[RHSeeger]

> That the foundational discipline of humanity - nutrition via hunting, gathering, or growing - is no longer a "profitable enterprise"?

I don't understand this statement. These things aren't unprofitable. Doing these things a specific way is unprofitable. Growing food is most certainly profitable; but only at scale. Is it sad that a small, family farm isn't really a great way to make a living nowadays? Sure. But that's not a foundational discipline of humanity; "creating food" is, but there's lots of ways to do that.

And, honestly, if we _ever_ get to the point where we can fabricate food from raw elements (a la Star Trek), then that will be a little sad, too... but still "creating food".

[Freak_NL]

The replicator in Star Trek doesn't seem plausible to me any more. Flawlessly outputting a cup of Earl Grey?

The computer-based drinks machine onboard the Heart of Gold on the other hand… Trying to order tea there now sounds suspiciously like a bout of futile prompt-engineering; trying to goad an LLM into giving you tea, but ending up with something which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

[wizzwizz4]

And if you phrase your question wrong, you have a chance of triggering a Chain of Thought process that gets stuck in a loop "analysing" some utterly irrelevant part of the problem (here, "why would anyone want to order tea?"), locking up important subsystems of other systems on the network in the process.

[bevr1337]

> Growing food is most certainly profitable; but only at scale

The agricultural practices you hint at only make sense in a boardroom. I'm sure it seems rational or logical, but it's not based in experience or ethics.

> But that's not a foundational discipline of humanity;

It is probably the foundational discipline of humanity. Cultivating and cooking food is what allowed us to do everything since.

[RHSeeger]

> Cultivating and cooking food is what allowed us to do everything since.

To repeat what I said before, more clearly

- Growing and cooking food is currently profitable.

- Growing and cooking food _a certain way_ is not profitable

- Growing and cooking food is a foundational discipline of humanity

- Growing and cooking food _a certain way_ is _not_ a foundational discipline of humanity

You specifically quoted a subset of what I said and called it out as wrong. Which is true, but also irrelevant; because it's not what I said.