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PBS and Science Magazine allegedly got some facts wrong. Regardless, the WHO is talking about three billion indoor fires in primitive homes. In most of these c

PBS and Science Magazine allegedly got some facts wrong. Regardless, the WHO is talking about three billion indoor fires in primitive homes. In most of these cases, there is no distinction between a "cooking stove" and "heating stove" and whether these families require heating year round or not, cooking is not a seasonal activity. Splitting hairs on this point is dumb, though. The point of citing it at all is to illustrate how big they are thinking. They want to solve the entire world's food problem. Isn't that scale of vision why we're all here?

prodigal_erik 13y ago
Soylent is not going to reduce the death toll from indoor stoves if those people have to continue using their stoves to stay warm (even if not also to cook). To make grandiose claims is to risk undermining legitimate ones.
DanBC 13y ago
> They want to solve the entire world's food problem. Isn't that scale of vision why we're all here? That's an amazing vision. Soylent shows little to no understanding of the actual problems of food security. There doesn't appear to be any research into the causes of food scarcity, or who is affected by food scarcity, or what a sensible solution would be. Soylent glop doesn't seem to do anything to increase local independence. Where food could be grown and sold locally now people are importing a bunch of stuff from elsewhere. Here are some people in Mogadishu selling food. (http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201207161308270312/Vegetable-sellers-in-Bakara-market-Mogadishu http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201207161308270312/Veg...) How much Soylent does this child need? (http://pinterest.com/pin/278519558175219781/ http://pinterest.com/pin/278519558175219781/) How do you get Soylent to the Democratic Republic of Congo? What do you do when people don't have clean water? Soylent have made a strong link between food waste and world hunger. They claim that waste here causes hunger there. That's clearly, blatantly, wrong. I'm all for big ideas and thinking big, but so far this is either a cynical scam or brutally ignorant.
- dvanduzer 13y ago
  Prior art on the link between food waste and world hunger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeoa0-U8-Yw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeoa0-U8-Yw The concept of Soylent is orthogonal to the slow food movement, but it isn't incompatible with local production by definition. None of your objections make any real sense. This is an early prototype of balanced-diet-in-a-pill, but because they haven't solved the problem of clean water across the globe, they're the cynical ones?

prodigal_erik 13y ago

Soylent is not going to reduce the death toll from indoor stoves if those people have to continue using their stoves to stay warm (even if not also to cook). To make grandiose claims is to risk undermining legitimate ones.

DanBC 13y ago

> They want to solve the entire world's food problem. Isn't that scale of vision why we're all here? That's an amazing vision. Soylent shows little to no understanding of the actual problems of food security. There doesn't appear to be any research into the causes of food scarcity, or who is affected by food scarcity, or what a sensible solution would be. Soylent glop doesn't seem to do anything to increase local independence. Where food could be grown and sold locally now people are importing a bunch of stuff from elsewhere. Here are some people in Mogadishu selling food. (http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201207161308270312/Vegetable-sellers-in-Bakara-market-Mogadishu http://www.irinnews.org/Photo/Details/201207161308270312/Veg...) How much Soylent does this child need? (http://pinterest.com/pin/278519558175219781/ http://pinterest.com/pin/278519558175219781/) How do you get Soylent to the Democratic Republic of Congo? What do you do when people don't have clean water? Soylent have made a strong link between food waste and world hunger. They claim that waste here causes hunger there. That's clearly, blatantly, wrong. I'm all for big ideas and thinking big, but so far this is either a cynical scam or brutally ignorant.

dvanduzer 13y ago
Prior art on the link between food waste and world hunger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeoa0-U8-Yw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeoa0-U8-Yw The concept of Soylent is orthogonal to the slow food movement, but it isn't incompatible with local production by definition. None of your objections make any real sense. This is an early prototype of balanced-diet-in-a-pill, but because they haven't solved the problem of clean water across the globe, they're the cynical ones?