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Comment by forinti | Hacker News Reader

Your comment made me think of the Japanese. They have a highly industrialised society, but they also value greatly hand-made products from food and clothes to woodwork and houses.

And they also like to emphasise how long it takes for someone to become a master at a given trade.

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Japan is struggling to get new blood into the traditional crafts, unfortunately. They are slowly losing that as well.

It was really eye opening seeing they’re able to eat raw eggs and (to maybe a lesser degree of safety) raw chicken because their society requires high standards of cleanliness in food production. We are literal cattle over here in the states.

Though, given Amodei and Altman’s behavior (along with the rest of the billionaire class) that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Eggs in the UK are safe to eat raw (and I presume the EU as well [but please verify before doing so!]).

Finland too. Fundamentally it is putting food safety over profits. Eggs being salmonella free is based on regular testing and culling infected flocks. It is a process that need constant work.

Germans even eat raw pork. Plus it has nothing to do with the parent comment.

You could eat raw eggs in most modern countries and be mostly fine. It’s not as uncommon as you would think. There are many drink recipes with raw eggs as an ingredient. You just happened to be exposed to it in Japan.

Eating raw chicken is risky even in Japan. There are cultures that eat raw chicken, pork, and other meat products by choice but it’s always a risk. There are outbreaks of serious food borne illness in Japan from raw chicken: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18406474/

That's because they spent a couple hundred years with a society structured around low/no growth and enforced familial occupations. There isn't much to do in such a society other than refine your craft aesthetically and wait for the growth-structured countries to come knocking.

LLMs are yet another example of science and technology leading to growth. Which means it's STUPID to restructure society into a low/no growth model like the smelly Europeans degrowthers want. On our current trajectory the only time it makes sense to degrowth is few hundred years after we make a dyson sphere or until FTL travel becomes possible.

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