#2594: Consensus Time explain

Proposal: Consensus Time

Every day, anyone in the time zone can press a button when they feel like it’s 9 AM. The next day, clocks slow down or speed up to match the median choice from the previous day.

[A diagram representing the hours of two days with tick marks, with some of the tick marks longer than others and/or in boldface, and some of them labeled as follows:]

Midnight

6AM

9AM today

Median

Noon

6PM

Midnight

6AM

9AM tomorrow

Noon

6PM

Midnight

[A brace connects the period from the second “Midnight” to “9AM tomorrow”. It is labeled:]

Longer hours

[A scatterplot of 57 dots appears below the hashmarks, indicating the distribution of when participants pushed the “9 AM” button. The most extreme outliers are at roughly 3AM and 9PM, but they most densely cluster around a vertical dotted line labelled “Median” at approximately 11:15AM, interrupted as it passes through the main mass of dots at roughly the position of the 29th plotted dot from either end.]

[Megan, facing to the left, and Cueball, facing to the right, each hold a handheld device. The devices are too small to see clearly but are making sounds, implying that each of them has just pressed the “9 AM” button.]

Beep