Close to one? So the probability that some cheaper/better alternative that we’re not considering is developed before anyone gets around to building the hyperloop is close to zero? That doesn’t look uncontroversial to me.
Once the first plans for a hyperloop are finished, then the inertia of the project will almost certainly carry it forwards. In China, it currently only takes around a year for railroads to reach this stage, so we shouldn’t expect it to take long.
There have been no major new innovations in transportation in the past century, since the car and airplane. It seems like this is due to solid structural and technological reasons, that have if anything only grown larger as the present types of technologies grew more entrenched in society. (e.g. the sheer amount of money needed for new infrastructure; the time construction takes- patents last for 20 years, while the Big Dig lasted for 25; the development of the technology and infrastructure behind cars, trains, and planes). All previous new transportation technologies besides the hyperloop have been preceded by extensive experimentation and many failures; we do not see anything like this today. Planes and cars, during their initial introduction, were less efficient than traditional travel, and it took decades (ish) for them to catch up; in contrast, a hyperloop (again, assuming the ideas presented in Musk’s analysis are sound) is better than current tech already- meaning any new competitor would take even longer to catch up. Furthermore, different transportation technologies make sense to use for different distances; anything new would have to be an enormous disruption, to replace transit across the entire range of distances a hyperloop would travel. What’s more, the hyperloop is open source, whereas any replacement is very unlikely to be so; even if something that looked likely to probably be better were announced tomorrow, China or Russia would, IMHO, be fairly likely to bring a hyperloop to at least the testing stage in an effort to explore options and to avoid dependence on foreign patent owners- the LA-SF hyperloop’s expected costs are only 2% of China’s most recent railroad investment plan, it would be cheaper in China, and a testing prototype would be much cheaper. So anything new would have to be significantly better almost immediately and come out of nowhere.
Elon Musk/hyperloop appears to be an exception to the above. As predicted, though, Musk will not be making a profit from this. And he is arguably the only person in his reference class- i.e. very wealthy, technically competent people who focus on new innovations in transportation (c.f. Tesla and SpaceX).
ETA: By analogy, unless in the scenario I’ve outlined you would expect all construction of train lines, including those already designed, to be halted within the next year or two, you should also expect the hyperloop to be built unless the hypothetical replacement is announced soon and is much, much better.
“There have been no major new innovations in transportation in the past century, since the car and airplane.”
Drones, jet engine, viable CVT, ICBM, space shuttle, maglev, turbine cars, nuclear-powered engines, helicopter, hovercraft, jet ski, snowmobile...
Today’s automobile technology is vastly superior to a century ago, in power, speed, efficiency, and safety.
None of those are ‘major innovations in transportation’, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that most people do not ride ICBM’s to work everyday, the fact that automobiles had almost entirely replaced horses before CVT and turbines, and the fact that planes had partially replaced ocean liners before jet engines. (In fact, some pre-WWII planes are still in everyday commercial use today.) You are likely confusing ‘major innovations’ in the sense of technical accomplishments with ‘major innovations’ in the sense of innovations that had a large impact on society. While new technologies are fun to think about, only the latter definition is relevant.
Today’s automobile technology is vastly superior to a century ago, in power, speed, efficiency, and safety.
Incremental improvement != major innovations. If anything, the incremental development of automobiles is evidence against major new innovations, as argued above.
People didn’t drive cars to work a hundred years ago, either. And today,there are people drive through the Chunnel to work every day. “Innovation” does not have an established meaning of “something people ride to work everyday[sic]”. If you’re going to dismiss disagreements with a claim by appealing to a personal, non-explicit definition of a term used in the claim, then I don’t see the point of making the claim in the first place; a claim is useful only if the claim is phrased with sufficient clarity that people will know what would be a rebuttal of the claim. I don’t see how something ceases to be an innovation if it accomplished through incremental improvement. Can the same technological improvement be an innovation in one universe where it was developed all at once, and not an innovation in another universe where it was developed over a century? Automobile technology has incrementally increased over the last several hundred years. There was no sudden massive jump in the technology, but you seem to consider the transition from novelty to dominant mode of transportation to be a distinctive category of “innovation”. If technology X starts out costing 10 times as much as technology Y, and there are 100 different improvements in technology that each decrease the cost of technology X by 5%, is the 45th improvement an “innovation”, and the rest not? If technology X cost 1.1 as much as technology Y, and the cost of technology Y suddenly jumps by 15% and technology X therefore supplants technology Y, is that an innovation? You seem to think that “automobile” is an innovation, when a car, at its most basic, is simply a locomotive that isn’t run on rails. Why is going from “steam engine than runs on rail” to “steam engine that doesn’t run on rails” an innovation, but going from a steam engine that doesn’t run on rails, to what we have today, isn’t?
Do you know how Air Force pilots based in America get to Afghanistan? They don’t. They remote-pilot drones without ever leaving the US. That sounds rather innovative to me. And something that obviates the need for any US-to-Afghanistan hyperloop for these pilots. This discussion got started by your condition that “the basic ideas behind the hyperloop are sound and there is no global catastrophe”. What does “sound” mean? Presumably, it means that the hyperloop is cost-effective. And cost-effectiveness is something that depends on the cost of the alternatives, without any respect for whether those alternatives are “innovations” (however you define the term) or “incremental improvement”.
This was all addressed in Protagoras’s comment and my reply. Please recall that I was responding to a comment proposing that “that some cheaper/better alternative that we’re not considering [might be] developed before anyone gets around to building the hyperloop”; I am not the one who is defining the scale of innovation necessary. Obviously, “driving a car with CVT” is not an alternative to “driving a car,” and helicopters are not a generally better transportation technology than cars/trains/plane. (It’s better in a few specific situations, but obviously for the ancestor’s claim that a “better alternative” would be sufficient to prevent a hyperloop from being built, better needs to be interpreted broadly, in the sense that cars are better than a horse and buggy.) I feel like it’s pretty reasonable for me to have assumed that readers would have read the comment I was replying to.
Close to one? So the probability that some cheaper/better alternative that we’re not considering is developed before anyone gets around to building the hyperloop is close to zero? That doesn’t look uncontroversial to me.
Once the first plans for a hyperloop are finished, then the inertia of the project will almost certainly carry it forwards. In China, it currently only takes around a year for railroads to reach this stage, so we shouldn’t expect it to take long.
There have been no major new innovations in transportation in the past century, since the car and airplane. It seems like this is due to solid structural and technological reasons, that have if anything only grown larger as the present types of technologies grew more entrenched in society. (e.g. the sheer amount of money needed for new infrastructure; the time construction takes- patents last for 20 years, while the Big Dig lasted for 25; the development of the technology and infrastructure behind cars, trains, and planes). All previous new transportation technologies besides the hyperloop have been preceded by extensive experimentation and many failures; we do not see anything like this today. Planes and cars, during their initial introduction, were less efficient than traditional travel, and it took decades (ish) for them to catch up; in contrast, a hyperloop (again, assuming the ideas presented in Musk’s analysis are sound) is better than current tech already- meaning any new competitor would take even longer to catch up. Furthermore, different transportation technologies make sense to use for different distances; anything new would have to be an enormous disruption, to replace transit across the entire range of distances a hyperloop would travel. What’s more, the hyperloop is open source, whereas any replacement is very unlikely to be so; even if something that looked likely to probably be better were announced tomorrow, China or Russia would, IMHO, be fairly likely to bring a hyperloop to at least the testing stage in an effort to explore options and to avoid dependence on foreign patent owners- the LA-SF hyperloop’s expected costs are only 2% of China’s most recent railroad investment plan, it would be cheaper in China, and a testing prototype would be much cheaper. So anything new would have to be significantly better almost immediately and come out of nowhere.
Elon Musk/hyperloop appears to be an exception to the above. As predicted, though, Musk will not be making a profit from this. And he is arguably the only person in his reference class- i.e. very wealthy, technically competent people who focus on new innovations in transportation (c.f. Tesla and SpaceX).
ETA: By analogy, unless in the scenario I’ve outlined you would expect all construction of train lines, including those already designed, to be halted within the next year or two, you should also expect the hyperloop to be built unless the hypothetical replacement is announced soon and is much, much better.
“There have been no major new innovations in transportation in the past century, since the car and airplane.” Drones, jet engine, viable CVT, ICBM, space shuttle, maglev, turbine cars, nuclear-powered engines, helicopter, hovercraft, jet ski, snowmobile...
Today’s automobile technology is vastly superior to a century ago, in power, speed, efficiency, and safety.
None of those are ‘major innovations in transportation’, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that most people do not ride ICBM’s to work everyday, the fact that automobiles had almost entirely replaced horses before CVT and turbines, and the fact that planes had partially replaced ocean liners before jet engines. (In fact, some pre-WWII planes are still in everyday commercial use today.) You are likely confusing ‘major innovations’ in the sense of technical accomplishments with ‘major innovations’ in the sense of innovations that had a large impact on society. While new technologies are fun to think about, only the latter definition is relevant.
Incremental improvement != major innovations. If anything, the incremental development of automobiles is evidence against major new innovations, as argued above.
People didn’t drive cars to work a hundred years ago, either. And today,there are people drive through the Chunnel to work every day. “Innovation” does not have an established meaning of “something people ride to work everyday[sic]”. If you’re going to dismiss disagreements with a claim by appealing to a personal, non-explicit definition of a term used in the claim, then I don’t see the point of making the claim in the first place; a claim is useful only if the claim is phrased with sufficient clarity that people will know what would be a rebuttal of the claim. I don’t see how something ceases to be an innovation if it accomplished through incremental improvement. Can the same technological improvement be an innovation in one universe where it was developed all at once, and not an innovation in another universe where it was developed over a century? Automobile technology has incrementally increased over the last several hundred years. There was no sudden massive jump in the technology, but you seem to consider the transition from novelty to dominant mode of transportation to be a distinctive category of “innovation”. If technology X starts out costing 10 times as much as technology Y, and there are 100 different improvements in technology that each decrease the cost of technology X by 5%, is the 45th improvement an “innovation”, and the rest not? If technology X cost 1.1 as much as technology Y, and the cost of technology Y suddenly jumps by 15% and technology X therefore supplants technology Y, is that an innovation? You seem to think that “automobile” is an innovation, when a car, at its most basic, is simply a locomotive that isn’t run on rails. Why is going from “steam engine than runs on rail” to “steam engine that doesn’t run on rails” an innovation, but going from a steam engine that doesn’t run on rails, to what we have today, isn’t?
Do you know how Air Force pilots based in America get to Afghanistan? They don’t. They remote-pilot drones without ever leaving the US. That sounds rather innovative to me. And something that obviates the need for any US-to-Afghanistan hyperloop for these pilots. This discussion got started by your condition that “the basic ideas behind the hyperloop are sound and there is no global catastrophe”. What does “sound” mean? Presumably, it means that the hyperloop is cost-effective. And cost-effectiveness is something that depends on the cost of the alternatives, without any respect for whether those alternatives are “innovations” (however you define the term) or “incremental improvement”.
This was all addressed in Protagoras’s comment and my reply. Please recall that I was responding to a comment proposing that “that some cheaper/better alternative that we’re not considering [might be] developed before anyone gets around to building the hyperloop”; I am not the one who is defining the scale of innovation necessary. Obviously, “driving a car with CVT” is not an alternative to “driving a car,” and helicopters are not a generally better transportation technology than cars/trains/plane. (It’s better in a few specific situations, but obviously for the ancestor’s claim that a “better alternative” would be sufficient to prevent a hyperloop from being built, better needs to be interpreted broadly, in the sense that cars are better than a horse and buggy.) I feel like it’s pretty reasonable for me to have assumed that readers would have read the comment I was replying to.