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The 20th century was the century of carbon-based energy. I am confident the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy (i.e. terrestrial atomic generation and energy from sun’s fusion).

It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.



Perhaps we should call it all Big Bang energy.

I agree this is silly. Harnessing the radiant energy of the sun is categorically different from converting wind or carbon into usable energy. Trying to group these into one category seems out of touch with the reality of developing the t technlogies.


It's silly to describe solar as atomic energy from sun’s fusion as a distinct category from carbon-based energy, because of course carbon-based energy was formed by capturing solar energy from the sun's fusion.

Fine, call it a 'carbon-cycle' energy system. Which may make it more clear that we're doing a great job on the 'burning' part of the cycle, but not so good on the 'capturing' part of the cycle.


You could get super pedantic and say it's all gravity based energy, but it stops being a useful way to classify things long before that.

Distinguishing between carbon and atomic is a pretty useful and meaningful distinction, although ultimately not perfectly correct.


How is this anything but useless pedantry?


I think the OP is illustrating the pedantry of "well technically solar energy is atomic energy" by pointing out that, by that standard, so is coal and oil. In other words, I don't think you disagree with the OP.


There's certainly a lot less latency from atomic reaction to harvested energy though :D


Not meant to be snarky, but why does Mr Altman assume folks care what he's confident about regarding things outside his expertise in software and startups? I genuinely wonder.




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