[andbberger]

Sort of topic, but man is his presentation format tiresome.

I would never have guessed that he has a PhD in chemistry... he comes across as rather off his rocker

I think it's his rhetoric - there's some substantive argument under the surface but it gets washed out with all the aggression and rhetorical fallacies.... it's very schizophrenic...

[andbberger]

Following up on my comment because this is driving me nuts...

His aggressive diatribe manner of speaking seems all too ubiquitous these days, as we find ourselves conducting the vast majority of our communications with the 'hivemind' on platforms where ability to attract attention wins out over quality discourse.

And it's just fucking impossible to have any real conversation in that context. There's no room to entertain subtleties, the higher-order structure of the subject, if you will.

For instance.... he makes it out like everyone involved in this prize is absolutely clueless about thermodynamics and that there are no conceivable advancements to be made for this particular scenario because thermodynamics.

Bullshit. There's plenty of innovation to be had. You can take advantage of daily temperature swings, use a ground-source heat pump... and almost certainly current humidifiers aren't operating at the thermodynamic limit; there's probably work to do in developing better materials, optimizing the design for efficiency, etc

[tastroder]

I kind of see what you're saying in regards to leaving no room for subtleties but that argument goes both ways.

I tried to find accurate information on the technology and how they differentiate from the regular old dehumidifier spiel when I first heard about the prize, even spending a few minutes on Google scholar searches for their contributors. It was all drowned out by marketing materials and fancy graphics.

On one side we have a person with a Youtube brand that lives off of these kinds of debunkings, including their over the top tone. On the other side we have multiple companies with a product and accompanying marketing budgets. Both clearly lacking in room for discussion and subtlety. Could the youtuber get their point accross more objectively and clear? Sure. Would somebody listen or even discover their argument? I kind of doubt that. Just like the product would not gain traction from scientific papers alone.

Trying to make my point clearer, I do not feel like that the Youtube person is solely at fault for a weirdly framed discussion here. If the XPrize winners have more innovation to show than combining two technologies that they seem to have used before they should clearly communicate that, including scientific analysis that are easy to discover. They got a prize for a product that claims to be better than competition with similar tech in a space that previously saw players that absolutely were pure snake-oil. Just put facts next to your pitch decks and fancy marketing materials people.