Comment by laumars | Hacker News Reader

Comment by laumars | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting points but I only agree with one of the 3 examples you've provided:

> People definitely buy more and bigger TVs if their cost of operation is cheaper.

In all my years I have never, ever, heard anyone say that until now. People buy bigger TVs because it's cheaper to buy, or because they offer better features (smart, 3D, 4k, curved, etc) or because they move house and their new room is bigger so want something proportional. Or even just because they're used to their old TV and want a visible upgrade.

However I have never heard anyone say "this TV is bigger than my old one because it's cheaper to run".

(obviously I'm not saying "nobody in the history of consumers have said what you claim", but I would be astounded if that was a normal buying trend. More likely it's a niche quirk you've exampled)

> They also buy more power-hungry phones – energy efficiency increases in general haven’t turned into energy savings!

From what I gather, the trend for power-hungry phones have outstripped energy savings anyway. It's improvements in battery technology that have enabled people to continually upgrade. So I don't really see the cost of electricity vs energy consumption improvements being a deciding factor here.

> More efficient use of energy also simply makes people have less incentives to conserve it (switching off lights and appliances when not used, turning down heating/AC, driving less, and so on).

That's a fair point. It would be hard to judge just how significant that impact is though. But I definitely agree there will be people out there who do leave lights on because they're cheap to run.

Of course energy efficiency is not the only, or even primary reason. But it is there somewhere, and insofar as it isn’t (would people be willing to pay for 4x the energy use? 8x? 16x?) it is just evidence that energy is too cheap if people don’t need to think about it!

I do grant you that energy efficiency wins in many fixed appliances (washing machines, fridges, etc) do probably transfer directly to reduced energy usage by those appliances – but remember that energy is fungible, and reduced use here may and often will transfer to increased use there.

On the bigger TVs point, you’re sort of talking past each other. Noone* is buying a bigger TV because it suddenly fits within some power budget but nobody* would have bought a 60” CRT that heated the room like an oven. Nowadays, you’ll struggle to find a non-garbage TV much smaller than that.

The improved efficiency enables new uses which consume more energy, eating into the improvement.

* for small values of noone/nobody

The problem with 60" CRTs wasn't the heat it produced (or at least that was only a small part of the problem), it was the depth of the box. The depth of CRTs was related the width of the screen. This meant larger CRTs was often too deep to be practical (unlike Plasma and LCD which even in the earlier days could fit more flush against the side of the room or tighter into a corner). Schools, youth clubs, etc did have larger CRT TVs on a trolley but even those weren't 60" because storing that simply wasn't practical - it simply wouldn't have fit into many storage rooms. Even TV studios used a wall of monitors (which surely would have ran hotter) rather than one big monitor because of the space requirements.

Also lets not forget that back in the days of CRT everyone was still watching standard definition - which looks terrible on 60" displays (which possibly was also a deciding factor for TV studios using a wall of monitors rather than one big screen?). So there was a lot to be said for having the right sized screen to fit the output resolution. These days we have 4k and that will easily scale to 60 inches.

You’re still missing the point, which was that new technologies enable new uses that consume the energy efficiency gains made over their predecessors.

TFTs, being thinner/cooler/more efficient than CRTs, allow bigger and more common screens thus using some if not all of the energy saved from doing away with CRTs.

This is the same point as someone else made up the thread WRT the availability of RAM enabling developers to be more complacent about the efficiency of their applications.

I get the point you're making but my point was that I don't agree that energy efficiencies is what have lead to larger displays. At best I see that as a byproduct but honestly I think it's more of a parallel development. So I agree there is a correlation there but I don't agree with your conclusion of causation.

At least with the RAM example (where more RAM enables developers to write heavier software applications) there is a definite causation. However with regards to CRTs, I think we'd have seen the same trend to larger screens even without the drive to engineer more energy efficient hardware (and in fact we did see that with plasma screens back when they were in vogue. Plasma was favoured for bigger displays because it produced better looking screens* despite LCD being more energy efficient).

* better viewing angles, refresh rates, sharper display, better contrast

> I don't agree that energy efficiencies is what have lead to larger displays

That wasn’t my point, and was why I originally said that you and Sharlin seemed to be talking past each other.

LCDs took off because of their physical advantages (weight/thickness/heat, although the heat it produces has to be correlated with energy input) despite their shortcomings (fixed resolution, limited brightness and contrast ratio, response time) and plasma screens were an attempt to deal with those shortcomings but are now mostly dead. As you say, improved efficiency was correlative but not entirely causative.

A naive view would have been that as LCDs took off, their efficiency would lead to a drop in power consumption over CRTs. The Jevins paradox shows that not necessarily to be the case - bourne out by the proliferation of displays where previously there were none and in displays getting larger.

> A naive view would have been that as LCDs took off, their efficiency would lead to a drop in power consumption over CRTs. The Jevins paradox shows that not necessarily to be the case - bourne out by the proliferation of displays where previously there were none and in displays getting larger.

I think we'd need to run the maths before making any claims there tbh. We're getting dangerously into the realm of using assumptions as statistics. Points we'd need to consider:

* how much more efficient are LCDs compared to plasma and CRTs per square inch.

* how much did the trend to bigger screens proliferate with plasma vs LCD

* how has the cost of LCD and plasma screens changed over the last 20 years (this should be broken down by TVs with features such as smart TVs, 3D, HD, 4k, curved screens, etc)

* what about the uptake of said features on TVs?

* and lastly are those features only available on TVs of screen sizes > n?

* any other variables I've not considered? (I've only quickly thrown some thoughts together so there's bound to be some metrics I've missed)

I think the point you're making is a pretty hard conclusion to argue (or for me to refute) without any meaningful statistics to back it up. However it does still make for an interesting discussion so while the conclusion may remain unproven I have enjoyed the debate :)

Agreed - my point has a lot of hand waving, and have a +1 for it staying civil too :)

I would probably argue that integrating more (oxymoronically) “smart” stuff into TVs might have made them less efficient too but it probably helped because of increased integration, fewer <100% efficient power supplies etc.

The 60" CRT typically required 45-65" of space front to back. That's a lot of room to give up.

The 60" LCD panel takes up 3-8" front to back, which is dwarfed by the cable box, disc player, gaming system...

And therefore more people have >=1 of the LCD, which is exactly the point…

Likewise, people used to have one TV. Now, a significant majority have multiple. Not because they’re more energy efficient but the effect is the same.

The original point was about energy efficiencies though. This was the point people were disagreeing with.

Also for what it's worth, back in the early-to-mid 90s I actually did do a study on the number of TVs in an average household in my home town (it was for a college assignment). While my sample size was relatively small (ie only a few hundred people interviewed), I did discover the vast majority of homes had 2 TVs instead of 1 (which surprised me as I didn't live in a particularly affluent area). So I don't think it's quite true to even say most people used to only have 1 TV. Or at least that wasn't the trend observed by my study.

The original point was the Jevin paradox, which says that increased efficiency leads to more efficient consumption. We’re now going round in circles about the causes of the decline of CRTs relative to flat panels, which is definitely a divergence.

I suspect if you re-ran the study you’d get a number bigger than 2, which (qualitatively) is the point I was getting at!

The think the thing about the Jevin paradox (if I understand it correctly) is it requires causation and, as I've said previously, I think in the case of TVs it's a correlation without causation. ie I think we would still have seen larger displays and more TVs in each home even if there hadn't been improvements in energy efficiency. I appreciate you feel we're going round in circles but that's always been the crux of my point right from the start and the reason why I don't believe the Jevin Paradox applies to that specific example.

However I do also think we've headed into the realm of using assumptions as statistics (as also discussed in my other post[1]) so perhaps this is one of those occasions where our differing opinions cannot be consolidated?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18192773

Also there has to be a somewhat high and tractable initial cost for the paradox to kick in. How much does it cost to run a TV for a year? I have no idea as it is rolled into my monthly electricity bill.

Now for a car I can see that immediately. Whoa $60 for a tank of gas? Maybe I won’t go on that road trip or maybe I’ll use the bus or telecommute.

"Nowadays, you’ll struggle to find a non-garbage TV much smaller than that"

I think that's an overstatement regarding 60 inches. I still have a 27" Samsung LCD TV that was high end when I bought it, but I did some light research and it appears that if I limit my choices to new 4K Samsung TVs that are in stock at a NYC retailer, there are plenty of 40-50 inch options. There are also 30 inch Samsung TVs if you don't mind a lower resolution.

I think it's assuming too much to assume that everybody has a $500-$1000 budget and gets the biggest thing they can afford. Some people don't have that budget, and some people who have the money still happily take the savings now that prices are down from a decade ago. And some people don't get a new device until the old one breaks.

I think an educated person should be aware of Jevon's paradox, but it's overused and abused because people cite it dogmatically to short circuit thinking or fact gathering. Risk homeostasis is another similar idea - there's something to it, but it's harmful to reasoned thinking when people go around assuming it applies 100% without checking.

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