radialstub

My gotcha point was that they are slow. It would kinda suck to have the weather turn on you and then have to wait hours for the house to heat up, compared to a resistance heater that can instantly provide heat. The resistance heater can also be placed close by, compared to the heatpump that will attempt to heat up the entire room or house.

You are not accounting where the energy came from.

Google:

> Fossil fuels generate about 60% of U.S. utility-scale electricity

If we are being generous, these power plants are around 50-60% efficient. Motor vehicle engines are around 35-45% efficient.

If you actually go do the math and account for all the losses during each step of conversion and transmission, I think you would find that they are much closer to each-other than you think.

You have to compare energy usage all the way back to the source, otherwise you are throwing vital information.

> EVs are 4 - 5X efficient

Not even close

> Heatpumps are 4 - 5X efficient

Compared to heating elements, possible, but that's cause heatpumps do not create heat, but move heat. They come with the disadvantage of being really slow, and would increase baseline load during nighttime.

> Induction stoves are 4 - 5X efficient (vs gas stoves)

Nope

> Centralized power generation with fossil fuels loses ~75% (67% wasted up front, remaining in transmission and distribution).

How are you planning on powering all your electric appliances? And before you say solar, you are aware that the sun only shines during daytime, while peak energy usage happens in the morning and late afternoon. It would also mean that car chargers would have to be installed at workplaces for EV's to take advantage of cheap daytime energy. Good luck convincing your employer to eat that cost.

> There are many many other losses and costs: defense budget to protect oil infra

Your fighter jets are not going to be powered by batteries any time soon.

> fossil fuel subsidies

The government also taxes fuels, I am too lazy to calculate if they are net taxed, or net subsidized (excluding externalities, of course).

> ethanol subsidies, trillions of gallons of water,

Sure, ethanol sucks.

> externalized health costs (10M deaths from air pollution/year -- nytimes)

Energy ain't free, you know. Without an abundance of renewable sources available like Norway or Iceland, there is going to be a cost payed to maintain the lifestyles people have gotten used to. Solar is only a partial solution. I cannot see how grid scale chemical batteries are as clean as people make them out to be.

They should be underpaid (I think they should be paid even less), since they earn money from the government and don't facilitate any trade or provide value to end-users. A lot of them think their job is to weed students out instead of educating them. If you read through published research you can see how they stroke their own egos for their useless discoveries. There is zero market feedback for their work so the entire system becomes a circle jerk and full of suck ups.

The people building houses, ensure sanitation systems work, plan logistics to get food to supermarkets etc. should earn triple the amount academics earn.

Academia is just a bunch of egotistical people forcing kids to work on their particular hobbies and if the kids don't enjoy it, the professors have the potential to signal a bad reputation to employers. The system is kind of disgusting. Students should be given much more free reign in what they study.

I earn $22000 per year working as an electrical engineer in control systems. Americans don't know how good they have it.

They did not buy this award, this is just the work of a politician creating ties with powerful people.

In South Africa, the gangs infiltrated the government. This isn't just paranoia or extremist political ideology, this was recently exposed in the Madlanga Commission.

> To combat corruption these countries need to educate their population of its effects plus hefty penalties, including capital punishment, to get it under control. The higher up the tree the more severe the punishment should be. Politicians and senior civil servants should always be put to death since their corruption has the greatest impact.

Giving the government the power to exert these punishments will only give the corrupt officials the power to legally do this to their enemies.

There is no hope for these countries.

This is the government's problem. I tend to be on the side of less government, but it is so obvious that payment facilitation should be a service provided by the government. The government is just allowing corporations to collect rents, because they are lazy and incompetent.

The current tax system is fundamentally flawed, and this will achieve nothing.

The system is rigged against people who provide labour, when these people are the ones keeping the system going. Why can companies deduct taxes from operating expenses and investments, yet individuals are taxed on revenue? This means companies can build wealth much easier than individuals. Why is housing, food, education and savings not considered operating expenses?

Yes but that's because of the scaling laws for transistors. ML models seem to get better the bigger they are. If you want to compress the world's information, you need to look at all the information in the world.

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