Overall, this debate would benefit from clarity on the specific metrics of comparison, along with an explanation for why we should care about that specific metric.
Photosynthesis converts light into a form of chemical energy that is easy for plants to use for growth, but impractical for humans to use to power their machines.
Solar cell output is an efficient conversion of light energy into grid-friendly electrical energy, but we can’t exploit that to power plant growth without then re-converting that electrical energy back into light energy.
I don’t understand why we are comparing the efficiency of plants in generating ATP with the efficiency of solar cells generating grid power. It just doesn’t seem that meaningful to me.
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).
Overall, this debate would benefit from clarity on the specific metrics of comparison, along with an explanation for why we should care about that specific metric.
Photosynthesis converts light into a form of chemical energy that is easy for plants to use for growth, but impractical for humans to use to power their machines.
Solar cell output is an efficient conversion of light energy into grid-friendly electrical energy, but we can’t exploit that to power plant growth without then re-converting that electrical energy back into light energy.
I don’t understand why we are comparing the efficiency of plants in generating ATP with the efficiency of solar cells generating grid power. It just doesn’t seem that meaningful to me.
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).