(Congrats. paxys, you got me to reply twice to you :))

>and there isn't a "correct" answer there

For me, personally, I like the concept that noon is when the sun is at it highest point or closest, I can adjust everything else around that.

Considering how wide time zones are that is pretty much impossible to standardize on regardless of which clock you pick. Then it becomes a question of which cities you are going to prioritize, and I doubt any politician wants to start that conversation.

Plus, "solar noon" itself shifts by ~20 mins throughout the year due to the Earth's orbit.

>Considering how wide time zones are that is pretty much impossible to standardize on regardless of which clock you pick

With standard time you will still have the rough center of the time zone match with solar time with about +/- 30 minutes give or take on the sides. With DST it may well happen that no part of the timezone actually matches solar time since everything is essentially shifted 1 hour to the East.

An awful lot of us can't "just adjust around that" though. A significant portion of the population work jobs with relatively fixed hours, working something like 8-5, 9-6, etc. So if you don't get off work until, say, 6, and then have an hour commute home, DST is really nice to allow for some sunlight for outdoor activities after work.

Sure, it's easy to say "just leave work an hour earlier" and some people have that flexibility. But far from most, I'd wager.

I would like to see this change in conjunction to moving to a 32-35 hour work week. As a developer it is still often socially difficult to take time during the day to do errands or go to appointments, and so I am constantly reminded of the times when I simply could not take the time off.

I'd love to live in a world where bankers and dentists and optometrists all kept different hours, so the bankers could get glasses, and the dentists take out loans, without having to drop everything to do it. With smart phones this is somewhat more tenable. I don't need to memorize when the dentist is open, so there is less immediate value in reducing the world to a small set of common numbers.

> then have an hour commute home

That’s where the problem is.

"Or closest" is a mildly significant caveat.

The real Sun and the imaginary “mean Sun,” from which mean solar time is measured, may be as much as 16 minutes apart because during the course of the year the apparent motion of the real Sun against the background of the stars (the ecliptic) alternately slows down and speeds up.

https://www.britannica.com/science/solar-time

The east–west component [of the analemma] results from the nonuniform rate of change of the Sun's right ascension, governed by combined effects of Earth's axial tilt and orbital eccentricity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma

> For me, personally, I like the concept that noon is when the sun is at it highest point or closest, I can adjust everything else around that

Then you must not like time zones, as that is true only in one particular sliver of a time zone. You want true local time, like before the railroads time.

Actually, time zones are the best approach we have now to "noon is when the sun is up".

I actually like this as a compromise. Otherwise it's just a matter of how many people prefer leisure at what time.

The entire idea of DST is that it provides a nice balance between the two: still reasonably light in the morning in winter, and move some of the very early morning sunlight to the evening in summer.

That is the idea, but such an idea is not objectively correct.

I think it is wrong to ask the general public what they prefer. Most people honestly don’t know, and if they do, they might prefer the option which is more harmful for their health without realizing it.

Much better is to ask public health experts. Which will look at sleeping patters, at risk groups, etc. I’m particularly worried about teenagers which will be forced to wake up before sunrise and are unlikely to go to sleep earlier under social pressure (including from their own family).

It also varies by where you're located in a time zone and what latitude you are at. Somewhere like Boston, you basically have dark at both ends of the day in the winter no matter how you move things around. And it's also pretty light in the morning and light until quite far into the evening in winter. Boston should really be in Atlantic time based on longitude but it doesn't make sense to be in a different time zone than the rest of the East Coast.

That doesn't mean it optimizes for what is actually healthy though. Most American's clearly want to eat unhealthy, based on our obesity rate. Doesn't mean it's what is healthiest though.

> The question is whether you want more of it in the morning or the evening, and there isn't a "correct" answer there.

The folks at various chronobiology and sleep study societies say otherwise:

> The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic problems of DST. We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens.

* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

Lots of footnotes here in this paper if you want to get into the details:

* https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.0094...

The position papers of various societies:

* https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/

* https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/

* http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...

* https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-ci...

* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...

There seems to be a consensus on what's "best", and it doesn't appear to by Year-round DST.

I'd be curious to know what hearings, if any, were held on this topic, and with whom.

>The amount of sunlight stays the same.

Lol, no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_sun

I know that's an extreme, but you get the idea.

You've misread the parent. They are saying that on a given day, the number of hours of sunlight is the same whether it's daylight or standard time. The only thing that changes is when in the day the sun is shining.

Oh, I see.

TheCoelacanth was arguing about summer vs. winter so that's the thread I was following in my mind.

I believe he meant you get n hours of sunlight in the summer, regardless of whether you arbitrarily decide to call it 6 AM or 7 AM when the sun rises.

The amount of sunlight stays the same, but you have to rename the phenomenon to "1am sun" or whatever

I grew up in the land of the midnight sun. I am not sure what point you are trying to make. People really don't complain much about it being light until late. It is much more common to hear people complain about the sun setting sooner as fall approaches.

The above poster is referring to the amount of sunlight between a savings and standard time basis - not between summer and winter.