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This author is so offended by the idea of meal substitutes that they attempt to dress them up as class warfare. Such baseless, emotional absurdity
by n42 2y ago
This author is so offended by the idea of meal substitutes that they attempt to dress them up as class warfare. Such baseless, emotional absurdity
- addicted 2y agoNot disagreeing with your point, but I don’t understand why people call these baseless arguments “emotional”. The aim of the person making the argument is to try and use someone else’s plight and disadvantages as a reason to excuse their choices. They don’t do this by tugging on heart strings. They do this by trying to position themselves as a 3rd party neutral observer which makes the reader more likely to believe that their claim that a claimed injustice is real or a claimed solution will work. It’s not an attempt to deceive through emotion. It’s an attempt to deceive by making themselves appear as neutral and unbiased.
- compacct27 2y ago"3rd party neutral observer" Taking a look at the rest of the blog, this one's anything but.
- n42 2y agoI don’t think it is emotional manipulation, I think it is emotional reasoning. They use a vague claim of violent diarrhea and the change of a CEO to make the case that meal substitutes have failed at the only thing they claim to do (false) and that Silicon Valley is out of touch for applying reasoning to something they don’t actually understand. I would be interested in an article making a case against these drinks that used some kind of substantial argument, but this is not it. The article may as well be an anti vaccine article claiming vaccines give you diarrhea, our bodies regulate themselves, and big pharma is trying to get you hooked on a recurring revenue model to create a class divide. A pseudo-intellectual argument worked backward from trying to explain the “feeling” that putting chemicals in your body is bad. Reading between the lines, I suspect the real root of the argument is that the author has an emotion - they don’t like the idea of Soylent or the brand that was created behind it - and is jumping through hoops to rationalize that feeling.
- dotcoma 2y agoNo, she’s merely saying that it could end up like that. And given the existence of “food deserts” in low-income neighbourhoods, or the fact that those who eat at fast-food joints tend to be poor… I think she has a point. She is over-stretching it, it’s true, but I don’t see it as so unlikely.
- bcrl 2y agoMy reading of the article is that the author doesn't think that picking the dystopian view of what food will become from a well known sci-fi movie and trying to make that into product is the best thing for humanity. The richness of the human experience is found in variety. The moment we give that up we lose something. Experiencing food in all its many forms is one of the joys of life. Similary, I love curated lists of songs and movies from other people the push me outside of the realm of what I seek out on my own. They have a richness that the infinite scrolling screens of AI generated suggestions are missing. Moveover, other people notice things about you and adjust their suggestions according to your emotional state. Down and depressed? Maybe a friend will suggest an insightful comedy to lift you up a bit. AI generated suggestions never seem to do that for me.
- smabie 2y agoAnd soylent is yet more variety right?
- bcrl 2y agoSure, replacing a meal with different items and textures in it with a single pasty liquid is so much more variety.
- Defletter 2y agoYou are more than free to not buy and consume it...
- bcrl 2y agoThat's missing the entire point of my posts. My issue is that the vision being taken and made into being is the one from a dystopian future. Why not aim for a more utopian view of society instead? Focus on solving actual world problems that will make people's lives better as opposed to taking ideas from futures that most people would agree that they want to avoid.