A "Day" Isn't What It Used To Be
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- How we understand time with clocks is fundamentally different than the passage of cosmic time and this is mainly due to our time zones. Let's take a look at the history of timekeeping to see how these two concepts of time coexist in our lives.
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TIME CODES
00:00 Cold Open
00:43 Clock time is meaningless
02:04 Ancient history of timekeeping
04:05 What is a day?
07:23 Modern history of timekeeping
10:19 Summary
12:18 Outro
12:46 Featured Comment
First, I want to welcome all the new people to the comments. I'm appreciating all the unique and diverse opinions. The time zone thing _is_ a matter of opinion, so it's ok to disagree and discuss. Let's just make sure we all play nice. Second, here are some things that keep coming up in discussion along with my personal responses:
*"Won't this mess with everyone's circadian rhythm?"*
It shouldn't. I'm not suggesting anyone keep different waking hours. I'm only suggesting we _relabel_ what those hours are called.
*"How am I supposed to know if someone is awake so I can call?"*
1. You shouldn't be calling without _at least_ having texted to make sure it's ok first.
2. If they're asleep, their phone should be on silent.
3. Not everyone keeps the same schedule, so you already have to ask about it. This problem already exists. Having no time zones saves you the extra calculation.
*"If someone says it's 2pm, how will I know how much daylight there is?"*
Why do you need to know how much daylight there is? If that's relevant information to the conversation, they should be using more descriptive language like midday, or afternoon, or evening, or something like that. This is especially true if you're talking about authors writing dialog in their books.
*"How do you plan when you travel to a different time zone?"*
Wouldn't the local people be suggesting the times for those plans? If you're there for an official event, there's an itinerary. If it's a meetup with a local friend, that friend can suggest times. Is this not what already happens anyway?
*"If you travel, you're going to have to adjust to the new daylight hours."*
That's rather presumptuous of you 😉. In all seriousness though, I kept my home schedule the last couple times I traveled and it was glorious. Why bother adjusting? Wake up and go to sleep when you normally do. Eat your meals when you normally do. Don't let the Sun be your boss!
*"China has a single time zone and it's not good."*
The problem isn't China's time zone. The problem is that they _also_ require everyone to keep the same schedule in that time zone, so the people living in the far west have to wake up too early. You've got to let everyone keep the schedule that they need for their local circumstances or this doesn't work.
*"Why does London get to keep the normal clocks times?"*
Because they're already at UTC+0. It doesn't _have_ to be that way. I was just trying to use a system we already had. If you want something else, I'm ok with that. We can use a timezone from the middle of the ocean for all I care. You want the 24-hour format rather than am/pm? That's fine too. You want to use the star-date system from Star Trek? Let's go for it! Unfortunately, the more deviation there is from what we already use, the harder sell it's going to be. In the 1790s, France tried to institute a metric time: 10 hours/day, 100 minutes/hour, and 100 seconds/minute. It clearly didn't catch on.
All of these answers require a lot of assumptions/inconveniences to fix something that isn't really an issue. I honestly don't know anyone that complains about time zones.
To be honest, I find it handy to be able to check what time it is at another location and know if the people there might still be at work, or on their lunch break, or if it should be night there.
so I can estimate how long I would have to wait for an email reply, for example, or whether I can give them a quick call.
As people like to go to sleep when its dark its useful to know the time zones
Personally I think we should keep our time zones and end the DST switching madness. The time zones are convenient for understanding local time as eg 8am is early morning everywhere. You may prefer to know the time but I prefer to understand it. UTC is for machines and astronomers, not people.
Liking your videos mate👍🥸
That Mr Beat fella
Why is he called Mr Beat?🤔
The problem with one time for everybody is when you call your friend on the other side of the earth and he says. "Why are you calling at 3:00 PM? Everyone's asleep!" With time zones, you get a reasonable idea of where the sun is in other parts of the world. A universal time would be good for legal documents. Time zones would be good for personal interactions.
Agreed
I think people will use other words to describe their local environment. Like, for example "noon", "dusk", "dawn", "midnight" etc. I suspect we would need more words though. It could be fun to discover those
@@weebaldfella We have that. Called time zones.
Really? Would you lose the knowledge that people have nighttime on the other side of the earth when you have daytime? Thats seems strange.
@@someilas7253 Is it a matter of losing knowledge or a matter of thinking about that knowledge in the moment? Never heard someone say, "Oh yeah, that's in a different time zone"?
As a person who had regular night shift jobs and did homework at night. "Time" has always been relative to me. I've always wondered why we don't have more variety in office hours. Like I wake up and go to the bank while most people do it on their break or after work. So yeah I like the UTC idea. But I don't hate night shift like most people either. I find I have a more relaxed day avoiding traffic or lines at the store. I still get plenty of sunlight and vitamin D and go to park with my dog just on a "different schedule" then most
There is no day And night, just Light And dark
@@MrSkinkarde you had literally nothing to add😂🤦🏾♂️
There are some places like that. I've had many jobs in my life and one was working at a fairly famous studio. As long as our assignments were complete we were allowed to come and go as we pleased. The schedule i made for myself was 11 am to 7 pm. As long as management knew it you could do it. Some guys would come in at 6 pm and work through the night. But it was their choosing.
I used to prefer working overnights when I worked in retail jobs. Just avoided people and that’s all I wanted in a job 🤣😂 you really get to see the horrible side of society when working retail/fast food jobs, so might shifts are a nice way to avoid that. 🤣
And because of this you probably will live a longer, less stressed life
Getting rid of time zones would still create the confusion of when exactly people work. Someone in say India who thinks a work day is 9am-5pm would still have to be aware a work day in the east coast of the United States was say 11am-7pm. There would still be a conversion to take into account
This is one of the most underrated subjects in physics. I really appreciate that you considered talking about it
I'm honestly surprised the video is doing so well. I thought this was just going to be a passion project.
@elect eng.... what's your take then lil bruh?
The key words here are "in physics", the vast majority of people are not even scientists and would probably think something like "wtf?" Because it would not make sense to the majority.
As a programmer, I do agree that the number doesn't matter.... and since it doesn't, we should keep time zones.
Because as a person, regularizing when the sun comes up or goes down DOES matter, and not just for convenience. Power usage, internet traffic, and even road utilization all benefit from a "noon-centric" view that allows simpler comparison than a rolling offset. We aren't as sun driven as our ancestors but it's still one of the biggest factors affecting our lives.
Fair enough.
I am a programmer, I used to think it doesn't matter, then I learned about the fucking circadian cycle. Its seems the human machinery don't like it much when you force it at a random number.
Like, who cares I wake up at 1PM UTC which is 10.am. in my timezone... while people have to go work at stupid arbitrary 9.am. stupid system.
The biological machinery will always want to wake up at what's equivalent to -2 from noon. yes, I can't wake up in the middle of the night (or as the early birds call it, gasp, "morning", is that the word ? ) , aka, noon-6. why's that ? its not like the cows need to be milked or something ...
We all work punching stupid keys on a computer, why does it matter the hour I work... (lol, I almost quit over this, but my boss eventually conceded, its not easy to find programmers)
Now, that was the last video, going to sleep at noon-10
It would be so much simpler if we used fixed offsets to noon, instead of rolling ones. The high noon is 12h, the actual time doesn't matter much.
Everything is a mess, humans are complicated
Definitely a good point. All the more reason to get rid of change the clocks twice a year.
Your statement, "We aren't as sun driven as our ancestors but it's still one of the biggest factors affecting our lives." makes the case of why time zones do not matter. Why would the numbers on a clock matter if we don't really need to know what they are at the time the sun comes up or goes down? The numbers on a clock face and the ability to set an alarm associated with those numbers would have been more helpful to hunter/gatherers and to farmers from the beginning of farming to present day. For people who work in offices, not so much. Use of ante and post merīdiem would no longer be necessary so we would simply switch to a 24 hour clock where 1 pm becomes 13:00, 2 pm becomes 14:00, etc. This would make global business operations much simpler.
@@williamslifko4222 I disagree, Knowing the context of the time would be more important than having one universal time. it would be easier for a business to look at customer traffic flow through out the day on a global scale if the time on the clock matched up with the time of day. and then you have major problems with all the businesses close to the international date line (say like Sydney Australia) who would have a change of date in the middle of the day rather than when most people are asleep. it's a lot easier and cheaper to just look up time differences than to change the world to one time universally.
Yes, time zones are awkward when we are talking real time to a distant person.
However in many cases we are exchanging timeless stories. When my friend overseas tells me what he was doing at 8am, I know he is talking about his morning, and I don’t have to think about where exactly he lives.
This works until you are talking to someone in Tibet about what happened at 8 am, when it is pitch black outside because the sun won't rise for another 2 hours. They have China's Beijing-centric time zone across a country the size of the contiguous USA, that makes no sense for Tibetans and Uiygurs way out west.
Why do you need to know that's his morning?
@@ScienceAsylum
For example if my friend (who lives overseas) says he had a coffee at 7am, than it is fairly normal. But if it actually means 8pm, then I should asks questions. Or if he got home from a party at 9pm that’s different than getting home at 4am. This alone is a big clue if he had a great party, or he was tired and went home instead.
Most stories are relevant to its context, and the context is mostly local.
Minority of the stories involve multiple time zones.
So with this idea to abolish time zones, those minority of the stories would be easier to follow, whir most of the stories would be more confusing, because I need to translate it continuously, even if the whole story is contained to his location.
Just think what would that do to literature? Would translators then adjust somehow the times? This would add even more to the problem. Lets face it is a braindead idea and anyone suggesting it should be canceled.
@@ScienceAsylum Because the environmental context in which situations occur change how people respond to them and how we picture them in our head.
Something happening outside at dawn creates a very different picture than something happening outsidein the middle of the night.
I agree with other comments. For me, when I arrange a time for a phone call to a friend in the US for example (I am in Spain) it is easier for me to know how many hours of difference we have, and know if they will be awake, working or whatever. I think it is more difficult to ask "where is the sun at your 5pm" than asking "what time is it there now" and remember the difference.
Either way, you still have to know the difference between the places. That will always be the same. No matter what the clock says, if you are starting your work day roughly following the sun, i.e. what we now call morning, it makes no difference if your clock reads 0900 or 2300, you still can't call some in the US as you know they'd be asleep.
It would be easier, bc you can just ask when their noon is and call at that time. It’s the same time for you as it is for them, so no math needed.
@@Rwdphotos That's where you realise time zones would still be a thing, even if all clock match.
@@King-tk5bg I don't think you understand the concept of a time zone
@@Rwdphotos Maybe you don't. There would still be areas that would be somewhat synchronised, agreeing solar noon would be at 16:00 for instance, even in places where it would be closer to 17:00. And those people would use a notation like "UTC+4" to let others know what schedule they are on. That fits the definition of a time zone on my perspective, but maybe you want to call it by a different name.
I think time zones have their value - it's very intuitive for someone to say the time of day in their timezone and then I'll recognise where in their day to day cycle they are.
But I think using both a unified and zone based clock in tandem would be smart. People wouldn't have to convert from multiple time zones when they hear UTC. They'd know the conversion for their area. It would help simplify things.
Yes it is called Greenwich Mean Time and corresponds to 0-degrees longitude
@@professorvegas Yeah, I know...
Isn't that kinda what we have?
When I get the message, the meeting will be at 11am UTC+4, I just substract 4 from 11 and add my timezone. The problem is remembering what time zone I am in 😅
@@gamerdinbasarabia2093 Read above comment.
I think the thing everyone likes about time zones (being able to say it's 3pm and be understood) can easily be replaced with words we already have, like dawn, morning, afternoon and dusk. Those words are already precise enough for conversation, and if you need to schedule something, then you would use numbers. Basically, I think we could have the best of both worlds, with no real downside.
Why not? Because for those of us in the middle of the Pacific, the calendar would switch from Monday to Tuesday in the middle of the day. It would force countries in far-flung parts of the world to go through massive organizational upheaval, albeit admittedly only once, for no particular local benefit. People would resist. They'd keep using local time to organize their lives and just look up a conversion table if they wanted to know the global time -- which is effectively what we already do.
Exactly, UTC is not a secret, anyone can use it.
except those people die in old age, and you effectively solved the problem in 1 generation if you forced it by Law.
@@monad_tcp _Enforce it by law?! Punish_ people for calling it 1pm instead of 0400 UTC? What kind of twisted ethical priorities could possibly justify _that?_
@@monad_tcp And you haven't solved the problem of the calendar day changing in the middle of the actual day.
@@danielcopeland3544 Well DST is enforced by law, so what's the problem ?
Someone called me and woke me up at 6AM!
What were you doing sleeping so late?
No here 6AM isn't late here, it's like an hour before we wake up normally.
Oh so 4PM here?
Don't know, where did you say you were again?
Texas
Hang on let me get a time conversion chart to help me figure out what time it was for you.
No, it's 3PM there.
Wow that is early. Damn! Thank God we don't need to remember time zones anymore! We just have to remember time conversion charts, which is totally different!
So convenient!
When you are an owl, damned larks just ring you at 11 of morning. Living in the same timezone doesn't help when people don't care.
24 hour clock. AM and PM would necessarily need to go away. Be mindful that your co-workers and friends start their days on a different "shift" than you do. 1600 (time to start work in my time zone) is the evening in Australia. Don't bug them during family time! This assumes midnight still occurs on the current system's GMT. Dolly Parton could come up with a new song about America working during their shifts instead of the same hourly set floating across time zones. Designating your day time as shift names may be a way to keep the time zone framework in place during the normalizing of global time; e.g., I work the Pacific shift, you work the Indian shift and she works the USSR Zone 5 shift. It's a step toward letting go while something new comes along.
@@trappedkitty5335 sounds like changing things from one to another, with the same amount of work to do but nothing to relate it to. Instead of having to remember what time it is somewhere when you call, you no longer know what time things should be at a given place, basically. And you end up having to say things like "OK everyone on the call, remember we need to come in 4 hours from the global normal morning time equivalent in your area!" Maybe I'm just not seeing the advantage...
@@count_of_darkness5541 Do you take all phone calls by simply repeating "Who?" at the caller?
Oh, surprising to see you here, Nathan
I love the idea of no time change. We really can overcomplicate things.
Imagine travelling a lot. You'd have to memorize the local daily schedule for every place. Examples:
In asia, stores would be open from 00 to 12, in Europe from 07 to 19.
On the west coast of the USA from 16 to 04.
That means, everytime you travel, you have to look up and memorize the local daily schedule. Or you memorize the time offset to your 'home schedule' and always add it to the current time (e.g. USA has offset of -9 hours to europe).
In that case, wouldn't it be smarter to let your clock apply the offset?
Sure, using one universal time makes things simpler, but it also makes some other things more complicated.
In the end, we have time zones for everyday life and UTC time for things that need to be coordinated internationally, like aviation, internet, weather forecasting, etc. And i think it's mostly good the way it is.
but the problems should we all switch to no dst or permanent dst lol.
@@dabeste6163 . TRADITION! Just because it’s tradition doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Nice to see this channel tagging-in other content producers (eg Mr Beats) that may have touched on similar concepts in their own work. I've seen multiple videos on another very popular physics channel where they clearly had been "influenced" (putting it politely) by content from here. The video about energy travelling "around" wires is the most recent example.
One benefit of having timezones is that it helps us understand when day time is in other places. If I ask someone what time it is at their place and they say it's 2pm, I know that is day time and they probably have been up for a while. On the other hand if it's 2pm for everyone, I'll need a different way of understanding the difference from my day time to theirs.
"So I'll call you at 10 am"
"Are you crazy? That's in the middle of the night!"
"Oh so when would it work for you?"
"Maybe 5pm"
"That's already too late"
You might end up just calculating my time + x hours = what is early morning for me. That is basically time zones, but with probably even more confusing. Or you end up searching "Noon time in country x".
I think the timezones help with having an intuitive feeling of what that number means in relation to your daily routine. You don't need to learn that 6pm means early morning in Chicago. If someone says "Event x happened at 10pm in y" you know that it was at the end of the day.
Still, there probably is potential to make timezones better.
I like the irony that the video is extrmely physics-y in proposing the least practical way to standardize time beyond cultural references, but the primary way to express time sticks to AM/PM anglocentric conventions that are literally describing whether the time is before or after the sun peaking in the sky, with the much more rational 24 hour clock being relegated to the footnotes. Traditioooon!
But yes, you're right on the money. Hours of the day are not about keeping time in sync across the world (the Internet does that for us these days, and that works on a unified clock already), it's about defining rough bands for things like working hours and sleeping times, so we don't all keep waking up our grandparents in the middle of the night when we live abroad. It'd be madness to try to coordinate a multinational event on UTC. Picture that wall of clocks you get in multinational companies to let you know when people in other offices come to work. In UTC you'd still need that, but it'd be some spreadsheet of which time of the day different people come in and out of work and have lunch breaks instead. For two locations you may be able to mark it on a single clock, but stuff would get stupid really fast if you have a bunch of locations.
I think you're missing the point, yes timezones as we currently use them hour of the day is the same part of the day. However in the new system you'd start by picking which part of the day {early morning, morning, afternoon, evening, etc} then picking an hour that falls in that part. Currently you think about 2pm, and are like well they've been up for hours. I work nights, I don't get up until the local 5pm. Also as the southern hemisphere has their summer/winter reversed to the northern hemisphere and Australia happens to be on the GMT- side of the Meridian Southern Hemi, with North America being GMT+ and Northern Hemi. So when a North American wants to call an Aussie not only are there the fake timezones that don't actually match the position of the sun, you have the North American Savings switch, then generally a week or so later the Australian Savings switch; If you want to call once a week you'll have to scheduled around the TimeZone differences, and the Savings at least 4 times a year. In the new system, you'd be like "2PM Earth Standardised Time (EST) is morning for me" then they'd respond "2pm EST is late evening here" now you know that 2pm Earth Standardised Time is good for you both to call. No time Zone non-sense, no Daylight BS, and you did it all in an E-mail like they did so long ago in the 2020s. Which will still be around in the far-future of the 3000s
@Fluffy Pillow Your suggestion breaks the intuitiveness just as much as no time zones.
Understanding when day time is, is actually not that useful, if you simply want to schedule a meeting. You need to know the timezones for all people involved in the meeting and adjust for them. If there was only one coordinated time, you could simply ask them which period of time would work for them and compute the overlap instead.
Living in Germany, I usually work from 8am to 5pm (UTC), while someone in New York might be working from 1pm to 9pm (UTC). Knowing these ranges is enough to tell that we could potentially meet between 1pm and 5pm - without anyone having to shift their working hours.
Even if we have timezones, we still need to know about other peoples working hours, since not everybody is working 9 to 5. Some start at 5am, some at 10am, some work night shifts, ...
@@nightsinger81 you know we have calendar programs now that take care of that stuff for us, right?
"Call it a day." was a seriously funny joke. I actually LoL'ed. Dork.
🤣
Stressed?
It would have been funny if I didn’t see it coming when it’s pinned up at the top.
If he would have shared that with Mr. Beast "Oh, good one...I just got done saying..." that would have been epic. Dork overload.
"Call it a day" I never thought we could use this phrase to actually mean it. 😄
😂
This video is fabulous! I learned lots of cool stuff & "tradition' had me rolling! Thank you for educating me. Subscribed.
time zones are still handy to figure out when it's too early or too late to ask your co-worker a question. Knowing it's 10am here, but 7am where they are takes fewer brain cycles than "it's 4am everywhere, what does that mean for talking to Susan again?"
Bingo. The problem with UTC is that it's so simple, it makes time too complex to be practical. You would have a lot of difficulty trying to determine what point of the day other people around the world are in.
Good point. But small down side to layover flight times. Sleep schedules. Etc.
If you already know there's a 3 hour difference, then you can use UTC just the same as a timezone. Currently, you still have to know the timezone difference when talking to someone internationally, and switching to UTC isn't going to change that, but it will simplify having multiple "clocks".
EXACTLY. This legit proves people rely on sCiEnCe way too much to the point of delusion.
you are literally just doing the math in your head, unless you have to google time zone differences, but most people already know the differences between the time zones relevant to them. there is absolutely nothing complicated about it at all, you do basic arithmetic, lets not sit here and pretend like we would need to start computing some complicated integral, its basic addition and subtraction. so pretending that it somehow becomes more complicated or complex is silly. if theres a universal time now, and prior to that CA was 3 hours behind you because your in the eastern time zone, guess what, its still the same, you subtract 3 from your time to see where they are at. stop making this out to be something complicated
As a software developer who dealt with aviation situations, I can attest to what a mind-boggling complexity is introduced by time zones + daylight savings in so many software situations that would otherwise be relatively simple. Obviously aviation has long ago adopted the obvious solution, all of the aviation community thinks and communicates only in universal time.
Same for banking and telecom -- the time is usually stored in unix time (seconds before/after 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970), and being converted to local time on displaying to the user, while taking into account local timezone, daylight saving, leap years, leap second time adjustments, different calendars and other nonsense humans come up with.
In telecom it also accounts for relativity when synchronizing events with satellites.
@Nondescript UTC is still synchronized to astronomical time through the use of leap seconds. Humans schedule them by observation of our orbital motion, so we've been using the last second of June 30 or December 31, but only occasionally, to have a 23:59:60 before rolling over to 0:00:00 of the next 24 hour "day". That means not every minute has 60 seconds, and not every day has 24 hours, and not every year has 31,536,000 seconds both because of leap seconds and leap days. It's all a mess, and will only get worse when we start communicating with humans on the Moon and Mars. Computers would be perfectly happy to just count the number of integer oscillations of a Cesium atom since an epoch, but I think humans will always impose local scaling factors to understand our circadian rhythms.
Chat apps now often display the local time of the recipient you're about to communicate with, and frankly that removes almost all the burden on me to figure anything out. I still hate DST because it messes with my personal daily routine. I think an ideal solution would be algorithmic timezones that would flex throughout the year to center our local time on solar noon by adjusting our UTC offset by some number of seconds per day. Computers stick with UTC, or even an improved UTC without leap seconds and days, and a timezone like CET varies between UTC+01:00 and UTC+02:00 smoothly through the year. Such a timezone would make any mechanical clock obsolete however.
@@MrWhateva10 Well yeah, even leap years are more complicated than most people realize. It's not simple as year divisible by 4... because if year is divisible by 100, it's not a leap year, unless that year is also divisible by 400... so 2000 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100 etc. are not
Aviation but not reservation! All flight schedules are local, which is painful for developers but easy for the public.
I’ve been saying this for a while. Since I’ve had to develop applications that schedule people all around the world, time zones combined with daylight savings adjustments make it nearly impossible to make everyone happy.
2:20 "almost winter, winter, still winter, and construction"
that made me giggle, well done video guy
"Clock time" is more accurately defined by the concept of "time of day" or average solar time with a 0 reference point of 12AM/midnight. This reference allows us as humans to form patterns in our daily lives that can be universally understood by everyone on the planet. UTC is great for time related calculations, but time of day is useful for creating a common structure that we can reference that does not change throughout the year. It provides a sense of control and regularity to something that would otherwise be variable.
Thats what I'm saying! It would be weird if you had to figure out what 3 AM meant in Japan and whether that was day or night. The fact that a number is connected to where the sun actually is in the sky, is practical for the common person. For scientists, I can understand why this is impractical, but for practical purposes, it's quite suited to what it's used for
The common structure can collapse when scheduling meetings with groups of people from across the globe. We should probably rename UTC to 'common time' or 'world time' (or 'space time' 🙃) so it clicks better with people.
@@kaylaa2204 I agree in theory that "it would be weird". I just think it would be *less weird* than the system we have now. It only looks normal because we're used to it, but it carries its own set of problems -- of course, my main reason for saying that is that my job involves figuring out what time something happened by collecting information from different countries around the globe. Coordinating a meeting is hard when you have to tell each person "Ok Fred, that's X:XX your time. No, Sally, Fred is in Utah. You're in New Orleans. So YOU start at Y:XX". And inevitably, half of them get it wrong.
I would love to be able to just tell them "We start at UTC 23:30" and have everyone get it right for once.
@@grayaj23 protip: just use a digital calendar, like google or outlook, or even zoom - they all do that kind of UTC calculation for you, and subsequently make the adjustments for the recipent's calendar.
That’s a very polite way to say this is a really bad idea. Also getting rid of time zones would just recreate the same problems that time zones were created to solve while giving us basically nothing in return
Construction is definitely my favourite season. The smell of freshly laid asphalt...
😂
If you lived here in Montreal, Quebec you would know there as 4 such constructions seasons....
I've been a supporter of going to CUT or Zulu time for over 40 years. By the way, Minnesota has 6 seasons. Spring, summer, fall, winter, winter, winter.
As a resident of Michigan, a so appreciated your accurate description of our seasons!!!
Keep the time zones. Let’s say I travel from California to Britain. With time zones, I just move my watch forward on the plane, and all the numbers on the dial mean the same thing, my intuitions are preserved. We switch to Universal time and I have to calculate the difference in my head every time I look at my clock because the numbers don’t mean anything. If I am tired, stressed, or in a rush then it is highly likely that I will forget to do that and I’ll mess something up, which would make for a lousy vacation.
The crew of that plane have their watches set to UTC... as does the ATC they are talking too.
@@mytech6779 sure, utc is fine for certain things. I dont think anyone is arguing that. What it isnt fine for is normal human use, as otherwise there is no intuition of what times are relevant to another person located somewhere else.
I'm fucked in both of the timelines, and I can only work in Central Pacific Timezone... My body refuses to wake up at 9.am if its not in that specific Timezone. It means I always wake up -2 from high-noon. Always, regardless of the timezone, which is kind of arbitrary.
I might as well use UTC, it won't change much to me, as my clock is always synchronized as other people use GMT-4 , everything is even worse because I remote work with a global team with Russians and Indians...
I said timelines ? I mean Timezones, (might I make some Copenhagen interpretationst angry with that).
And time zones convey meaning. When I book an intercontinental meeting I check the time zones to make sure all the participants are awake. With universal UTC I'd need a separate parallel system to let me understand each person's local office time and sleeping time. Kinda like... the Time zone system.
I never even considered the concept of universal time. I could go for that. It's just a number. Nothing but your concept of time would have to change. No sleep schedule change. I dig it.
You are not a youtuber, international youtuber, they need to set their upload time, make sure it suit their international fan's time, so, it always be on their mind.
God is said to have cut short the time of Earth's destruction in the last days. Matt 24:22.
This is a side effect of His Mercy. But the Wrath will be equal to His anger. So yes He will cut short days as in speed them up. As evil and wickedness intensifies visibly through the world, He also increases the destruction, He also stretched out the Heavens. Evolution did not do anything on that matter.
Isai 42
Isaiah 44:24
Isai 51
Everything that God says will happen, happens. Everything that a scientist says is a theory; all the while looking up at the Place where God sits, Heaven. How ironic.
Sleep schedule would still change if you flew somewhere. They'd wake up at a different time, and sleep at another time.
@@haze6647 CZcams analytics tells us what time our audience is watching in _our own_ time zone. What time it is in other parts of the world is irrelevant.
2:18 as a man who has lived his entire life in Michigan; I felt this
Dear Michigan,
On behalf of all of Canada, I'd like to say:
We feel you.
I was stationed at Fort Wainwright, Fairbanks, Alaska, for 3 years. The sun 🌞 gets really interesting at the poles.
In the summer the sun _might_ set in the North behind the ski hill around 1am, if it bothered to set at all. Then it'd rise again around 3am, so it was a perpetual pastel sunsetrise, like something from a Thomas Kincaid painting.
However, in the winter the sun would rise in the South over the airfield around 10am, and it'd set around 2pm, never getting more than a hand span above the horizon.
Local Time being linked to the location of the sun is actually pretty good, because if I move somewhere else (for example to Asia) I don't need to know what time it is where I came from, but whereabouts the sun is where I am. To most persons, it matters more where the sun is standing in the sky than the international time. It may help with international trade and things like that, however for most people, it would actually be detrimental. Now Changing when is what time is bad, but that is nothing new
As society grows and more and more people becomes connected via the web the urge to understand which time is "there" will be greater than our care about the sun. We just need more TIME till more people suffer from timezones issues
@@flannn6 But we still need to have an idea of what their sun is doing since most human activity is and will continue to be when the sun is out. So UTC can help you both agree to have the meeting at 6, but it doesn't tell you if you should expect them to be awake at that point.
That might be true if you actually go somewhere, and it will only matter initially until you get used to it. While timezones are making my life a misery on daily basis when I'm working with collegues around the world. The change would change my daily stationary misery to something more tolerable while for those that actually travel every day it would become a misery.
@@flannn6 timezone issues?
"Hey what time is it for you?"
"6 am est"
"Oh cool, lets have our meeting in 5 hours from then alright?"
And if you do run into an issue where that time isn't specific from your hours ahead, there are thousands of tools to do the calculations for you if youre not smart enough to do simple addition and subtraction.
@@marsovac learn to actually communicate then. Thousands of businesses have world spanning supply chains. And they seem to be running properly when not shut down by the government.
I feel that this falls into the trap of arguing that "X is a social construct" implies that "X is bad" or "X shouldn't exist". But lots of social constructs exist for very good reason. Money is a social construct, but it enables us to help each other (even to help total strangers whom we'd have no reason to trust) by giving us something we can use to exchange for other, more intrinsically useful stuff. The rule of law is a social construct but it does a good job of keeping undesirable behaviours (like, y'know, murder) to a minimum.
Time zones are not so obviously essential to civilisation like money or law, but that doesn't mean they're totally pointless or without merit either, even if the way they are divided up is pretty arbitrary.
I think they are bad, simply because they overcomplicate things for completely unnecessary reasons. I cannot even calculate the amount of time I've lost during software development having to deal with timezones, daylight savings time, etc. I get the historical reasons for timezones, daylight savings time, etc., and I imagine that very initially, a complete change would cause some minor problems. But heck, most EVERYONE uses their phones for their "time keeping" anyway, so if the software just took care of the "new" standard, I think the vast majority of people would adapt pretty quickly and perhaps even come to realize just how stupid the old way was (just like we realize how insane having to pay for "long distance phone calls" was 15 years ago).
Fair enough.
I'm not arguing that they're inherently a bad idea. They served us well for a while there. I'm just arguing that they're no longer necessary.
@@ScienceAsylum time zones are still necessary, getting rid of it only bringing a cost of messing with human's life along with circadian rhythm, in this case making a single world time zone just making a greater version of Beijing time, where people living in the far western provinces observe sunrise as late as 10.30 am
@@ScienceAsylum wasn't expecting feedback. Always love it when content creators engage with comments like this. Keep up the good work on this channel 👍
Hey Nick! I understand what you mean, of course the way we count is arbitrary. I also hate the Timeshift with a burning passion (interestingly enough, I'm also heavily affected by jet lag when traveling; my wife doesn't have a real problem with either). I work internationally (automation soft-and hardware development, installation and trouble shooting) and time zones and time shifts are a complete nightmare for time synchronization.
Also, if you read this, I would personally love to see videos with your brilliant explanations about 1) the relational interpretation of QM and 2) the Bell inequality.
Thank you for your work, you combine education and entertainment in a way that transcends both for public science education.
Hope you have a good time!
Actually, the clocks in a time zone only match the sun in a narrow band area of each timezone. The borders of the timezones are roughly a half hour ahead or behind the sun depending on which side you're on. And that is if you don't take into account some of the weird off shoots that some timezones have due to even more politics.
I usually wait until the end of a video before deciding to hit the like button, but on this one you had me at “call it a day.”
If you want to get rid of time zones, then firstly and automatically stop using that "AM/PM nonsense", but normal 24hr time format instead. If the Sun and time zones are thrown out of time system, then "Ante or Post Meridiem" (before and after MIDDAY - Sun in zenith) is no longer clock connected terms.
The AM/PM system comes from clocks only having up to 12 on them. I'm pretty sure there isn't any hourhand/minutehand/secondhand clocks that go all the way up to 24.
@@quujj 24-hour analog clocks exist, and have existed as well as the 12 hour analog (And for most of history, was preferred over the 12h clock). AM and PM has existed since around 1500 B.C.~ and was used to describe which side of the sundial the shadow was on. Ante Meridiem was on the left side on the northern hemisphere, right on the southern, and visa versa for Post Meridiem.
@@quujj "The AM/PM system comes from clocks only having up to 12 on them."
No, you've got it exactly backward - the AM/PM system is the reason for (most) clocks having only 1 to 12 on them!
There *are,* and have been for a very long time, 24-hr clocks; and up until a few decades ago, they, like all clocks back then, were analog.
The hour hand on a 24-hr clock revolves at half the speed of its 12-hr counterpart (1 instead of 2 revolutions per day).
And the hours are numbered from 0 (at top) to 23, in 15º increments, instead of 1 to 12 (at top) , in 30º increments.
Searching on "24 hour clock face" should bring up some images of them.
Nowadays, many of our digital devices (computers, tablets, smart phones, ...) that have clock features, allow setting them to either a 12 or a 24-hr display.
Fred
*Time* is a cyclical measurement, divided into units by the rate of change in magnitude along a given vector(s).
Yeah, i get confused with those am/pm things
As a programmer, time zones are a pain in the ass and I whole heartedly agree with this video. I already had this idea and told some friends about it, I'm glad I'm not the only one that has this idea.
I think it's really easy to use both a local time and a universal time.
It’s nice to know when other people in the world are generally awake…when the sun is out. Circadian rhythm dictates our lives for the most part. If it’s 1pm where I live it’s nice to know I’m not interrupting someone else’s sleep if I give them a call in a different time zone.
If you think of the other side what's east or west from you, the time of day will differ.
If you think of the other side what's north or south of you, the season of the year will differ.
@@BokoMoko65 Meanwhile, the arguably Best social commentary i know: Hbomberguy.
Also funny af, tbh.
Exactly. I have family three time zones away, so when I get out of work at 11pm my time, I know it's 2am their time and I shouldn't call them to wish them a happy birthday (as one example) until a little later in their day. With UTC, I would still know that they're three solar hours away but I would have no idea if 11pm was too early or late to call them without the context of what part of the solar day 11pm represented to them.
Personally I think we should keep our time zones. Sure it would be nice to tell people in other time zones “let’s call at 13:00”, but when traveling we would just have to know when people do everything. I also usually use time zones to see which of my int‘l friends are probably awake. Basically, just because I would immediately know what time it is somewhere doesn’t mean I‘d know if the person was awake or not.
Signed, a fellow DST hater (let‘s at least end that madness)
Yea gave this some thought when I was thinking about how a multi planet civilisation would deal with time and really, I couldn’t think of a more elegant fix than timezones (dealing with time between 2 colonised planets is a completely different beast and really I can’t think of a clean solution at all)
Good point. I see the value in a world time but your opinion makes much sense. And the majority of the world would be happier to just end DST, the cause of jetlag for everyone twice a year.
Like any change, current generations would have to work hard to adjust to a change of this type. However, future generations would take it in stride, not having the experience of the previous convention.
Most people are missing the point of the argument and reasoning about how it would work in practice right now. The argument against is similar to the argument against converting to metric in America. Most people are currently comfortable and functioning in the current system. Why change it if it works?
I think any change of this nature would have to be adopted by different international communities/industries over time, to justify governments falling in line and build the consensus necessary for such a switch. So if you think this is better, you have to convince people in your specific field, company, industry, and try to build momentum.
I was going to say exactly this.
@@Hurricayne92 If go interplanetary, it might be better to measure time using the pulses from a distant pulsar. Like, maybe, the one in the Crab Nebula. It could be like stardates in Star Trek.
Im from the caribbean and back when i was a youth the summer holidays used to be helly long. Two long long months (july-August)of frolicking in the sun.. The days would drag on. Now the days end as quick as they start. Now you have to hustle to do your morning chores before you can make a short getaway to the beach and back for dinner then bed. Back in my youth days we were never worried that rain would ruin our cricket games or our fruit picking shinanigans. Now everythings different. We're aging a hella lot faster. Life is really different.
Screw time zones. I've been telling people that a lot and you are the first person to actually agree with me
"But they could just take an average of those and call it a day."
At that moment, I remembered to give my thumbs up.
And we know that eating your own scat is highly intelligent, so...
@Rheumattica ... Numbers are a language we use to interpret the universe, and biology definity has its uses. Otherwise, did I do something to offend you?
I think our time has a practical utility as is. Especially when considering the global market and work hours. If I’m working with a company in Australia, it’s good to know that I’m not bothering them at 2am about some work related issue. Even though time is technically the same everywhere, our sleep schedules still revolve around the relative position of of the sun.
Edit: Not to mention trying to dictate which areas get which time slots. I would imagine everyone would want dibs on their location being the standard for everyone else to adjust around.
Good point. Then you can almost guarantee somewhere like China or Russia wouldn't play along and would do their own thing anway
For knowing that you need to know the time difference between your country and australia. It's gonna be the same time difference, instead to adding to your local time zone you will add it to UTC to know in what time of the day are they in
@@asmrenjoyer9704 so what's the benefit of using UTC then if you're still using a freaking timezone to work it out? You didn't solve any problem at all.
What time is it in Italy right now? Australia? West US?
You probably have to look it up to figure it out regardless. The reason you wouldn't is if you have a constant reason to go/communicate with there(work/family). And if so, this change would go over even easier. It's like learning class rooms in a new school. You'll get a grip, probably faster than you thought.
@@squirrellyme so then what benefit is there of using UTC over the current method if you still need to memorise/look up the time difference?
The doobly-doo is def a keeper for me lol great informative vid. Many thanks!🙏 I agree, timezones make things far more complicated than I feel like could/should be
I delved deep into this subject when I first came across Scott Flansbergs concept for the Human Calculator Calender. 13 months of 28 days. The first month and day starting at zero. Wherein you could say Wednesday the 3rd of January would be Wednesday every month. Be much easier for the stock exchange etc, and we could still keep timezones.
Can you imagine the politics involved in who gets the “normal” time and who has to completely change their time?
Wars have been fought over less.
Nailed it.
i think the 00:00 would still be in prime meridian no?
@@nilavkalita7448 potentially yeah, everybody accepts UTC, so there should be no war over this. It also works well with magnetic fields of the earth, as they are also cross prime meridian. Issue is only in understanding and relations. UTC is fine for global management, but work-life balance and tourism will be hell with unified time zone.
While I will agree that DST is stupid and should be gotten rid of everywhere. Changing to one world timezone only, is just gonna move the problem, and in fact make it even more confusing, as instead of having to do a one time adjustment of your clock when you travel there, and one time adjustment back when going home, you would instead have to relearn what time is daytime when going there, and unlearn it when going home again. You would still have to adjust your sleepschedule, and now instead of knowing that no matter where on the earth you are, you can go buy your grocereies from somewhere around 8-9am to 9-10pm, when ever you have to go somewhere you have to learn what their open hours are, when you go to sleep and wake up etc etc. And anyone doing International business, would have it even worse, specially if it is in multiple places current timezones.
I would say that we could use more consistency in timezones, the current timezone map is indeed a mess, as so many places don't line up with the geographical local time. Timezones should plain and simple go along the closest country border for it geographical location, and everyone should be using Standard times. And for countries that are so wide as to cover many timezones (US, Canada, China etc), use either state borders, or geographic features, like major rivers or similar for the timezones borders within the country.
tl;dr:
DST? GET RID OF THAT S***, everyone, should just use "standard time" for their timezone
Timezones? Should stay, but some refinement and standardization of what timezones each country belong in does need some work
Know Sci Man Dan?
The Science-CZcamsr?
And: May i recommend you even more, regardless of you knowing Dan or not? I mean, i got so many
and i LOVE spreading Education via Recommendations.
I love DST. An hour being put forward in winter means I can sleep in by another hour.
@@pinklady7184 No you can't, you don't actually sleep any more or less. moving the clock forward or back doesn't magically make more time, you'd have to go to bed an hour earlier relative to the timezone to get that extra hour. DST is the stupidest thing in existence. It's not like you can spend that saved daylight at another time. Besides it would make more sense if it was in summer than in winter, as the day is longer thereby allowing you to enjoy the sun more. Not in the winter where you literally get less sun because of DST.
Remember DST was invented due to a candle shortage. Not because of any of the reasons people use to justify it. It's only maintained cause of tradition and people's stupidity
no, we should go one hour ahead because fuck sunlight at 6AM, or hell 5, I hate switching between them but my god we should jump ahead and stay ahead...
" and now instead of knowing that no matter where on the earth you are, you can go buy your grocereies from somewhere around 8-9am to 9-10pm, "
just get rid of unions, and let the bezos open the store 24/7
I'm kidding
(the irony is that it would create more jobs, but although shit ones, can't win)
Don't forget circadian rhythm. For those who don't know Refers to your internal clock (yes, there is a timekeeper inside of you) synchronized mainly by sunlight. So keeping those time zones have a biological reason
U got an Instant Subscription from Me!
What a Great! Video and genuinely good rhetoric and way to explain things. 🏆✨
I Really enjoy your Image, the way you explain things ur quirky lil jokes and the amount of good information I'm gettin from this Video, absolutely amazing!
Something is telling Me you're always putting out high quality content like this!
Thank You for your work and dedication! ❤️
Yeah, like you need additional indoctrination from this lier!
we dont need to do away with time zones per se, but maybe start to use utc more often when scheduling things that arent localized to a certain time zone.
Yup
Or just use UTC for everything anyway. For a local "zone", it wouldn't make any difference, but would remove a whole pile of unnecessary complication, just for the sake of an arbitrary number on the clock matching up (very imperfectly) with the position of the sun in the sky.
It will not help. Future events are bound to future configuration of timezones. You can notice that timezones have names and not mere numbers. We need to get reed of DST and political changes to achieve fixed time shifts.
A lot of organizations already do that. During my military service, most logs referenced "Z" time, which is military speak for Greenwich Mean Time.
I live in AZ. I sometimes like to pretend that AZ time is the one true universal time because we never have to switch our clocks for "daylight savings" like the rest of the US does.
In Indiana, we were just like you (never had to change our clocks) until a few years ago, they went with the rest of the country. I miss the old days.
living up in the snowbelt i have to say we realyl do need to swtich clocks otherise we'd ever have sunraise way too early in summer or way to late in winter. is it ideal no, but its a necessary evil
and Hawaii
Time zones are fine even though from an implementation standpoint they’re complicated. I personally think switching to UTC would be more confusing than people realize or would like to admit - “noon” could be at 24:00.
I like the idea of industry using UTC. They can do whatever they want if a certain practice is easier for them.
24:00 doesn't exist, but what's the issue with having noon at 0:00? Where I am today, noon is technically 20:14. That isn't even on the hour, or even the half hour or quarter hour, nor is it the same each day.
Despite the cheesy dorkiness i still enjoy the videos( i guess that means im a dork and a nerd). You have better topics than most similar science channels. You also present the info in an easy to digest way. Thanks for the good content.
Hank has you beat though lol i can listen to that dude talk about anything and enjoy it for unknown reasons.
I think this just transposes a problem. Sure, a meeting would be a 1pm for everyone, but now I don’t know if that is the middle of the night for the other person.
*_"The Time on your Clock is Meaningless"_*
If you have ever been in a waiting room for your doctors appointment or in a line at the Department of Motor vehicles, you will recognize the wisdom of this phrase.
The DMV is hopeless, however, to reduce the cost of medical care, I propose that your medical fee be reduced 1% for every minute delayed on your appointment. By personal experience, visiting the doctor's office will be a very good way of making money. If you are a hypocondriac, you'll be richer than Warren Buffet
huh.
I've never been in a DMV or a doctor's waiting room that had a clock. I know this because the only thing I travel with that can let me know the time of day is my Honda Civic.
Life is short enough. Waiting in line makes it seem longer.
This helped me so much its not even funny, seriously thank you for this video, it all makes sense properly now
Every time I get a new boss they “fix” a bunch of things that aren’t really broken, this gave me déjà vu.
The problem with removing time zones is that if you travel adjusting to the new times would be a pain jet lag would still be an issue(due to the fact that you would still have to adjust your sleep with the sun). For example if you travel to another state or country without looking up sunrise and sunset times you will have a adjustment period where you don’t know when stores or banks are open or even what time you need to go to sleep I order to be awake when everyone else in that area is. With pill schedules you still have issues with prescriptions making you get up in the middle of the night to take them or maybe during work. Also the argument he makes about calling someone at a specific time is also irrelevant because if you call at one pm that could be in the middle of the night for them and it would still require mental math in order to prevent excess confusion. Ultimately changing to one synchronized time would be about the same on the local level but when traveling it would be a nightmare. It’s convenient to know that most businesses are open from about 7 to 5 and you eat breakfast at 7 or 8 lunch at noon and dinner around 7 or 8. None of the arguments you provided were benefits to changing over. Time zones have a purpose, international relatability.
Exactly. And don't forget that a significant part of the world would then have to start to deal with the confusion of having to switch date and day of the week in the middle of their day.
Just ask programmers about the huge PITA in dealing with time zones, DST, and so on. I am all for just using UTC, but not sure yet if we can also adapt to a decimal hour system :).
speaking as a programmer only DST is a pain. For everything else you just use unix time and let the OS convert it to readable time format. Nothing difficult about that. Speaking of unix time, hey look 1 globaly used standard time notation without timezones!
Tom Scott made a good video about this issue in the programmation
Just ask computer progammers and they'll answer "that's what computers are for". Computers love UTC because they have no connection to this planet, this star, this solar system. Humans do.
@@jamie0 I mean the computers are as much of the stars kids as we are
The earth day hasn't always been 23 hours 53minutes long. It started out as approximately 5 hours long 4.1 billion years ago and has been getting longer ever since, due to the tidal effects of the moon (which also been slowing down and at the same time moving away from earth) acting as a drag on the Earth's rotation.
Michigan is very close to Minnesota, but here we have two seasons Winter, and Road repair !!!
Oh another thing, Daylight savings time... Like totally blows!
When I was a kid in the 1950s I used to set my watch by tuning into “The National Bureau for Standard WWV” on my shortwave radio. That pleasing pulsating beat of the nation’s “clock” and the automated reading of “at the tone the correct time will be…”. I loved that clock - I set my wristwatch and room clocks and always reminded people that only I had “the correct time” - I did get beat up now and then but mostly because of my glasses. #NerdsUnite #GetRidOfTimeZones
That's such a fun story! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I swear, I remember having the most accurate time in class was such a flex.
The son of a friend of mine had some pretty serious OCD issues, so he took a nosedive into obsessing about accurate time when he was around 11 years old. He wore two watches until I made the mistake of telling him the joke "A man with a watch always knows what time it is. A man with two is never sure". So he started wearing three. He outgrew it a couple of years later.
@@grayaj23 thats a fun story too :D thanks for sharing
Did you compensate for the time it took those radio waves to travel from Fort Collins to your radio and through its circuits to the speakers? And the even longer time it took the sound from the speakers to reach your ears and your brain to perceive it? if you did, it wasn't your glasses :-)
There is value in having a shared experience tied to time of how we pass our days. For things like movies or just understanding an anecdote easily, it makes sense to have a quick understanding of the section of the day without having to consider in how many hours someone might be waking up. If I know it's 3am there, I don't call. But if I have to figure out how many hours ahead they are and do that math....
Wow. I just randomly found this video wondering the same thing I've been thinking since watching Lakers play at 1am in Illinois while my friends were watching it at 10pm. Thanks
What you're saying makes perfect sense, that time zones are archaic and based on a long tradition of having our measurement of time follow the Sun. Unfortunately I don't think were anywhere nearly ready to get rid of time zones. It'll probably even take a few decades to get rid of Daylight Savings!
Fair point.
I sure had a great TIME making my video, and it is certainly about TIME we collaborated. Admittedly, though, more of us should spend more TIME talking about the true purpose of TIME zones. All the TIME I have spent listening to people argue that TIME zones are overrated has really caused me to spend some TIME reflecting about it. Anyway, if you are reading this right now, thanks for taking the TIME to do so and to watch both our videos.
First!
Second
@@ScienceAsylum 4th
Actually, in some frame of reference, you all commented simultaneously
Haha 👍 Hmmm, in another frame of reference we haven't even commented yet? 🤔
"More precise than its weight driven counterparts" pendulums are regulators, not drivers. Pendulum clocks still used weights to drive them. Its like saying "Engines with fuel injectors are more efficient than their gasoline powered counterparts"
Agreed..and since Pendulums work based on gravitational force (acting on the pendulum arm via centrifugal force), they (in theory) should be no more accurate than simple 'chain-hang' weights (both keep the clock spring working against the internals through a ratchet mechanism). It wasn't that the 'pendulum clocks' were any more accurate because of the mechanism, but that the internals of the mechanism became more precise and refined...that's all. It's not like a pendulum clock functions in a direct relation to the Equation of Time...it is simply working in relation to local gravity, length of the pendulum arm (adjustable by a length screw acting on the pendulum arm as a micro-adjuster) and its actions related to the swing of the pendulum.
Beeeaakkman!! You just reminded me of that legendary science guy. Love ur videos bro. Thanks a lot for sharing valuable information.
Ahhh. I remember living in Michigan. Good times. Snowmen, school when I’m ankle deep in snow, cold, cold, road work outside the house, cold, cold. Good times, good memories.
That would break how we communicate. You can’t just say “ugh i was up till 3 last night” because it would mean nothing. You would have to invent new words to stand in for the time and people would just end up using those instead of the actual time. We care more collectively about being able to connect and relate to each other than being accurate. I like the idea but it would never work. Meetings would be easier and writing programs and tech would all be easier, but i think our day to day language would change to fight it. Then you have to write code to relate times to those words … which would vary base on place… and all that time you saved goes right back to writing that crap.
That "ugh" says a lot more to me than "up until 3 last night", because it communicates tiredness and I know a lot of people who would be comfortable with staying up all night and going to sleep at 3pm. Also, were you talking about 3pm or 3am? Or are we using 24 hour clock? Even if we use conventional pattern of talking about time the language stays a problem. You could've said "I was up until very late last night" and it would've been more informative, relatable and accurate, no inventions needed. Accuracy of your language increases your relatablitiy I would argue. For example: Metaphors are accurate, not in scientific sense but accurate in a sense of trying to relate human experience of the world.
@@Youkai9 Yea, good point. The "ugh" definitely conveys most of what you're saying. So, one would just assume that 3 is late, and they would assume it's 3am, just from that "ugh" (current system I mean). So, no you wouldn't "need" to invent anything...but... what I want to happen and what I think would happen are different though. I just think it would be a shit show, based on how immaturely we tend to react to everything LOL. Groups will form... people who are down to change and people who love the old way. I mean give it a few years and it will be like nothing ever happened... it will all just work because we also have short memories, so people will forget it was any other way. Someone would just need to have the balls to pull the trigger and put in the necessary work to change the zeitgeist. But it will totally be a shit show for a bit., and I guess my point is... would it be worth it? I mean maybe? Put it this way... for the love of god don't do it right now lol. Wait for a less insane batch of humans to emerge... or maybe wait till we go cybernetic.
edit:: also, I mean, you've seen what it looks like when the gov tries to make a website. That's kinda where I'm coming from haha
@@Youkai9 so lets me less specific with language?
Because I say "ugh I had to wake up at 10am" does that make me lazy or did I wake up super early? You have no idea.
Getting rid of timezones has no benefit
@@Nereosis16 You need to know when people wake up, so you can tell if they're lazy? That's your argument?
The time zone lines may be too arbitrarily drawn, but I'd argue there's way more benefit to time zones than the alternative. Every human on the planet has a (roughly) common experience with what time label to use for different parts of the day. Every human has (roughly) the same definition of what "12:00 noon" means, as in what it looks like outside, whether most people are awake or sleeping, whether most people are working or resting, whether most people are eating dinner or breakfast, etc - so that "X o'clock" label is a description of the current state of life and can easily be translated to other parts of the world after applying a time zone offset. 3pm is roughly the same state of life for most everyone on the planet. Differences in latitude, the axial tilt, and the wild off-longitude swings in the time zone lines don't make it a perfect translation, but it's a pretty good starting point.
When regularly working/communicating with people around the world, "what time is it there?" is ALWAYS the first thing you think about because that hourly label means something useful. If I need to call someone in a different time zone, I do have to know the difference in time zones between us, but once I offset the difference from my time I intuitively know what part of the day the other person is experiencing in their time zone, because we both have the same label. If instead we're both on UTC, it's not that the calculation becomes difficult, it's just less intuitive. Instead of calculating the offset and knowing "they're in X part of their day", I'd apply the offset to the current time and know "they are in the part of their day that I will experience at X time later today/or did experience at X time earlier today".
Your first paragraph is completely undermined by China. China has one timezone. And China is HUGE. And has over a billion people. So no, "most" people on earth don't have the same definition of "noon"...roughly 200,000,000 people (that's quite a few!) at least (assuming likely 5 timezones if China were divided) have a completely different notion.
In terms of the calculations with a standard time, you simply don't have to do any...that's the point! Sure, you have to have some knowledge of their situation and a basic understanding of how the earth rotates...but you already had to have that in the current mess, PLUS do math! So eliminate the math and just simplify the issue!
@existdissolve China crosses only about 3 timezones, so their noon is from 11am to 1pm relative to a ship due south in the ocean which has those timezones. It’s daylight and the sun is high in the sky at 12:00 noon in China for everyone.
Nick Lucid. Greetings from Oaxaca. I studied Math and Philosophy in college in the 70's but I am interested in almost every intellectual pursuit (a symptom of Philosophical thinking) and I adore Humor. So your quirky show (with minor excursions into musical theater) is right up my alley. You had me laughing outloud several times. 😆
I don't really care what folks do about time zones. Keep it, abolish it, people don't seem to be able to agree on anything so you'll always have China-Arizona anomolies in the 'system'. Just want you to know how much I enjoyed your 'show' I'm looking forward to more examinations of off kilter topics. JIM
Bless you I completely agree
Telling time by the sun makes sense to me. The point of clocks is to mark the human daily biological cycle. The sun rise and set controls the cycle right? I think it is more than just tradition.
Our circadian rhythm doesnt rhyme with industrial labor production expectations. Industry over life is the motto
I actually know a guy that lost his birthday. We crossed the International Time/Date Line at midnight. His birthday was the next day, but the next day automatically became the day after. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, but for Petty Officer Olson, we had to wish him a happy belated birthday. My understanding of the time zone theory started at that moment. Thanks for this interesting and pertinent presentation.
For that, he should be given a free pass on the rule that you get your head shaved the first time you cross the equator.
He described Michigan in the shortest but most accurate way I even seen lol
Even tho I hardly was able to understand some of the words you have said I do agree that the world should be on a universal time. Good job
😬🤣🤣🤣💯
Time zones, as arbitrary as they are, do help to standardize our concept of time. UTC works well in some settings, say aviation, but when trying to figure out when business hours are in another location, then it becomes confusing. If the workday in any given place is 9-5, then we just use a little arithmetic to figure out when it's the best time to call a company in New York, if I'm living in California.
As for Daylight Saving Time, I say ditch it and go back to Standard Time. I hate the idea of using Daylight Saving Time year round, as some propose.
I feel like getting rid of time zones would just complicate things. If I want to spontaneously call a friend of mine who is in a time zone eight hours ahead of me, I do simple math to determine whether or not he is likely to be awake. I won't call him at 6 pm my time, because that would be 2 am for him. However, if time zones didn't exist, I wouldn't have any concept of when in the day it is for other time zones.
Also, time zones just help add stability. If someone was born and raised in one place they would always associate 12:00 am with a certain time of day. If they were to move far away, in a very different time zone, 12:00 am would be a completely different time of day. They would have to relearn what each hour time meant. And while yes, that person would eventually get used to it, it just adds an unnecessary complication.
And really, time zones as they are aren't that hard. As long as you have access to Google, it's pretty easy to figure out.
Time zones are easy.
Cause west = back
east = forth
So it's just a matter of looking up how far back or forth you need to adjust your clock for a given location.
On the other hand having no time zones would require the person to imagine what time of the day it is for the same time number everywhere. And i think that's just stupid.
For example. What sense does it make for there the time to be 02:49 where i'm from which is at night. And when it's the same 02:49 let's say in Japan. Then that would mean that it's noon or afternoon there. But how am i supposed to know or even imagine that and by how much. It just makes no sense there to be the same time number for the whole planet. I just think that's dumb cause it makes it way harder to tell if it's morning, noon, afternoon, evening or night and by how much.
Time zones are superior.
On the other hand maybe the daylight time change could be taken out but even that's no big deal cause it's just 1 hour difference.
So i think time is just fine the way it is.
we can use the Earth equator circumference and plot it to a 360 degree circle, and map each country according to that degree, so if you're at 180 degree and it's day time you should now that near 0 degree is night time
This makes no sense to me. With or without timezones, you need to make a calculation to know what the situation is ina different part of the world. Infact, the calculation is pretty much the same in both cases. So, timezones just make communication harder because the labels we use to describe time are inconsistent. It is just that we have got used to a messed up model so we cannot even imagine how a better one would function.
@@electronresonator8882 Using degrees would work to give a rough estimate, but to the layman, what meaningful difference is there between degree 180 and degree 195? It's very abstract. On the other hand, everyone has a clear idea of the difference between 8:15 and 9:15.
@@Gielderst Exactly!
How many times has someone thought, "if only I had a teacher like this" when people see this channel? 🤓
I love this guy.. and.. i love his topics.. and ideas! 👍
2:20
As a Michigander myself, this is pretty accurate.
Same
Michigander
Having time zones has various benefits.
When you travel, you change your clock as you are told to and you now immediately have a vague but rather good idea as to when shops and services are open.
If you read a story about someone working from 8PM to 2AM or someone's home being searched at 3AM etc, you know the story is talking about night times.
Sure, it also means that if you have a satellite that can catch TV form the other side of the world, program hours given by the TV won't mean anything to you until you correct for the time zone.
It also means that you remember big global events according to your own time zone.
On balance, I believe that time zones are better than using UTC.
Now daylight saving time is a nightmare. Not in my own personal life, a 1 hour adjustment twice a year is nothing for me. But when you need to know what time it is on the other side of the world according to both latitude and longitude it's quite tricky without a computer or smartphone
I love this! And I never want to change time based on the seasons either.
Very interesting video, and well done on all the work put in. Very informative about stuff I had literally no idea about. But as to your overall question and proposition, my answer is 'no'. The current time system isn't broken, so it doesn't need fixing. Not everyone has to contend with converting time with international timezones. I used to regularly communicate with someone on the opposite side of the globe. We lived in almost opposite timezones, but we found a way to make the communication work. It didn't require backflips or mental gymnastics, just some initial planning and understanding.
Of course timezones seem a confusing mess when you look at the entire world map with all of its partitioned timezones, but who needs to contend with every timezone at the same time? A tiny minority if I had to guess. At the most, some people might have to stay abreast of the time in one or two, or three other countries at most.
People have made it work all these years, thus far. I fail to see a problem, if I'm being completely honest.
UTC is amazing confusing to extrapolate the events when communicating or travelling. Basically the problem still exists. I think ending DLS is a good idea and maybe consolation of some time zones, make them larger.
Having been project manager for an international collaboration, I can say that UTC is the worst system to arrange meetings, except for all the other ones that have been tried.
If we were to get rid of time zones we need to get rid of the twelve hour clock and change to a 24 hour clock. The concepts of AM and PM make even less sense in a UTC system.
Also, the military uses UTC, though they call it Zulu Time, to help coordinate forces in multiple time zones.
I'm ok with the 24-hour format 👍
We should get rid of it period. That's the second thing that needs to go after DST.
"I'm okay with it."? You sound more like an authoritarian dictator than a scientist here.
Your description of Michigan is spot on 😅
As someone who frequently coordinates schedules across time zones, removing them would be a god send.
Doing away with time zones would be pointless when considering business and trade. Everyone locally, likely in a state or country would all be considering a particular time as business hours in order to coordinate in your area, just like time zones. But i do love the idea of not having to bother with time zone conversion, i missed out on jobs because i screwed up on time zones.
If we switched to UTC people would still be required to do conversions to figure out when to organize a meeting. I can’t tell you how many times someone in another part of the world emailed me in the middle of the night, only to send a follow up half an hour later asking me why I hadn’t responded yet. Besides, there a world clock built right into windows.
Yes, we need time zones. We use local time far more than time in other zones, so it works well to associate the time with the sun. We do not need Daylight Saving Time, however. Everybody hates it but we can’t get rid of it.
I remember at a kid realizing that different parts of the world are day at different times before I learned about time zones. I thought the sun rose at 2pm in some places and 11 am in other places.
Getting rid of time zones would do nothing other than creating new problems. Instead of needing to figure out what time the clock reads in a given country, you'd need to figure out what part of the day a given time describes on the world clock. Say you need to schedule a call with someone half-way around the world: the video claims you could just name a time, but then you need to figure out the waking hours for the people in the city you're calling and also the overlap between your waking hours and theirs. You haven't solved any problem with one world clock; in fact, it probably leads to more ambiguity than we have with time zones.
The main problem of the video is an issue of changing the clock twice a year, which by means we indeed should get rid of daylight saving time, not the time zone itself
You already need to figure out the hours of the other person and reach an agreement.
Anyhow if you don't want to coordinate too much you will need to know when the other person is active, and the new method does not change that, only removes calculations away.
This is how it goes currently:
Person A: I want to have a call tomorrow at 9AM.
Person B: 9AM which time?
Person A: 9AM my time.
Person B: Ok let me do some calculations.
Person B: ... That is not OK, this is midnight my time... can we do it 9AM my time?
... ... ... ... 6 hours of email and calculation later ... we got a time
With the new method:
Person A: I need to have a call tomorrow at 9AM.
Person B: That's not ok, I am at sleep and wake up at 1PM.
Person A: Ok 2PM?
Person B: Ok.
^^ see any reference to time works for both and no calculations are needed, but you still need to know when the other person is available, the same as now.
@@marsovac the flaw of the so called "new method" fails to bring the context of sun position in a day, in which the Person A did not gave the idea of whether he'll still be awake or not
The human cost of the so called "new method" only creates a greater version of Beijing time where people living in the far western regions observe sunrise as late as 10.30 am
An interesting idea that would probably need a lot of getting used to. There are many aspects to consider, especially local adjustment when travelling.
Local time has much meaning when you plan your day and automates tasks; travelling somewhere in the suggested universal time would mean you have to personally keep converting time instead of making a simple clock adjustment to accommodate the change. I wonder how practical it would be in general.
In brief, yes - we need time zones.
Human beings are naturally diurnal; not merely because our eyes function poorly in dim lighting conditions, but virtually every aspect of our psychological evolution is tied to it as well. Not only do we sleep better at night than during the day, but light levels also affect the production of hormones which help to regulate our activity. Small wonder that people who work the night shift more frequently suffer from depression, delusions, and self-inflicted harm.
While some might argue that this is irrelevant to 'numbers on a dial', think about why everyplace had "local noon" prior to time zones. True, it was integral to early timekeeping devices such as solar calendars (I know of a fairly large such site in southeastern Colorado, of all places, filled with Ogam) but it is also integral to our daily function. Noon is noon - go ANYWHERE in the world and noon is approximately the middle of the day. Even if you're accustomed to US Mountain Time and go to Brisbane Australia (been there, done that), 6AM is when people are generally getting up to go to work; noon is roughly when everyone is having lunch; 6PM is dinnertime; etc. If anything, the current system of time zones **IS** "everyone working from the same clock" because virtually every aspect of human activity is controlled by the sun's position relative to our position upon the Earth.
To add a further note to the involvement of railroads: The issue was never with hours but with minutes, which varied from community to community. If a westbound train reached a certain point at 11:13 by one clock and an eastbound train reached the same point at 11:08 by a clock which was five minutes behind (quite likely, as solar noon occurs earlier to the east and later to the west) you've got a disaster on your hands. This was an acceptable compromise because (with few exceptions) there was no point anywhere in the world more than 30 minutes ahead of or behind solar time - a very minor skew back when most people were far more perceptive of solar time than today.
The need for such accuracy to avoid railroad mishaps was a key influence in promoting accurate timepieces. Engineers were required to carry an approved pocketwatch at all times, and said watch was required to be recertified every fifteen days - the watch could not lose or gain more than three seconds per day, had to do so in all weather conditions, regardless of how tightly the spring was wound or what position the watch was kept in. Station clocks were kept synchronized via telegraph and train operators (including conductors) synchronized their watches at every station before departure; again, not due to hours but because minutes or even seconds of inaccuracy could result in costly losses of lives and equipment.
haha love the surprise guest, Mr. Beat. 👍
Sure, we should use UTC more often to schedule events but I still think that time zones would be. Your argument Nick is that it would not matter if job time switches from 9-5 to 2-10 and I agree, it wouldnt matter. However there would still be geopolitical divisions where people work from 2-10, 3-11, 4-12 etc. so people would still be required to switch behaviours from "time zone" to "time zone". Instead of remembering each region's "9 to 5" we now shift our clocks instead so there is less to remember. It is easier in my mind.
Well since my Provence has once again failed to be rid of this Saving nonsense, and my smartphone and smartwatch will just change. I'm not sure how much remembering there is to do. You think that the new "time zone" will be when people work, however I work 0000hrs to 0800hrs everynight so when I want to say do some in-person banking during banking hours. I have to get up in the middle of the [day] to get my roll of laundry coins, disrupting my sleep.
We could also make it 9-3, 10-4, 11-5, or something. Personally, I would mind having time to lounge in the morning.
right, and one more flaw would be, that timezones could also never die, because multi national companys had to write down thair workingtimes in each and every place in the world, so what would they do? They have to change the company papers from "we are working 9 to 5 on this planet" to "we are working 0 to 8 in timezone A, 1 to 9 in timezone B, 2 to 10 in timezone C ...", so there will be challenges :D ... all over my gut feeling is, it doesnt matter if we change the clock or the behaviors...
The four seasons of Michigan hit me so hard
I actually "came up with" this idea when I was a kid. It just made sense to me.