What Will Happen in the 2020s • Hacker News Board

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#341

Post by ma2rten » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:39 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #315

ma2rten wrote: post #313

Regarding China, I believe that the Chinese economy will collapse because less and less countries will want to do business with China due to it’s human rights violations. Regarding plan based diets, I agree but I think that eating meat will be seen as babaric. I believe that the way way we treat animals now will be seen similarly as we see slavery now. Regarding, decentralized internet and crypto currencies. I don’t…

> Regarding China, I believe that the Chinese economy will collapse because less and less countries will want to do business with China due to it’s human rights violations. Think you're totally wrong here. The only countries that will care about China's human rights record are the NATO countries. The other 6 billion people in the world live under governments that will be happy to work with a superpower willing to loo…

But those are the countries that China would want to trade with.

China also has territorial conflicts with all of it’s neighbors in South China Sea.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#342

Post by hanniabu » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #262

hanniabu wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will remain idle unltil untethered energy and bandwidth become free unless you tie it to an incentive, and thus you arrive at cryptocurrencies

Funny you mention that, since we've seen cryptocurrency processing concentrated in big data centers... for all the same reasons everything else is located in big data centers - energy and bandwidth are cheaper.

That's up to whoever is supplying the services. While many may be outsourcing this to data centers, I'm sure it's not the case for everyone and there are people operating their own hardware.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#343

Post by bagacrap » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

joyjoyjoy wrote: post #280

bransonf wrote: post #209

A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take. China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods. What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months. I don’t think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we’ve seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it’s not indicative of the next decade i…

"What they aren’t good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months." Wrong Chinese people are very happy. In some rankings they belong to the happiest people. Here they are medium range: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/09/10... My prediction: We will see an economic depression, also caused by energy problems. The current quantitative easing is actually the first sign of the p…

So you're saying that Hong Kong is a different country?

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#344

Post by bouncycastle » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

One prediction he missed out is the mining of space for scarce resources. (He just touched on commercialization of space, but he probably assumed things like satellite launching and space tourism)

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla/SpaceX towed a lithium filled asteroid to near Earth within the next decade. They are probably working on it right now.

Save this comment and come back in 2030

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#345

Post by joyjoyjoy » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

Baeocystin wrote: post #337

joyjoyjoy wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How's life in China?" "Great!" Source: I live there! This is the mistake you're making regarding stuff you have no idea of.

>Source: grew up there

Yeah. Because we know that post-soviet Russians are very happy people. Not.

Source: I am there once a month.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#346

Post by pascalxus » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

rhlsthrm wrote: post #321

6nf wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. They don't want the highly processed fake stuff that contains who knows what. The only way beef loses is if the alternatives are significantly cheaper. If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef then you got a shot at converting people.

But what if it's not "highly processed" due to advancements in tech? Personally I would always choose the fake (lab grown or plant based) over the real meat. Real meat and three industrial farming process just has too many ways that the product is prone to contamination, not even to mention the cruelty/ethics. I say this as an avid meat eater as well. I love the taste of meat but I'd switch in a heartbeat once there'…

This is a bit shocking and I'll get downvoted for it but:

Not to mention that red meat is a class 2 carcinogen (Source: WHO). And processed meat, is a class 1 carcinogen, right up there with Plutonium, according to the World health organization.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#347

Post by mdorazio » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

paul_f wrote: post #299

nradov wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support nuclear power, however I doubt we will ever see many more reactors built in most countries. The growth of photovoltaic solar power combined with coming cheaper grid scale battery storage is going to wreck the economics for nuclear (including fusion if it ever works).

The big assumption being economical grid storage. We don't have a technology yet to do that.

Yes we do and it’s already being deployed. See [1] for example.

[1] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/07/29/california-gas-plant-...

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#348

Post by Gustomaximus » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #236

I don’t really buy into 4-6. I don’t see any benefit for a country to turn its currency into a crypto asset. Either they are relinquishing a great deal of control in democratizing their financial system (also exposing themselves to attack), or it’s a crypto in name only that doesn’t seem any better than digital cash through banks except for a buzzword. Decentralization is hit or miss. You get economies of scale with…

Also 7/10

7 - I can't see massive exploration suddenly over 10 years. And when this boom does come governments will be very involved, like in the colonial periods, there is massive national advantage to get people to go stake claims. I can only see it being a similar blend of govt/private.

10 - we will see progress but anything groundbreaking in the cancer fight this seems too short a time scale.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#349

Post by burfog » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

Fauntleroy wrote: post #298

LeftHandPath wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals, which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West. For the most part, the author’s expectations about crypto are mistaken in that they assume financiers in the west trust China enough to buy into its digital currency. We are bordering on a Cold War; we aren’t about to trust them to keep their promises on cryp…

In theory the US could add Guam and Puerto Rico... but how would that ever be politically viable? There's no way this is going to happen if one party in a two party system knows it will lead to their doom.

Add two at once. Possibilities include creating West California, West Washington, South Virginia, and South Illinois.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#350

Post by __d » Wed, Jan 01, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

pascalxus wrote: post #272

opportune wrote: post #236

I don’t really buy into 4-6. I don’t see any benefit for a country to turn its currency into a crypto asset. Either they are relinquishing a great deal of control in democratizing their financial system (also exposing themselves to attack), or it’s a crypto in name only that doesn’t seem any better than digital cash through banks except for a buzzword. Decentralization is hit or miss. You get economies of scale with…

Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and it'll have to be cheaper too. People all over the world love meat, especially US, UK and the Chinese. I've tried to convince some family members to reduce their meat consumption even a tiniest amount gets a huge amount of resistance. People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even b…

If an effective carbon tax is introduced (see #1) then the price of meat will rise astronomically, which will make reduced consumption inevitable.

In many places, climate change will make existing agriculture unsustainable, so there'll be massive upheaval in the industry at the same time.

If that's combined with a cultural movement similar to flugskam, I think drastically reduced meat consumption is possible.

Of course, there'll be counter forces -- likely primarily cultural. "Only libtards don't eat meat" etc. So it goes.