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Jevons paradox

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Re: Jevons paradox

#121

Post by aurareturn »

woadwarrior01 wrote: post #110
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…

This is exactly the case. Anecdotally speaking, growing up in the 90s, I remember my parents adding lightbulbs and fluorescent tube lights to their shopping list every couple of months. We used to have a small stockpile of these in the pantry. Fast forward to today, the last time I bought lightbulbs for my house was over 5 years ago and that was to upgrade from regular led lamps to Philips hue.

Not the case I’m observing.

My sister just did a home remodeling and she added must have been 50 LED recessed lights in the ceiling. There are automated LED lights in the outdoor pathways, lights hanging on the balcony rails, lights under kitchen cabinets, lights inside closets, lights inside pantries, solar powered LEDs in backyard, etc.

Her appliances also have more indicator lights than ever before.

I’m not even counting the countless LED screens such as phones, iPads, TVs.

In total, she may every well have 10x more lights than before the LED boom.

Time Square in NYC was famous for having many lights and screens. Walk around any large Asian city in 2025 and they all look like time square with countless lights and screens.

Thats said, there is a limit to lighting demand because we still need darkness to sleep. I think the upper bound for intelligence is far higher than LED lights.

Re: Jevons paradox

#122

Post by [deleted] »

enragedcacti wrote: post #103
adam_arthur wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induced Demand is a poorly conceived mental model. The concept of "Induced Demand" is easily explained by the default state of the downward sloping demand curve, and upward sloping supply curve. In basic economic theory, if you reduce the cost of a good, more people will consume it. e.g. the classic building a highway example; there was always demand for cheap housing with accessibility to downtowns, but the supply o…

> The concept of "Induced Demand" is easily explained by the default state of the downward sloping demand curve, and upward sloping supply curve. In basic economic theory, if you reduce the cost of a good, more people will consume it. It is easily explained by that because that is literally the definition of induced demand (see sentence one of wikipedia). The concept has a name because its important to discuss the ex…

[deleted]

Re: Jevons paradox

#123

Post by empath75 »

crazygringo wrote: post #113
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 muc…

The way the market reacted is completely illogical.

If Nvidia announced a new chip that was 10x more effective at the same price, the market would be like WOW they're going to sell so many of those!

But a software advance that achieves the same effect somehow causes the opposite reaction.

Re: Jevons paradox

#124

Post by Temporary_31337 »

aurareturn wrote: post #121
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the case. Anecdotally speaking, growing up in the 90s, I remember my parents adding lightbulbs and fluorescent tube lights to their shopping list every couple of months. We used to have a small stockpile of these in the pantry. Fast forward to today, the last time I bought lightbulbs for my house was over 5 years ago and that was to upgrade from regular led lamps to Philips hue.

Not the case I’m observing. My sister just did a home remodeling and she added must have been 50 LED recessed lights in the ceiling. There are automated LED lights in the outdoor pathways, lights hanging on the balcony rails, lights under kitchen cabinets, lights inside closets, lights inside pantries, solar powered LEDs in backyard, etc. Her appliances also have more indicator lights than ever before. I’m not even c…

Still it does not use as much electricity as the previous generation of light bulbs and she won’t be replacing them often. So from a perspective of the industry it’s not so good. The tech is better but there’s less sales / margins/ profits altogether.

Re: Jevons paradox

#125

Post by adam_arthur »

enragedcacti wrote: post #103
adam_arthur wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induced Demand is a poorly conceived mental model. The concept of "Induced Demand" is easily explained by the default state of the downward sloping demand curve, and upward sloping supply curve. In basic economic theory, if you reduce the cost of a good, more people will consume it. e.g. the classic building a highway example; there was always demand for cheap housing with accessibility to downtowns, but the supply o…

> The concept of "Induced Demand" is easily explained by the default state of the downward sloping demand curve, and upward sloping supply curve. In basic economic theory, if you reduce the cost of a good, more people will consume it. It is easily explained by that because that is literally the definition of induced demand (see sentence one of wikipedia). The concept has a name because its important to discuss the ex…

"Induced Demand" is often, incorrectly, talked about as a shift in the demand curve in response to increase in supply.

There is no shift. I am addressing this common misunderstanding, not debating the wording in the Wikipedia article.

"Induced Demand" is a misnomer, as the demand was always there at the given price. It is not induced, just realized. If I offer you a gold bar for $0, did I induce your demand to accept it?

Most people will always have demand for goods offered below their perceived intrinsic value.

Ultimately it's semantics around definitions, but the thinking of lay people around this concept is typically more of the shifting demand curve, not realization along the existing curve

Re: Jevons paradox

#126

Post by inglor_cz »

aurareturn wrote: post #121
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the case. Anecdotally speaking, growing up in the 90s, I remember my parents adding lightbulbs and fluorescent tube lights to their shopping list every couple of months. We used to have a small stockpile of these in the pantry. Fast forward to today, the last time I bought lightbulbs for my house was over 5 years ago and that was to upgrade from regular led lamps to Philips hue.

Not the case I’m observing. My sister just did a home remodeling and she added must have been 50 LED recessed lights in the ceiling. There are automated LED lights in the outdoor pathways, lights hanging on the balcony rails, lights under kitchen cabinets, lights inside closets, lights inside pantries, solar powered LEDs in backyard, etc. Her appliances also have more indicator lights than ever before. I’m not even c…

Even if she has 10 times as many (well possible if compared, say, to the 1960s), they aren't likely switched on most of the time.

People generally don't like if it is "too bright" in the room, and the extra lights in closets, pantries etc. will only be used marginally, for a few minutes a day.

It helps that LED lifetime isn't degraded by frequent on-and-off cycling.

Re: Jevons paradox

#127

Post by aurareturn »

Temporary_31337 wrote: post #124
aurareturn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the case I’m observing. My sister just did a home remodeling and she added must have been 50 LED recessed lights in the ceiling. There are automated LED lights in the outdoor pathways, lights hanging on the balcony rails, lights under kitchen cabinets, lights inside closets, lights inside pantries, solar powered LEDs in backyard, etc. Her appliances also have more indicator lights than ever before. I’m not even c…

Still it does not use as much electricity as the previous generation of light bulbs and she won’t be replacing them often. So from a perspective of the industry it’s not so good. The tech is better but there’s less sales / margins/ profits altogether.

Is this true? What were the revenues of lighting companies before compared to now? Do we count TV screen makers because they’re LEDs as well?

I just watched Veritasium’s video on how LEDs were indented and the companies making LEDs saw exponential increase in revenue. https://youtu.be/AF8d72mA41M

Basic Google search tells me the lighting industry has experienced high growth due to the invention of LED lighting.

Re: Jevons paradox

#128

Post by aurareturn »

inglor_cz wrote: post #126
aurareturn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the case I’m observing. My sister just did a home remodeling and she added must have been 50 LED recessed lights in the ceiling. There are automated LED lights in the outdoor pathways, lights hanging on the balcony rails, lights under kitchen cabinets, lights inside closets, lights inside pantries, solar powered LEDs in backyard, etc. Her appliances also have more indicator lights than ever before. I’m not even c…

Even if she has 10 times as many (well possible if compared, say, to the 1960s), they aren't likely switched on most of the time. People generally don't like if it is "too bright" in the room, and the extra lights in closets, pantries etc. will only be used marginally, for a few minutes a day. It helps that LED lifetime isn't degraded by frequent on-and-off cycling.

So what are we measuring here with Jevons Paradox?

Light bulb sales? Total lumen output? Total lighting revenue?

Re: Jevons paradox

#129

Post by inglor_cz »

aurareturn wrote: post #128
inglor_cz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if she has 10 times as many (well possible if compared, say, to the 1960s), they aren't likely switched on most of the time. People generally don't like if it is "too bright" in the room, and the extra lights in closets, pantries etc. will only be used marginally, for a few minutes a day. It helps that LED lifetime isn't degraded by frequent on-and-off cycling.

So what are we measuring here with Jevons Paradox? Light bulb sales? Total lumen output? Total lighting revenue?

Maybe installed capacity in lumens.

Re: Jevons paradox

#130

Post by fragmede »

cafed00d wrote: post #74
mminer237 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my question about the current events is: Are people really locked out of LLMs due to price? It seems like everything already has AI in it and that virtually every end user hates it. I could see a shift to more local models or something, but not an increase. I feel like LLMs have largely been oversold as a solution in search of a problem. Or are people just applying this as everyone and their mothers are going…

Absolutely! Even for inference! The SOTA models for all commercial purposes need to run on a consumer’s device. Running either Grok2 or DeepSeek or even Llama405b requires nearly 400-500gb of memory. Buying a tinybox with enough gpu memory costs $15k-25k. Or equivalently the same if you build your own. A distributed Mac cluster costs about the same, if not more, if you’re buying 2-3 M2 Ultra each with 192gb of memory…

Not to mention, the north star is to get to a place where we have the hardware to do training at home. we're a long ways off, but without the restrictions of needing the hardware to do it, ideally, we'd make the model such that is continually being trained.
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