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Comment by gandalfgeek | Hacker News Reader

Hossenfelder is a technical person able to read technical literature, follow chains of argument and decipher statistical analysis. If such a person reads the literature in a field new to her, summarizes it, and then you disagree with it (oh but the papers really meant something else), then the problem is with the literature, not the reader.

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Every field is filled with technical literature that is complete bullshit. The entire point of consulting an expert who has been in the field is they have spent enough time to sift through that.

There is significant literature on functioning perpetual motion machines in physics as well. If you were to read it and report on it, that would make your reporting shit.

Or it's because she is often fishing for a contrarian position to take. I can't remember the specifics but when discussing electric cars for example she just comes across as whinging to own the eco people.

You only need a few minutes of thought to understand why electric vehicles will never be able to replace internal combustion engines as things stand today. They are little more than a way for rich people to demonstrate how green they are.

> You only need a few minutes of thought to understand why electric vehicles will never be able to replace internal combustion engines as things stand today.

Well, no, you absolutely need some data, axioms, or facts to support your thoughts, too. Pure thought only works for mathematics and some areas of philosophy.

So, please - what are some of the facts from which that few minutes thought would proceed? Is it the case that there is a hard upper-limit on the range (imposed by constraints in battery technology), or that some road surfaces are unsuitable for EVs, or that electric engines are unsuitable for some chassis types (e.g. heavy haulage), or...?

Weight -- electric car vs electric bike

Distance -- electric cars promote building places inefficiently. The car and the commute are synonymous

Drop the constraint of needing cars, and you can make much better solutions

> Weight -- electric car vs electric bike

Adoption of each isn't exclusive of the other, so that's irrelevant.

> Distance -- electric cars promote building places inefficiently

No, they don't, as a replacement for ICE vehicles. If anything, they promote building things more efficiently.

> Drop the constraint of needing cars, and you can make much better solutions

Replacing some share of ICE cars with electric cars does not require active maintenance of a constraint of needing cars. Reconfiguring cities to not need cars is a slower process than replacing what cars are used, so there is a role for the latter even if the former is the main long-term solution (and even if it is and reduces the scope of pervasiveness of the need for cars, it is unlikely to replace all need.)

There are many varied and systemic reasons, from supply chain, to mass consumer behaviour, politics, battery technology, access to minerals and the sheer insane scale of mining that we would need to ramp up to, to meet the demands of electrifying even a fraction of today's ICEs. This article explains it pretty well: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-ev-transition-explained-265931...

> “EVs,” notes King, “pull an invisible trailer filled with required major lifestyle changes that the public is not yet aware of.” > > When it does, do not expect the public to acquiesce quietly.

To electrify any significant proportion of ICEs you will need to massively ramp up mining in developing countries. This is going to crush their populations like a meat grinder at the same time that it blights their ecologies with the after-effects of mining. It's a new colonialism with a race to acquire resources for EVs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-cob...

A _significantly_ more helpful comment - thank you!

Fossil fuel mining has had the same effects, e.g. Shell's shenanigans in Nigeria, Angola's general malaise, the mishmash of autocratic monarchies in the ME, their effects on air quality everywhere, … yet somehow they get a pass and are regarded as a given.

I don't give fossil fuel mining a pass. I advocate for mining a much more energy-dense mineral, which has an order of magnitude less impact on the population and ecology.

If it only took a few minutes, perhaps you could take a few more minutes and enlighten the rest of us. As it sits this comment adds nothing.

You're right. Here you go https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37629505

> You only need a few minutes of thought to understand why electric vehicles will never be able to replace internal combustion engines as things stand today.

You only need a little thought to see that each increment of electric vehicle adoption shifts the market context and incentives away from “as things stand today” in a way which makes your claim, to the extent its true as written, irrelevant in practice.

« then the problem is with the literature, not the reader »

That... sure is an interesting position to take.

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