[extropy-chat] Antarctica timezone(s)

[Anders Sandberg]

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 01:31:34PM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>> work, so it is not too hard to have a clock unlinked to nature. On Mars,
>> sols probably do matter for most probes and visitors, so the clock need
>> to
>> be linked.
>
> What we need is a number of synchronized high-precision oscillators
> driving a time standard, normalized for absolute rest and for flat
> spacetime.

We need that for some applications, but for everyday applications a
calender is mostly used to coordinate the cyclic social activity of
humans. Even today, with electric light, fast global communications,
melatonin and a 24-hour society we still have fairly strong periodicities
that are hard to skip (hence the failure of most polyphasic sleep
programs). Sleepless transhumans might dispense with it and just view time
as progressing linearly onwards, but mixed human-transhuman societies
would still have cyclicities that need to be managed.

It could also be that some processes in society are better done according
to set periodicities than continously or "just in time", a bit like how
periodic hormone release might have positive effects in the body (one
theory suggests that sharp spike trains of insulin concentration allows
efficient signalling without the problems of persistently high
concentration).

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University