave clock twice a year ?!

We're not agreed. In a few years, we're gonna be. For a while.

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