Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Ladies and gents this is what standard-issue Silicon Valley style grift looks like (following in the footsteps of the great Kurzweil). Ignore basic physics, massage data so you can more credibly fit an exponential curve on it, and extrapolate a fantastic future for it.

All this to underpin the grand illusion of capitalism that exponential YoY growth is sustainable to justify insane VC valuations. Which is even more perverse when all this is done in the name of saving the planet.




We know that tech adoption follows an s-curve that is only exponential in the lower parts. No-one is claiming truly unbounded exponentials for these techs.

The thing is that they have been exponential so far. clean energy forecasts based on linear trends, not on doubling of installations or on halving of prices have been consistently too pessimistic.

We can expect this to continue for a short while longer, until inflection points are reached.


Having a lot of cheap electricity is also a trope in an anarcho-syndicalist utopian paradise for all the people.


Which basic physics did he ignore?


When you’re responding to an article with a large amount of data and sources provided, the burden is on you to show which data is incorrect or which assumptions are too rosy and how you quantitatively arrived at those conclusions.

I’d be with you if the author was just hand waving their way to this conclusion but they seem to have done their research and used real numbers.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: