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by bluehazed 1407 days ago
I feel like this comment is seriously underestimating the average farmer, these are people with complicated jobs and wide ranges of skill sets. Also when your livelihood is threatened unless you learn how to do something, you're gonna learn how to do that thing.
3 comments

Yeah, I'm an engineer that has worked closely with farmers for much of my career. I'm in absolute awe. They are an unbelievable wealth of knowledge of all kinds of technology, hydraulics, mechanics, weather, genetics, soil science, hydrology, forecasting, business, etc. etc. etc. The list just keeps going. And in general, if your numbers are telling you one thing and the farmer is telling you another, I'd usually bet on the farmer.

These people are CEO's of massive enterprise operations managing tons of capital in a high-risk, high-tech, unbelievably complex environment that they must constantly stay on top of.

Indeed. One of the smartest human beings I know is a farmer. His breadth of knowledge is astounding.
I’m in no way demeaning a farmer by asking if their skill sets can be applied to complicated software. What I’m really wondering is what it takes to fix a hardware problem with this software. I wouldn’t underestimate anyone whose life depends on fixing a problem…