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Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#401

Post by machiaweliczny »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #350
woeirua wrote: post #273

Nuclear war. It has fallen out of favor to talk about this as a serious possibility, but the world is in many ways closer to nuclear armageddon right now than it has been at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. People seem to have gotten comfortable with the idea of Ukraine as a low-tempo conventional war, but it could very quickly turn into something much more significant.

Ironically this could all be happening because a lack of nukes. Ukraine gave theirs away and have been left essentially naked and defenceless since. Would Putin have thought twice if they had a nuclear arsenal? Who knows.

I know, yes.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#402

Post by ericmcer »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #375
colinmhayes wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people already have children that are more attractive than average. Being attractive is the biggest signal for generational wealth which reinforces the need for trophy spouses which reinforces the signal and so on.

Of the truly rich today, can you honestly say that they are more attractive than average? I’m not seeing it. I’m not talking Hollywood level but much higher, generational wealth levels. I realize that it’s hard to get data on this but just anecdotally, there aren’t many examples that come to mind.

Have you seen Zuckerberg, Musk and Bezos?

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#403

Post by bilsbie »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #159
656565656565 wrote: post #135

Population control? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_planning We will have no choice eventually.

I agree that population control mostly solves our environmental issues. But I don't trust humans to make such collective sacrifices willingly. We're just too lazy, stupid, and selfish. I think the more likely outcome is that reality will control our population for us, via drought, famine, war, and epidemic.

The 1700s called. They want their Malthusian catastrophe back.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#404

Post by KerrAvon »

youngNed wrote: post #364
philwelch wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people already have children who are more intelligent and attractive than average. They do this via mechanisms like “being intelligent enough to get rich, or at least not being stupid enough to go broke” and “being rich enough to marry hot people and have kids with them”. I don’t know if polygenetic testing is going to have a significant effect, but if it does, there is going to be a significant generation gap i…

this 'people are rich because they are smart' is not a take i expected to find on HN. Its not quite as damaging as 'people are rich because they work harder' but its really not far off

You must not read political stories on HN. We have both kinds of music: entitled old white dude takes and entitled young trust fundie takes.

I’m exaggerating, but anecdotally HN does have this reputation.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#405

Post by spywaregorilla »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #350
woeirua wrote: post #273

Nuclear war. It has fallen out of favor to talk about this as a serious possibility, but the world is in many ways closer to nuclear armageddon right now than it has been at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. People seem to have gotten comfortable with the idea of Ukraine as a low-tempo conventional war, but it could very quickly turn into something much more significant.

Ironically this could all be happening because a lack of nukes. Ukraine gave theirs away and have been left essentially naked and defenceless since. Would Putin have thought twice if they had a nuclear arsenal? Who knows.

Ukraine didn't have the codes to use them.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#406

Post by bko »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #306
bko wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely. Do you believe this? I know its a stated goal, but is there anything to hold the company's accountable or is this just a promise? I can't imagine them giving up a cash cow and something they've been doing for decades. EV sales in the USU are 5.6% of the market. I just find the claim that these companies will just s…

> Do you believe this? There are a lot of built-in incentives for manufacturers to switch to electric once the market demand exists. Less moving parts to warranty means potentially less long-tail costs for parts as well as less capital allocation for potential warranty service claims paid to dealerships. Less moving parts that can fail. Less parts in general. AWD in electrics is typically done with a front and rear m…

> What Tesla did was de-risk the market by showing that consumers will buy the product despite its flaws.

Tesla is sexy, sure. But I don't think they proved that people want electric cars. Tesla still sells very few cars (~3%). The giants sell a lot more cars

I agree electric cars are better, but nothing stopped the car giants from making them decades ago. Tesla didn't come around at the right time, even Musk admits as much. The car giants could have worked on electric cars in the past, but for whatever reason didn't. It would have even been easier for them considering their expertise in manufacturing and distribution. Not to mention that politicians don't really like Tesla for whatever reason. If you listen to Biden talk about electric cars he often suspiciously leaves out Tesla, which is weird considering their cars are made in US and dominate 75% of the electric market in the US.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#407

Post by KerrAvon »

philwelch wrote: post #400
youngNed wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this 'people are rich because they are smart' is not a take i expected to find on HN. Its not quite as damaging as 'people are rich because they work harder' but its really not far off

Being smart and working hard will both make most people richer than being stupid and lazy. There’s a share of luck, but that washes out in the population-wide statistical analysis. Plus, if you’re stupid and lazy but you max out on luck and win the Powerball, the odds are surprisingly high that you will eventually go bankrupt, and if you don’t, your children will. So even if you are lucky, you need to be smart and di…

Except that most rich people come from inherited wealth. Elon Musk is an emerald mine scion, for example. Sometimes it’s intelligence, but mostly it’s not.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#408

Post by cauthon »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #247

Preimplantation polygenetic testing. The idea is that, when doing IVF, you sequence the genome of all the embryos and implant the ones that you predict will have properties that you like. This already exists for monogenetic screening (for parents who don't want to pass on heritable diseases for their children, where those diseases are localized to one gene). But the idea here is that, by checking thousands of genes,…

> But the idea here is that, by checking thousands of genes, you can make predictions for things that start to be very relevant to parents, like attractiveness or height or intelligence.

Personally, I think this interpretation of polygenic risk scoring is a crock of irreproducible shite. I don’t think it’s your fault, I think a lot of people in the field are shilling something they don’t have for grant money, and they’ve created an exciting sci-fi yarn that’s easy for people outside the field to digest.

Height is a univariate trait that does not change after the age of ~20. If you show me someone who can take a genome and predict adult height within a centimeter, then I’ll believe they have a snowball’s chance of predicting something as nuanced and varied as “attractiveness” or “intelligence”.

I think there’s promise in applying PRS to assessing risk for non-Mendelian disease, but there’s far too many social and environmental variables at play to reliably predict these softer features. Like other people have joked, if you want a single number that best predicts educational attainment, use a zip code.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#409

Post by CalRobert »

collyw wrote: post #234
CalRobert wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons we moved from California to Ireland. People thought it was weird in 2013. Less so now.

They were telling us Manhattan would be underwater by now 20 years ago.

"They" also were telling us the US west would experience drought, fires, and increased heat waves.

Re: Ask HN: What's the next big thing that few people are talking about?

#410

Post by ColanR »

youngNed wrote: post #364
philwelch wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people already have children who are more intelligent and attractive than average. They do this via mechanisms like “being intelligent enough to get rich, or at least not being stupid enough to go broke” and “being rich enough to marry hot people and have kids with them”. I don’t know if polygenetic testing is going to have a significant effect, but if it does, there is going to be a significant generation gap i…

this 'people are rich because they are smart' is not a take i expected to find on HN. Its not quite as damaging as 'people are rich because they work harder' but its really not far off

To me it falls in a similar category as how highly intelligent people are less likely to be overweight. I think that with intelligence comes a better sense of how to control oneself. Ever seen the stats on how often lottery winners end up going broke? Not that many people have the capacity and knowledge to control their emotions with their reason. Being wealthy is not a question of making money, it's a question of keeping it.
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