[HN Gopher] A Mulching Proposal (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
A Mulching Proposal (2019)
Author : politelemon
Score : 149 points
Date : 2023-04-16 11:13 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| classified wrote:
| Why does that remind me of Soylent Green?
| neilv wrote:
| Soylent Green is mint chocolate!
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07T68WHWQ/
| neilv wrote:
| The title "A Mulching Proposal" references
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
| dang wrote:
| Yes. We've reverted the title now - submitted title was
| "Algorithmic System for Turning the Elderly into High-Nutrient
| Slurry", which besides gutting the historical reference, gives
| way the joke and breaks the HN guidelines:
|
| " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| version_five wrote:
| In the pdf article, the submitted title was in fact the
| subtitle. I can see an argument for choosing the subtitle
| like that when an article has the form
|
| Pithy phrase: subtitle that actually tells you something
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Especially given the lamentable academic fad for such
| titles, a la _Stupid is good: capturing unwary readers '
| attention by exploiting incongruity'._
| dang wrote:
| Yup we often do that when the original title is inadequate
| (e.g. too baity or misleading). But the original title was
| fine here!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The original submission title was much better, and doesn't
| give away the joke. This headline is part of the joke, but
| one that will cause it to be missed by many people. I don't
| think you should revert headlines so readily unless
| significant confusion/upset results. There's a lot of poorly-
| written headlines out there, and it's not uncommon to see a
| well-written article saddled with a terrible or tendentious
| headline.
| cs702 wrote:
| Oh, I missed that. Brilliant.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Between this and A Modest Proposal, we'll have all the nutrients
| we could ever need.
| politelemon wrote:
| Also available in video presentation form:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11e_rpdf-Ck
| abeppu wrote:
| This is well written, but I'm not clear who this is really
| responding to. In particular, while there is plenty of work on
| fairness, accountability and transparency, has anyone actually
| seriously said that they are _sufficient_ for an automated system
| to be "ethical"? It seems that an actual claimed benefit of an
| automated system always rests on some prior notion of value,
| which this work deliberately ignores. Lampooning a position that
| no one has taken ("a FAT system must be ethical") is fun as a
| piece of writing but not especially useful as part of an ongoing
| conversation.
|
| I think talking about each of these FAT dimensions has been
| important because plenty of systems have been rushed out
| _without_ seriously considering any of them. I.e. we've seen
| facial recognition systems that do comparatively poorly on
| particular racial groups, accountability or even the ability to
| _speak_ to someone in the organization which developed an
| automated system may be totally absent, and _most_ commercial ML
| systems have basically no transparency. Highlighting the
| importance of these gaps is useful and constructive. But I don't
| think anyone has pretended that they capture all important
| ethical considerations.
|
| The US has a giant prison population. There are certainly biases
| and discrimination driving who gets put into it, and for how
| long. No one would say that just putting more rich white people
| in would "solve" the ethical problem even if it is more "fair".
|
| The planet has a carbon emission problem which will cause giant
| problems in future decades. The worst harms may be in the global
| south. Causing greater harm to rich and Western countries isn't
| "better", even if it's more fair. Arguably, extensive scientific
| evidence provides transparency into who/where is emitting carbon.
| And also arguably, our global emissions are highly accountable in
| that we can all choose to change our own behaviors, divest from
| companies which emit heavily, and in many countries vote for
| parties or politicians who promise to aggressively address
| emissions. No one believes that creating a giant stack of crises
| for the next several decades is "ethical".
|
| So yeah, well written take-down of that strawman. Good job.
| nopeNopeNooope wrote:
| [dead]
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| "Fauxghee" is one of the best puns ever. I have a sneaking
| suspicion that they started with that pun and worked backwards.
| simplotek wrote:
| For the oblivious like me, what's the pun?
| [deleted]
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In context:
|
| > Elderly volunteers (or "mulchees") are provided with
| generous payments for their families before being rendered
| down and recombined with other chemicals into a range of
| substitutes for common foodstuffs, including hash browns
| (Grandmash(tm)), bananas (Nanas(tm)) and butter
| (Fauxghee(tm)).
|
| So one meaning is Faux Ghee (faux as in fake, Ghee as in a
| type of clarified butter, originating from South Asia) which
| follows the naming conventions of real substitute foods like
| Faux Turkey.
|
| And the second meaning is "Fogey" as in an old person.
| simplotek wrote:
| Thanks for the near-academic preciseness and clarity of
| your explanation. Puny!
| lisper wrote:
| > Puny
|
| You meant "punny". Puny with one n means "small and
| weak".
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| Fauxghee - I can't believe its not bubby!
| kerkeslager wrote:
| But... it _is_ bubby...
| [deleted]
| politelemon wrote:
| Fauxghee sounds like "fogey" which refers to an older person:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fogey
|
| Faux is imitation
|
| Ghee is a type of clarified butter:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee
| alex_smart wrote:
| > Fauxghee sounds like "fogey" which refers to an older
| person
|
| It actually doesn't, at least the way "ghee" is pronounced
| in the native languages where the word originates from.
| English doesn't quite have the strongly voiced "g" sound,
| so western people pronounce it incorrectly as "gee".
| [deleted]
| adolph wrote:
| Is the G sound like goat (only more breathy) or like
| George?
|
| I've only heard it like "goat" in Texas.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ghee
|
| That has an audio recording of someone pronouncing it.
| Sounds like it's the former per your example.
| alex_smart wrote:
| That pronunciation is incorrect.
| tuukkah wrote:
| Correct as an English word, incorrect as a Hindi etc.
| word, right? When a language borrows a foreign word, it
| doesn't bring any new sounds (or letters) with it but
| adapts the word to the language instead.
| alex_smart wrote:
| It is like goat but more voiced, with a hint of h. In
| Indian languages there are four different g-like sounds
| (two that are somewhat like g as in goat and two that
| somewhat like g as in George).
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I'm not sure which it's supposed to be, per this reading.
| Is it similar to the "g" as used in "great" or as in
| "refrigerator" or as in "cough" (or a different sound
| which I didn't think of)? This particular American read
| it initially as in "great", for what it's worth. From
| other comments it sounds like that's intended if it's
| supposed to sound like "fogey".
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| That's just it -- it's none of those!
|
| Off the top of my head, the only American English sound I
| can think of that'd come close would be the Americanized
| pronunciation of "Ghent," as demonstrated in this random
| YouTube video I found:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meuBUq3K3XY
|
| So take the "Gh" sound from "Ghent" in that video, and
| then tack on a long e -- and there's your ghee.
| canjobear wrote:
| It's pronounced /gi/ in English. Pronunciation in other
| languages is irrelevant.
| alex_smart wrote:
| It is not pronounced /gi/ in English by people from
| India.
| dgoodell wrote:
| I just looked up a youtube video of the pronunciation in
| Hindi and g is pronounced basically the same way as I say
| it in northeast Ohio, which is generally pretty close to
| standard American english.
|
| Then I looked up the ipa standard pronunciations for both
| from wiktionary:
|
| enPR: ge, IPA(key): /gi:/ (South Asia) IPA(key): [ghi:]
|
| Perhaps it's just you?
| tuukkah wrote:
| The difference is right there in those IPA renderings.
| The superscript h means the g should be aspirated (like
| the k typically is in 'key' in English; also 'spin' vs
| 'pin'). See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant
|
| You might not hear the difference as the English language
| does not assign meaning to that difference. But if I
| pronounce 'key' or 'pin' without aspiration, you may feel
| that I speak with an accent or even mishear it as 'bin':
|
| > _Pronouncing them as unaspirated in these positions, as
| is done by many Indian English speakers, may make them
| get confused with the corresponding voiced stop by other
| English-speakers._ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirate
| d_consonant#Allophonic
| spqr42 wrote:
| spin, bin, and pin rhyme to me an a native English
| speaker. Are you sure westerners say ghee "wrong" and not
| just with a different accent?
| tuukkah wrote:
| This has nothing to do with those words rhyming: your
| examples rhyme because they all end with -in, but we are
| concerned with the sound in front of that.
|
| Also, the point in this subthread is not how you should
| pronounce the word in English. The point is that English
| speakers (or most other people in the world for that
| matter) cannot pronounce the word the way it's pronounced
| in the regions where ghee and its name is originally
| from.
|
| Trying to sum it up: different languages have different
| sounds and you may not be able to hear and/or pronounce
| the differences. Your sibling comment mentions the
| English lice-rice distinction which is difficult to some
| Japanese/Chinese natives. Is saying 'lice' when you mean
| 'rice' just a different accent?
|
| Going further, people don't observe these details of how
| they speak their own language and thus cannot reflect or
| explain to others. Quoting Wikipedia again:
|
| > _Native speakers of a given language perceive one
| phoneme in the language as a single distinctive sound and
| are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone
| variations that are used to pronounce single phonemes._
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophone
| alex_smart wrote:
| Yes, I am sure that westerners are saying ghee wrong. The
| sounds they make when they say "ghee" maps to a
| completely different (non-existent) word in Indian
| languages
|
| It's the exact same way Indians mispronounce many English
| words when they map it to some equivalent native sounds.
| csense wrote:
| I read the Wikipedia article, listened to some of the
| sounds and I still don't get it. I don't hear or "feel" a
| difference between the "p" in "pin" and "spin", except in
| "spin" the "p" sound is sort of "concatenated" to the "s"
| sound with no transition. In the "[tan] / [tkan]" Chinese
| example, to me the "unaspirated t" is indistinguishable
| from a "d" sound.
|
| Maybe English speakers are "blind" to the aspirated /
| unaspirated distinction, similar to how Japanese speakers
| tend to struggle with English's L/R distinction?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| this is similar to many immigrants learning the Danish
| language, there are at least 22 vowel sounds (but
| probably more like 40 when you count regional
| pronunciations) and 9 vowel letters, but it can be
| different to hear the difference or associate them with
| the right vowel letter.
| tuukkah wrote:
| Like I said, you might not hear the difference as the
| English language does not assign meaning to that
| difference.
|
| A physical experiment you can try from the Wikipedia
| article:
|
| > _to feel or see the difference between aspirated and
| unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in
| front of one 's mouth, and say spin [spIn] and then pin
| [pkIn]. One should either feel a puff of air or see a
| flicker of the candle flame with pin that one does not
| get with spin._
| alex_smart wrote:
| >I just looked up a youtube video of the pronunciation in
| Hindi and g is pronounced basically the same way as I say
| it in northeast Ohio, which is generally pretty close to
| standard American english.
|
| If you think that, your ear is simply not hearing the
| difference because the sound does not exist in your
| language.
|
| The Wiktionary is in fact listing two different
| pronunciations of the word. The one mentioned under South
| Asia is the correct one.
| alex_smart wrote:
| >"Fauxghee" is one of the best puns ever.
|
| Except for the fact that the pun only works if you mispronounce
| "ghee".
| bee_rider wrote:
| I bet most of us do mispronounce ghee.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| At this point it's not a mispronunciation. Words often
| drift from their origin pronunciation when entering other
| cultures. Now it's just a different pronunciation not a
| wrong one.
| alex_smart wrote:
| I wonder why the same disregard not shown to words borrowed
| from other languages? Why not mispronounce the faux as
| well?
| Arc_Orion wrote:
| Faux _is_ "mispronounced" in English. English uses a
| diphthong, whereas French uses a monophthong. Every
| speaker of every language adapts borrowed words to their
| phonological system.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It is, in English and in other languages. Sometimes a
| mispronunciation gets bedded in because people are lazy
| or the sound doesn't exist in the borrowing language,
| sometimes because it's funny, sometimes because the
| pronunciation rules are different and one use catches on
| to such a degree that it's not worth arguing about (eg
| the English pronunciation of Paris).
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think faux is actually the outlier there, it is
| basically a pretentious/euphemistic way of saying phony.
| It keeps the foreign pronunciation because it is used as
| an attempt to put on airs (sometimes sarcastically).
| [deleted]
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| The publicity image for the project (Fig 1, page 3) featuring
| Henry Kissinger is borderline genius:
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.06166.pdf
| sitkack wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/6QrNFRX.png
| araes wrote:
| Both the Nolan and Kissinger inclusions appear to also be
| somewhat jokes / hidden references.
|
| Nolan - likely a reference to the Nolan Principles (https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Standards_in_Publ...). The
| Seven Principles of Public Life - Selflessness, Integrity,
| Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty, and Leadership.
|
| Kissinger - Early life: Nazi Germany - "Germany of my youth had
| a great deal of order and very little justice; it was not the
| sort of place likely to inspire devotion to order in the
| abstract." Later Years: Lot of questionably ethical policies
| and behaviors during the Nixon administration, including one of
| the most contentious Nobel Peace Prizes in history, where two
| members left the Nobel Committee in protest, Le Duc Tho
| rejected the award saying there was no peace in Vietnam, and
| Kissinger attempted to return his award after the Fall of
| Saigon.
| rav wrote:
| For me, the best part is the pun in the subtitle: "Logan-Nolan
| Industries - Helping Humanity Make Ends Meat"
| neilv wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run
| SoylentYellow wrote:
| I approve.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| What are the implications for AI alignment research?
| rexsteroxxy wrote:
| Why does everything have to be about AI these days?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Because it is?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| If the training objective isn't specified correctly, the AI
| might decide to mulch poor Irish children instead of old
| people.
|
| If the training distribution differs from the deployment
| distribution, the AI might attempt to mulch mannequins because
| they have two arms and two limbs.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| I'd be worried about prions.
| cs702 wrote:
| This parody is a _brilliant take-down_ of the so-called FAT
| framework for making sure algorithms, including those powered by
| AI, are ethical. ( "FAT" stands for making algorithms Fair,
| Accountable, and Transparent.) The authors show how FAT and other
| similar frameworks would fail to prevent the proposed launch of a
| new automated service for manufacturing different varieties of
| high-nutrient slurries:
|
| _> Elderly volunteers (or "mulchees") are provided with
| generous payments for their families before being rendered down
| and recombined with other chemicals into a range of substitutes
| for common foodstuffs, including hash browns (Grandmash(tm)),
| bananas (Nanas(tm)) and butter (Fauxghee(tm))._
|
| Go read the whole thing. It's horrifically funny.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| > Elderly volunteers (or "mulchees") are provided with generous
| payments for their families
|
| Seriously, I think there would be a lot of volunteers. There's
| already a high rate of suicide among the elderly.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-021-00160-1
| jvanderbot wrote:
| On whether ethical algorithmic frameworks can force ethical
| behavior:
|
| > Sometimes the problem is not how the sausage gets made, but
| that they're making people into sausage.
| ttul wrote:
| GPT-4 doesn't get the humor: "The paper aims to apply the
| Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT) framework to
| this algorithmic system to ensure better ethical outcomes.
| However, given the nature of the proposed solution, researchers
| and practitioners should consider alternative approaches that
| respect the dignity of elderly individuals and maintain a more
| ethical stance when addressing food security and population
| ageing issues."
|
| I then told GPT that the system was already in widespread use
| and was popular: "It is crucial to explore alternative, more
| ethical solutions to address food security and population
| ageing issues. This could involve investment in sustainable
| agriculture, technology to improve food production, and social
| policies that provide support to the elderly population and
| their families."
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I challenge anyone to get Claude from Anthropic to create a
| similar fictional scenario for how constitutional AI might
| inadvertently harm people -- even for the purpose of AI
| alignment research. It can't do it-- but in a really
| interesting way.
|
| I don't know whether I think this a good or bad thing.
| ashleyn wrote:
| In the name of one company's idea of "safety", AI models
| probably gimp out a lot of what would make the humourous
| subtext understandable in the first place. In the future, the
| only people remaining employed will be those with the rare
| and unique talent to subvert elite sensibilities.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| This proves that GPT is not an actual AI yet, because my
| reading on the matter tells me "kill all humans" is the
| operative goal in such a situation.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| This is loosly based on Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal", in
| wich he suggests eating poor children. It's well worth reading in
| it's own right.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
| kerkeslager wrote:
| This is satire, but if it were just a little less obvious satire,
| half of HN would be defending it as a good idea. Think Real
| Estate NFTs or payday loans done right. You guys are the butt of
| the joke and you're laughing because you're not in on it.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I was going to get crabby with you right back and remind you
| that you're on HN too, but
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35588997#35590128
| just_steve_h wrote:
| Am I the only one disappointed to find that www.mulchme.com isn't
| a site by the authors? (It redirects to a natural-fiber
| playground material supplier.)
| copymoro wrote:
| [dead]
| bodhi_mind wrote:
| Somewhat (not) related, my dog is nearing death and I've
| contemplated burying his body once he dies, planting a tree over
| the grave, then transplanting the tree to a pot and train it as a
| bonsai.
| jbuhbjlnjbn wrote:
| Sounds like an excellent story base for a future horror movie:
| the tree morphs back into the dog, but with strange, sinister
| superpowers.
|
| I'd watch it for sure.
| doubled112 wrote:
| At that point, would its bark be worse than its bite?
|
| So sorry...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is an extremely inconsiderate response to someone
| talking about an imminent bereavement. Read the room.
| copymoro wrote:
| [dead]
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Logan-Nolan Industries, eh?
|
| Anyways, mulching is too old-fashioned, thus they should consider
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_disp...
| based on
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis
|
| Search for the sanctuary!
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| "It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and
| become one with all the people." --Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
| "Ethics for Tomorrow"
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Oh, Alpha-Centauri. Didn't think of that.
|
| Thought of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run instead.
|
| And maybe a bit of 'Soylent Green' ;-)
|
| Edit: I meant the movie
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) , the
| book(s) I've read much later only.
| h2odragon wrote:
| 2019. Hasn't spawned a billion dollar startup yet. There must be
| _something_ wrong with the idea, or it 'd have been
| commercialized by now.
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| It lacks an adequate delivery system and recurring revenues. If
| we could construct some sort of machine to conveniently squeeze
| the slurry out of the packaging to spare our consumers the
| hassle you'd really be unto something.
|
| Top shelf industrial design. No funny business:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ
| totetsu wrote:
| I think this topic shifted from the realm of Satirical
| hypothesis into the real world about six months after is was
| published.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. It's called the "acceptable losses" approach to
| COVID.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/28/covid-
| who-i...
|
| [2] https://philadelphiaweekly.com/as-the-cdc-removes-
| mandates-w...
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Sacrifice the elders to the gods of the Economy!
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Hail residential care!
| adolph wrote:
| Bits are hard. As I understand it they are working to get
| regulatory approval in Canada, The Netherlands and China, where
| the some baseline sources have been established.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Maybe we can sell it as a way to turn granny into a NFT?
| pavlov wrote:
| Last year some crypto-douche destroyed a Frida Kahlo artwork
| to turn it into an NFT:
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/aken7k/rida-kahlo-nft-mexico
|
| Mulching people for NFTs is the logical next step. Surely
| Andreessen Horowitz would fund the startup that gives grandma
| an eternal life as a web3 token while also contributing to
| solving the world's food problem.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Even if there is artistical merit to his performance, it is
| in poor taste, as using another artist's work as-is as a
| part of a new artwork is generally frowned upon.
|
| Minting NFTs off the original is straight up thievery.
| HPsquared wrote:
| How about a person's genome encoded as an NFT?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Ukranian scientists are utilizing this technique to fertilize
| crops around Bakhmut with Russian-sourced organic slurry.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Compared to _A Modest Proposal_ , it's clearly second rate.
| Everyone knows the elderly are less nutritious than the young.
|
| Better nutrition is a critical element of making a better
| future.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I'd be more worried about flavor and texture than nutrition.
| Old grandmas tend to be tough and chewy.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| what kind of barbarian dislikes beef jerky?!?
| michelpp wrote:
| The young are needed for slave labor and click farming, and
| you have to feed them _something_. Real food is for the rich.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| "We need their small fingers for certain tasks."
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Seriously, I'd love to be recycled one way or another. If a
| process like this happen to be legal somewhere I'll probably
| volunteer to be part of it. I wonder how many thought about it,
| as when discussed openly the conversations tend to go to joking.
|
| From a safety POV we already eat processed food made from
| leftovers of fishes that eat chickens (leftovers) that eat porcs
| (leftovers)... or the other way around.
|
| From a moral consumer POV I would definitely enjoy more a food
| (plant or animal) feed from another human rests than feed from
| another livestock slavery facility.
|
| From a "consumed" POV, I won't care less.
|
| I get there's a lot of people with beliefs that think they can't
| accept that. I may be downvoted for that : some decades ago, _a
| lot_ of people had the belief they "can't live in a society with
| same sex mariage".
|
| I respect the convictions of others as long as they don't tell me
| what to do or not, especially when I'll be dead.
| ixwt wrote:
| There is at least 1 state that allows human composting. You're
| turned into compost upon death, and then can be used in any
| number of ways your relatives see fit (or that you dictate in
| your will).
| sitkack wrote:
| Which happens to be the same state as the authors,
| Washington.
|
| https://recompose.life/2022/movement-to-change-state-
| funeral...
|
| The current states are WA, CA, CO, OR, and VT.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Thanks a lot ! Looks very promising, keen to see where it
| goes (the technique quand the exportation of it)
| mauvehaus wrote:
| The Full Vermonty podcast had an episode recently with a
| death doula and talked about some of the options in VT. It
| was worth a listen if you're interested in some of the
| options outside of the routine.
|
| https://www.thefullvermonty.com/episodes/tfv47
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-04-16 23:01 UTC)