Just how powerful do you think eBikes are?

Based on this, powerful enough to make climbs a breeze on the lowest setting.

It has been said many times on this thread already, but I will repeat once more as clearly the point isn’t getting through to some… eMTB’s still need pedalling!

They do because that’s mechanically what’s required for the motor to work.
But whenever any kind of substantial effort is required, such as going up a mountain, people are doing little more than waggling their legs.

Can’t we just talk bikes? Keep it bikey and forget everything else. You’re thinking too deeply

Sorry to have disturbed you.
Maybe buy yourself a new bike to take your mind off it.

Like it or not in time MTB will be a powered sport for the majority and riding off-road on a standard MTB is a future niche.

I agree with this.

I would guess that the people on STW who don’t own ebikes are becoming the minority.
And as we’re 10 pages in, it’s time to talk about capitalism and its unwavering ability to create great things and then to destroy them.

Who would have thought that the big problem that needed solving in mountain bikes was the need to pedal them? That feature of a bicycle that makes it so beautifully simple, healthy, affordable and efficient.

Hey ho.

I’m far from an ebiker, but I acknowledge that I get less fitness benefit from riding outside to spending the equivalent time on a turbo trainer.

As we start to learn more about the fitness benefits of motorised biking, I would imagine that e-bike turbo trainers will be the next logical step.

I’m part of an e-mtb gang and we often head down the pub after rides to have a few pies and a pint. Often the conversation revolves around our deteriorating health and non-existent fitness, then we laugh and say, stuff it, we’re the ones having all the fun.

I respect that. I think it’s a lot more honest and reasonable than a lot of the claims made above.

Do any ebikers accept that using a motorised bike is generally less beneficial to your health and fitness?
Or is it just not talked about?

Owning the Eeb doesn’t mean you have to sell your others.

I would guess that it’s something that happens naturally over time.
That people may initially try to keep a balance but it becomes harder over time.
As fitness and strength drops and you have the experience of zinging up climbs.

A great late contender for Strawman Argument of the Year 2023.
Good work @scienceofficer

*marks up Copa as a fully paid up, tin hat wearing conspiracy theorist*

It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s a pragmatic way to sell expensive things to people like you.

I think another part of it is that billions has been spent promoting ebikes.
With the main target market being people who already own bicycles.

So it pays to present ebikes as being exactly the same thing – just another option.
To promote the benefits, while hooking into all the existing positive connations of cycling.
To remove any of the unease/barriers.

And a genius thing about ebikes is the need to turn the pedals before the motor will engage.
Because without that, if the pedals were removed – it would give a truer reflection of what’s happening.

The bike industry is benefitting massively from conflating bicycles with motorised bikes.
But they’re two fundamentally different activities.
Not better or worse – just different.

Also, if I ride my ebike with the motor on is it a motorbike but if I ride it with the motor off, is it then a bicycle?

Yes.

A bike is a bike is a bike

Because that’s obviously not true.
There’s a fundamental difference between something powered by a human or powered/assisted by an engine. They are two different things.
The reason I get annoyed when the two are conflated is complex and probably very boring.
And would involve talking about capitalism.

Black/white thinking going on with you dude.

It is black/white because they’re two different things.
A cyclist is somebody who rides a bicycle. A bicycle is powered by a human.

How is riding an ebike not cycling? Really confused by this

In the same way that riding a motorbike isn’t cycling.

He’s really happy with it and its really nice to see people still getting a buzz from cycling at that age…

Aye, but he’s not cycling. He’s doing something different.
Doesn’t mean it’s bad but it’s not cycling.

My garmin metrics show I’m working more overall, I’m gaining fitness and recovering more readily from my efforts.

This seems a bit delusional to me. The idea that riding an ebike is better for fitness than cycling.

Meh, same old argument that’s gone round the bazaars since MTB came in to existence, be it about suspension, aluminium, carbon, singlespeed vs gears, etc, etc.

As has been mentioned already. I don’t think it’s the same as any of those other things.
A fundamental thing about a bicycle is that it’s human-powered.

An ebike isn’t just another kind of bicycle – it’s something fundamentally different.
Not that one’s necessarily better than the other but they’re completely different past times.
It’s the genius of marketing that they’ve been so effectively blended together.

I would guess from your various projects that you’re a reasonably wealthy person who’s a bit bored.
So your happiness relates to finding pleasing ways to distract/entertain yourself – like elaborate devices to kill squirrels and buying sports cars to refurbish etc.

For myself, and I would guess many people, happiness at the moment is more related to reducing the basic anxieties of life. Things caused by having a low and insecure income/job; while being faced with ever-increasing costs of living etc.

Gamifying cleaning the dishes doesn’t really help with that kind of thing.

Tiny Rogues. A classy minimalist rogue-like for under a tenner.
Beautifully simple, snappy and satisfying. And unlike lots of similar games, it’s not maddeningly difficult.
Great for playing while listening to music.

In the words of Viv Savage: “Have a good time…all the time.”

An interesting character in all this, who seems to be largely forgotten, is Charles Parnell.
In the 1880s he led the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster that kind of created the modern political party.
This was because Parnell feared the effect of his Irish MPs living and working in London.

He felt it was inevitable that, over time, they would adopt more Anglicised attitudes.
So to fight against this, he devised rigid rules and pledges to monitor and control their actions/voting.
This is what we now think of as the whip system.

Sinn Féin found a more effective solution with their MPs not attending Westminster.

His sister routinely dislocates her shoulder doing her day job, his brother broke his neck not that long ago and spent months in traction.

Red Bull should sponsor a return of Last of the Summer Wine. Each week we follow these loveable characters as their crazy bicycle antics inevitably end in disaster and an uplifting thumbs up from a hospital bed. You have been watching…

A horrible event. An annual sacrifice to the sugary drink gods. Yay capitalism.
They should just have them playing russian roulette.
Less risk of costly life changing injuries that are icky for the brand.

So the role of a human becomes that of an editor rather than a creator, if you see what I mean?

Yes, I think so. It will have the same kind of impact as automation in manufacturing. A factory that once required hundreds can be managed by four or five managers/monitors. The real-world impact is fewer jobs, more competition and lower pay.

Do you have a plan?

It’s a bit disheartening but there’s work available to train AI models.
Kind of helping to make sure your job is obsolete.

For example, writing copy for estate agent listings. It’ll generate that stuff pretty easily, but it’s a stretch to see estate agents being put out of work because of it?

Yes, but even something mundane like that has consequences.

For the past decade or so, I’ve paid my rent/bills by writing that kind of low-level copy. It’s no longer viable. And as a copywriter, there’s nowhere really to turn that isn’t affected by AI.

The same order of magnitude problem for an incremental improvement applies though, even for more refined data sets. It’s fundamental to using a probabilistic approach.

That’s true. Thing is, it doesn’t have to be great. It just has to be better/cheaper at doing something than a human. And there are already lots of areas where that’s the case.

As these models are already trained on truly massive data sets, it’s hard to know where this extra data is going to come from.

They seem to be moving away from that thinking. And seeing the benefits of using smaller and more refined datasets/subsets as they can be more effective and require loads less resources.

My understanding is that the problem for self-driving cars is that the data sets are not generalisable.

I think the main block is more of a legal one. The complexities of liability if an AI-controlled car injures/kills someone. And the current laws not able to provide an answer.

It could be the same kind of issue that throttles ChatGPT-style services. There have already been a number of legal cases in which people have taken legal action for the made-up lies/hallucinations of AI-generated results.

“Lest we forget”

Agree with this:

We can still feel isolated, alone and helpless whilst feeling pressurised into a well paid job we hate, that takes us away from our family and we can’t find a way out of.

I think a lot of the problems in the UK are difficult to capture with statistics or graphs – so are largely ignored. They’re wishy-washy “Guardian” things that are mostly imperceptible. It’s class, culture and community. It’s security and stability. It’s perceptions and opinions.

it’s not forecast data

Estimated data is probably more accurate. It’s not a recording of the actual temperature at the time; it’s a prediction/estimate based on lots of different factors. And which can be interpreted in different ways, using different models.

Good article @munrobiker

“So the data going back thousands of years is reliable.”

I don’t think we can say that. We have around 300 years of actual data and forecast data going back much further. But there’s a fundamental difference between the two.

The forecasts may be extremely reliable but we don’t know. It’s not discounting them but to avoid presenting them as something they’re not.

suggesting we can’t combat climate change without destroying capitalism

Doesn’t necessarily mean destroying capitalism but understanding the cause and addressing it.

Hopefully that clears up the length of the period we have data from for you.

Yes, it’s reasonable and useful but the fact remains that there’s only around 300 years of fairly reliable data. That’s not to discount the predictions/modelling but to understand them as informed guesswork.

…but I don’t think the media portray it like that.

I think this is my main problem. Like so many things, it’s mostly the extreme positions that are heard.

No doubt because they recognise that addressing the climate change problem is a much more urgent and critical problem than achieving global revolution.

First you said that it was talked about all the time, which it isn’t. And then you suggest that it’s actually not important to discuss and understand the main driver of man-made pollution. Which I disagree with.

Most of the people going on about weather events are the deniers going on about how cold it is.

I don’t tend to follow those people so maybe I don’t see it it. But it’s just as daft and illogical irrespective. And symptomatic of the general hysteria that surrounds the subject.

Eh? It’s discussed all the time!

Not by the most high-profile campaign group. There’s talk of “evil” and “climate collapse” as the cause of injustice. Nothing about capitalism:

From the Just Stop Oil website:
“Climate collapse will mean the end of workers’ rights, women’s rights, all human rights. It is already the greatest injustice visited on the global south in human history. If you are not in resistance you are appeasing evil. If you continue to stand by you are betraying 200 years of struggle and the sacrifice of those that came before us. It is time to put everything aside, we are going into resistance with or without you. Are you bystander or are you going to rise up?”

I pretty much support everything climate campaigners call for but I would be classed as a ‘denier’.
That’s not really true, I’m more of a don’t knower.
There may be lots of evidence but it’s based on only around 300 years of data.
I think it’s dangerous to say we’ve moved past the point of discussion.

And I find much of the conversation relating to it hysterical and illogical.
A particular example is the constant use of individual weather events as a sign/proof of climate change.
On a very basic level, that just seems daft. And yet, lots of intelligent people that I respect seem happy to do this.

The other thing I find frustrating is that the most basic driver of pollution is rarely ever discussed: capitalism.

…she got about 4/5 emails from colleagues saying “you’re about to be contacted by R4 to do In our time, sorry I gave them your name to stop them from asking me”

That really comes across. Usually find the best bit is the extra 20 minutes they do on the podcast where Bragg just lets them have a chat about the subject. You can feel the sense of relief.

I know quite a few folks who’ve been on In Our Times. They rarely go on twice.

I really like the concept but find it unlistenable due to Melvyn Bragg.
Realise it’s a difficult task but it just becomes an hour of him trying to press and pester people into saying what he wants to hear. Would work better if the presenter was genuinely trying to find out about the stuff. Or if they just didn’t use him.