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Comment by addaon | Hacker News Reader

> it’s costs are only likely to decrease over time

What is this based on? We're well past a 50-ish year deflationary period in the cost of major appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, etc). We're pretty clearly at or near the end of the deflationary era for computers and computation. Automotive... speaks for itself. We're still there for televisions, surprisingly; but it looks like these technologies tend to have a handful of decades of rapid cost decrease, followed by a never-ending cost increase over time as the manufacturers consolidate and claim an ever-increasing margin.

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The computer of 10 years ago is still a lot cheaper than a modern model. Deflation stops basically only if hardware advancement stops.

EVs are a great example: they keep getting cheaper for what they provide, even if the price stays the same. 200 miles of range 5 years ago is now 400+ miles of range today. Compared to ICEs, where advancement has stalled for the last 20 years, which seem like a worse deal every year.

> Compared to ICEs, where advancement has stalled for the last 20 years,

It hasn't really stalled: VVT, VCR, Cylinder deactivation that works properly, and start-stop becoming commonplace are all meaningful improvements (though smaller than the ones seen in EVs over the same time frame, which makes sense given the relative maturity).

ICE advancements haven’t materially affected car performance like EV advancements have. Start-stop is considered an annoyance to most car owners, for example, not a feature.

It is mostly because ICE tech is mature and has no real place to go for improvements beyond incremental refinement. EVs can ride the wave of battery tech advancements for another decade or two.

Crazy take: this only appears to be the case because industry incumbents tend to start applying mechanisms of gambling addiction to products; providing gratifications right on the lower threshold of expectations promotes dependency. New entrants to the car industry have no reason to adopt such a strategy, and so EV owners always look happier than ICE owners, but not crucially so, mysteriously trapping ICE owners in their thing despite EVs appearing massively better by joy as subjective proxy measurement for actual progress.

Even crazier take: Japanese companies always do this. Like knocking out features in an alternating fashion, so that you never get features A and B together, and such.

Honestly I think the biggest advancements in ICE cars recently have been the development and maturation of hybrid cars. Imagine telling someone in 2006 that your minivan got 36 miles per gallon!

36 mpg is 6.5 l/100km. That's only a smidge better than the most efficient Renault Espace from 1999: https://www.auto-abc.eu/Renault-Espace/g988-1997

You're comparing diesel to gasoline

Those are all tech that almost everyone owns. Makes sense that mass production would reduce costs and then the cost reductions would go towards zero. For new technology that hasn't been mass produced, it's a completely different story.

But that's my point. If you're basing your society shape around adopting a technology based on it continually decreasing in price, but you only get a few decades of that behavior before saturation and then you're at the mercy of the consolidated winners... generally adoptions like this aren't reversible at the societal level. You're locking in a long-term structural change based on a short-term pricing trend.

Still doesn't make sense. You were criticizing: "But once a technology like general-purpose humanoid robotics exists, it’s costs are only likely to decrease over time."

But the point was currently general-purpose humanoid robots is not affordable by the average person like say cars or washing machines currently are, but it will be because the costs will decrease. There was no argument that the price will forever keep going down, just like the price of cars or washing machines are not expected to constantly go down.

> costs are only likely to decrease over time

>> There was no argument that the price will forever keep going down

It's very hard for me to read the first quote as anything other than a continuing decrease in expected value of cost as a function of time. This directly contradicts the second quote.

Ok, this is definitely a reading comprehension issue that you have that you should fix somehow.

That’s only if you look at the final price without understanding the makeup of that price.

The components of computation have been getting cheaper every year… it hasn’t lately because the demand for memory suddenly massively started outstripping supply.

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