5 ms·

> Technology should be used carefully when in the environment of the unknown. Trials and observations should be conducted in limited capacity with a long window

by ethbr0 5y ago

> Technology should be used carefully when in the environment of the unknown. Trials and observations should be conducted in limited capacity with a long window of study A laudable goal. And yet, without the agricultural revolution of the 1960s, we wouldn't have grocery stores today with well-stocked shelves. Cautiousness has its own price.

markdown 5y ago
Have you seen the grocery stores today? I mean really stopped and taken a good hard look at what's on them? Mostly garbage. Garbage. And then you have this: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/q4aeuc/every_single_night_at_amazon_fresh_thrown_out_5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/q4aeuc/e...
- californical 5y ago
  It’s totally true. I’ve always liked the advice that you should mostly walk around the perimeter of the store, and only go into the middle part (aisles) when you have some specific need (canned veggies, beans, pasta). It obviously depends a bit on your store’s layout, but I’ve found the advice to be almost universal. The aisles contain all of the junk (an unbelievable amount of junk), and the good fresh ingredients — fruit, veggies, dairy, breads, meats — are around the outside.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The Reddit link is irrelevant without knowing the size of the operation and the normal amounts of waste. If people think they can design systems that can predict demand perfectly and result in no errors, perhaps they should get a job at a grocery store or start their own.
  - markdown 5y ago
    The OP (who works at that shop and knows the demand and supply), explained in the post that they have a massive freezer that's mostly empty they could throw this stuff into for a day or so until it's picked up by soup kitchens. The choice to discard perfectly good food is a diabolic one.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      It’s also discussed in the thread that other major retailer worldwide do the same thing. You can choose to think that there are evil people intentionally choosing to throw the food away deriving happiness from others’ hunger. Or you can investigate the issue and determine that there is a good reason (aka probability and cost of liability is too high compared to throwing it away). Retail businesses operate on razor thin margins where a few missteps would kill them, and it is pretty naive to think the professionals in that business do not know how to run their own business.
      - markdown 5y ago
        > It’s also discussed in the thread that other major retailer worldwide do the same thing There are other evil people out there so this is ok? Is that your argument? > There are evil people intentionally choosing to throw the food away deriving happiness from others’ hunger What are they, if not evil, because that's exactly what they're doing... throwing good food away while people in the neighbourhood go hungry. > Or you can investigate the issue and determine that there is a good reason But I have investigated the reason, and it isn't a good one. This food is thrown out BEFORE expiry date. This means that at the moment of destruction, it was completely legal to sell the food. If it was legal to sell, it was legal to give away. And I'm not saying that they should let dumpster divers just come and take what they want. I'm saying that there are organisations (soup kitchens, etc) that you can have legal agreements with that leave Amazon free of liability, just as if they'd be free of liability if they sold the food. To not do this is evil. > Retail businesses operate on razor thin margins where a few missteps would kill them Selling food before it's best-before/expiry date is legal and is the core function of every retail business. They could sell this food for a $0.01 to a food kitchen and it would be no more a misstep or risk than if they sold it to any other customer. > it is pretty naive to think the professionals in that business do not know how to run their own business I said nothing of the sort. They know exactly how to run their own business. But they're evil people who are letting starving people suffer while they throw out perfectly good, FDA approved, non-expired, healthy food.
Retric 5y ago
That was ~60 years ago, it’s perfectly reasonable to use a 20 year time horizon for testing changes to the food supply etc. Progress isn’t just about whatever the new thing is it’s about finding something actually better.
- melony 5y ago
  says Lysenko.
quotemstr 5y ago
> And yet, without the agricultural revolution of the 1960s, we wouldn't have grocery stores today with well-stocked shelves. It's not that we wouldn't have well-stocked shelves: it's that we wouldn't be alive. We can feed as many people as we do because of the incredible advances we've made in agricultural sciences. Without those, there just wouldn't be enough calories to go around. Does the sum of all the joys of billions of people mean nothing to everyone who denounces modern agriculture? All this invective against technology is sophomoric, short-sighted, and fundamentally unserious, and if we followed the recommendations of people to whom science is a bad thing, just "playing god", then a huge number of us would simply cease to exist.
- carapace 5y ago
  Ecology is a science. > Does the sum of all the joys of billions of people mean nothing to everyone who denounces modern agriculture? The thing about that is that the story isn't over yet. Yes, billions of people owe their lives to the Haber–Bosch process (et. al., I'm obviously simplifying here) but if billions of people die due to ecological and economic collapse, is it really all worth it? As a concrete counter-example to modern mass agriculture there are ecological systems of food production that result in high yields while increasing fertility, biodiversity, and biomass (such as Permaculture, Syntropic and Regenerative agriculture, etc.) So we can have our both well-stocked grocery shelves and healthy ecosystems.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    Additionally, it seems the production of industrial ammonia is a major CO2 emitter. https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-chemistry/Industrial-ammonia-production-emits-CO2/97/i24 https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-chemistry/Industrial-a...
- bmitc 5y ago
  Do you have any references for these statements? I have never even heard that things were apparently so dire in the 60s. Does your sentiment that we apparently couldn’t feed ourselves take into account population growth? What if the population had simply not grown as it did? My current understanding is that the U.S. overproduces what it needs, exports the excess at dirt cheap prices, killing off developing countries’ farmer livelihoods. So in the U.S., there’s multiple birds killed with one stone.

by ethbr0 5y ago

markdown 5y ago

Have you seen the grocery stores today? I mean really stopped and taken a good hard look at what's on them? Mostly garbage. Garbage. And then you have this: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/q4aeuc/every_single_night_at_amazon_fresh_thrown_out_5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/q4aeuc/e...

californical 5y ago
It’s totally true. I’ve always liked the advice that you should mostly walk around the perimeter of the store, and only go into the middle part (aisles) when you have some specific need (canned veggies, beans, pasta). It obviously depends a bit on your store’s layout, but I’ve found the advice to be almost universal. The aisles contain all of the junk (an unbelievable amount of junk), and the good fresh ingredients — fruit, veggies, dairy, breads, meats — are around the outside.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
The Reddit link is irrelevant without knowing the size of the operation and the normal amounts of waste. If people think they can design systems that can predict demand perfectly and result in no errors, perhaps they should get a job at a grocery store or start their own.
- markdown 5y ago
  The OP (who works at that shop and knows the demand and supply), explained in the post that they have a massive freezer that's mostly empty they could throw this stuff into for a day or so until it's picked up by soup kitchens. The choice to discard perfectly good food is a diabolic one.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It’s also discussed in the thread that other major retailer worldwide do the same thing. You can choose to think that there are evil people intentionally choosing to throw the food away deriving happiness from others’ hunger. Or you can investigate the issue and determine that there is a good reason (aka probability and cost of liability is too high compared to throwing it away). Retail businesses operate on razor thin margins where a few missteps would kill them, and it is pretty naive to think the professionals in that business do not know how to run their own business.
    - markdown 5y ago
      > It’s also discussed in the thread that other major retailer worldwide do the same thing There are other evil people out there so this is ok? Is that your argument? > There are evil people intentionally choosing to throw the food away deriving happiness from others’ hunger What are they, if not evil, because that's exactly what they're doing... throwing good food away while people in the neighbourhood go hungry. > Or you can investigate the issue and determine that there is a good reason But I have investigated the reason, and it isn't a good one. This food is thrown out BEFORE expiry date. This means that at the moment of destruction, it was completely legal to sell the food. If it was legal to sell, it was legal to give away. And I'm not saying that they should let dumpster divers just come and take what they want. I'm saying that there are organisations (soup kitchens, etc) that you can have legal agreements with that leave Amazon free of liability, just as if they'd be free of liability if they sold the food. To not do this is evil. > Retail businesses operate on razor thin margins where a few missteps would kill them Selling food before it's best-before/expiry date is legal and is the core function of every retail business. They could sell this food for a $0.01 to a food kitchen and it would be no more a misstep or risk than if they sold it to any other customer. > it is pretty naive to think the professionals in that business do not know how to run their own business I said nothing of the sort. They know exactly how to run their own business. But they're evil people who are letting starving people suffer while they throw out perfectly good, FDA approved, non-expired, healthy food.

Retric 5y ago

That was ~60 years ago, it’s perfectly reasonable to use a 20 year time horizon for testing changes to the food supply etc. Progress isn’t just about whatever the new thing is it’s about finding something actually better.

melony 5y ago
says Lysenko.

quotemstr 5y ago

> And yet, without the agricultural revolution of the 1960s, we wouldn't have grocery stores today with well-stocked shelves. It's not that we wouldn't have well-stocked shelves: it's that we wouldn't be alive. We can feed as many people as we do because of the incredible advances we've made in agricultural sciences. Without those, there just wouldn't be enough calories to go around. Does the sum of all the joys of billions of people mean nothing to everyone who denounces modern agriculture? All this invective against technology is sophomoric, short-sighted, and fundamentally unserious, and if we followed the recommendations of people to whom science is a bad thing, just "playing god", then a huge number of us would simply cease to exist.

carapace 5y ago
Ecology is a science. > Does the sum of all the joys of billions of people mean nothing to everyone who denounces modern agriculture? The thing about that is that the story isn't over yet. Yes, billions of people owe their lives to the Haber–Bosch process (et. al., I'm obviously simplifying here) but if billions of people die due to ecological and economic collapse, is it really all worth it? As a concrete counter-example to modern mass agriculture there are ecological systems of food production that result in high yields while increasing fertility, biodiversity, and biomass (such as Permaculture, Syntropic and Regenerative agriculture, etc.) So we can have our both well-stocked grocery shelves and healthy ecosystems.
- bmitc 5y ago
  Additionally, it seems the production of industrial ammonia is a major CO2 emitter. https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-chemistry/Industrial-ammonia-production-emits-CO2/97/i24 https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-chemistry/Industrial-a...
bmitc 5y ago
Do you have any references for these statements? I have never even heard that things were apparently so dire in the 60s. Does your sentiment that we apparently couldn’t feed ourselves take into account population growth? What if the population had simply not grown as it did? My current understanding is that the U.S. overproduces what it needs, exports the excess at dirt cheap prices, killing off developing countries’ farmer livelihoods. So in the U.S., there’s multiple birds killed with one stone.