upvote

points

by uuyy4 hours ago |
comments
upvoteby kibwen3 hours ago|
next
[-]
Not janitors. Hazmat cleanup crews.
reply
upvoteby jcgrillo3 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach%2C_Missouri

Scrape off all the soil, put it in casks, and bury it in a concrete bunker for 10000 years. Then relocate everyone and attempt to rebuild.

reply
upvoteby Brian_K_White4 hours ago|
prev|
[-]
It's kind of like producing code is becoming more like farming.

We didn't create the dna we rely on to produce food and lumber, we just set up the conditions and hope the process produces something we want instead of deleting all the bannannas.

Farming is a fine an honorable and valuable function for society, but I have no interest in being a farmer. I build things, I don't plant seeds and pray to the gods and hope they grow into something I want.

reply
upvoteby nradov4 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Prayers are for weather. Pretty much all farmed plant, animal, and fungus species have been selectively bred or genetically modified. Farmers know what's going to grow.
reply
upvoteby Brian_K_White3 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
Farming has merely a lot of study and input into the process, very little actual control and no determinism at all. We know how to improve chances is all. The fact that we breed and "engineer" is like a drop in the bucket.
reply
upvoteby nradov59 minutes ago|
parent|
next
[-]
Tell me you've never done any farming without telling me you've never done any farming. There is certainly risk in the business due to market fluctuations, weather, natural disasters, disease, and pests. But the final product is highly deterministic. Almost all genetic variability has been expunged from major food production species in a relentless pursuit of predictable yield. Everything looks and tastes the same. We can debate whether that's a good thing but it is the reality for most farmers.
reply
upvoteby bluefirebrand3 hours ago|
parent|
prev|
[-]
It's pretty deterministic in that if you plant corn you will grow corn not beets, you know?

If the farming situation were as dire as you seem to suggest, we'd have unpredictable famines all the time, but we don't

reply
upvoteby Brian_K_White1 hours ago|
parent|
[-]
You might grow corn, or you might grow defective unusable corn and/or any number of other things like locusts or fungi or other plants that decide to grow in the place where you planted corn. Sure, the corn seeds will not produce ball bearings. Genius observation. There are about an infinity of other things that can and do happen besides that.

Planting is merely setting up the conditions. We didn't write the dna, we couldn't write the dna if we wanted to because we are an infinity away from understanding all the actual processes that descend from the dna. And when we utilize the dna that we simply found and didn't and couln't hope to write, it's always, at best, a case of hoping it goes right again this time.

reply