Can humans handle propserity better than mice? will our brains replace processors? and reducing co2 emissions in steel production
Insights from The Economist, 4th Apr, 2026 edition
Can humans handle propserity better than mouses?
Let us start with mice. The scientist John B. Calhoun ran a series of experiments between 1968–1972. He built an enclosure that housed 8 mice and an unlimited supply of food and water. It had the ideal temperature, no predators and enough space for 4000 mice.
The expectation was for the population to grow and hit the maximum. Initially, the population doubled every 55 days. But as the population reached 2200, things began to fall apart. Some males became aggressive. Females abandoned or even killed their offspring. Other mice withdrew from social interaction and focused on eating and grooming. They gave up on reproduction completely. Eventually the colony became extinct.
Does this apply to humans? Norway is a good example of a country with everything in plenty. It has one of the highest per-capita income in the world at $90,000. The country’s sovereign wealth fund driven by oil sales and prudent investments has $400,000 for every citizen. A fifth of Norway’s spending comes from the returns from the sovereign fund minimizing the need for taxes. Its citizens enjoy free universal healthcare, free basic education and subsidized higher education apart from several other benefits.
With wealth has come lower birth rates, higher cost of goods and services, over-spending and a relaxed approach to life.
Hospital services for example cost 30% more in Norway compared to EU peers. But even at this higher cost, their wait times have not reduced as much as neighboring Denmark.
Most government run projects complete well behind schedule and well above budget. Norway spends 50% of its taxes on foreign aid as compared to 10% for UK.
People spend more time in school. Unemployment is 10% compared to 5% for Denmark. Even when they work, they are under employed. For example, 70% of service workers born in Norway have a master's degree. They also borrow a lot, typically 2.5 times their income.
Norway’s challenges are not really chronic problems except for the lowering birth rate. Projects all over the world overrun time and budget. In India for instance, one of the poorest countries per capita in the world, projects overrun budget by 60% to 70% on average. Unemployment while higher than Denmark is on par with other European countries like Spain at 10% and France at 8%.
Norway has the benefit of having a high tax rate in place. Its inequality is one of the lowest. Its Gini coefficient is 0.27 and is in the top 10 most equal countries in the world. Norway will be able to sustain this lifestyle as long as the sovereign wealth fund keeps earning a 6% return adjusted for inflation. Even if the returns go down, cutting down on aid should give them the cushion to transition into a more efficient country.
It is safe to say humans will fare better than mice when it comes to enjoying wealth without having to do too much work in return.
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Will human brains replace processors in data centers?
Brain cells have many benefits over processors. They are super-efficient. A human brain consisting of 90B neurons, takes about 20 watts of energy. Neurons can be in more than 2 states (0 or 1) that traditional transistors do. They store memory and processing power together making them more efficient. About half the energy used up by a processor is in moving data around. Some tasks such as motor skills are computationally easier for the human brain than traditional processors.
Cortical labs, a startup in Australia has decided to put these benefits to the test. They have placed neurons grown from stem cells donated by humans on tiny electrodes allowing conventional computers to pick up electrical activity generated by the neurons and stimulate them. The neurons can stay alive for up to 6 months through tubes that supply oxygen and remove the carbon dioxide. All of this is packaged into a box that can fit into server racks in data centers.
Cortical has opened up its technology for people all over the world to experiment with. Students at Stanford took advantage of this to train this computer to play the first-person shooter doom in a weeks' time.
We might soon be able to literally have a brain on hire!
You can read the full article here.
Reducing Co2 emissions by cleaning up steel production
Steel making accounts for 8% of the global Co2 emissions. It is more than 3 times the emissions from civil aviation. In normal production reducing agents such as carbon monoxide or a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide are used to remove the oxygen from the iron ore to leave behind the metal. The byproducts of this are carbon dioxide and water causing the pollution.
Apart from being polluting, there is another disadvantage. The resulting iron is full of impurities and has to go through further cleansing to get usable metal.
Electra, a startup is using electricity to solve for both problems. Iron is first dissolved in sulphuric acid. And then current is run through the solution which plates the iron on an electrode through a process called electrolysis. A demonstration facility is being built to produce 500 tons of iron a year.
Hertha, another startup is taking a different approach. It generates hydrogen and oxygen by heating up methane through a process called pyrolysis. A mixture of this hydrogen and carbon is then passed through the molten ore to extract out the pure Iron. Other chemicals remove impurities and allow the pure iron to sink to the bottom for easy extraction. The benefit of this approach is it uses an electrical furnace, an equipment that is already being used to melt scrap steel for recycling. It aims to have a 10,000-ton production capacity by 2027.
The promising thing about both approaches is that apart from solving the emissions problem, it eases the complexity of getting pure metal once it is removed from the ore. This along with its ability to demonstrate industrial scale production makes it a promising technology for the future.
You can read the full article here.
