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488 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 18 Nov 2023 \ on: What if time = blocktime? bitcoin
This is a fun thought experiment, but it's hard to accept the premise, since it seems less important that we agree to coordinate around one single time value, vs having the semantics of time be broadly equivalent, e.g., 5am means nearly the same thing to someone in Tokyo as it does to someone in Omaha.
It would impose significantly more cognitive burden on me to try to imagine the perspective of any random person speaking about time than it does to have to correct for multiple time zones, which I have tools to help me do whenever needed; and I expect I have a more challenging multi-time-zone coordination problem than most.
To make this even more explicit, imagine the same issues in play, except for seasons. Right now, in North America, we're moving into winter; but in Uruguay, you're moving into summer. We could just agree to take Uruguay as a reference, but now "summer" means vastly different things to you and I, even if the term is literally describing the same universal time. The seasonal affordances of the world predominate in human affairs over the absolute time in which those affordances unfold. Blocktime loses all those distinctions.
Good point. Seasons are location dependent but I’not sure I would say they depend on a particular time zone. Although I don’t think you are making that assertion.
I can’t tell you the amount of seconds (and therefore hours) I have lost trying to cognitively process what time it is on the other side of the world for colleagues. Or what time to setup a meeting for.
The current system doesn’t work for a global interconnected system. Perhaps block time doesn’t either. I wonder therefore what becomes the standard.
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I can’t tell you the amount of seconds (and therefore hours) I have lost trying to cognitively process what time it is on the other side of the world for colleagues. Or what time to setup a meeting for.
Oh yes, it's a pain, for sure. But Outlook lets you set up so you can at least see them, so I'm regularly scheduling across 4 time zones and three continents. It's not simple for sure, but I think the complexity is irreducible unless you can make everyone agree to keep the same hours, regardless of where it falls across night and day distinctions.
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