Which Heater is More Efficient?

It's getting colder and time to get out the heaters!  But if you are buying a heater, here's a few tips when listening to the salesman.

All heaters (except for heat pumps which don't actually convert electricity to heat) are 100% efficient.  If a salesman tells you one 2000W heater is cheaper to run than another 2000W heater, they are either lying or don't know what they're talking about.  It's like saying one 2L bottle of milk has more milk than the other 2L bottle of milk.  The thing you need to base your decision on is what style of heating you want.  Fan heaters heat the air in the room more quickly, but the air is then cooled by the floor, walls and ceiling.  Convection heaters take more time to heat the air, but at the same time the heated air slowly heats the walls, ceiling.  Radiators, like panel heaters and oil heaters take even longer, but they are a more consistent heat since they heat the walls, ceiling etc which in turn evenly distributes the heat throughout the room.  Once the room is heated, the ambient temp is easily maintained.

So if you're icy cold and want instant heat, sit in front of a bar heater or fan heater.  If you want the room to be comfortable, switch on a convection or panel heater about 20 minutes before you want to use the room (depending on how cold the room is, you may need to give it longer). The more you spend on a heater with a thermostat, the more consistent the ambient temperature.

If you have a heat pump, turning up the temperature doesn't heat the room more quickly.  Just set it to the temperature you find comfortable and wait for it to bring the room to that temp.  Setting it at a much higher temperature takes the same amount of time to heat the room, but then it keeps on raising the temp until it reaches the dialled temp.  Keep curtains closed and keep doors closed that will allow heat to escape, like bathroom, hallway, toilet, laundry doors etc.

Don't heat parts of the house that you seldom use, such as toilet, spare bedroom, etc.  Keep those doors closed.  Try to localise the heat to where it's needed most.  Unless you plan to spend the evening sitting in your hallway, keep the doors closed and retain the heat in your living area.

The most efficient form of heating is the heat pump.  Spending a couple of thousand dollars on a heat pump will pay for itself within a few years and you also gain the added benefit of cooling in the hot summer.  If you don't want to have a fixed heat pump installed, you can always purchase a portable heat pump (portable air conditioner) for a fraction of the cost.  Generally you'll find these portable heat pumps are rated at around 1kw power consumption and they will produce around 3kw of heat.  That's like having three 1kw heaters for the price of one!

So at the end of the day, when the salesperson says to you, "This heater is more efficient to run that that heater,"  what he's actually saying is either a.  "I don't know what I'm talking about" or b. "This heater is a lower wattage and will produce less heat than that heater."

Can Personal Experience Be 100% Accurate?

When I was a child at the age of around 6, I fell over at school and something stung me on the palm of my hand.  I shook my hand before I got a look at what stung me and then when I looked, I saw a yellow blob with a stinger injecting venom into me.  When I arrived home after school, my mother asked me what stung me and I said I don't know.  She asked me to describe it and I said it was yellow but it wasn't a wasp.  So my mother looked through an encyclopedia of insects and found a yellow ichneumon wasp.  She showed me the picture and told me that's what stung me.  Even though I knew it didn't look like what I saw, I spent the rest of my life believing that I was in fact stung by an ichneumon wasp and I was mistaken in what I actually saw.

Looking back, I based my belief on authority.  My mother based her belief entirely on the fact that it was yellow and not a common wasp.  As a result, I believed something that wasn't true because what I saw was in fact the venom sack of a bee.  This is a fine example of how unreliable personal experience is in finding truth.

The Amway Religion

Back in 2002, I almost got caught up in Amway.  I met with these people who promised me some amazing things.  I went around to their house to hear of this wonderful job opportunity.  They sat me down and my first question was, "What's the job?"  They said they'd explain all that to me, but first they just want to talk about some things, and went on to say stuff like, "Wouldn't it be wonderful to wake up in the morning and stroll out to the golf course without worrying about money?  Wouldn't it be wonderful to receive an unexpected bill in the mail and happily write a check to pay it?"  This sounded pretty good to me, so I asked once again, what is the actual job?  And again they said it would all be explained at the seminar the following week.  They gave me a motivational book and some cassette tapes to listen to.

The following week, I went to the seminar.  I learnt nothing about Amway, but I heard how amazing it was to not have to worry about money, not have to go to work and to have your dream car, dream home etc.  I also heard a few success stories of other people who were part of Amway.  After the seminar, I asked again what the actual job was, and they changed the subject back to the seminar.

A week later, I went to the second seminar, hearing all the same motivational jargon.  After the seminar, I told the guy trying to get me into Amway that I don't think Amway is for me and I'll just leave it thanks.  He replied with something I'll never forget.  He said, "I think you're losing the faith in Amway and you just need to listen to the tapes, read the book and come to more meetings."

Have a think about this.  Listen to the tapes, read the book and come to more meetings, then you'll regain faith.  Sounds a little like how religion works, does it not?

Continual Compensation

When a product grows too fast for its platform, we encounter bottlenecking issues.  People don't upgrade their computers every year - hell, my computer is 7 years old - but user software is continually developing.  Facebook got to a point where videos and photos were chewing through people's data and making their internet devices slow right down, so they had to change the way visual media is executed.  Facebook has become so resource hungry as of late that they've had to change the way we view our feeds.  No, Facebook doesn't change every so often just to annoy you, it's actually to benefit you with a better, more streamlined and suitable interface for your internet device.

Now for the point that you inevitably anticipated... everything else is the same - including religion.  Cars become faster, so more safety features need to be added to compensate for an increase in risk.  Faster cars use more fuel, so the focus shifts to designing more economical engines.

In very ancient times, things like lightening, sickness and ultimate purpose were not understood, so humans compensated by filling in the gaps with the concept of the supernatural.  Epilepsy was explained as being caused by demons, sickness was explained as being the result of a curse, lightening was explained as being a manifested wrath of the gods and ultimate purpose was rationalised as a result of being created.  This worked fine for a time, but eventually we discovered new things, new and more rational explanations.  After a few millennia, lightening was discovered to be an electrical discharge, sickness was discovered to be caused by microorganisms and biological defects, epilepsy was discovered to be a result of a neurological malfunction and as for ultimate purpose, opinions are still divided due to the tough grasp of ontological security.

50 years ago, it was wrong for an unmarried Christian couple to hold hands.  Today, it’s wrong in some Islamic states for an unmarried couple to hold hands.  50 years ago, it was wrong for a Christian woman to show too much skin.  Today, it’s wrong in some Islamic states for a woman to show any skin at all.  50 years ago it was wrong for a married Christian couple to divorce.  Over the years, divorce became more common so a compensation had to eventually be made and is now accepted by most Christian denominations that divorce isn’t that bad.  All kinds of cherry picking of the Bible sees to it that it is justified.  Unmarried couples holding hands is ok because compensation was made by broadening the boundaries.  In free speech society, it has become easier to walk away from ridicule so many popular denominations compensated by not ridiculing couples for living together while unmarried, finally accepting gay people without prejudice and seeing prosperity as being a gift from God rather than an obstacle in the way of eternal life.

When we compensate, we find balance.  This is true in any situation, whether it be religion, mechanical engineering, computing, politics, society, medical science, the process of evolution and everything else.  The path of least resistance always wins out, but some situations take far longer.  In cosmological terms, modern society has only been around for a few minutes, so we still have a long way to go before we finally iron out the rough spots like war, poverty, etc.  But we will get there.  Eventually.

Is God the Objective Source of Morality?

We hear time and time again from the religious community that without God, we would not have an objective source of morality.  Let’s break this down and address it systematically.

“Without God.”  What does this mean?  Does it mean a literally absent God, a purposely withdrawn God or an intentional ignorance of God?  For all intents and purposes, the first two options are empirically the same.  The third option is interesting because in that case, we need to determine who is in control.

Imagine finding yourself face to face with an angry dog.  For simplicity, you have three options.  You could try your best to defend yourself when the dog attacks, you could try your best to run faster than the dog or you could ignore the dog, pretending it isn’t there.  The pretend option leads us to an interesting scenario.  While touching a hot stove, pretending it isn’t hot isn’t going to stop you from being burned.  But pretending that an angry dog isn’t there might just save you.  If the dog sees no threat, it most likely won’t attack.

How is God analogous to a dog?  Well if God is real, then ignoring God isn’t going to stop Him from going about His business because being omnipotent, we have no control.  But if you swap the agenticity of God over to the imagination of a person, then ignoring God would cause Him to dissipate and become harmless.

What do we observe in the real world?  We observe randomness.  We observe a universe that is mathematically without influence.  Some cancer patients have successful cancer treatments, some sadly don’t.  The same goes for religious cancer patients who have people praying prayers of faith.  With a universe that operates as though there is no influential agent, we can make the assumption that there is no God influencing it since a God is not needed.

So without God means a literal absence of a God.  The next part of the statement is, “we would not have”.  This is a definite logical condition.  It claims “If X then Y,” not, “If X then probably Y.”

The last part of the statement is, “an objective source of morality.”  We need to define what an objective source of morality is.  Is it a set of rules?  Is it conditional on geographic location?  Morality in the US is considerably different than morality in Syria.  In New Zealand it is moral for a 16 year old to have sex but that would be immoral in the United States.  The Holy Bible lists a set of rules commonly known as the Ten Commandments and Christians claim that this is the basis of morality, but the Holy Qur’an has a completely different set of rules upon which Islam bases its morality.

Many religions all claim absolute morality even though they all differ, so as the human race, we need to collectively agree on a universal set of morals.  If you take what is universally agreed upon by the majority of a diverse humanity and we remove the philosophical constructs of love, peace, etc, leaving us with one objective rule that protects ourselves and everyone around us, we are left with the platinum rule: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.”  Now of course this only works when everyone harmoniously follows the rule so we won’t get into silly debates on self harming or what not.

So let’s reconstruct the original statement in our defined form.  “If God does not exist, then we would not treat others the way they want to be treated.”  Think about that for a moment.  Religion claims that if God does not exist, then we would not treat others the way they want to be treated.  Look around and see what’s going on in this world.  How many people are being treated the way they want to be treated?