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Jevons paradox

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Re: Jevons paradox

#111

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

blagie wrote: post #109
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #104

>Energy-efficient lighting, such as LED bulbs, has become a popular solution to reduce energy consumption. However, it serves as a notable example of the Jevons Paradox. While LEDs significantly lower the cost of lighting per unit, this reduction often leads to increased usage. For instance, people may install more lights in their homes or businesses, use them for longer durations, or adopt decorative and outdoor lig…

Your math is wrong: > This felt false to me, LED bulbs are generally 10x more efficient, so the average number of lights would have had to increase 10 fold, and this is ignoring the savings from not having AC cool those other 50 watts a bulb that went to heat. The first 5W also went into heat. Perhaps with the exception of light escaping through a window, * every* watt that goes into a lightbulb comes out as heat for…

If a 5w bulb and a 60w bulb output the same amount of light, those 55w are being wasted elsewhere (heat).

I said 50 because I was afraid someone would go 'ACTUALLY LED's only save 50-55w', I didn't expect someone to argue that the 5w led bulb is also outputting heat. You are of course right, 2.5w of that 5w is likely heat being cooled by the AC.

>I would not be surprised if there were a 10x increase in use of lighting with LEDs.

Quite frankly I don't care either way, I just wanted a source. I'm happy you feel that way though.

Re: Jevons paradox

#112

Post by Ekaros »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #104

>Energy-efficient lighting, such as LED bulbs, has become a popular solution to reduce energy consumption. However, it serves as a notable example of the Jevons Paradox. While LEDs significantly lower the cost of lighting per unit, this reduction often leads to increased usage. For instance, people may install more lights in their homes or businesses, use them for longer durations, or adopt decorative and outdoor lig…

I somewhat doubt there is now 10x light fixtures... Thus 10x the traditional bulbs. That seems rather large undertaking in most buildings. Sometimes I think it makes sense to stop and think what would 10x more of some items mean in practise.

Re: Jevons paradox

#113

Post by crazygringo »

creamyhorror wrote: post #107

Are people getting hung up on NVDA's fall? It feels like most aren't drawing direct logical links - the Jevons paradox doesn't apply directly to stock prices. I think the situation is fairly clear with some understanding of finance / equity markets. My analysis of the market and competitive situation: Deepseek's cheaper LLM services + providing open models for other hosts to provide => overall prices for using LLM se…

No, this isn't directly about Nvidia or stock prices at all -- it's about the emergence of much lower-cost AI models.

So the way Jevon's paradox could apply is that if an AI model only costs 10% of the energy+GPU to train (or run), then we might not get 90% energy+GPU savings... we might actually wind up consuming more energy+GPU on the whole because the models become so much cheaper, we use them more than 10x as much.

Obviously this will affect Nvidia's price, but this principle absolutely does not apply to stock prices directly.

Re: Jevons paradox

#114

Post by khazhoux »

An example you may have learned about in school was Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. He thought his invention would reduce slavery by making it very cheap to clean the seeds out of picked cotton. Instead, this efficiency led to an explosion of demand for this lower-cost cotton.

Re: Jevons paradox

#115

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

blagie wrote: post #109
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #104

>Energy-efficient lighting, such as LED bulbs, has become a popular solution to reduce energy consumption. However, it serves as a notable example of the Jevons Paradox. While LEDs significantly lower the cost of lighting per unit, this reduction often leads to increased usage. For instance, people may install more lights in their homes or businesses, use them for longer durations, or adopt decorative and outdoor lig…

Your math is wrong: > This felt false to me, LED bulbs are generally 10x more efficient, so the average number of lights would have had to increase 10 fold, and this is ignoring the savings from not having AC cool those other 50 watts a bulb that went to heat. The first 5W also went into heat. Perhaps with the exception of light escaping through a window, * every* watt that goes into a lightbulb comes out as heat for…

> I would not be surprised if there were a 10x increase in use of lighting with LEDs.

Has the average homeowner added more ceiling lights or lamps because of different bulbs?

Has the average office added more lighting because of LEDs? Factories?

In order for an overall 10x increase in usage, there needs to have been some MASSIVE new usage or expansion of lighting, somewhere, to make up for all of these enormous use cases (residential, commercial) where there was probably close to zero increase.

So, do you have any pet theories ?!!

Re: Jevons paradox

#117

Post by blagie »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #115
blagie wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your math is wrong: > This felt false to me, LED bulbs are generally 10x more efficient, so the average number of lights would have had to increase 10 fold, and this is ignoring the savings from not having AC cool those other 50 watts a bulb that went to heat. The first 5W also went into heat. Perhaps with the exception of light escaping through a window, * every* watt that goes into a lightbulb comes out as heat for…

> I would not be surprised if there were a 10x increase in use of lighting with LEDs. Has the average homeowner added more ceiling lights or lamps because of different bulbs? Has the average office added more lighting because of LEDs? Factories? In order for an overall 10x increase in usage, there needs to have been some MASSIVE new usage or expansion of lighting, somewhere, to make up for all of these enormous use c…

> Has the average homeowner added more ceiling lights or lamps because of different bulbs?

As much as I appreciate the snark and sarcasm, at least where I live, the equivalent is happening.

Old home and commercial construction would typically have one central light per room. Homes would have a single light fixture with 1-3 lightbulbs at the center of each ceiling and were pretty dimly lit. Commercial would be similar with fluorescents. You would turn it off when you left a room.

New home and commercial construction has accent lighting all over the place, some turned on 24/7. Cabinets have under-cabinet-lights. Closets have closet lights. We have rows of LEDs lining all sorts of accents.

If you compare 80's-style construction to 2020's-style, the amount of new light seems to be about that much of an increase.

Re: Jevons paradox

#118

Post by aurareturn »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #105
aurareturn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a given. Another counter argument is that’s Nvidia will sell less high margin advanced GPUs that require expensive networking equipment. Problem with that argument is that every competitor gets the benefit of higher efficiency and the baseline will reset back to 0.

The models will all get more efficient, but NVIDIA as the high cost provider of compute (as well as cloud services that use them) - 10x markup on H100s - may not benefit from increased demand. If the models turn out to be a commodity, then low cost providers will be the winners, likely running on chips like TPU and Trainium (Amazon/Anthropic) that don't have the 10x markup.

Low cost providers will not be the winner because those will become commodity. It’s the leading model, the one closest to AGI that will make all the profit.

Nvidia has products to serve lower end as well. There’s no reason why Nvidia can’t dominate in the commodity sector.

And if Nvidia can’t keep their high margins, they will make it up with significantly more volume (Jevons Paradox in play).

Re: Jevons paradox

#119

Post by [deleted] »

blagie wrote: post #117
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not be surprised if there were a 10x increase in use of lighting with LEDs. Has the average homeowner added more ceiling lights or lamps because of different bulbs? Has the average office added more lighting because of LEDs? Factories? In order for an overall 10x increase in usage, there needs to have been some MASSIVE new usage or expansion of lighting, somewhere, to make up for all of these enormous use c…

> Has the average homeowner added more ceiling lights or lamps because of different bulbs? As much as I appreciate the snark and sarcasm, at least where I live, the equivalent is happening. Old home and commercial construction would typically have one central light per room. Homes would have a single light fixture with 1-3 lightbulbs at the center of each ceiling and were pretty dimly lit. Commercial would be similar…

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