A Mulching Proposal (2019)

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• 3 years ago

I think this topic shifted from the realm of Satirical hypothesis into the real world about six months after is was published.

kevviiinn• 3 years ago

Sacrifice the elders to the gods of the Economy!

Animats• 3 years ago

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...

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

Maybe we can sell it as a way to turn granny into a NFT?

pavlov• 3 years ago

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.

HPsquared• 3 years ago

How about a person's genome encoded as an NFT?

meindnoch• 3 years ago

Ukranian scientists are utilizing this technique to fertilize crops around Bakhmut with Russian-sourced organic slurry.

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

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.

h2odragon2• 3 years ago

I'd be more worried about flavor and texture than nutrition. Old grandmas tend to be tough and chewy.

michelpp• 3 years ago

The young are needed for slave labor and click farming, and you have to feed them something. Real food is for the rich.

adolph2• 3 years ago

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.

classified• 3 years ago

Why does that remind me of Soylent Green?

neilv3• 3 years ago

Soylent Green is mint chocolate! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07T68WHWQ/

neilv3• 3 years ago

The title "A Mulching Proposal" references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

cs7022• 3 years ago

Oh, I missed that. Brilliant.

dang3• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

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.

adfgadfhionio• 3 years ago

The original title is better. This style of satire works best when it's entirely deadpan. Putting a reference to A Modest Proposal in the title gives the joke away.

politelemon2• 3 years ago

Also available in video presentation form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11e_rpdf-Ck

ZeroGravitas2• 3 years ago

"Fauxghee" is one of the best puns ever. I have a sneaking suspicion that they started with that pun and worked backwards.

simplotek2• 3 years ago

For the oblivious like me, what's the pun?

ZeroGravitas2• 3 years ago

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™), bananas (Nanas™) and butter (Fauxghee™).

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.

politelemon2• 3 years ago

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_smart8• 3 years ago

"Fauxghee" is one of the best puns ever.

Except for the fact that the pun only works if you mispronounce "ghee".

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

I bet most of us do mispronounce ghee.

helsinkiandrew• 3 years ago

The publicity image for the project (Fig 1, page 3) featuring Henry Kissinger is borderline genius:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.06166.pdf

rav• 3 years ago

For me, the best part is the pun in the subtitle: "Logan-Nolan Industries - Helping Humanity Make Ends Meat"

neilv3• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run

sitkack2• 3 years ago

https://i.imgur.com/6QrNFRX.png

araes• 3 years ago

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, Lê Đức Thọ rejected the award saying there was no peace in Vietnam, and Kissinger attempted to return his award after the Fall of Saigon.

SoylentYellow• 3 years ago

I approve.

dr_dshiv2• 3 years ago

What are the implications for AI alignment research?

rexsteroxxy• 3 years ago

Why does everything have to be about AI these days?

wrycoder• 3 years ago

Because it is?

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

I'd be worried about prions.

cs7022• 3 years ago

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™), bananas (Nanas™) and butter (Fauxghee™).

Go read the whole thing. It's horrifically funny.

GartzenDeHaes• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.”

ashleyn• 3 years ago

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.

bryanrasmussen3• 3 years ago

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.

dr_dshiv2• 3 years ago

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.

andybak• 3 years ago

The critique of FAT made in this article is convincing but easily remedied.

The paper obliquely argues that FAT does not evaluate the outcome itself, merely offering tools to validate the route to that outcome.

Therefore I propose that FAT is extended with an extra criteria - that of Reasonableness...

kerkeslager2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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

aziaziazi2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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).

sitkack2• 3 years ago

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.

paulddraper• 3 years ago

Between this and A Modest Proposal, we'll have all the nutrients we could ever need.

bodhi_mind• 3 years ago

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.

jbuhbjlnjbn2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

At that point, would its bark be worse than its bite?

So sorry...

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

This is an extremely inconsiderate response to someone talking about an imminent bereavement. Read the room.

webnrrd2k• 3 years ago

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

just_steve_h• 3 years ago

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.)

abeppu• 3 years ago

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.

A Mulching Proposal (2019)

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