I’m simply evaluating and responding to the claim:
I believe that plants are ≳ 1 OOM below the best human solution for turning solar energy into chemical energy, as measured in power conversion efficiency
It’s part of a larger debate on pareto-optimality of evolution in general, probably based on my earlier statement:
But we now know that evolution reliably finds pareto optimal designs:
(then I gave 3 examples: cellular computation, the eye/retina, and the brain)
So the efficiency of photovoltaic cells vs photosynthesis is relevant as a particular counterexample (and based on 30 minutes of googling it looks like biology did find solutions roughly on par—at least for conversion to ATP).
I’m simply evaluating and responding to the claim:
It’s part of a larger debate on pareto-optimality of evolution in general, probably based on my earlier statement:
(then I gave 3 examples: cellular computation, the eye/retina, and the brain)
So the efficiency of photovoltaic cells vs photosynthesis is relevant as a particular counterexample (and based on 30 minutes of googling it looks like biology did find solutions roughly on par—at least for conversion to ATP).