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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?

#711

Post by fuzzzerd »

salmo wrote: post #600
feoren wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a good insight, and I hope this comes to pass, but a couple points: > the world's largest vehicles (huge mining trucks) are electric What about cruise ships, freighters, freight trains, and aircraft carriers? They're diesel or nuclear-powered. Or maybe nuclear still counts as having an electric motor, just with a nuclear generator instead of a battery? > only EV's that are half the width of a normal c…

Freight trains are also electric, just with diesel generators. I'll completely speculate 2 things that stand in the way of them going fully electric: 1. Trains derail, crash, etc. I live in a city that's a rail hub. We probably have a derailment every couple years even with annual rail/rail bed maintenance. They will fix the rail, the roads around it, and have everything back up and running in less than 2 days. You s…

Trains would not be battery operated and have no risk of spilling the toxic battery components. They'd be powered by third rail or overhead wires. That is how most pure electric trains are powered today already.

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

#712

Post by imiric »

norwalkbear wrote: post #603
dont__panic wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Gattaca]( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ ) is about the long term consequences of this exact technology for society. In particular, the consequences for the children born naturally who don't benefit from this tech. They don't get any say in the decision, but end up heavily penalized, barred from certain jobs for "safety" reasons, aren't desirable partners... an underclass of society.

People who don't benefit from good genes are already the underclass today

Not in the way commercial gene selection would enable. It would give more power to the rich to breed genetically superior humans, something that was previously up to chance, and a level playing field for everyone, regardless of social status. In a few generations, rich families would be untouchable genetically, producing a superior lineage and widening the social gap.

This is why it's critical that access to this technology is democratized and equally accessible to everyone.

It's crazy to me that we're already approaching Gattaca, and the discussion does not revolve entirely on how to prevent it.

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

#713

Post by fzzzy »

tmaly wrote: post #119
Balgair wrote: post #105

Memristors (sorta) Though small room temp ones don't exist yet, they likely will some day. As to why they are a 'big thing': Imagine a large GPU cluster turned down to the size of a laptop and running off a solar cell. They'd revolutionize electronics in other ways too. But the main use we can see now is that they allow for great amounts of computation for very cheap energy budgets. Stuff that takes coal mines today…

I thought HP had announced a breakthrough on these a few years back?

Yes. 14 years ago. :)

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

#716

Post by xyzzyz »

cauthon wrote: post #556
s1artibartfast wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”. This has been done. Not to 1cm but ~3cm, and it has been reproduced by many labs all over the world That said, most genetic prediction aren't targeting exact vales, but avoiding the worst outcomes, whi…

I haven't previously read the Lello paper [1] that review is citing, but a quick skim makes me skeptical. Particulary the legend for figure 5: > Activated SNPs are distributed roughly uniformly throughout the genome. If the authors were actually identifying a genetic component to a heritable trait, I'd expect them to observe some linkage disequilibrium. And without any analysis of the SNPs (are they coding/noncoding?…

> it's hard to believe that they're uncovering actual biology and not just chance correlates with external/socioeconomic factors.

This is routinely validated on siblings. If the polygenic scores are as accurate in predicting differences between siblings (who, presumably, share substantially same environment) as they are between unrelated people, it means that they detect real, biological things, instead of just some kind of population stratification. The linked abstract, of course, mentions this, and you'd have known this if you had read the article.

Also, your assumption that socioeconomic factors are independent of genomes (that they are just "chance correlates) is also substantially wrong. Genes correlate with socioeconomic factors, because they often cause socioeconomic factors. People are not born into socioeconomic conditions randomly, they are born into socioeconomic conditions of people who share half of their genome with them.

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

#717

Post by xyzzyz »

cauthon wrote: post #562
ChadNauseam wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 don't know why that would be the standard, since the amount of variation in height that's attributable to environmental…

> since the amount of variation in height that's attributable to environmental factors might make that fundamentally impossible Yes, that is my point. Both intelligence and attractiveness have a significant amount of variation attributable to environmental or other external factors, and have the additional complication that they cannot be measured by a single objective unit (like height can). > do you think that in 2…

> IMO dedicating funding to improving child care, healthcare+diet, and k-12 education will have a much greater impact on increasing a society's measures of intelligence and educational attainment.

Maybe if you do it in North Korea, but US/Europe are already pretty much "maxed out" here. You can always improve things on the margin, but you're not going to see substantial gains of even d = 0.5 magnitude.

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

#718

Post by xyzzyz »

philwelch wrote: post #516
sinenomine wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is going to be a significant generation gap in intelligence Have you thought about the obvious implication that embryo selection with polygenic scoring could be used to lower the gap between genetically privileged types of people you describe and the average couple deciding to apply to procedure? What's needed: an egalitarian policy & infrastructure allowing any couple to improve the genetic basis of their pr…

> Have you thought about the obvious implication that embryo selection with polygenic scoring could be used to lower the gap between genetically privileged types of people you describe and the average couple deciding to apply to procedure? Of course. If we boost an entire generation’s IQ at birth and eventually introduce them into the adult population, what is going to happen is that the boosted generation is going t…

> The degree of augmentation is going to make a big difference. During the era of the Flynn effect, we sort of had this happen naturally and we handled it just fine, but a 20 point boost would basically obliterate things.

The Flynn effect has not been genetic, and it didn't translate into differences in actual, real-world performance in a way that IQ difference within cohort do.

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

#719

Post by pasttense01 »

CabSauce wrote: post #253
maverick74 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What amazes me is how little we talk about hydrogen (H2) fuel cell vehicles. Because, unless we get a tremendous breakthrough in the next 5 years, electric battery vehicles will be a very big pain. -Batteries are terribly expensive (and prices are not going down as fast as expected) -Batteries degrade too fast -Batteries take too long to charge -Electricity prices are already going up terribly fast to take advantage…

I'm not particularly knowledgeable, but my impression is that hydrogen might work for specific applications, but we don't have a very efficient of generating it. It still takes substantially more energy than if we just store the energy in batteries.

The cost of storing energy in batteries is truly enormous when talking about large amounts (for example two weeks of U.S. total energy usage); this would probably costs trillions of dollars. But instead if you stored this in caverns or convert it to ammonia or another fuel... the storage cost will be a small fraction of this.

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

#720

Post by saberdancer »

baobob wrote: post #176
saberdancer wrote: post #149

Russia will collapse.

I feel like this definitely needs to be expanded. What makes you think that? Their currency is stronger than before the war (despite internal fragility) They have the entire continent of Europe by the balls on oil/gas They've made an absolute killing in the energy sector this year due to the fear and scarcity they have created. They're making steady gains in their war in Ukraine They have the ear and economic heart o…

Currency is propped up - easy to fall.

They have shown themselves to be blackmailers with energy - no one will trust them again. The war will make Europe less dependent on Russian energy.

Steady gains - I wouldn't say so as they had to retreat from the whole northern Ukraine. In my opinion, Russia lost the war after first week or two. They bet everything on quick collapse of Ukrainian army and now that it did not happen, they are in a war they want to fight with peacetime army against an 40 million country that is fully mobilizing. It's a losing fight for Russia.

How much aid did China send to Russia? Answer is very little to none.

Reason why I feel Russia will collapse is that usually after major defeats, empires fall. We have various factions already jockeying for position and I bet that people like Kadyrov wouldn't mind carving their own part of Russia (independent Chechnya). After Russia depletes their army and manpower in a futile war against Ukraine we can see various other national movements come up. Especially if/when Putin dies.

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