Live data from Hacker News

Proof of Corn

proofofcorn.com

231–240 of 325 posts

Re: Proof of Corn

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill gates is one of the largest farmland owners in the world (or at least was - I last checked about 10 years ago...) He hires people to work on his farm, and managers to manage it. Food is the most important thing for modern society and the reports I have suggest he is trying to raise food in the most sustainable fashion possible (organic is often not sustainable)

Why is organic not suatsinable? Not affordable I get. But does organic damage the environment making it hard to farm again? or use inputs that are not sustainable? Genuine question. I am alway curious when a statement goes against conventional wisdom.

Organic allows some really nasty chemicals that build up in the soil because they were used 200 years ago. Organic often substitutes plowing for weed killer - this is both bad for the air - more CO2 - and plowing destroys the soil.

if organic finds something good conventional farming adopts it.

conventional farming is developed at research universities. Organic is developed in cities by people who know nothing about farming, and often have an agenda.

not that conventional farming is all good. And even where it is better not all farmers do what is best. However organic is not a step better.

Re: Proof of Corn

#232
post #97

> AI doesn't need to drive a tractor. It needs to orchestrate the systems and people who do. Pure dystopia.

What work DO you want the humans to do? The endless complaining and goalposting shifting is exhausting

[deleted]

Re: Proof of Corn

#233

This exercise is pointless. Of course software can affect the physical world: Google Maps changes traffic patterns; DoorDash teleports takeoff food right to my doorstep; the weather app alters how people dress. This list is un-ending. But these effects are always second-order. Humans are always there in the background bridging the gap between bits and atoms (underpaid delivery drivers in the case of doordash). The mo…

I think the distinction between "directly" and "indirectly" affecting the world is meaningless. Say you're an Uber driver. What does the actual work? The car. You don't take people from A to B, your car does. You don't burn a thousand calories per mile, your car does.

Yet you get credited for all that work, because a car's ability to move people isn't special compared to your ability to operate it without running people over. Similarly, your ability to buy things from a store isn't special compared to an AI's ability to design a hydroponics farm or fusion reactor or whatever out of those things. Yes, you can do things the AI can't, but on the other hand, your car can do things you can't.

All this talk about "doing things in the physical world" is just another goalpost moving, and a really dumb one at that.

Re: Proof of Corn

#234
post #89

This is lopsided. Technology promised to remove drudgery from our lives, and now we're seeing experiments that automate all the easy, air-conditioned decision making while still delegating the toil to humans Unequivocally awful

Awful indeed! Turns out most of our jobs have consisted of easy, air-conditioned decision making. We're going to have to find another secret handshake with productive capitalists if we want to ensure our continued allotment of the spoils of global exploitation of the toilers.

Or they force us to close those hands into fists.

Re: Proof of Corn

#236
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would guess it's less about rent seeking and more about him making a bet on safe places to store billions of dollars. there's a lot of economic collapse that can happen where farm land remains valuable in a way that housing stock, office buildings, or MSFT stock wouldn't

The qustion does that collapse look like a warzone where a digitial piece of paper saying you own something means very little.

my point is that if you were to look at the spectrum of collapse that can happen, maintaining ownership of valuable farm land is basically the last stop before your billions being worth nothing. if we're to the point of legal land ownership dissolving then there's really nothing more he could have done to preserve capital

Re: Proof of Corn

#237
post #22

The point they seem to be making is that AI can "orchestrate" the real world even if it can't interact physically. I can definitely believe that in 2026 someone at their computer with access to money can send the right emails and make the right bank transfers to get real people to grow corn for you. However even by that metric I don't see how Claude is doing that. Seth is the one researching the suppliers "with the h…

I think with the work John Deere is doing to keep closed systems, I could see a proprietary sdk and equipment guidance component.

Re: Proof of Corn

#238
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think once we get off LLM's and find something that more closely maps to how humans think, which is still not known afaik. So either never or once the brain is figured out.

This is where it’s a mistake to conflate sentience and intelligence. We don’t need to figure out sentience, just intelligence.

Is there intelligence without sentience ?

Re: Proof of Corn

#240
post #22

The point they seem to be making is that AI can "orchestrate" the real world even if it can't interact physically. I can definitely believe that in 2026 someone at their computer with access to money can send the right emails and make the right bank transfers to get real people to grow corn for you. However even by that metric I don't see how Claude is doing that. Seth is the one researching the suppliers "with the h…

It's because "AI" is the new "Crypto". Useless for everything, but everyone wants to jam it into everything.
Post reply on HN