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> Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you solve it by investing the least possible resources into it. Our economic system op

> Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you solve it by investing the least possible resources into it. Our economic system optimizes for exactly this.

deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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mikelyons 7y ago
What if we had one world religion where everyone's goal in life was to become infinitely loving and utterly selfless? Would we grow food for eachother differently? Would we be compensated differently for doing so?
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  You're describing humanism. We'd probably end up looking a lot like an ant colony. Unfortunately, as a non-hivemind species, it is unlikely that we will ever have that level of cohesion.
  - mikelyons 7y ago
    I'm not actually referring to humanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE1yPCeF1Cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE1yPCeF1Cc
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  No, it turns out that the adherents of the religion of "love thy neighbor" and "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" have no problem with our economic system.
  - mikelyons 7y ago
    I'm talking about psychedelic induced direct experiences of the point of life as utter selflessness and infinite love.
    - zepto 7y ago
      Weird that it requires a special compound to give you a direct experience of this. You’d think that if the point of life was selflessness and love, this would be more obvious. Also, what do you think of the people whose medicine comes from the coca plant, who have direct experience that the point of life is greed and self-satisfaction?
      - mikelyons 7y ago
        the concept of "a special compound" is something you made up. It takes a special compound to experience numbness of your teeth for dental work, does that mean the numbness is something that takes away from the value of the dental work or the protection from pain? Watch the videos that correct the stigma of psychedelics and see the human history of them.
      - mikelyons 7y ago
        It sounds like you have no experience with cocaine, and no experience with psychedelics ... I can understand this position coming from ignorance, so I don't blame you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA
        zepto 7y ago
        Firstly you are just wrong. I have experience of both, especially psychedelics, and I am familiar with and have been involved in research on the topic. Secondly, your reasoning is clearly impaired because you drew a conclusion for which you obviously don’t have any facts to support. Thirdly, you lept to defend an ungrounded claim that a particular drug experience gives access to spiritual truth. Temporary distortions of experience can be valuable but to quote from a famous drug culture movie, “why trust one drug and not another?”. This is an extraordinary claim that requires serious examination. Your reflexive defense suggests that you have lost sight of this. These kinds of failures of reasoning are attributed to psychedelics by even the most optimistic of researchers. See this article by one of the world’s leading researcher in the field: http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=IwAR36UzFla5Lfx7-4LTr6R8N0XdUSOnbg3gnRPXn806cPKO7Zsas2EsJJhDs http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=Iw... The section ‘what about the woo’ in particular talks about the problem. I think psychedelics can be very positive, but they can also damage your ability to reason. As a temporary tradeoff this may well be a reasonable price to pay for relief from trauma. It’s a red flag when you start proclaiming that psychedelics are the door to experienced of fundamental truth and you are unable to reason about it. This kind of thinking is a symptom that you haven’t addressed the side effects the psychedelics have had on you.
- imhoguy 7y ago
  We try: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." God be our Nature/Universe as space, soil, water air, plants, life.
commandlinefan 7y ago
… which is a good thing! The challenge is investing the right amount of resources that retain the necessary minerals, is ecologically sustainable long term and healthy. Anything more is waste, which has its own problems.
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  > The challenge is investing the right amount of resources that retain the necessary minerals, is ecologically sustainable long term and healthy. Our economic system refuses to account for these things, and refuses any attempt at being held accountable for them, as well. It optimizes for a supply chain that depletes soil, replaces robust ecosystems with fragile monocultures, forgoes sustainability, and enjoys the luxury of not having to account for the negative externalities of turning a profit.
xsmasher 7y ago
You optimize for what you can measure. Food and consumer products will have to change greatly when hand-held tricorders let you compare nutritional value of two foods, or the amount of harmful chemicals on the surface of an item.
- fucking_tragedy 7y ago
  While we wait for Star Trek magic, our economic system refuses to account for its inability to maintain a robust, sustainable and healthy agriculture industry, or its destruction of the environment.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Our economic system optimizes for exactly this. It seems to be a facet of globalization in particular. When all your food came from a dozen local farmers whose names you knew, they each had to worry about reputational damage for doing things like this. Today the decision is made by a mid-level manager whose name you'll never know and who doesn't even work for the same company by the time the public discovers the issue. Even the company itself generally isn't known to the customers. Do you know if the food at your grocery store is from Cargill or Conagra or someone else? What does a company have to fear about reputational damage if you don't even know who they are? Capitalism requires informed customers whereas globalism smushes different quality products from different quality producers into the same pipeline based on broad categories that don't fully capture what customers actually need out of the products. But we also can't expect everyone to have to grow their own food just so they know what went into it. It takes some middle ground where farming has enough size to get reasonable economies of scale and specialization but not so much that nobody has any idea where their food actually comes from.

> Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you solve it by investing the least possible resources into it. Our economic system optimizes for exactly this.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

mikelyons 7y ago

What if we had one world religion where everyone's goal in life was to become infinitely loving and utterly selfless? Would we grow food for eachother differently? Would we be compensated differently for doing so?

jniedrauer 7y ago
You're describing humanism. We'd probably end up looking a lot like an ant colony. Unfortunately, as a non-hivemind species, it is unlikely that we will ever have that level of cohesion.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  I'm not actually referring to humanism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE1yPCeF1Cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE1yPCeF1Cc
fucking_tragedy 7y ago
No, it turns out that the adherents of the religion of "love thy neighbor" and "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" have no problem with our economic system.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  I'm talking about psychedelic induced direct experiences of the point of life as utter selflessness and infinite love.
  - zepto 7y ago
    Weird that it requires a special compound to give you a direct experience of this. You’d think that if the point of life was selflessness and love, this would be more obvious. Also, what do you think of the people whose medicine comes from the coca plant, who have direct experience that the point of life is greed and self-satisfaction?
    - mikelyons 7y ago
      the concept of "a special compound" is something you made up. It takes a special compound to experience numbness of your teeth for dental work, does that mean the numbness is something that takes away from the value of the dental work or the protection from pain? Watch the videos that correct the stigma of psychedelics and see the human history of them.
    - mikelyons 7y ago
      It sounds like you have no experience with cocaine, and no experience with psychedelics ... I can understand this position coming from ignorance, so I don't blame you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA
      - zepto 7y ago
        Firstly you are just wrong. I have experience of both, especially psychedelics, and I am familiar with and have been involved in research on the topic. Secondly, your reasoning is clearly impaired because you drew a conclusion for which you obviously don’t have any facts to support. Thirdly, you lept to defend an ungrounded claim that a particular drug experience gives access to spiritual truth. Temporary distortions of experience can be valuable but to quote from a famous drug culture movie, “why trust one drug and not another?”. This is an extraordinary claim that requires serious examination. Your reflexive defense suggests that you have lost sight of this. These kinds of failures of reasoning are attributed to psychedelics by even the most optimistic of researchers. See this article by one of the world’s leading researcher in the field: http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=IwAR36UzFla5Lfx7-4LTr6R8N0XdUSOnbg3gnRPXn806cPKO7Zsas2EsJJhDs http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=Iw... The section ‘what about the woo’ in particular talks about the problem. I think psychedelics can be very positive, but they can also damage your ability to reason. As a temporary tradeoff this may well be a reasonable price to pay for relief from trauma. It’s a red flag when you start proclaiming that psychedelics are the door to experienced of fundamental truth and you are unable to reason about it. This kind of thinking is a symptom that you haven’t addressed the side effects the psychedelics have had on you.
imhoguy 7y ago
We try: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." God be our Nature/Universe as space, soil, water air, plants, life.

commandlinefan 7y ago

… which is a good thing! The challenge is investing the right amount of resources that retain the necessary minerals, is ecologically sustainable long term and healthy. Anything more is waste, which has its own problems.

fucking_tragedy 7y ago
> The challenge is investing the right amount of resources that retain the necessary minerals, is ecologically sustainable long term and healthy. Our economic system refuses to account for these things, and refuses any attempt at being held accountable for them, as well. It optimizes for a supply chain that depletes soil, replaces robust ecosystems with fragile monocultures, forgoes sustainability, and enjoys the luxury of not having to account for the negative externalities of turning a profit.

xsmasher 7y ago

You optimize for what you can measure. Food and consumer products will have to change greatly when hand-held tricorders let you compare nutritional value of two foods, or the amount of harmful chemicals on the surface of an item.

fucking_tragedy 7y ago
While we wait for Star Trek magic, our economic system refuses to account for its inability to maintain a robust, sustainable and healthy agriculture industry, or its destruction of the environment.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Our economic system optimizes for exactly this. It seems to be a facet of globalization in particular. When all your food came from a dozen local farmers whose names you knew, they each had to worry about reputational damage for doing things like this. Today the decision is made by a mid-level manager whose name you'll never know and who doesn't even work for the same company by the time the public discovers the issue. Even the company itself generally isn't known to the customers. Do you know if the food at your grocery store is from Cargill or Conagra or someone else? What does a company have to fear about reputational damage if you don't even know who they are? Capitalism requires informed customers whereas globalism smushes different quality products from different quality producers into the same pipeline based on broad categories that don't fully capture what customers actually need out of the products. But we also can't expect everyone to have to grow their own food just so they know what went into it. It takes some middle ground where farming has enough size to get reasonable economies of scale and specialization but not so much that nobody has any idea where their food actually comes from.