Maybe not anytime soon. But if you were to tell Benjamin Franklin, we’ll be able to fly across the Atlantic in our sleep, he would have pistol whipped you and sold your organs.

> I got 25mpg in my old Town Car.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think of this, but a non-plugin gas-only camry hybrid gets 52 mpg. Again, you only fill it with gas.

At some point all jobs will be done by robots. No job is safe. It won’t happen as fast as you think, though. When I was a kid the atm was invented and they said bank tellers and eventually banks would become obsolete. It was a real thing that people argued and did news stories about. People actually boycotted atms or moved their money from banks that used them because they didn’t think it was fair for a person to lose their job to a machine. That was fifty years ago. I see physical branches are closing now. It is happening as predicted but it also took the invention of camera phones, direct deposit, and the internet to make it work. So yeah, eventually everyone’s worse fears about AI will happen but not in our lifetimes. I mean factory automation happened before and during my lifetime and society adjusted. AI will be no different.

>It's the same with all manner of student competotions and projects from the Putnam competition, the various DARPA challenges etc. The more a university promotes itself the more grant money and industry cooperation it's likely to get. It's actually good for both the students and the university as a whole.

This is very different than what OP is saying.

>The point is that it's a pointless, dead-end feature that was only implemented to generate superficial interest.

This is what's cynical.

I'm not saying either of these things.

I'm saying, compared to actually building a car, it's way easier to do the math about the maximum possible benefit and realize it's so tiny that building that car is guaranteed to be at best pointless and at worst a net negative for the environment - which it turned out to be and, worse, it will probably motivate others to waste their time and resources as well, which in turn will cause further unnecessary damage to our planet, contrary to what they set out to do, which is ironic.

With that realization you can conclude that some of the following happened:

- They did not do the math and built a car. Not a wise sequence of steps, especially for someone who is smart and determined enough to be capable of building a car

- They did the math and decided to build the car anyway. Even less wise

In any case, calling this "innovation" is... similarly not wise.

It's a fun exercise and building a car is obviously a really good achievement on its own, but as far as being touted as a solution to our CO2 problem, this is bonkers. Hypocrisy is a good thing to avoid.

In simple terms, instead of extracting something from nothing, the energy was "borrowed" from somewhere else, taking advantage of the idea of quantum entanglement, the fact that two subatomic particles can change their state in line with the other, even when the two are separated by a distance.

Pretty sure in earth's climate. May be wrong.

>It's incredibly cynical to think that this project was used to get money instead of teach students and build their skills.

It's not cynical at all. It's quite standard and not something bad.

It's always both with projects like these - they are both learning opportunities for students and a way to promote both your students and the skills and prestige of the university.

It's the same with all manner of student competotions and projects from the Putnam competition, the various DARPA challenges etc. The more a university promotes itself the more grant money and industry cooperation it's likely to get. It's actually good for both the students and the university as a whole.

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However, loved experience in the US will very much depend on which state you live in.

For example: several conservative states have been passing bans on abortion, meanwhile liberal states have been passing laws guaranteeing the right to an abortion.

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Just so I understand your point:

You’re saying that this group of students has access to all known and available scientific information and expertise to independently conceive of a way to use our vehicles to diminish our carbon footprint.

However, they failed to recognize that the method that they chose is an impossible dead end which will be of no practical use to anyone. In short, a complete waste of time and resources.

Fuck SUVs in general.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo

The amount of energy generated is lower than the loss of efficiency due to the added weight of a solar panel. It’s significantly more efficient to mount a solar panel on top of a pole wherever you spend the most time parked (house for personal vehicle, office for business vehicle).

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Are you thinking a liter of fuel, not a gallon? A Yaris does way better than 15mpg (unless it’s got a LS swap, maybe 🤪)

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And how much CO2 is made to charge that car

Since when was the Lincoln town car a 7 seater?

They don’t make 6 passenger, 4 body trunk sedans anymore

The Roman Empire fell also in part because it’s people stopped giving a shit, they stopped being patriots, they stopped fighting for themselves and for the idea of Rome as an empire. They became divided based on one man seeking ultimate power; essentially the people at the top stopped caring about empire and shifted only to caring about their own power, with some notable exceptions.

At various points plague and war reduced the available labor and soldiers, slaves ruined the economy for Romans at home because of selfish rich people seeking only the next dollar, and yes, various external threats converged at one time or another to sap Roman strength again and again.

The Romans at various points were overexteneded, with Hadrian, and also Augustus before him, trying to redefine defensible frontiers for the empire. You’re right in that this is not the same for America because it’s not outright hegemony, we have allies, but ofcourse our Allie’s spend a hell of a lot less on their militaries than we do. They rely on us marching and sailing around to put out the various fires around the world.

The economic similarities at home, however, with selfish rich fucks who are allowed to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, is actually similar, though not for exactly the same reasons. There’s no slaves in America anymore, so rich people use different mechanisms to achieve the same end, but the greed is exactly the same, and people in power either not giving a shit, joining in on it, or assisting in the redistribution of wealth is similar to what happened in Rome.

Rome had emperors who at times were sons of other emperors or, at their best, were men of merit selected by previous emperors or, at their worst, were selfish generals, or high ranking government officials that were selfishly seeking power. Some of them weren’t completely corrupt, some of them were. You know anyone like that who assumed the most powerful position of the most powerful country in the world? The Presidency of the United States is nowhere near the same, but the general similarities are there. It IS enough to make some comparisons.

Neither the US nor the world order that the US heralded in 1951 are diminishing.

What makes America desirable to tens of millions of immigrants and millions of visitor students who are waiting in line?

It's civil and civic values. A freer society leads to a better system of social cohesion (try being a black man in China or Russia). America by no means is a utopia, but it remains the top destination because it allows you to live a relatively free life vs the alternatives.

America has checks and balances, division of power in government, and a balancing of populism vs technocracy. We'll talk about Balkanization or civil war when the filibuster rule is amended.

aviation only accounts for 2% of global emissions, a stat in which private jets make up a small fraction of that 2%. So no, its not "FACTS" to try and push off responsibility by just blaming politicians and hollywood celebrities.

None of that matters if the initial conditions are provably unfavorable. It's like trying to innovate on perpetuum mobile when we know it is impossible, by the laws of physics, for it to work. Your examples are all in a distinct category because we had no reason to believe they were impossible.

Oh thanks, I was about to ask but I accidentally ignored the parentheses at first.

That's kind of unintuitive, and scary.