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What Will Happen in the 2020s

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Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#361

Post by jka »

6nf wrote: post #304
pascalxus wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Even within a much smaller price margin, there'd still be plenty of reasons to make kill-free meat the default preference.

Abattoir and meat-processing facilities might not be able to achieve the same quality bar for hygiene as lab-developed meat cultures. That should ultimately translate into better food safety for consumers.

There are also strong ethical and environmental arguments for choosing kill-free meat as opposed to high-methane[0] animal-based meat products. It's not the entire solution to environmental problems by any means, but it's a large opportunity.

A good chunk of meal decision-making comes down to the way that food is marketed and the way that we talk about and discuss our food options.

As determined and evidence-led entrepreneurs and technologists, all of us in the HN community can do a lot to advocate for and influence public opinion and behavior in whatever direction we choose.

[0] - https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#362

Post by dwaltrip »

jl2718 wrote: post #253

> people overestimate what will happen in a year and underestimate what will happen in a decade. Last decade seemed like the opposite. So much happened every year, but nothing changed over the decade. The biggest change seems to be the expansion of aggrieved classes to include almost everybody. This only applies to “the West” of course. Changes elsewhere are perhaps striking.

There are enormous changes ocurring. Rapid development of less developed countries, complete commoditization of computing power, secularization of america (catching up to Europe), revizitalizion of the space industry (SpaceX and other "new space" companies, smallsats, internet constellations, etc), amazing resurgence of psychedelic research, prosthetics and other biotech advancing rapidly, continued progress in many fundamental technologies (batteries, materials science, robotics, BMIs, etc), AI technologies, information representation and communication (changes in media, continued digitalization of business, etc).

The list goes on and on.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#363

Post by chamza »

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…

The reason a country would want to use a crypto asset for their money supply would be to own the private ledger completely; they wouldn't utilize the decentralized, public, blockchains we see today.

All financial activity and transactions can easily be monitored on a blockchain; the movement of money could be tracked from it's inception to it's current location on one ledger. Each private key can correspond to a citizen (much like a social security ID) and citizens can be taxed more easily and efficiently. This is why China is leading the pack here and is already developing a PBOC digital currency[1].

[1]=https://fortune.com/2019/11/01/china-digital-currency-libra-...

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#364

Post by ksec »

neonate wrote: post #45

https://web.archive.org/web/20200101163454/https://avc.com/2...

Given this is the top comment, I assumed this was down a moment ago due to traffic.

So here is a prediction for 2030, self hosting blog post are still too lazy for CDN in 2030. If there is anything I will not bet against it will be people's laziness.

Nothing wrong with Laziness really, after that is what product should be about, set and forget about it. Hopefully all blog software would have Cloudflare or CDN by default in 2030.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#365

Post by rokhayakebe »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #287

Fred Wilson (A VC) somehow dominates HN last New year as well... And was so completely wrong it’s shocking anyone would promote him year after year. It’s obvious to me people are doing so only because they WANT all these predictions to come true not that they have any basis in reality. It’s bubble talk for bubble people, no offense. His solution to NN (which we all died from, remember?) was “blockchain”. Here he is l…

And was so completely wrong it’s shocking anyone would promote him year after year.

This is a misunderstanding of how voting/promoting works. If someone is wrong you may want to promote them as much as someone who is right in the hopes of enlightening the masses.

Also, you may disagree with something and find it interesting still. In that case upvoting makes sense.

Upvoting != Agreeing. Unfortunately, when you do not have a button for agreeing or disagreeing, you are inclined to use the Vote button.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#366

Post by elfexec »

LeftHandPath wrote: post #278
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…

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…

> A lot of the article seems to be based on liberal ideals

Not liberal ideals. Globalist neoliberal ideals.

> which include a less prominent America, the promotion of Veganism, and embracing the fall of the West.

These aren't liberal ideals. They are globalist neoliberal ideals. Anti-human, anti-american and pro-globalist financiers.

> or it becomes more closely unified and a world power in the likes of the US, Russia, or China.

Simply will never happen as neither the US nor Russia would support this. Only china currently seems to want closer EU integration purely for economic/market purposes. Power is a zero sum game. The biggest loser in the rise of EU would be the US. Having europe turn from a "vassal" to a competitor would represent a significant loss of power for the US.

> Furthermore, I think we could see the United States grow with the additions of Guam, Puerto Rico, and/or Greenland.

Guam and Puerto Rico are already part of the US. I think we should work with native greenlanders directly and have greenland become part of the US. Perhaps a large cash payment for each true native inuit greenlander ( not danish/european/etc settlers in greenland ) and a percentage of greenland's productive output for 100 or 200 years? Seems like something should have been worked out with the native greenlanders a long time.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#367

Post by theincredulousk »

I think the next decade will see a radical change in the materials used to make a significant percentage of common goods. From biodegradable materials that equal the performance of petro/plastics, to graphene replacing steel, aluminum, carbon-fiber, etc. for many applications. Also potentially changing the game with respect to microchip fabrication and performance.

RE: Graphene though, there are so many military applications, that it’s hard to say what the lag will be to civilian technology. If history is any indication, and I hope it isn’t, there could be a decade or (much) more between first production applications and public knowledge that those applications even exist, let alone having access to products incorporating them.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#368

Post by pharke »

__d wrote: post #350
pascalxus wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cour…

There would likely be unintended consequences to raising the price of meat through a carbon tax. It creates a market for cheaper meat that there will be no shortage of producers or consumers for. How that meat is made cheaper is an open question. It could be through carbon offsets but it could just as well be through worse conditions for the animals or importing the meat from countries where production is cheaper.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#369

Post by jka »

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…

As someone from the UK who has tended to eat meat a lot in the past - I do agree with your reading of culture in the UK historically.

But I also think it's remarkable how quickly public opinion in the UK has been shifting with regard to environmental concerns.

Traveling by train as opposed to air travel, reduction of single-use plastics and plastic packaging, and reduced-meat diets all feel like much more common discussion topics and lifestyle choices than they were even five years ago.

Shops and restaurants have also shifted to meet changing demands. There have been mistakes (incentives around long-life plastic shopping bags haven't worked out exactly as planned) but overall it feels like a wave of change.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#370

Post by cortesoft »

gordaco wrote: post #322
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.

You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly. There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you do…

I don't think they necessarily eat meat and drive big cars because of the need to signal their ideology. I agree that their ideology means they don't care about their impact on the environment, which means they don't have the incentive not to drive a big car or eat meat; since they don't have disincentive, the positive reasons to do those two things win out.
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