This has got to be ChatGPT, right? There's just a lot of... nonsensical phrasing and sentences? I love the story of it, but I can't take the writing.

> This worked great if you were electrifying America in the 1930s, when labor was cheap, materials were subsidized, and the government could strong-arm right-of-way access. It works less great when you’re trying to reach a farmer four hours from the nearest paved road who earns $600 per year.

It's structured like a contrasting pair of sentences, but it just doesn't make any sense. The things it's calling out in 1930s America aren't - or don't have to be - dissimilar from modern Africa. The farmer making $600/yr is kind of a non-sequitur.

> But there was still a massive, seemingly insurmountable barrier: $120 upfront might as well be $1 million when you earn $2/day.

No, it's 60 days of earnings. It's just a weird sentence. Taking a median US wage of $60k/yr or $165/day, 60 days of earnings is $9,900. "Might as well be $1 million" is a wild take, and a sloppy way to say it.

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skandergarroum 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hey there, author (Skander from Climate Drift) here.

So for the record: This isn't a chatgpt article, it's something I wrote over the weekend while I was down with a flu (although the idea has been running through my head for a while).

@America's 1930s: Most of US rural electrification happened at this point (90% of urban homes hat electricity, only around 10% of farms). Rural Electrification Act from 1936 changed that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act

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FloorEgg 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hey in the part 3 that introduces PAYG it jumps from $100 down $40-65 a month to $0.21 a day / $1.50 a week.

It seems your mixing up examples since they're off by an order of magnitude. Once I read that my trust in everything else started breaking down and I couldn't be bothered to read the rest with the same level of engagement.

	▲	jogu 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I noticed the same, the number don’t make any sense.

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losvedir 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks! Maybe I'm a little too sensitive to AI signals. I actually really love the story and content, but if it was AI generated I didn't know how much to actually believe it. I still don't know who you are, but it's probably less likely to be totally fabricated if a human is responsible for it. So, thanks, I'll give it another read.

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tobyjsullivan 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Rather than too sensitive, I think you’re making up AI signals. Poor writing (or, in this case, slightly less than perfect writing) is not a phenomenon to which humans are immune.

If you like the idea of human-written content on the Internet, I recommend against joining the chorus of voices baselessly accusing humans of being AI bots - an unfortunate trend lately which only serves to disincentivize future contributions.

	▲	tomalbrc 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Why this works: Blah blah" It is more likely that the poster just lied.

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tomalbrc 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> It worked because it solved a real problem: Kenyans were already sending money through informal networks. M-PESA just made it cheaper and safer.

Here’s why this matters: M-PESA created a payment rail with near-zero transaction costs. Which means you can economically collect tiny payments. $0.21 per day payments.

Why are you lying about this, its clearly written by an LLM

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bluGill 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My grandpa (long dead) remembers his dad paying $600 in the 1920s (1930s?) to get electric to the farm. That is the actual cost, not inflation adjusted. Most of the neighbors didn't because that was too much money in those days.

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mysterypie 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> $600 in the 1920s (1930s?), not inflation adjusted

I consulted the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator:

$600 in 1925 would be $11,264 today

$600 in 1935 would be $14,329 today

A lot of money, but I've heard that it can easily cost $10-20K today to erect a couple of poles to bring power a hundred feet to your property in a rural area these days. Do you know what distance was being covered to bring power to your grandfather?

	▲	bluGill 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		i didn't learn this until I was given a copy of his autobiography (about 5 pages) after he did so I have no way to ask.

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_kidlike 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I also got ChatGPT vibes... all this repetition of "why it matters" and all the lists, and going back and forth between contradictions...

It's even sadder to me that the author says this is not GPT. I believe them. Which means we have reached a point where the style of how ChatGPT writes has made its way into our sub-conscious...

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zem 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

don't know if the article is chatgpt or not, but "might as well be a million dollars" is a super common way of saying "completely out of reach"

	▲	_ink_ 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And from that $2 you probably still have to spend something on food / shelter / clothing, so it's not like you could just save it all.

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raincole 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The farmer making $600/yr is kind of a non-sequitur.

It's less than a non-sequitur. It makes the contrasting even weaker because it means in modern Africa labor is still cheap, just like in 1930s America.

> I love the story of it, but I can't take the writing

My personally heuristic is that if the style is AI, the substance is likely AI too.

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golden-face 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Huh? Even if the farmer could save 100% of that daily $2 earning it's still 60 days worth of wages, which while not exactly $1,000,000, is still a lot for the the farmer.

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12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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FanaHOVA 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The structure of each section gives away that it's mostly AI even without having to read the actual words. I'm sure it was AI + writer, but there's something about ending each section with 3-4 short, question-like sentences that is strongly AI. This is the same format as the successful LinkedIn slop so maybe it's not AI and just algo-induced writing.

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SamBam 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Yup. It's the colons after every paragraph's first sentence:

> It worked because it solved a real problem: Kenyans were already sending money through informal networks. M-PESA just made it cheaper and safer.

> Here’s why this matters: M-PESA created a payment rail with near-zero transaction costs.

> The magic is this: You’re not buying a $1,200 solar system.

> It gets even better: there are people who will pay for credits beforehand.

It's just again and again and again. It's sounds 100% ChatGPT.

Maybe this is 100% written by hand by someone who reads too many ChatGPT-generated articles. Possibly the author just spends a ton of time chatting with ChatGPT and have picked up its style. Or it's just more AI-written than OP wants to admit.

	▲	portaouflop 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We are so cooked. We spend more time trying to suss out if something was written by AI than actually reading the article. So many legitimate ways of writing are now “ai” style. I used to use emdash a lot, but now I deliberately avoid it because it’s an AI smell - using the less “correct” version instead. E

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tomalbrc 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Lets see a small paragraph from the article:

> It worked because it solved a real problem: Kenyans were already sending money through informal networks. M-PESA just made it cheaper and safer.

> Here’s why this matters: M-PESA created a payment rail with near-zero transaction costs. Which means you can economically collect tiny payments. $0.21 per day payments.

Ah yes, not AI slop at all! /s