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192 points imasl42 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.237s | source
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rsynnott ◴[] No.45311963[source]
This idea that you can get good results from a bad process as long as you have good quality control seems… dubious, to say the least. “Sure, it’ll produce endless broken nonsense, but as long as someone is checking, it’s fine.” This, generally, doesn’t really work. You see people _try_ it in industry a bit; have a process which produces a high rate of failures, catch them in QA, rework (the US car industry used to be notorious for this). I don’t know of any case where it has really worked out.

Imagine that your boss came to you, the tech lead of a small team, and said “okay, instead of having five competent people, your team will now have 25 complete idiots. We expect that their random flailing will sometimes produce stuff that kinda works, and it will be your job to review it all.” Now, you would, of course, think that your boss had gone crazy. No-one would expect this to produce good results. But somehow, stick ‘AI’ on this scenario, and a lot of people start to think “hey, maybe that could work.”

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ben_w ◴[] No.45313284[source]
> I don’t know of any case where it has really worked out.

Supermarket vegetables.

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HarHarVeryFunny ◴[] No.45315451[source]
Are you saying that supermarket vegetables/produce are good?

Quite a bit of it, like Tomatoes and Strawberries, is just crap. Form over substance. Nice color and zero flavor. Selected for delivery/shelf-life/appearance rather actually being any good.

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ben_w ◴[] No.45315759[source]
> Form over substance. Nice color and zero flavor. Selected for delivery/shelf-life/appearance rather actually being any good.

From an economics POV, that's the correct test.

I was also considering the way the US food standards allows a lot of insect parts in the products, but wasn't sure how to phrase it.

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1. HarHarVeryFunny ◴[] No.45323209[source]
> I was also considering the way the US food standards allows a lot of insect parts in the products, but wasn't sure how to phrase it.

I don't know how the US compares to other countries in terms of "insects per pound" standards, but having some level of insects is going to be inevitable.

For example, how could you guarantee that your wheat, pre-milling, has zero insects in it, or that your honey has no bee parts in it (best you can do is strain it, then anything that gets through the straining process will be on your toast).