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by epistasis
459 days ago
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> It seems clear that solar owes it's growth to Germany and California policies which subsidized the global solar industry with taxes on their economies, most disproportionately placed on individual ratepayers. But why couldn't solar research have been long-term funded based on it's fundamental value I think this is a really important distinction, that between research in the lab versus research on the factory floor. Tesla in particular has talked about how much they value engineers that get down in to the production process versus those that are working in the lab. That's the "doing" that needs to happen. As well as shaking out parts of the upstream supply chains and making all that cheaper. We can theorize about what's going to work in practice, but the price drops are the combination of 1% savings here, 0.75% savings there, 0.5% there, and until you have the full factory going you won't be able to fully estimate your actual numbers, much less come up with all the sequential small improvements that build on each other. And all that comes together in the design of the next factory that's the next magnitude up in size. |
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> until you have the full factory going you won't be able to fully estimate your actual numbers, much less come up with all the sequential small improvements that build on each other.
Why not? Is there a theory or school of management or industry that establishes this foundational principle that seems so commonly invoked? It feels true, but I don't really know why it might be true. There must also be great examples of counterpoints in this too!
Maybe it goes back to learn by doing: it's a common refrain in outdoor recreation that safety rules are written in blood; that many of our guidelines directly follow from bad things that happened. But certainly we can also design safety rules by thinking critically about our activities. Learn by doing vs theory.