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The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

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Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#51

Post by mrguyorama »

I bounced off this game.

It was fun and rewarding early on, as an idle game addict, but there's a massive complexity cliff.

You go from "just plant the newest crop on every square" to "Okay, now you need to manage farm-wide state in a way that the tools do not support, and develop powerful planning systems and priority systems to actually yield meaningful results and higher level crops" and I just don't understand why.

The reward for rewriting an entire working (nice and simple) system to a behemoth full of complex logic and systems engineering is.... another crop? At least until you get to spawn new drones which is locked off until you've already basically beaten the game for some reason?

Like it feels like there is massive missing transition and purpose to that complexity. In factorio, you deal with the insanity of petrochemicals because it gives you fun toys.

I found myself quite unable to engineer an entire system like that just to... improve my rate of resource growth. Somewhat.

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#52

Post by Tyr42 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #34
candiddevmike wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with hours of time in Factorio pre-space age update, I've really struggled to get back into the game. I really want to build out a mega base with the new train logic, but every time I try to get into it it just feels like work. Space age seems like it had a pretty lukewarm reception, and some of the tech tree changes seem like artificial padding (cliff explosives).

I'll be honest, I don't think Space Age was all that good as an expansion. The developers really focused on giving the player new types of logistics challenges to solve, but that was never what I wanted. I wanted the same Factorio gameplay, but with more stuff to build. So out of the four new planets, the only one I actually enjoyed building on was Vulcanus (because it plays pretty much like vanilla Factorio but with…

Luckily, there are lots of mods which make the base game more. I really enjoyed my bobs + angels run. I'm sure it would be even more fun if you opted into quality on top to really go mad.

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#53

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

9rx wrote: post #35
sebstefan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I get the confusion The framing of the debate is not using your terminology so this isn't useful Being a farmer isn't owning a farm, it's doing the farming. Farmhands are farmers. This is the definition that most people have, and if we use your definition, the entire debate doesn't make sense. Remember we're talking about a game, and the game is called "replacing the farmer", in which you don't play a humanoid and…

> Being a farmer isn't owning a farm Not according to the government. To legally become a farmer you need farm receipts of a certain amount or more. Selling your labour to a farmer is not that. And not according to the dictionary either. There are multiple words surrounding this topic for good reason. > Farmhands are farmers. It is possible that a farmer also works on his farm, or another farmer's farm for that matte…

>> Being a farmer isn't owning a farm

> Not according to the government.

Why would we care what they think? Depending on the government we're talking about, that could be an ignominious distinction. One government that comes to mind most recently focused its efforts on creating fake memes and myspace pages of political opponents, to troll them, while the same government failed to provide basic services to its people (and continues to do so).

Instead of asking the government what words mean (Orwell wrote on this idea), we can just ask the people what the words mean. And the people say that 'farmer' includes folks doing the actual cultivation, even if they don't own a thing.

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#54

Post by 9rx »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #53
9rx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being a farmer isn't owning a farm Not according to the government. To legally become a farmer you need farm receipts of a certain amount or more. Selling your labour to a farmer is not that. And not according to the dictionary either. There are multiple words surrounding this topic for good reason. > Farmhands are farmers. It is possible that a farmer also works on his farm, or another farmer's farm for that matte…

>> Being a farmer isn't owning a farm > Not according to the government. Why would we care what they think? Depending on the government we're talking about, that could be an ignominious distinction. One government that comes to mind most recently focused its efforts on creating fake memes and myspace pages of political opponents, to troll them, while the same government failed to provide basic services to its people…

> Why would we care what they think?

Well, with the exception of Hong Kong, which isn't exactly a farming mecca, Singapore, and Eswatini, all other English speaking countries are democratic. Which means that the government and the people are the very same thing, so when the people have decided that's what farmer is, that's what farmer is to basically everyone (there are always outliers who like to go against the grain, of course).

> we can just ask the people what the words mean.

There's an old saying: "Actions speak louder than words". People will make up bullshit if you ask them. More revealing is to look at how people actually use the word "farmer" in practice. And it turns out that we do — and then record that use in a book known as the dictionary. Like I said in an earlier comment, it echoes the same.

> And the people say that 'farmer' includes folks doing the actual cultivation

Sure. There are also people who use the word "farmer" to refer to someone who creates web/social media content. But these are outlier uses. Obviously all words have been made up on the spot, and can be made up on the spot (again) any time you so wish. You've not stumbled upon any kind of revelation there. But in going that way you've made it clear that you're not paying attention to the discussion that is taking place.

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#55

Post by soultrees »

vrighter wrote: post #21
skeltoac wrote: post #2

I played this! The quadcopter with the straw hat got me. Funny and great fun. At the end I was still full of ideas for optimizing my code and the dev was making breaking changes that would require a full rewrite (a good time guaranteed) but I was more compelled to go back to Factorio due to the Space Age expansion. The rest of this comment would be about Factorio but writing on HN does not help the factory to grow.

I had spent ages optimizing my maze solver ( https://github.com/VrIgHtEr/TheFarmerSolvedAMaze ). Meticulously going over which operations take how many ticks. But then the dev made a bunch of breaking changes and couldn't be bothered to rewrite everything.

Run an agent on it. This is what they excel at.

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#56

Post by cheschire »

mrguyorama wrote: post #51

I bounced off this game. It was fun and rewarding early on, as an idle game addict, but there's a massive complexity cliff. You go from "just plant the newest crop on every square" to "Okay, now you need to manage farm-wide state in a way that the tools do not support, and develop powerful planning systems and priority systems to actually yield meaningful results and higher level crops" and I just don't understand wh…

Maybe don’t do everything at once. Try cycling through optimized whole-farm algorithms and clear() between them

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#57

Post by sebstefan »

9rx wrote: post #35
sebstefan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I get the confusion The framing of the debate is not using your terminology so this isn't useful Being a farmer isn't owning a farm, it's doing the farming. Farmhands are farmers. This is the definition that most people have, and if we use your definition, the entire debate doesn't make sense. Remember we're talking about a game, and the game is called "replacing the farmer", in which you don't play a humanoid and…

> Being a farmer isn't owning a farm Not according to the government. To legally become a farmer you need farm receipts of a certain amount or more. Selling your labour to a farmer is not that. And not according to the dictionary either. There are multiple words surrounding this topic for good reason. > Farmhands are farmers. It is possible that a farmer also works on his farm, or another farmer's farm for that matte…

> Actually, we were talking about some pedantic take on the word "replace", which transitioned into a pedantic take on the word "farmer". There is no discussion about a game going on in this thread. This indicates that you didn't bother to read the thread before replying. Why?

? No the entire thing is about the game and the word "replace" in the title.

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#58

Post by sebstefan »

tantalor wrote: post #40
sebstefan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming isn't artistry, society benefits from its automation Is it still bad if the farmer gets replaced?

What's so special about artists? Farming is an ancient human practice. It would be a huge loss to society if we forgot how to do it with our hands, without automation.

>What's so special about artists?

People like doing it

If you automate away jobs people like, their labor gets re-routed to other things they don't like. Like not being able to sell illustrations and turning to being a cashier

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#59

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

9rx wrote: post #54
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Being a farmer isn't owning a farm > Not according to the government. Why would we care what they think? Depending on the government we're talking about, that could be an ignominious distinction. One government that comes to mind most recently focused its efforts on creating fake memes and myspace pages of political opponents, to troll them, while the same government failed to provide basic services to its people…

> Why would we care what they think? Well, with the exception of Hong Kong, which isn't exactly a farming mecca, Singapore, and Eswatini, all other English speaking countries are democratic. Which means that the government and the people are the very same thing, so when the people have decided that's what farmer is, that's what farmer is to basically everyone (there are always outliers who like to go against the grai…

> democratic. Which means that the government and the people are the very same thing

This is an unrealistic, idealistic assumption which evidence does not bear out. Examples: Ask people whether they think "farmer" includes non-owning cultivators; Look at majorities voting and losing due to things like the electoral college; Look at gerrymandering seeking to minimize government representation of the people.

If the government and the people are indeed the very same thing, then we can just ask the people, because according to you, the government agrees with the people anyways, or it is undemocratic.

> People will make up bullshit if you ask them.

In general, this goes double for governments. As for this example, it's impossible for the majority of people to "make up bullshit" for word meaning, because the meaning of a word is what most people say it is.

On the other hand, it's totally possible for a government to "make up bullshit" in that case.

> There are also people who use the word "farmer" to refer to someone who creates web/social media content.

There are also people (perhaps even governments!) who exclude non-owning cultivators from their personal definition of "farmer", but that is an outlier use, in some cases only applicable in niche contexts, like tax law. Most people do not use such a definition.

> you're not paying attention to the discussion that is taking place

Please don't attack other posters. That behavior is perhaps better suited for more well-known social media sites. You are smart and capable of making your point without attempting to detract from me as a person.

Re: The Farmer Was Replaced [video]

#60

Post by 9rx »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #59
9rx wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would we care what they think? Well, with the exception of Hong Kong, which isn't exactly a farming mecca, Singapore, and Eswatini, all other English speaking countries are democratic. Which means that the government and the people are the very same thing, so when the people have decided that's what farmer is, that's what farmer is to basically everyone (there are always outliers who like to go against the grai…

> democratic. Which means that the government and the people are the very same thing This is an unrealistic, idealistic assumption which evidence does not bear out. Examples: Ask people whether they think "farmer" includes non-owning cultivators; Look at majorities voting and losing due to things like the electoral college; Look at gerrymandering seeking to minimize government representation of the people. If the gov…

> Ask people what they think "farming" includes non-owning cultivators

"Farming" usually refers to all that surrounds the entire activity. That includes farmers, farmhands, supportive family, etc. But we've been talking about "farmer".

With that, I'll assume you accidentally mistyped "farmer". Let's take a look at a practical example. Soybean and cattle farmers have recently been all over the news with stories about their current low/high profitability. Do the masses watching the news understand these people as being the hired hands out in the field/in the barn collecting a fixed wage? Or do they understand these people as being the business owner with a product to sell?

> because the meaning of a word is what most people say it is.

Not quite. The meaning of the word is how the speaker (or author) has decided to use it.

But, yes, since we are currently talking about what most people consider the word to mean as a general rule, not a specific person using it in a particular way, "farmer" is deemed to be the business owner. We know this not only from anecdotal observation but also because there are people whose job it is to determine how people use words and that is what they have determined is most common.

The game chose to use the word differently, in a less traditional way, but the discussion has made it clear that we aren't talking about that specific instance. Going there would be nonsensical.

> Please don't attack other posters.

The computer screen you are looking at cannot attack you. Perhaps what you really mean is that your emotions are leaving you to feel unpleasant? These feelings stem from the mind's view of the world not matching the reality it is starting to understand. This confusion, for want of a better word, can feel like an attack of sorts. However, it does not stem from external force. It is an internal process. When this happens, it is time for personal introspection.

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