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Oh boy, another Soylent discussion. Here is what all the off topic discussion will be: Person1) "What is so hard to understand sheeple?! Soylent isn't for all

by Balgair 10y ago

Oh boy, another Soylent discussion. Here is what all the off topic discussion will be: Person1) "What is so hard to understand sheeple?! Soylent isn't for all your meals, just ones that you are too busy to eat. Also, it has all the vitamins you need not like all those thousand other bars/drinks!?" Person2) "I'd rather move to the bottom of the ocean than buy Soylent. Why would you ever skip a meal?! Capitalism is the root of all evil including making me miss my dinner!" Folks, we all come at food differently, it's a very personal thing. Just because you feel this way about food, does not mean we all do. It's like people that stand or sit when they are wiping after going #2. We all coexist just fine and none of us know that there is really any other way and are astounded when other people are different. Chill, people, chill, it's food.

akamaka 10y ago
You could also say some people like Trump and other people like Clinton, and it's just an opinion. However, one opinion is highly correlated with being more educated. I suspect that the same is true here. The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity. I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking.
- chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
  >The population at large has a very poor level of education We have a general education crisis going on in the United States. We've got some of the best propaganda in the world, and it's making us sick.
- BigJono 10y ago
  I suspect the intelligence correlation is the other way around to what you're implying. I'm still yet to see any evidence that Soylent or similar products are unhealthy (i.e that it takes more than a good balance of macro and micro nutrients for food to be considered "healthy"), especially when compared to an average western diet rather than an ideal one. I have seen an awful lot of baseless appeals to nature and tradition though, both of which are indicative of low intelligence.
  - akamaka 10y ago
    I think you're probably right, and I didn't want to make my point about general intelligence, but only focused on food knowledge. It's hard to prove any food healthy or unhealthy, but one of the main premises of healthy eating is prefering fresh ingredients over highly processed food. The studies which support that view are large-scale and wouldn't be able to point to a specific problem with Soylent, but undoubtedly Soylent is very much on the processed side in the spectrum of foods.
- pveierland 10y ago
  > The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity. Conceptually, the advantages of a product such as Soylent includes long shelf-life, reducing the frequency and time needed to shop food, offering healthy fast-food meals, having a lower carbon footprint and being more sustainable than regular food, reducing the time spent preparing food, being cheaper than other sources of ready-made food (with basis in my own budget). These are not trivial advantages if fully realized, and it seems reductive to reduce the advantages of Soylent to just being a product for people poorly educated about food. > I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking. I believe most people who eat healthy basically just follow hand-wavy norms and guidelines about what is considered healthy, e.g. include fish and vegetables in your diet (simplified). Once someone actually tries to engineer a complete diet such as Soylent it becomes apparent how hard it is to guarantee rich completeness. However, in the long run I believe the engineering approach, based on scientific input, is more likely to result in a proper diet. Especially when in the long run a "Soylent version X" can be based on a closed loop with personal body telemetry and customized food mixes based on these sensor readings.
  - akamaka 10y ago
    I agree with you overall, but my different viewpoint comes from witnessing other companies addressing the advantages you've mentioned. Just as trends in the computer industry have been largely led by power users, there are also food "power users". These are people who save time cooking with new equipment (powerful blenders, sous vide, etc), have high quality, freshly-picked food delivered in weekly boxes, have convenient herb gardens, etc. There are more innovations on the horizon (Farmbot, Cinder, etc). Of course, Soylent is still much faster, but I think these "power users" will close the gap in convenience faster than Soylent can close the gap in quality.
    - daveFNbuck 10y ago
      I do not and will not prepare my own food, so it usually takes me at least 30 minutes and $10 to go out and get a meal. When I don't feel like doing that, a bottle of Soylent saves most of that time and money.
- joesb 10y ago
  That's call convenient. We still have people with poor level of education on programming and computer, yet company keep making more accessible PERSONAL COMPUTER for people to use.
  - akamaka 10y ago
    I think personal computers area good analogy to kitchen equipment, but I draw the opposite conclusion. Back in the 1980s, only a small group of elite users had access to workstations built by companies like SGI, which had advanced graphics beyond anything the average person would know. Many people couldn't type and had secretaries to do it for them. Nowadays, there are millions of people who know how to use advances tools like Photoshop, every computer is essentially a workstation, and some people even want to see every child learning how to code. Food literacy and kitchen equipment are going on the same trajectory, and I'd put my money on the food startups that cater to the high end of the market, which will eventually been the mainstream.
roymurdock 10y ago
Soylent is more than food...the company and, more importantly, the idea (increased productivity/efficiency) that it embodies is a poster child for the social norm-disrupting technology that is coming out of SV. Many of this site work in the area and belong to its culture/brand (whether they want to or not) and it's their identity and what other people, friends and family included, quickly judge them by. It's not rational to judge an entire area or economic movement on the merits of a few, high-profile companies that are working on products that seem to be straight out of the movies (self-driving cars, addictive ad networks, virtual reality porn, gov spy software, futuristic milkshakes) but it's exciting so it's what people do. Nobody cares about the food aspect. Think one layer deeper - it's SVs brand, and, inextricably, "technology"s brand - yes that includes computers, servers, CRM software, virtual machines, the actual stuff that people on this website do and no it doesn't make any sense to link this stuff to Soylent's energy bars - that comes under attack every time one of SV's brand leaders is found to be harming people rather than helping them.
- bertiewhykovich 10y ago
  I don't think it's irrational to judge an industry that worships "disruption" on visible failures of that paradigm. Blithe disruption is all fun and games until it's your GI tract getting disrupted.
- bertiewhykovich 10y ago
  I don't think it's irrational to judge an industry that worships "disruption" on visible failures of that paradigm. Blithe disruption is all fun and games until it's your GI tract getting disrupted.
bbcbasic 10y ago
Nice strawman in response to no-one's comment
- lucb1e 10y ago
  Yeah and it sounds a bit condescending. Still, in previous discussions, it's true and s/he might have prevented a similar discussion here (or maybe I haven't scrolled to it yet). That's why I decided not to downvote.

by Balgair 10y ago

akamaka 10y ago

You could also say some people like Trump and other people like Clinton, and it's just an opinion. However, one opinion is highly correlated with being more educated. I suspect that the same is true here. The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity. I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking.

chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
>The population at large has a very poor level of education We have a general education crisis going on in the United States. We've got some of the best propaganda in the world, and it's making us sick.
BigJono 10y ago
I suspect the intelligence correlation is the other way around to what you're implying. I'm still yet to see any evidence that Soylent or similar products are unhealthy (i.e that it takes more than a good balance of macro and micro nutrients for food to be considered "healthy"), especially when compared to an average western diet rather than an ideal one. I have seen an awful lot of baseless appeals to nature and tradition though, both of which are indicative of low intelligence.
- akamaka 10y ago
  I think you're probably right, and I didn't want to make my point about general intelligence, but only focused on food knowledge. It's hard to prove any food healthy or unhealthy, but one of the main premises of healthy eating is prefering fresh ingredients over highly processed food. The studies which support that view are large-scale and wouldn't be able to point to a specific problem with Soylent, but undoubtedly Soylent is very much on the processed side in the spectrum of foods.
pveierland 10y ago
> The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity. Conceptually, the advantages of a product such as Soylent includes long shelf-life, reducing the frequency and time needed to shop food, offering healthy fast-food meals, having a lower carbon footprint and being more sustainable than regular food, reducing the time spent preparing food, being cheaper than other sources of ready-made food (with basis in my own budget). These are not trivial advantages if fully realized, and it seems reductive to reduce the advantages of Soylent to just being a product for people poorly educated about food. > I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking. I believe most people who eat healthy basically just follow hand-wavy norms and guidelines about what is considered healthy, e.g. include fish and vegetables in your diet (simplified). Once someone actually tries to engineer a complete diet such as Soylent it becomes apparent how hard it is to guarantee rich completeness. However, in the long run I believe the engineering approach, based on scientific input, is more likely to result in a proper diet. Especially when in the long run a "Soylent version X" can be based on a closed loop with personal body telemetry and customized food mixes based on these sensor readings.
- akamaka 10y ago
  I agree with you overall, but my different viewpoint comes from witnessing other companies addressing the advantages you've mentioned. Just as trends in the computer industry have been largely led by power users, there are also food "power users". These are people who save time cooking with new equipment (powerful blenders, sous vide, etc), have high quality, freshly-picked food delivered in weekly boxes, have convenient herb gardens, etc. There are more innovations on the horizon (Farmbot, Cinder, etc). Of course, Soylent is still much faster, but I think these "power users" will close the gap in convenience faster than Soylent can close the gap in quality.
  - daveFNbuck 10y ago
    I do not and will not prepare my own food, so it usually takes me at least 30 minutes and $10 to go out and get a meal. When I don't feel like doing that, a bottle of Soylent saves most of that time and money.
joesb 10y ago
That's call convenient. We still have people with poor level of education on programming and computer, yet company keep making more accessible PERSONAL COMPUTER for people to use.
- akamaka 10y ago
  I think personal computers area good analogy to kitchen equipment, but I draw the opposite conclusion. Back in the 1980s, only a small group of elite users had access to workstations built by companies like SGI, which had advanced graphics beyond anything the average person would know. Many people couldn't type and had secretaries to do it for them. Nowadays, there are millions of people who know how to use advances tools like Photoshop, every computer is essentially a workstation, and some people even want to see every child learning how to code. Food literacy and kitchen equipment are going on the same trajectory, and I'd put my money on the food startups that cater to the high end of the market, which will eventually been the mainstream.

roymurdock 10y ago

Soylent is more than food...the company and, more importantly, the idea (increased productivity/efficiency) that it embodies is a poster child for the social norm-disrupting technology that is coming out of SV. Many of this site work in the area and belong to its culture/brand (whether they want to or not) and it's their identity and what other people, friends and family included, quickly judge them by. It's not rational to judge an entire area or economic movement on the merits of a few, high-profile companies that are working on products that seem to be straight out of the movies (self-driving cars, addictive ad networks, virtual reality porn, gov spy software, futuristic milkshakes) but it's exciting so it's what people do. Nobody cares about the food aspect. Think one layer deeper - it's SVs brand, and, inextricably, "technology"s brand - yes that includes computers, servers, CRM software, virtual machines, the actual stuff that people on this website do and no it doesn't make any sense to link this stuff to Soylent's energy bars - that comes under attack every time one of SV's brand leaders is found to be harming people rather than helping them.

bertiewhykovich 10y ago
I don't think it's irrational to judge an industry that worships "disruption" on visible failures of that paradigm. Blithe disruption is all fun and games until it's your GI tract getting disrupted.
bertiewhykovich 10y ago
I don't think it's irrational to judge an industry that worships "disruption" on visible failures of that paradigm. Blithe disruption is all fun and games until it's your GI tract getting disrupted.

bbcbasic 10y ago

Nice strawman in response to no-one's comment

lucb1e 10y ago
Yeah and it sounds a bit condescending. Still, in previous discussions, it's true and s/he might have prevented a similar discussion here (or maybe I haven't scrolled to it yet). That's why I decided not to downvote.