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In the same we should be worried that people don't know how to grow their own food, procure their own heat, or build and thrive in a community. Not being snarky

In the same we should be worried that people don't know how to grow their own food, procure their own heat, or build and thrive in a community. Not being snarky, I am genuinely worried about that

rqtwteye 3y ago
Or how a car works. I am always surprised that a lot of young people have no idea how many cylinders their car has or how to do an oil change, never mind any real repair.
- throwaway3090 3y ago
  Although, maybe that's ok. My car has 0 cylinders and doesn't require oil changes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
arnaudsm 3y ago
Great comparison, that's even more worrying. If we suddenly loose fossil fuels and fertilizers, the lack of agricultural skills will probably kill billions.
- setr 3y ago
  Unless you’re in full apocalypse mode, every man for themselves, I’d expect for the most case people will learn from their neighbors quickly enough — as long as a survivable subset of the population knows what they’re doing What’s going to kill billions is the lack of industrialized farming productivity, but you don’t expect every individual to know how to resolve that
  - berkes 3y ago
    I doubt even the lack of industrialized farming productivity will "kill billions". It will certainly switch diets and most probably cause hunger and malnutrition for some time. But we can support billions of people, given the right diets. We cannot support billions of people's mcnuggets, beef burgers or cornflakes with milk. About a third of my food comes from stuff I make, grow and harvest myself. I can up that, if I need, but preparing, growing and harvesting are a hobby, not a full-time endeavor. I'm certain I can't up it to 100%. Maybe not even 50%. But some neighbor, friends and family can help out (and I them) and I'm certain with some ~100 people we could be self-sufficient. Sober, sure. But not dead. (I would die from lack of insulin within months, though. TII. So I am aware of how dependent on industry and high tech I am)
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      > About a third of my food comes from stuff I make, grow and harvest myself. 1/3rd of value or flavour is relatively easy. 1/3rd of protein or calories is a lot harder. Need those mechanized 2000ac farms growing corn, canola or wheat to supplement the homegrown tomatoes/potatoes/peppers/herbs/apples. But it’s impressive what can be done with a somewhat small backyard in terms of value/flavour and not a lot of effort.
      - fn-mote 3y ago
        > 1/3rd of protein or calories is a lot harder Depends on the local deer population. Only slightly kidding. They reproduce quickly and are currently plentiful. Overabundant, even, in the central US.
        Scoundreller 3y ago
        oh, for sure, but they said "make, grow and harvest" themselves, so I excluded that from my thinking. Get something else to do the work can accomplish a lot. As could fishing depending on where you are.
      - berkes 3y ago
        My diet is vegetarian, so a lot of flavor is that staple. My tiny lot brought me all the potatoes, corn, beans and pumpkin I need and some more. Our five walnut trees, shared with 12+ households, produce some more protein. I obviously still buy rice and a lot of wheat and rye meal to bake my bread and pizza and to make pasta. My point was that I don't need the large industrialized food industry to feed myself. My point was not that I can do without a society with specialized and efficient food production.
lxgr 3y ago
That concern must be about as old as agricultural societies at this point. Specialization and division of labor really is nothing new.
blueflow 3y ago
If only tech was at the point where it would be as reliable as your local supermarket or your house. When i'll leave for family home later, i'll take my laptop with me. My family is big, so the chances are high that i'll need to run some ADB or photorec on a SD card. I hate it[1]. There is some knowledge/reliability deficit with computers that houses/heatings/food aquisition dont have. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HvtEhxINvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HvtEhxINvQ
- q0uaur 3y ago
  from my experience, heating has plenty of reliability deficit, probably getting way worse in recent years. fancy boilers with computers in them break way more often than they have any right to.
  - brewtide 3y ago
    Agreed. Likely in the search of efficiency, which oftentimes brings complexity, which then involves more precision or more pieces to a puzzle, or both. There is something to be said about the dead simple ways of things for sure, and all depending on object/item but a "sweet spot" where something is pretty darn efficient yet not overly complex. Our endless forwards towards "the most efficient" everything always carries consequences. People / society included.
pixl97 3y ago
More people at least knowing and having some practice with these things makes communities more antifragile. At our current rate of consolidation and specialization we're going to get to the point where so few people know how to do particular high tech things we may be at risk of someone taking those people out and leaving a massive capability hole across multiple industries.
- blueflow 3y ago
  > risk of someone taking those people out Or just burnout, changing jobs or them leaving tech alltogether. I'd argue that many companies are already incapable of keeping their tech stack running as intended due to knowledge deficits.
  - q0uaur 3y ago
    we've done it to ourselves, by embracing MASSIVE complexity at every turn to get the fancy new features. i keep thinking about how we don't actually need 95% of the code running at my job to actually accomplish my company's goals. it's insane how we just kept going with the flow while features and maintenance effort exploded. that said, anyone know how well the BSD's work as a desktop operating system? mostly worried about hardware i guess, since it's already an issue on linux from time to time. but man the linux ecosystem, while wonderful, suffers from massive complexity too, or at least it looks more and more like it the longer i use it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bongodongobob 3y ago
Yeah water and sunlight is too much for anyone to comprehend. Don't pretend that someone couldn't learn it in a weekend. Plant seeds Water Sunlight Pick weeds Wait
- BytesAndGears 3y ago
  Did you forget a /s ? Growing food is much harder than that. Growing a few tomatoes or something is easy. But growing enough food to sustain yourself and your family is much more involved and requires a lot of training and experience. Most people could likely do it. But it would take them 3-5 years of failures before they could reliably grow enough food for themselves. Probably more on the scale of a whole family.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    Growing food year round for your entire family is quite literally impossible unless you have acres of land.
    - kefabean 3y ago
      There’s a widely quoted myth that the UK’s ‘dig for victory’ campaign during WWII deemed a standard allotment plot (~250m2) sufficient to feed a family of 4.
    - vik0 3y ago
      Why do you think it takes that much land to feed an entire (average[1]) family? Besides plants, you could have animals, and get milk and meat from them. Chickens for eggs and meat too. It doesn't take too much land for it in my opinion. And if you live in a community that does that sort of thing, you could trade meat for tomatoes, and vice versa, or whatever, without relying on megacorps to give you your calories Localism is the way [1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...
      - 3y ago

In the same we should be worried that people don't know how to grow their own food, procure their own heat, or build and thrive in a community. Not being snarky, I am genuinely worried about that

rqtwteye 3y ago

Or how a car works. I am always surprised that a lot of young people have no idea how many cylinders their car has or how to do an oil change, never mind any real repair.

throwaway3090 3y ago
Although, maybe that's ok. My car has 0 cylinders and doesn't require oil changes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

arnaudsm 3y ago

Great comparison, that's even more worrying. If we suddenly loose fossil fuels and fertilizers, the lack of agricultural skills will probably kill billions.

setr 3y ago
Unless you’re in full apocalypse mode, every man for themselves, I’d expect for the most case people will learn from their neighbors quickly enough — as long as a survivable subset of the population knows what they’re doing What’s going to kill billions is the lack of industrialized farming productivity, but you don’t expect every individual to know how to resolve that
- berkes 3y ago
  I doubt even the lack of industrialized farming productivity will "kill billions". It will certainly switch diets and most probably cause hunger and malnutrition for some time. But we can support billions of people, given the right diets. We cannot support billions of people's mcnuggets, beef burgers or cornflakes with milk. About a third of my food comes from stuff I make, grow and harvest myself. I can up that, if I need, but preparing, growing and harvesting are a hobby, not a full-time endeavor. I'm certain I can't up it to 100%. Maybe not even 50%. But some neighbor, friends and family can help out (and I them) and I'm certain with some ~100 people we could be self-sufficient. Sober, sure. But not dead. (I would die from lack of insulin within months, though. TII. So I am aware of how dependent on industry and high tech I am)
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    > About a third of my food comes from stuff I make, grow and harvest myself. 1/3rd of value or flavour is relatively easy. 1/3rd of protein or calories is a lot harder. Need those mechanized 2000ac farms growing corn, canola or wheat to supplement the homegrown tomatoes/potatoes/peppers/herbs/apples. But it’s impressive what can be done with a somewhat small backyard in terms of value/flavour and not a lot of effort.
    - fn-mote 3y ago
      > 1/3rd of protein or calories is a lot harder Depends on the local deer population. Only slightly kidding. They reproduce quickly and are currently plentiful. Overabundant, even, in the central US.
      - Scoundreller 3y ago
        oh, for sure, but they said "make, grow and harvest" themselves, so I excluded that from my thinking. Get something else to do the work can accomplish a lot. As could fishing depending on where you are.
    - berkes 3y ago
      My diet is vegetarian, so a lot of flavor is that staple. My tiny lot brought me all the potatoes, corn, beans and pumpkin I need and some more. Our five walnut trees, shared with 12+ households, produce some more protein. I obviously still buy rice and a lot of wheat and rye meal to bake my bread and pizza and to make pasta. My point was that I don't need the large industrialized food industry to feed myself. My point was not that I can do without a society with specialized and efficient food production.

lxgr 3y ago

That concern must be about as old as agricultural societies at this point. Specialization and division of labor really is nothing new.

blueflow 3y ago

If only tech was at the point where it would be as reliable as your local supermarket or your house. When i'll leave for family home later, i'll take my laptop with me. My family is big, so the chances are high that i'll need to run some ADB or photorec on a SD card. I hate it[1]. There is some knowledge/reliability deficit with computers that houses/heatings/food aquisition dont have. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HvtEhxINvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HvtEhxINvQ

q0uaur 3y ago
from my experience, heating has plenty of reliability deficit, probably getting way worse in recent years. fancy boilers with computers in them break way more often than they have any right to.
- brewtide 3y ago
  Agreed. Likely in the search of efficiency, which oftentimes brings complexity, which then involves more precision or more pieces to a puzzle, or both. There is something to be said about the dead simple ways of things for sure, and all depending on object/item but a "sweet spot" where something is pretty darn efficient yet not overly complex. Our endless forwards towards "the most efficient" everything always carries consequences. People / society included.

pixl97 3y ago

More people at least knowing and having some practice with these things makes communities more antifragile. At our current rate of consolidation and specialization we're going to get to the point where so few people know how to do particular high tech things we may be at risk of someone taking those people out and leaving a massive capability hole across multiple industries.

blueflow 3y ago
> risk of someone taking those people out Or just burnout, changing jobs or them leaving tech alltogether. I'd argue that many companies are already incapable of keeping their tech stack running as intended due to knowledge deficits.
- q0uaur 3y ago
  we've done it to ourselves, by embracing MASSIVE complexity at every turn to get the fancy new features. i keep thinking about how we don't actually need 95% of the code running at my job to actually accomplish my company's goals. it's insane how we just kept going with the flow while features and maintenance effort exploded. that said, anyone know how well the BSD's work as a desktop operating system? mostly worried about hardware i guess, since it's already an issue on linux from time to time. but man the linux ecosystem, while wonderful, suffers from massive complexity too, or at least it looks more and more like it the longer i use it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

bongodongobob 3y ago

Yeah water and sunlight is too much for anyone to comprehend. Don't pretend that someone couldn't learn it in a weekend. Plant seeds Water Sunlight Pick weeds Wait

BytesAndGears 3y ago
Did you forget a /s ? Growing food is much harder than that. Growing a few tomatoes or something is easy. But growing enough food to sustain yourself and your family is much more involved and requires a lot of training and experience. Most people could likely do it. But it would take them 3-5 years of failures before they could reliably grow enough food for themselves. Probably more on the scale of a whole family.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Growing food year round for your entire family is quite literally impossible unless you have acres of land.
  - kefabean 3y ago
    There’s a widely quoted myth that the UK’s ‘dig for victory’ campaign during WWII deemed a standard allotment plot (~250m2) sufficient to feed a family of 4.
  - vik0 3y ago
    Why do you think it takes that much land to feed an entire (average[1]) family? Besides plants, you could have animals, and get milk and meat from them. Chickens for eggs and meat too. It doesn't take too much land for it in my opinion. And if you live in a community that does that sort of thing, you could trade meat for tomatoes, and vice versa, or whatever, without relying on megacorps to give you your calories Localism is the way [1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h...
    - 3y ago