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It’s the innovators dilemma. We have so much not just technical but cultural and political sunk cost in fossil fuels and traditional industrial era infrastructu

by api 10mo ago

It’s the innovators dilemma. We have so much not just technical but cultural and political sunk cost in fossil fuels and traditional industrial era infrastructure. The Chinese are just developing now and don’t have so much of that sunk cost. So they can think like it’s the future. We are stuck in the past. Eventually there may come a day when it’s China that is stuck in the past, looking back to the early 21st century like we look back to the middle twentieth, and someone else will be ascendant. I really felt like Trump’s 2024 election was the moment it became the Chinese century. It was the moment we chose to exit our position of world leadership both culturally and technologically.

jack_tripper 10mo ago
>I really felt like Trump’s 2024 election was the moment it became the Chinese century. You must have been asleep at the wheel or living under a rock to have mised China's rise over the last decades. They didn't wait for Trump to get elected in 2024 and then flipped a switch from third world country to global superpower. "Damn, this hot cup of coffee burned my tongue. Why would Trump do this?" -HN comments
- api 10mo ago
  No I saw it. I just felt like that was the moment it tipped.
  - jack_tripper 10mo ago
    [flagged]
  - jack_tripper 10mo ago
    [flagged]
  - epistasis 10mo ago
    This is exactly right, IMHO. We were in a course to counter China's momentum, we had handled COVID so much better, our industry had a huuuuuuge investment in it and was poised to take tiff. And then it was all killed. And we are killing off our other competitive edges over China, the way we attract all the world's best science and tech talent to build here in the US rather than in their own countries. We have sat back scientific research 2-5 years by drastically cutting grants in nonsensical ways and stopping and decimating a class of grad students. We were the most admired country in the world, and in a short amount of time we have destroyed decades of hard work building a good reputation. We won't get that back in a year or two, it's going to be decades of work.
    - jack_tripper 10mo ago
      >our industry had a huuuuuuge investment in it Which industry? How 'huuuuuge' was the investment? >We were the most admired country in the world According to who?
      - epistasis 10mo ago
        This was reported all over, but certain circles considered it politically incorrect to acknowledge that anything good happened in the years 2020-2024, so perhaps you can be excused for missing it. Some random web hits. Check out the graphs herein the massive investment in factories: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-ira-and-chips-act-are-supercharging-us-manufacturing-construction/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-ira-... https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/inflation-reduction-act-tracker-clean-energy-manufacturing/715116/ https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/inflation-reduction-a... Back then when I would inform the politically cloistered about this massive boom in factory construction and the hope for US manufacturing in strategically important energy tech, the most pointed critique was "yeah there's lots of spending but that doesn't mean that the factories are going to make anything." Turns out the skeptics were right. It was a huge mistake that all this stuff went into areas where it is politically incorrect to acknowledge that clean energy is changing the world. Management was not able to trumpet the new investment and the workers dont want to acknowledge what's driving the new higher wages. As for the US being the most admired country, I work in science and a bit in entrepreneurship. The US was so far and away the leader in these that there's no comparison at all to any other country. Any visitor is completely blown away when they see what's going on, even when they heard ahead of time how much better science and startups are in the US. It's a bit shocking that you think the US was not one of the most admired countries out there, unless you're posting from China or Russia.
- nutjob2 10mo ago
  It was that Trump and the MAGA crowd conceded to the Chinese by destroying US goodwill and credibility built up over decades. The US will probably never recover those advantages, just as China is ratcheting up its program of dominance. Trump et al have destroyed many things that made the US great. It's bewildering why anyone would do such a thing but here we are.
  - tim333 10mo ago
    I don't think it's unfixable but the behavior is still kind of odd.
ksec 10mo ago
May be it is not of an innovators dilemma? Chinese CCP are willing to scarifies whatever traditional industrial era infrastructure in order for things to move forward and gain a global advantage. Especially when they are not the one paying for the scarifies.
mcswell 10mo ago
"Make America Little Again" --Donald J. Trump
ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago
Certainly sounds like a sunk cost dilemma. Just because a country has previously invested in fossil fuels, it doesn't follow that they can't get the benefit of solar with future investment. However, there's a lot of powerful money/people/corporations that depend on fossil fuels for making billions - that's the real problem as that skews the market and politics of energy production/distribution.
- api 10mo ago
  That political sunk cost is why the innovators dilemma happens. It happens in companies too where managers, executives, and top employees will have their careers built around a certain way of doing things. Change threatens that so they will resist change and double down. Basically success creates the preconditions for this failure mode in the future. It might be thought of as a form of overfitting. Success results in overfitting to a local maximum.

by api 10mo ago

jack_tripper 10mo ago

>I really felt like Trump’s 2024 election was the moment it became the Chinese century. You must have been asleep at the wheel or living under a rock to have mised China's rise over the last decades. They didn't wait for Trump to get elected in 2024 and then flipped a switch from third world country to global superpower. "Damn, this hot cup of coffee burned my tongue. Why would Trump do this?" -HN comments

api 10mo ago
No I saw it. I just felt like that was the moment it tipped.
- jack_tripper 10mo ago
  [flagged]
- jack_tripper 10mo ago
  [flagged]
- epistasis 10mo ago
  This is exactly right, IMHO. We were in a course to counter China's momentum, we had handled COVID so much better, our industry had a huuuuuuge investment in it and was poised to take tiff. And then it was all killed. And we are killing off our other competitive edges over China, the way we attract all the world's best science and tech talent to build here in the US rather than in their own countries. We have sat back scientific research 2-5 years by drastically cutting grants in nonsensical ways and stopping and decimating a class of grad students. We were the most admired country in the world, and in a short amount of time we have destroyed decades of hard work building a good reputation. We won't get that back in a year or two, it's going to be decades of work.
  - jack_tripper 10mo ago
    >our industry had a huuuuuuge investment in it Which industry? How 'huuuuuge' was the investment? >We were the most admired country in the world According to who?
    - epistasis 10mo ago
      This was reported all over, but certain circles considered it politically incorrect to acknowledge that anything good happened in the years 2020-2024, so perhaps you can be excused for missing it. Some random web hits. Check out the graphs herein the massive investment in factories: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-ira-and-chips-act-are-supercharging-us-manufacturing-construction/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-ira-... https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/inflation-reduction-act-tracker-clean-energy-manufacturing/715116/ https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/inflation-reduction-a... Back then when I would inform the politically cloistered about this massive boom in factory construction and the hope for US manufacturing in strategically important energy tech, the most pointed critique was "yeah there's lots of spending but that doesn't mean that the factories are going to make anything." Turns out the skeptics were right. It was a huge mistake that all this stuff went into areas where it is politically incorrect to acknowledge that clean energy is changing the world. Management was not able to trumpet the new investment and the workers dont want to acknowledge what's driving the new higher wages. As for the US being the most admired country, I work in science and a bit in entrepreneurship. The US was so far and away the leader in these that there's no comparison at all to any other country. Any visitor is completely blown away when they see what's going on, even when they heard ahead of time how much better science and startups are in the US. It's a bit shocking that you think the US was not one of the most admired countries out there, unless you're posting from China or Russia.
nutjob2 10mo ago
It was that Trump and the MAGA crowd conceded to the Chinese by destroying US goodwill and credibility built up over decades. The US will probably never recover those advantages, just as China is ratcheting up its program of dominance. Trump et al have destroyed many things that made the US great. It's bewildering why anyone would do such a thing but here we are.
- tim333 10mo ago
  I don't think it's unfixable but the behavior is still kind of odd.

ksec 10mo ago

May be it is not of an innovators dilemma? Chinese CCP are willing to scarifies whatever traditional industrial era infrastructure in order for things to move forward and gain a global advantage. Especially when they are not the one paying for the scarifies.

mcswell 10mo ago

"Make America Little Again" --Donald J. Trump

ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago

Certainly sounds like a sunk cost dilemma. Just because a country has previously invested in fossil fuels, it doesn't follow that they can't get the benefit of solar with future investment. However, there's a lot of powerful money/people/corporations that depend on fossil fuels for making billions - that's the real problem as that skews the market and politics of energy production/distribution.

api 10mo ago
That political sunk cost is why the innovators dilemma happens. It happens in companies too where managers, executives, and top employees will have their careers built around a certain way of doing things. Change threatens that so they will resist change and double down. Basically success creates the preconditions for this failure mode in the future. It might be thought of as a form of overfitting. Success results in overfitting to a local maximum.