Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

The most likely outcome is, that work schedules shift as people struggle to get up in the winter. Consequentely the amount of light after work doesn't change. Actually its worse than with the time changes, where there was an effect on the amount of light after work in the summer.


You really think society is going to collectively upheave itself and move to 10-6 in the wintertime just because its tougher to get up an hour earlier? If I were you I would not be a betting man.


Yes, I do. Not in an instant, but over time. That is what happened after introducing DST to some extend. Here in Germany DST was intruduced in 1980. Most stores open up later than they did back then. And they close later. Office hours used to start at 8, now its more like 9. School in some places start later or there is discussion to start later as pupils struggle to keep awake in the early hours in the winter. You can also see the effect in all places, which do have a significant deviation of their official time with the course of the sun. Take lunch time. Thats often not at 12, but shifted according to the difference. Germany, France and Spain are in one time zone, the meridian is going through the east of Germany. If you look at the day rhythm between those countries, you can see this effect very strongly. Lunch and dinner times are shifted pretty much exactly with the difference in astronomical time.

So I am pretty sure that after introducing permanent DST there are two possible outcommes:

- people shift their time tables to compensate

- if the time tables are not shifted, there will be a lot of unhappyness in the winter and a lot of pressure to change back the time shift.


Completely disagree. The outcome will be that people wake up in the dark during winter and have an extra hour of sunlight after work year round.


All experience with these kind of time shifts shows exactly the opposite. This is not, how the human body works.


It's easy to say "oh the research shows we should do this." It's much harder to actually do it. The amount of coordination required to get everyone to agree to change schedule is far to high for it to actually happen.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: