Comment by timerol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timerol | Hacker News Reader

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The text has the same number, but interprets it, ah, interestingly: "By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scenario."

This is a pretty ridiculous statement from the article, considering the history of population growth. Growing from 7.8B humans to 11B in 80 years is a significantly reduced growth rate compared to historical data. It's even reduced growth on an absolute scale. Starting from 1930, we went from 2B to 6B humans in 69 years[1]. We added tripled the world population in a few generations. I think we'll be able to handle to slow, steady population growth of the 21st century.

We have a lot of hard problems to solve in the 21st century, and population growth isn't even on the list.

Edit: I finished reading the article. I would not recommend that course of action. The so-called "running out of people" scenario is that the world has between 8 and 9 billion people in 2100. While that is a significant change to the model, calling it "running out of people" is clickbait garbage.

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

I think more importantly that you'll see different regions of the world experience very different growth rates, and that realignment will have a big impact on the world order. Europe and advanced Asian economies like China, Japan and Korea will (or in many cases already) see a declining population, while places like Africa and the Philippines will see huge population growth because their population pyramids already are "wide and flat" with a huge proportion of young people.

> We have a lot of hard problems to solve in the 21st century

I've been on the hunt for an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest challenges are. Anyone know where this body of work might be?

Copenhagen Consensus is an interesting one as a list of economists ranking cost-to-impact ratios. Something similar or adjacent?

[1]: https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/

> an apolitical assessment of what humanity's greatest challenges are

No such thing exists. Such an assessment would be inherently political.

True, although I think we can all smell the difference between a work intended for discovery vs. one that begins from a preset position.

  Income Inequality (go UBI!)
  Climate Change (go Tesla?)
  Authoritarian Rule (go...Democracy?)
  Disease and Aging (go science!)
  Racism and Religion (go education!)

> Climate Change (go Tesla?)

I am waiting for around the 2050s to see if/when the climate change movement goes against EVs in their current form. We're really just shifting all the polluting in time and place. Move it all to the front and back of the vehicle's lifespan, put a huge distance between the vehicle user and how the energy is produced, and we call it green because there's no smoke coming out of it.

In practice the numbers seem to suggest the overall change in emissions is not better - at least not in the type of EVs that are popular now (e.g. Teslas). A much smaller vehicle, with much less batteries, perhaps.

>the overall change in emissions is not better

This is false. The emissions associated with producing an EV are on the order of 15 tonnes CO2 equivalent, vs. 10 tonnes CO2 equivalent for a fuel combustion vehicle (FCV):

http://tasri.org/upLoad/down/month_1710/201710242243229582.p...

Meanwhile the emissions associated with gasoline vary but are at least 0.25 kg per mile (EPA average 0.4 kg/mile):

https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/P100JPPH.TXT?ZyActionD=Z...

Over the lifetime of the car -- at least 100000 miles -- that's 25 tonnes at a bare minimum. But EVs last longer than FCVs, so we should increase the range to at least 200000 miles and 50 tonnes CO2 equivalent (or 80 for a typical car), where EVs start to pull away substantially. Furthermore, the emissions associated with EV producing depend in part on fuel-derived electricity used in manufacturing, which can be reduced dramatically by switching to nonfuel electricity production.

Overall, EVs represent a massive decrease in pollution.

However, the most important things to solve are the problems we haven't solved: principally grid-level electricity storage that permits a higher fraction of electricity production from renewable sources. EVs, wind turbines and photovoltaics by contrast are technologies that are already applied in practice.

I am very sceptical of the claim that EVs will have a higher lifetime than ICEs. The latter reach end of life in the Western world due to a lack of desirability, not because of the maintenance burden.

A 20 year old EV will still smell bad, have gunk you can't clean all over the surfaces, not communicate with your phone etc.

Maybe it will be true, but I don't think you should count your chickens just yet, certainly not by a factor of 2.

People sell cars because they don't like them. But they crush cars because they become too expensive to fix.

If your smelly 20 year old EV is still rolling someone will buy it for a couple hundred bucks and drive it until it fails.

How the claims of superior maintainability for EVs vs ICs turns out, well, we'll see. There's an awful lot on an IC car that can go wrong that will send a well-used one to the junkyard, since repairs are so expensive. But there's also a lot that are kept on the road by driveway mechanics that have more time than money... and the EV future will be less friendly to that. I can do valve guides in my driveway, but I'm not replacing battery cells.

It just takes a new type of mechanic. I personally would have no complaints about swapping batteries, fixing electronics or upgrading/updating accessories but I also come from a different level of training. To me it appears as easy to remove an entire EV motor as it is to change a rear differential (electrical safeties aside).

Mechanics for decades have been complaining that "you can't fix these new computerized cars" when mechanically they are very similar to what has been produced for half a century, sensors and electronics just allow you (when properly working) to set and adjust on the fly...making engines more efficient and smoother running.

The "new mechanic" will be required to know most (if not all) of the same things as those of the past but will also be required to have an understanding of electronics repair and safety. I suspect due to things like microprocessor kits, robotics and such being more popular at a younger age that this will be a non issue. Sure...the current batch of mechanics may have issues but the next generation will (could?) consider it common knowledge.

I am sure in history someone complained that these automobiles can't be fixed as easy as replacing a horse. That is the issue with new tech...if you only know old...it seems like black box magic.

The problems independent mechanics have with new "computerized cars" is the expensive and sometimes unavailable DRM protected HW and SW tools that you need to perform any operations on the electronics which are usually only made available to authorized dealers by the auto manufacturers.

The "new mechanic" for the EV era will not exist if auto manufacturers make every digital tool proprietary and unavailable outside the dealer network, with phone-home to HQ for authorization.

Almost everything can be read by an OBD2 reader. Or there are also some homebrew options.

Tractors and such start to get tricky and I am sure there are aspects of the cars which you cannot control but from what I have seen you can get by without a reader on older cars (flashing the obd light) but on newer ones you need a decent reader. Which largely are about $100 depending on how in depth you want to go.

On my VW I use the OBDeleven reader...but I believe there is a generic comparable one also. It allows you to test sensors, modules, even door switches/lights and the radio.

I understand the added complexity is confusing at times but really once you have a reader it is easy enough. Code readers are actually a fairly accessible and cheap addition to your toolbox.

I do agree though that the "black boxing" and DRM of hardware needs to be addressed. Especially in anything that is relied on. If you buy a machine you should get full schematics/docs/etc upon request IMHO...but that isn't really a common thing anymore.

>Almost everything can be read by an OBD2 reader

Yes, read but sometimes you have to write to the ECU to update, reset or recalibrate some parameters and there's where the gotcha is since those writing operations are secured via challenge and respsonse and only available via manufacturer approved equipment.

Source: former automotive firmware engineer

It already has if you're looking in the right places.

It's a bit like 'reduce, reuse, recycle'.

Not having a car (possibly renting one occasionally, the inconvenience meaning that you use it less) is the best option.

After that is probably a family using an EV (e.g. with >2 occupancy).

After that is a single person using an EV to do loads of daft journeys (e.g. what sounds from over the pond like a typical 50+ mile daily round trip for work).

I had an EV for a while and sold it because I realised that it's ultimately just an excuse, like smoking "light" cigarettes. It still relies on a piss-take infrastructure of sprawl everywhere.

But we should definitely encourage them over ICE's.

This seems to be the same area Effective Altruism is interested in. I recommend looking at 80000 hours as a starting point:

https://80000hours.org/

Perfect, "Effective Altruism" is the keyword I'm looking for. I've heard of the 80000 people and will follow that thread. Thank you

>Starting from 1930, we went from 2B to 6B humans in 69 years[1]. We added tripled the world population in a few generations.

Along with huge technological changes. Nowadays the technological advances are more or less plateaued themselves compared to getting from no factories to factories, no electricity to electricity, no computers to computers, no telecommunications to telecommunications, etc, no cars to cars.

Today we already have problems all around the world with the economy...

Just FYI, in 1930 there was already factories, electricity, telecommunications, and cars. No computers though.

Yes, there were, but as William Gibson quoted, "not distributed evenly".

We had factories since the 18th century or so, but we had huge advances in the 20th century (from Taylorism to automation).

And the "rich have phones" in the 1920s and 1930s to "everybody has one" a little later meant a different impact...

And no modern hybrid seeds, and not the same level of fertilizer.

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