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Comment by catigula

7 days ago

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The only solution to those people starving to death is to kill the people that benefit from them starving to death. It's a solved problem, the solution isn't palatable. No one is starving to death because of a lack of engineering prowess.

> People are starving to death and the world's brightest engineers are ...

This is a political will, empathy, and leadership problem. Not an engineering problem.

  • Those problems might be more tractable if all of our best and brightest were working on them.

    • >>> People are starving to death and the world's brightest engineers are ...

      >> This is a political will, empathy, and leadership problem. Not an engineering problem.

      > Those problems might be more tractable if all of our best and brightest were working on them.

      The ability to produce enough food for those in need already exists, so that problem is theoretically solved. Granted, logistics engineering[0] is a real thing and would benefit from "our best and brightest."

      What is lacking most recently, based on empirical observation, is a commitment to benefiting those in need without expectation of remuneration. Or, in other words, empathetic acts of kindness.

      Which is a "people problem" (a.k.a. the trio I previously identified).

      0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistics_engineering

Famine in the modern world is almost entirely caused by dysfunctional governments and/or armed conflicts. Engineers have basically nothing to do with either of those.

This sort of "there are bad things in the world, therefore focusing on anything else is bad" thinking is generally misguided.

  • Famine is mostly political but engineers (not all of them) definitely have to do with it. If you’re building powerful AI for corporations that are then involved with the political entities that caused the famine, then you can’t claim to basically have nothing to do with it.

    • I totally disagree. "If A is associated with B, and B is associated with C, and C causes D, then A is responsible for D" is tortured logic.

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the existence of poor hungry people feeds the fear of becoming poor and hungry which drives those brightest engineers. I.e. the things work as intended, unfortunately.