I think that the gallup poll is flawed because it does not explain what daylight saving versus standard time is. I just spoke to an educated grad student, who thought that we were in standard time right now. Because the sun is out later during daylight saving time, the name is somewhat counter-intuitive. Also, because it’s on for most of the year, DST feels “standard.”

It matches our circadian rhythms better. That leads to absolutely massive better health outcomes, society-wide.

People wanting to drive home with a bit of light doesn’t really offset everyone’s sleep getting screwed up, especially those with later natural circadian rhythms.

School start times should be pushed back an hour anyways. Students learn better, especially middle school + highschool age. The only reason we don't is because it conflicts with parents working schedules.

Every division of society should just use its own schedule, then the number of divisions doesn't matter.

    Charles Moore, author of the Forth programming language

To the degree kids are standing around outside, they're already in the dark in northern US states (to say nothing about Canada and areas of Europe) for part of the year even with standard time.

And, yes, dynamic school schedules don't work because they need to be synced at some level with work schedules. A one-time shift might work though.

I mostly don't have a dog in this hunt. I pretty much set my own schedule absent the odd morning appointment.

that became an issue with the introduction of trains and their schedule.

how do you think this would work today with our interconnected world? we absolutely need standardized times or everything falls apart.

Okay, so you travel from, say, Washington DC to NYC and then you have to set your clock back by... I think it's like 13 minutes?

Which is why railroads started instituting time zones in the late 19th century: because it turns out having to recalibrate your watch every hour or so is a recipe for creating train crashes. Railroad time didn't become standard time until the early 20th century, in large part because a lot of the smaller cities were pretty irate at having to adjust their clocks. (It also doesn't help that coincidentally, places like Chicago and New York City are very near the center meridian of their time zone).

Ideal and impractical. Even with modern wifi.

Why not have your own timezone based on where you are standing right now? Oh, right, because that's the opposite of universal (or at least worldwide).

One-hour shifts are manageable. One-minute shifts between population centers are not. Your meeting would start at precisely 8:03:38, your time. The business you are calling would close its doors 13 minutes before 5 pm.

This is a great question, and theres alot of history there, this is how time used to work until travel and communication speeds necessitating coordination over larger areas required it. The biggest driver in North America? Railroads.

Great documentary on the history of human relationship with time is available here: https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-indies-time-1/

Technically no. Work and School dictate when we get up and go to bed. It's all relative. We could create a timezone where 12:00PM is in the morning. We are just used to this idea that morning, afternoon, evening, and night need to correspond to specific time values. For example, China uses just one timezone. So local regions just adapt to what logically makes sense. In a perfect world, local regions would adapt to the amount of daylight we have for each season, like it was before timekeeping and timezones. So school and work would shift when they start based off the rising of the sun. This isn't practical though for multiple reasons. It would cause chaos and confusion for work shifts, scheduling etc.

You can get up or go to bed whenever you wish.

You can say today's date is 27 Messidor Year CCXXXIV if you wish.

The problem is when you want to coordinate events between people following different time conventions.

Timezones as we know it started off as a railroad company invention. Does the London/Birmingham train follow London time or Birmingham time? Does the stop in Rugby use Rugby time?

DST in the US used to be a regional choice until 1966. Coordination became an issue.

"The lack of standardization led to a patchwork where some areas observed DST while adjacent areas did not, and it was not unheard of to have to reset a clock several times during a short trip (e.g., bus drivers operating on West Virginia Route 2 between Moundsville, West Virginia, and Steubenville, Ohio, had to reset their watches seven times over 35 miles)." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_time_in_the_United_...

> with a little more flexibility for rural areas so they can stay on the same time as their closest major population center.

We can do that already. I remember when most of Indiana didn't follow DST. Businesses in Danville, Illinois, near the border followed Indiana time by changing the listed hours of operation during summer.

Speaking of Indiana, 'Attitudes began to change in the 1990s, as Indiana's time zone situation was seen as impeding the state's economic growth. Interstate travel and commerce were difficult as people wondered, "what time is it in Indiana?"' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana

Having 12:00 noon be when the sun is highest makes these issues reappear.

What if we just split the difference?

America/New_York becomes UTC-04:30

Pretty sure there are studies that indicate the time shift is actually harmful - more car accidents, more heart attacks, all sorts of things.

Really, the question is which system (standard, DST, or both) causes the least damage?

Also worth noting we tried permanent DST a few decades ago and it was repealed within a year because people didn't like it. Approval in advance was north of 70% and in the aftermath below 40%, IIRC.

You're not a software developer, are you ;)? I'm not working on any timezone-aware products right now but I feel for all my brothers and sisters in the trenches if this passes and has to be fixed everywhere!

> Permanent DST means kids walking to school in the dark.

It means much more than that:

> Later sunrises and sunsets, as seen with pDST, are associated with multiple long-term health outcomes including increases in stroke, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.[8–10]

> The increase in obesity and other cardiovascular health problems show that even if DST were to encourage exercise in some individuals it is not enough to outweigh the effects of sleep and circadian disruption on food choices, metabolism, hunger hormones, and glucose control and other cardiovascular risk factors.[11,12]

* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476036/

The peer reviewed literature on the effects of changing time, pDST, and pST is quite extensive:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920869

You know what maybe all schools in the US shouldn't start at 7:30-8:15.

Similar idea with businesses.

Maybe people living in northern latitudes can have a different schedule than than south.

Better solution: Adopt summer and winter hours to follow the sun rather than arbitrarily changing the clocks and interrupting sleep schedule and circadian rhythms.

> with the only cost being people complaining for a day afterwards.

I complain all summer long.