6 ms·

>an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have [succeeded with a] task that specialists have so far failed at The guy who invented the spread

by zeteo 14y ago

>an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have [succeeded with a] task that specialists have so far failed at The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Nutrition is a field full of pseudoscience and highly susceptible to disruption. People should be encouraged to try new things here. If this guy is wrong it's at his own cost, and if right the potential benefits are enormous.

baak 14y ago
Elon Musk designed the rocket? All by himself? Wow! What a renaissance man. I figured he had physicists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, chemists, and you name it. But I guess he just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket. This guy is a hobbyist who is claiming his diet has cured most of his ails. You aren't the least bit suspicious of that claim?
- zeteo 14y ago
  >I guess [Musk] just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket Ah, I love it when people think they're sarcastic but they're correct: >"I was sitting behind [Elon Musk] on the flight back to London when he looked at me over the seat and said, 'I think we can build a rocket ourselves.'" He showed Cantrell the spreadsheet he'd been working on. "I looked at it and said, I'll be damned — that's why he's been borrowing all my books. He'd been borrowing all my college textbooks on rocketry and propulsion. You know, whenever anybody asks Elon how he learned to build rockets, he says, 'I read books.' Well, it's true. He devoured those books. He knew everything. He's the smartest guy I've ever met, and he'd been planning to build a rocket all along. [1] [1]http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-interview-1212-2 http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-int...
  - baak 14y ago
    ...didn't he have a Bachelor's in Physics? Either way, he didn't build/design the rocket himself. There was an enormous team.
  - roc 14y ago
    If the fellow from the article read a few books and then proceeded to hire a team of the best and brightest specialists to help refine and perfect his concept, I'm thinking the response would be different.
  - damoncali 14y ago
    I can assure you (as someone who has designed part of a rocket) that Elon Musk did nothing even close to designing a rocket. That paragraph describes a school project for a propulsion class, not a rocket design. Good on him for doing what he's doing, but he's not doing it alone.
  - farinasa 14y ago
    Go watch the tour of Space X. He shows their current rockets and prototypes and proceeds to explain that it was another guy that built it in his garage. Elon funded it's production.
- stephengillie 14y ago
  Most of his ails were probably caused by moderate obesity, and his meal replacement shakes probably have him on a calorie-restricted diet. At the very least, this guy is probably more aware of his calorie intake than he was when he was free-eating. (free-eating is when you eat what you feel like whenever you want to, without worrying about what or how much you're eating)
grhino 14y ago
He could be one of the rare ones that doesn't enjoy food, so he doesn't understand why eating food is often a social experience. Even if it does turn out to be the perfect drink, though I would think you could find something similar as a meal substitute shake, MRE, or for people who can't chew. There's probably already a market for something like this that is being targeted.
- zeteo 14y ago
  So maybe he'll make a killing in the meal substitute market. Or maybe he'll become the poster boy for why you need boron in your diet and you'll die horribly without it. Either way, we'll all learn something new and useful.
- DanBC 14y ago
  It's a big market and it's being targeted pretty successfully. It's a medical market, which means he's going to fail getting through the tricky regulatory problems. See, for example, Ensure or Ensure Plus.
Confusion 14y ago
I think Elon Musk is a prime example of why this guy is probably wrong. Elon Musk needed quite some time and money to organise sending a rocket successfully into space. He hired a lot of people for their expertise, because he didn't know everything and didn't have the time to learn everything by himself, let alone build it. If an Elon Musk were to attack this problem in the way such a problem needs to be attacked, then things would be interesting. Humans are more complex than rockets.
- J_ 14y ago
  He's not building a human though. He's building food. Modern rocketry has been around for about a century, and food has been with us since the beginning. I don't see why it would be that complex. Like pg said, the top comment for every new product posted on HN is always something dismissive that doesn't really add to the discussion, and this thread is no exception.
  - Confusion 14y ago
    Human females contain an environment in which an organism, after being bootstrapped, can assemble itself into a human using mostly food as input. I would argue that building the correct input for that environment and process is exactly as complex as building a human.
a_p 14y ago
>The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Both of your examples are poor. Dan Bricklin had earned a B.S in computer science from MIT and was studying for an MBA at Harvard when he wrote a software program that was useful for businesses. He had a very good background for the product that he created. Elon Musk was able to send his rocket into space after he hired a team of smart engineers to build it for him. His engineers benefited from the knowledge gained from NASA research that cost (when adjusted for inflation) hundreds of billions of dollars.
- zeteo 14y ago
  Bricklin's background in business was minimal, but he created a product that revolutionized business processes more than thousands of acclaimed gurus. Musk absorbed a few books on rocketry (see my related comment) and constructed an accurate theoretical model before hiring anyone.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Some people are geniuses (or close enough). Other people? Not so much. This guy pretty much falls into the not so much category. He forgot to include iron! Did Musk forget to include $ROCKETRY_COMPONENT? I'm glad that there are people willing to do interesting new stuff. I'm glad that some of these people are happy to experiment on themselves. I'm even glad if some of these people turn out to be idiots. I get a bit unhappy when someone who doesn't appear to know what they're talking about (and who has demonstrated their ignorance) goes on to say that they've got some answer that other people should be listening to. When these people say "It worked for me! You need to try this!" all sorts of bells start ringing. Asking people not to push their uninformed experimental pseudo-science is not the same as asking very clever people to not be clever in other fields.
    - ScottBurson 14y ago
      Show me anyplace in any of his blog posts where he says anything like "You need to try this!". He does invite people who would like to try it to contact him. That's far from a hard sell. He also says things like "At this point I think scepticism is completely reasonable."

by zeteo 14y ago

baak 14y ago

Elon Musk designed the rocket? All by himself? Wow! What a renaissance man. I figured he had physicists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, chemists, and you name it. But I guess he just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket. This guy is a hobbyist who is claiming his diet has cured most of his ails. You aren't the least bit suspicious of that claim?

zeteo 14y ago
>I guess [Musk] just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket Ah, I love it when people think they're sarcastic but they're correct: >"I was sitting behind [Elon Musk] on the flight back to London when he looked at me over the seat and said, 'I think we can build a rocket ourselves.'" He showed Cantrell the spreadsheet he'd been working on. "I looked at it and said, I'll be damned — that's why he's been borrowing all my books. He'd been borrowing all my college textbooks on rocketry and propulsion. You know, whenever anybody asks Elon how he learned to build rockets, he says, 'I read books.' Well, it's true. He devoured those books. He knew everything. He's the smartest guy I've ever met, and he'd been planning to build a rocket all along. [1] [1]http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-interview-1212-2 http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-int...
- baak 14y ago
  ...didn't he have a Bachelor's in Physics? Either way, he didn't build/design the rocket himself. There was an enormous team.
- roc 14y ago
  If the fellow from the article read a few books and then proceeded to hire a team of the best and brightest specialists to help refine and perfect his concept, I'm thinking the response would be different.
- damoncali 14y ago
  I can assure you (as someone who has designed part of a rocket) that Elon Musk did nothing even close to designing a rocket. That paragraph describes a school project for a propulsion class, not a rocket design. Good on him for doing what he's doing, but he's not doing it alone.
- farinasa 14y ago
  Go watch the tour of Space X. He shows their current rockets and prototypes and proceeds to explain that it was another guy that built it in his garage. Elon funded it's production.
stephengillie 14y ago
Most of his ails were probably caused by moderate obesity, and his meal replacement shakes probably have him on a calorie-restricted diet. At the very least, this guy is probably more aware of his calorie intake than he was when he was free-eating. (free-eating is when you eat what you feel like whenever you want to, without worrying about what or how much you're eating)

grhino 14y ago

He could be one of the rare ones that doesn't enjoy food, so he doesn't understand why eating food is often a social experience. Even if it does turn out to be the perfect drink, though I would think you could find something similar as a meal substitute shake, MRE, or for people who can't chew. There's probably already a market for something like this that is being targeted.

zeteo 14y ago
So maybe he'll make a killing in the meal substitute market. Or maybe he'll become the poster boy for why you need boron in your diet and you'll die horribly without it. Either way, we'll all learn something new and useful.
DanBC 14y ago
It's a big market and it's being targeted pretty successfully. It's a medical market, which means he's going to fail getting through the tricky regulatory problems. See, for example, Ensure or Ensure Plus.

Confusion 14y ago

I think Elon Musk is a prime example of why this guy is probably wrong. Elon Musk needed quite some time and money to organise sending a rocket successfully into space. He hired a lot of people for their expertise, because he didn't know everything and didn't have the time to learn everything by himself, let alone build it. If an Elon Musk were to attack this problem in the way such a problem needs to be attacked, then things would be interesting. Humans are more complex than rockets.

J_ 14y ago
He's not building a human though. He's building food. Modern rocketry has been around for about a century, and food has been with us since the beginning. I don't see why it would be that complex. Like pg said, the top comment for every new product posted on HN is always something dismissive that doesn't really add to the discussion, and this thread is no exception.
- Confusion 14y ago
  Human females contain an environment in which an organism, after being bootstrapped, can assemble itself into a human using mostly food as input. I would argue that building the correct input for that environment and process is exactly as complex as building a human.

a_p 14y ago

>The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Both of your examples are poor. Dan Bricklin had earned a B.S in computer science from MIT and was studying for an MBA at Harvard when he wrote a software program that was useful for businesses. He had a very good background for the product that he created. Elon Musk was able to send his rocket into space after he hired a team of smart engineers to build it for him. His engineers benefited from the knowledge gained from NASA research that cost (when adjusted for inflation) hundreds of billions of dollars.

zeteo 14y ago
Bricklin's background in business was minimal, but he created a product that revolutionized business processes more than thousands of acclaimed gurus. Musk absorbed a few books on rocketry (see my related comment) and constructed an accurate theoretical model before hiring anyone.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Some people are geniuses (or close enough). Other people? Not so much. This guy pretty much falls into the not so much category. He forgot to include iron! Did Musk forget to include $ROCKETRY_COMPONENT? I'm glad that there are people willing to do interesting new stuff. I'm glad that some of these people are happy to experiment on themselves. I'm even glad if some of these people turn out to be idiots. I get a bit unhappy when someone who doesn't appear to know what they're talking about (and who has demonstrated their ignorance) goes on to say that they've got some answer that other people should be listening to. When these people say "It worked for me! You need to try this!" all sorts of bells start ringing. Asking people not to push their uninformed experimental pseudo-science is not the same as asking very clever people to not be clever in other fields.
  - ScottBurson 14y ago
    Show me anyplace in any of his blog posts where he says anything like "You need to try this!". He does invite people who would like to try it to contact him. That's far from a hard sell. He also says things like "At this point I think scepticism is completely reasonable."