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Teach kids to farm, not code.

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Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#81

Post by zzzeek »

tomjen3 wrote: post #75
Heliosmaster wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why such a desperate trend to make everyone grow their own food again? Because people forgot in a hanfdul of years (that's what it is, compared to the span of human history) what was slowly learned over the course of centuries and millennia. And the result? That kids nowadays almost think that foods magically pops out from the shelf at the supermarket. Specialization (in the sense that nobody does everything, every…

Why does it matter where stuff comes from? I haven't the foggiest idea where my wood flooring came from, where my windows came from, or where my TV came from, nor my water, electricity, or the waste disposal guys who pick up my garbage. Yet for some reason it matters where my food comes from? Really, why?

food is more important and under greater threat (see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary...) than your TV, electricity, wood flooring, or windows.

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#82

Post by Mz »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #24
motters wrote: post #18

What will the problems of the next generation be, and how do we prepare them for that? On the face of it the next few generations face huge issues. The only thing we know for certain is that the way we live now is totally unsustainable in the long run, and that new solutions will need to be found to old and unglamorous problems. More localised food production might be one way to help them through what looks like a tu…

"The only thing we know for certain is that the way we live now is totally unsustainable in the long run" We "know" this how, exactly? Malthus was saying the same thing in 1798. Paul Ehrlich was saying the same thing in 1968. They were both dead wrong. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's and 1980's hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon…

What we are doing currently is unsustainable. A lot of our farms are propped up by oil-based fertilizer, which is kind of a bigger problem than our transportation systems being so dependent on oil. We will need to do things differently because oil is a finite resource. (That doesn't mean I agree with doomsayers. Change is a constant. )

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#83

Post by cpressey »

coldtea wrote: post #52
patrickaljord wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, this is a real low for HN. Are you actually saying that the only thing computing has done for the world is better porn delivery and better commerce? Wow. Do you have any idea how we managed to decode our genome so fast? Any idea that every science labs including maths have computers to test their hypothesis and solve their equations at such a huge scale and speed no human being could possibly dream to match? How…

> Ok, this is a real low for HN. Are you actually saying that the only thing computing has done for the world is better porn delivery and better commerce? Wow. Do you have any idea how we managed to decode our genome so fast? Any idea that every science labs including maths have computers to test their hypothesis and solve their equations at such a huge scale and speed no human being could possibly dream to match? Ho…

Does being able to land on other celestial bodies and examine them up close not count as world-changing for you? Or do you think we could pretty much just do space exploration without computers?

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#84

Post by XorNot »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #58
gambiting wrote: post #11

I don't understand. We've spent thousands of years, using 99.9% of able-bodied people for farming, hunting or some other food-gathering activities. Only selected few could afford to NOT work in farming. Even America, just 200 years ago had 90% of its population working as farmers. Why such a desperate trend to make everyone grow their own food again? Sure, the food industry is not always honest,not always as good as…

> Why such a desperate trend to make everyone grow their own food again? Because people forgot in a hanfdul of years (that's what it is, compared to the span of human history) what was slowly learned over the course of centuries and millennia. And the result? That kids nowadays almost think that foods magically pops out from the shelf at the supermarket. Specialization (in the sense that nobody does everything, every…

"You never know". But guess what - the apocalypse is not coming. It didn't come in the 20s, 30s, 40s...you get the picture. There's never an apocalypse coming. And even if there were - you probably won't live through it. And if you do...then the better question is why didn't you stop it in the first place?

Farming today has to be a large scale, highly studied and high-yielding enterprise. There's lots of room for improvement, but very little benefit to it on a microscopic scale (put seeds in ground, water, hope they grow).

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#85

Post by XorNot »

gambiting wrote: post #45
Turing_Machine wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't think people should have to be subsistence peasant farmers.

They don't. As I mentioned earlier - high-yield industry scale farming might be evil, dishonest or capitalistic. Doesn't matter - it is what allowed us to not be farmers. Few hundred hears ago you had to be a farmer to survive - today you don't have to, because there is enough food for everyone on the market. IF you can find another job, that is. But if you find a different thing to do, then you don't have to be a fa…

High-yield farming also isn't any of those things. There's a difference between outcomes and practice (or indeed, general American administrative incompetence).

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#86

Post by Mz »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #58
gambiting wrote: post #11

I don't understand. We've spent thousands of years, using 99.9% of able-bodied people for farming, hunting or some other food-gathering activities. Only selected few could afford to NOT work in farming. Even America, just 200 years ago had 90% of its population working as farmers. Why such a desperate trend to make everyone grow their own food again? Sure, the food industry is not always honest,not always as good as…

> Why such a desperate trend to make everyone grow their own food again? Because people forgot in a hanfdul of years (that's what it is, compared to the span of human history) what was slowly learned over the course of centuries and millennia. And the result? That kids nowadays almost think that foods magically pops out from the shelf at the supermarket. Specialization (in the sense that nobody does everything, every…

You remind me of a story: Inner city school starts a garden. At some point, a teacher pulls a carrot (or whatever) out of the ground, washes it off and eats it. School kid who observed this starts wigging out: Did you see what he just did?! He pulled something out of the DIRT and ATE it!! Ewww!

I will add that it causes big problems when decision makers have no clue where stuff comes from, what the world's limits are, etc.

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#87

Post by XorNot »

randomdata wrote: post #67
PeterisP wrote: post #5

The big point is actually that currently we (as in, the whole world) have far more farmers than we need (especially in the developing countries) and less coders than we need. And in the future, automation and coders will ensure that we will need even less farmers. How much population do we really need to tend all global arable land using modern methods machinery? Currently in developed countries it's somewhere near 2…

Driving the equipment around is the fun part, but not the real work that goes into the business. Farming is actually quite challenging. A recent problem I remember having on my farm: Soil is full of wet lumps of clay, unsuitable for planting, cultivators are not breaking them up and you have a few day window to fix the problem before it gets too late into the season to plant the crop. What do you do? I actually agree…

Coding practice scales. Farming does not.

If you have a smartphone, you have (potentially) a programming platform. We can't simply give everyone on the planet a few acres of farmland to get to grips with the challenges of farming.

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#88

Post by loup-vaillant »

> Programming is simply a tool, a way to abstract a problem and enable it to be solved or solved more efficiently. […] The programming part is nothing more than a hammer to a builder or a scalpel to a surgeon.

That sounds like a massive understatement of the actual power of electronic computers. They are the universal mental tool. The tool that can do any sufficiently specified cognitive task. There is no such physical tool yet (though we could hope for Drexlerian nanotechnology).

Programming is the way we control this tool. I do not know of any greater power.

Re: Teach kids to farm, not code.

#89

Post by XorNot »

Nux wrote: post #16

There's enough farming. We should teach kids how not to waste the food.

It really doesn't matter - most of the food is not wasted by individuals, it's thrown away by corporations.

There's a reason corn-products are in almost literally everything...

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