[xkcdz]

Interesting argument, and you’re totally right that they highlight how tricky it is to get people to adopt a new time system, especially when the benefits aren’t screamingly obvious. I hear you loud and clear: for most folks, global scheduling isn’t a daily itch that needs scratching, so why bother with something like GPTS? Fair point. But let me toss out a few reasons why I’m still hopeful it could have a shot in today’s world—maybe not for everyone, but for enough people to matter.

The Global Life Is Real Now: Back when the French tried their decimal time or the Soviets pushed their reforms, most people were rooted in one place, living local lives. Fast forward to now—remote work, international teams, and digital nomads are everywhere. I’ve got friends juggling calls between New York, Tokyo, and Berlin, and they’re constantly cursing time zones. GPTS could be a universal fix for that mess, a single time everyone could sync to without the mental gymnastics. That’s a pain point those older systems never had to tackle.

Tech Smooths the Switch: Unlike those past experiments, we’ve got tools today that make change less of a shock. Think about it—your phone already flips between time zones or shows you dual clocks if you need it. GPTS could just be an extra layer, not a total replacement. You’d still use local time for grabbing coffee with a friend, but switch to GPTS for a global meeting. It’s not about forcing everyone to ditch what they know—it’s about adding something practical for the stuff that’s already global.

It Feels Human, Not Just Math: I love that you mentioned the French Republican calendar’s ten-hour days and hundred-minute hours—super interesting, but yeah, it felt detached from how we live. GPTS, though? Each “pulse” is 0.864 seconds, pretty close to a heartbeat. That’s not some random decimal obsession; it’s a rhythm we instinctively get. It’s less about rewriting time from scratch and more about syncing it to something we already feel.

It Could Start Small: You’re spot on—most people don’t care about global scheduling yet. But some do: tech companies, finance folks, scientists working across borders. If GPTS catches on with them first, it could spread naturally, kind of like how UTC quietly became the internet’s timekeeper. The French and Soviet systems were top-down mandates that flopped—GPTS could grow from the ground up, driven by people who actually need it.

Getting traction would be an uphill climb. People hate change unless it’s worth it, and cultural habits die hard. But in a world where we’re already rethinking how we work and connect across the planet, maybe a system like GPTS could sneak in by solving real, modern headaches.

[stefanfis]

Yes, I see the reasoning, but it really is a tiny fraction of mankind dealing with this issues. And, as you said, there’s tech for that. One design flaw of your solution is the complicated math to go from classic time to GPTS. Time zones may be annoying, but in most cases, we just have to add full hours. New York is six hours behind the time of central Europe. That is easy math. Another aspect, perhaps I missed it: How does GPTS handle daylight savings, especially when some regions switch on different days? The conversion from GPTS to classic time and vice versa has always to be dependent on the current location. And finally, what about frequent travelers? Any time zone they visit will have vastly different opening times of shops or bars. They’d be forced to do the math everytime.

[didgeoridoo]

If I want AI slop I’ll go ask a chatbot, thanks.

[xkcdz]

Did you get my point tho?