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I really like your analogy to unit tests and integration tests. It makes me wonder if the Soylent ‘experiment’ might provide a better means to do that. Rob has

I really like your analogy to unit tests and integration tests. It makes me wonder if the Soylent ‘experiment’ might provide a better means to do that. Rob has already written about a few times where he was missing something in his formula and was able to detect specific problems and respond to them. Sounds pretty close to being unit-testable at that point.

cell303 13y ago
I really dislike the unit test and integration test analogy. It is based on the assumption that the human body has something in common with a computer program - or anything man-made for that matter. This is clearly not the case. We tend to think of ourselves in terms of whatever our current lead technology is. It has been like that before [1]. While it is certainly psychologically comforting it becomes dangerous when we act based on what really is somewhat of an arbitrary model. [1]: http://webadventures.at/2007/06/17/der-mensch-als-industriepalast/ http://webadventures.at/2007/06/17/der-mensch-als-industriep...
- nbouscal 13y ago
  It's based on the assumption that the human body is a complex organism made up of interacting subsystems, and that there is a distinction between testing the effect of a change on one subsystem and testing the effect of a change on the entire organism. That's a very abstract assumption, and easily applies in this case. If you can't see anything in common between the human body and a computer program, you're just not looking at an abstract enough level. You can start with "they both exist" and work your way towards the concrete from there.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  > We tend to think of ourselves in terms of whatever our current lead technology is. It has been like that before [1]. This is what we call progress. Technology doesn't grow on its own, it embodies the deep insights into workings of reality humans gain throughout the century. Therefore it is to be expected that we will draw parallels and that they will improve as we improve our tech.
pron 13y ago
There is no way anyone can make several accurate observation about nutrition at our current stage of knowledge about physiology, let alone be able to "hack" it. It's like someone saying they're working on a warp drive or a teleporter. It could happen some day, but probably far in the future. Actually, the warp-drive/teleportation problems might be easier, because we'll probably know when we get there. With nutrition, there's little evidence to suggest that a theoretically perfect nutrition would result in much improved health over sub-par nutrition. We don't even know that nutrition has a strong effect on health at all (other than eating poison, or few other truly well-known facts).
- nbouscal 13y ago
  There is no way to make accurate observations about nutrition? Well shit then, I guess we'd better just give up and accept our inevitable future obesity.
  - pron 13y ago
    Well, maybe. Research into obesity has been going on for decades in many countries without clear cut conclusions. On the other hand, tackling obesity alone is a different matter from finding food that makes us healthy. There might be some hope, yet. While we don't know that food can make us healthy, it's quite probable that it makes us fat or thin, or, at the very least, has a significant effect on weight.

cell303 13y ago

I really dislike the unit test and integration test analogy. It is based on the assumption that the human body has something in common with a computer program - or anything man-made for that matter. This is clearly not the case. We tend to think of ourselves in terms of whatever our current lead technology is. It has been like that before [1]. While it is certainly psychologically comforting it becomes dangerous when we act based on what really is somewhat of an arbitrary model. [1]: http://webadventures.at/2007/06/17/der-mensch-als-industriepalast/ http://webadventures.at/2007/06/17/der-mensch-als-industriep...

nbouscal 13y ago
It's based on the assumption that the human body is a complex organism made up of interacting subsystems, and that there is a distinction between testing the effect of a change on one subsystem and testing the effect of a change on the entire organism. That's a very abstract assumption, and easily applies in this case. If you can't see anything in common between the human body and a computer program, you're just not looking at an abstract enough level. You can start with "they both exist" and work your way towards the concrete from there.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> We tend to think of ourselves in terms of whatever our current lead technology is. It has been like that before [1]. This is what we call progress. Technology doesn't grow on its own, it embodies the deep insights into workings of reality humans gain throughout the century. Therefore it is to be expected that we will draw parallels and that they will improve as we improve our tech.

pron 13y ago

There is no way anyone can make several accurate observation about nutrition at our current stage of knowledge about physiology, let alone be able to "hack" it. It's like someone saying they're working on a warp drive or a teleporter. It could happen some day, but probably far in the future. Actually, the warp-drive/teleportation problems might be easier, because we'll probably know when we get there. With nutrition, there's little evidence to suggest that a theoretically perfect nutrition would result in much improved health over sub-par nutrition. We don't even know that nutrition has a strong effect on health at all (other than eating poison, or few other truly well-known facts).

nbouscal 13y ago
There is no way to make accurate observations about nutrition? Well shit then, I guess we'd better just give up and accept our inevitable future obesity.
- pron 13y ago
  Well, maybe. Research into obesity has been going on for decades in many countries without clear cut conclusions. On the other hand, tackling obesity alone is a different matter from finding food that makes us healthy. There might be some hope, yet. While we don't know that food can make us healthy, it's quite probable that it makes us fat or thin, or, at the very least, has a significant effect on weight.