Dissipative energy intuition Over the time i have been doing physics i have noticed a pattern related to energy that gets dissipated in systems which come to equilibrium after a certain time has passed. please hear me out with a few examples 
(i) A capacitor connected to a a simple circuit 
When we connect a capacitor to a circuit and close the switch of the circuit, charges flow, energy is redistributed.
Let us say that the final charge on the intially uncharged capacitor is Q. Then since Q passess through an emf E(say !)
it looses the energy equal to QE. On the other hand the energy stored in the capacitor is only 1/2QE. This means that another 1/2QE amount of energy has dissipated in the form of dissipative forces. We disregard the nature of this disspated energy, whether its light, sound, heat or any other form.
(ii)The transfer of water from a fully filled tank to another.
Consider the situation where two identical tanks are connected through a pipe, which has a valve. Initially the valve is closed and one of the tanks is fully filled upto the brim, while the other is empty.When the valve is opened finally after a long time the system reattains equilibrium. Since the pressure must same in both tanks therefore, the height of water column must be same in both of them, also volume is conserved. Let the initial height of the water column be H, area of the base of tank be A and the final height of water column be h then (hA +hA) = HA, this implies that h=H/2. Let us now analyse the energy. Initialy the energy was MgH/2 (since the COM is at H/2), finally the total energy is 2(M/2 x g x h/2) =MgH/4, again MgH/4 has dissipated away
There are many such examples that i have encountered. They vary from simple systems to quite complex unintuitive ones.They vary from different fields of physics. It happens in standing waves, rotational mechanics etc.
I know that this has to happen, because these systems must axiomatically come to equilibrium, and for that energy has to dissipate else the system will just oscillate with kinetic energy converting into potential energy and vice versa. What bamboozles me is that almost always the energy that has disspated is half of the initial energy that has been provided. Like i said this half stuff happens in standing waves also, and many more systems. 
I know its coming mathematically, But i am searching for a more intuitive ways to explain this, by leveraging symmetries, or making logical arguments. I need a feel of why this is happening.
EDIT
Take another very complex and non intuitive situation

The solution is this:

You see even in such a complex which btw @Fakemod does not correspond to any direct linear integral so as to introduce a factor of 1/2, this total loss in dissipation is still 1/2, what do you say about this @Fakemod and @Starfall
 A: You're wrong that the factor $ 1/2 $ in the capacitor energy implies any energy has been "dissipated away". This factor is simply a result of the fact that the voltage across a capacitor is not constant, but rather a function of the charge stored on the capacitor; so moving charges across a capacitor becomes harder over time. Since the defining relation of a capacitor is $ Q = CV $ with $ C $ a constant depending on the capacitor, and to move a charge $ dQ $ across the plates you do work $ V dQ $, you find that to store a charge $ Q_f $ in a capacitor, you have to do 
$$ \int^{Q_f}_0 V dQ = \int_0^{Q_f} \frac{Q}{C} \, dQ = \frac{Q_f^2}{2C} $$
of work, and all of this work is then stored in the capacitor in the form of electrical potential energy, at least in this idealized setup.
Your second example is markedly different from the situation with the capacitor. Here, you explicitly violate the conservation of energy when you think about "when the system reaches equilibrium". Your system would explicitly not reach an equilibrium under conservation of energy; rather, its idealized dynamics are equivalent to that of a harmonic oscillator. In practice, of course, both such hydraulic systems and harmonic oscillators dissipate energy, but they do so through interactions that are not specified in the simple gravitational model. 
It is true that under the effect of such external dissipative forces, your analysis of the equilibrium state of the system is correct; but the origin of the factor $ 1/2 $ in your example is simply that you chose to link two tanks together. If you had linked three tanks together, you'd get a factor $ 1/3 $, and if you had linked $ n $ tanks together you'd get a factor $ 1/n $. There's nothing deep about that.
