What Will Happen in the 2020s • Hacker News Board

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#531

Post by gfodor » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

cable2600 wrote: post #521

>6/ Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today. Much of the world’s food production will move from farms to laboratories. GMO Frankenfood made in labs hasn't been proven safer than regular meat in peer reviewed studies yet. Eating all plants like potatoes in The Martian have to take multi-vitamins as well. It is boring to ea…

It’s a fallacy when making ten year predictions to assume nothing will change in order to lead to the prediction. Presumably for the idea of plant based diets to dominate, there will need to be an available substitute for meat which is competitive economically and in taste.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#532

Post by zoomablemind » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

Reminded me of 2009 "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" by George Friedman of Stratfor. Among of his far fetched (but who knows, still possible) predictions was Poland becoming [again] a decisive power in Europe...

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#533

Post by gfodor » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:13 AM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #362

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…

I agree - the list of technologies (not just bits and atoms, but human institutions) winding their way along the innovation cycle leaves many, many reasons to feel confident the next decade is going to be one of profound, transformative, positive change.

One potential dark horse is genetic engineering. I wonder how close we are to the point where kids are doing gene hacking after school. It could happen this decade.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#534

Post by gfodor » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:17 AM UTC

RookyNumbas wrote: post #494

aazaa wrote: post #85

Many of these seem like wishful thinking on the part of the author. For example, take the first one: > The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. Oddly enough, if you go back to 2010 for predictions about the next decade, you'll see quite a few people talking about "peak oil." Almost nobody predicted a sharp turnaround in oil production and I don't think anyon…

I agree. Activism, Politics, Inter-governmental cooperation and policies will not be what alleviates the dangers of climate change. A few major technological breakthroughs will rock the world and we will be having a much different discussion in 20 years. The area we will struggle with the most is fixing what we've done to our oceans.

100% agree. Simple economics, self interest, and riding technological curves seem likely to be the things which silently solve climate change compared to the ongoing advocacy towards creating a moral panic.

The world wants and needs free, limitless energy, and there is no reason humanity can’t achieve that goal in the next decades.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#535

Post by hkyeti » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:17 AM UTC

There's a large plant based burger chain here in Australia. Many of their customers aren't even aware they aren't having meat, they just enjoy the taste. I definitely think the plant based prediction is on the money.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#536

Post by D_Alex » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:21 AM UTC

gordaco wrote: post #422

sumedh wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is taking about beef and pork for making his point. Does raising chickens even have the same impact as raising cattle on the climate?

Yes, I was thinking mostly about beef. Which seems to be the most environmentally impactful meat, by the way. Pork is less impactful and poultry is even less. Obligatory wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...

>...beef... the most environmentally impactful meat... Pork is less impactful and poultry is even less

This is largely because pork is raised in factory-farming conditions that are awful for the animals, and poultry even more so. Environmental "benefits" are countered by animal welfare drawbacks.

Here is a good analysis, you need to scroll around a bit to find pork and poultry info:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/12/11/acc-is-eating-meat-a-n...

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#537

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:22 AM 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…

[deleted]

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#538

Post by choicenotchance » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

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…

EU will by overrun by Sharia evangelizing radicalists it seems.

> In Germany, Turkey controls 900 mosques out of a total of 2,400. These Islamic centers not only serve members of the Turkish diaspora, but also stop them from assimilating into German society. Speaking with Turks in Germany, Erdogan urged them not to assimilate, and called the assimilation of migrants in Europe "a crime against humanity". He apparently wants them to remain part of Turkey and the Ummah, the global Muslim community.

> Last year, Austrian authorities announced the closure of several Turkish-controlled mosques after "children in a Turkish-financed mosque re-enacting the first world war battle of Gallipoli." According to The Guardian:

> As many as 60 Turkish imams and their families face expulsion from Austria and seven mosques are due to be closed under a clampdown on what the government has called "political Islam".

> Austria's chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said the country could no longer put up with "parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation," which he said had "no place in our country".

> Erdogan, however, knows that against Europe, numbers are on his side. "Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe," Erdogan told the Turkish diaspora. Eurostat, the official statistics agency of the European Union, shows that in terms of birthrates, Turkey is ahead of Europe. In one year in Turkey, more than 1.2 million children were born, while only 5.07 million children were born in all of the EU's 28 member states. What would Europe look like if 80 million Turks joined the EU?"

Ref: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15054/erdogan-campaign-ag...

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#539

Post by codebje » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #463

cletus wrote: post #416

So, I have a problem with a large number of these points. Each point alone requires a long rebuttal that no one would read. I think Fred is way off here. The bullet points: 1. There will be no global change in human behaviour and activity that is against the short term interests of those people. Period. The way to replace fossil fuels with renewables is by them being a cheaper source of power. We're well on the way h…

> 5. Decentralized Internet is a pipe dream. I think that nightmare is being realized right now - China & Russia have a head-start. I see balkanization of the internet as inevitable. Unless there's a breakthrough on the securing internet-connected devices and equipment, the strategic importance of defending local systems from foreign attacks cannot be ignored, and the most effective way is to sever international conn…

It happened long ago. We had a decentralised Internet, with end-to-end communications the norm. Money is more easily made with centralised control of users, though, so money is more readily spent on centralisation of services.

Ultimately, Discord/Slack/Whatnot succeeded over Jabber because far more money was put into services that can be commercialised than was put into something that's very hard to make a buck out of.

The run-out of IPv4 has massively exacerbated the problem, because with carrier grade NATs now the norm, protocols have to work via a central server to connect two end users. There won't _be_ a new decentralised killer app.

Well, if social unrest gets really bad across the globe we might see something like mesh networking with a mesh social media system spring up, I suppose.

Re: What Will Happen in the 2020s

#540

Post by bsder » Thu, Jan 02, 2020, 6:35 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #455

bsder wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the worst thing that could happen to China now is that Li Xinping lives a long life. We have seen over and over in history that an individual dictator fairly quickly diverges from rational paths.

Many patterns have been observed in nature, until an exception occurs that breaks the pattern.

This pattern has, sadly, been pretty reliable over more than 2000 years.

In addition, Li Xinping has shown very little enlightenment toward those who would oppose him irrespective of their correctness. This is always the first step down a long dark path.