4 ms·

That's a poor analogy. 1) We're starting from a functional state, 2) Changing diet is nowhere near as violent as hitting something with a wrench. Humans are ve

by lowboy 13y ago

That's a poor analogy. 1) We're starting from a functional state, 2) Changing diet is nowhere near as violent as hitting something with a wrench. Humans are very adaptable wrt. food, generally speaking. Look at the different diets all around the world, or even in one person's lifetime. The only issue I take with Soylent is their claim that it's perfect. I think we need MUCH more time to gather data.

jlgreco 13y ago
You have failed to understand the analogy. Hitting things with a wrench is how I fix things. Hitting things with a wrench is not analogous to eating Soylent, hitting things with a wrench is analogous to the medical care required when you break yourself. The fear is that Soylent, used as hyped, has the potential to break a human. Breaking yourself, or much worse, others, is a far more serious than breaking a machine. That sort of relaxed attitude towards health is exactly why I would not trust a product like this from people like this. Soylent really should not be banking on "it is difficult to kill a human", and neither should you.
- lowboy 13y ago
  Ah. That wasn't very clear in your comment. Yes, breaking humans is bad. Is there any indication that Soylent is going to break people though? As far as I can tell, it's unknown what the long term effects will be, but we have some evidence that it should be just fine. Do you have any evidence that points to Soylent being harmful?
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Stronger: more harmful than many irresponsible diets e.g. McJunk, fat, sugar?
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720683
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    This is exactly the relaxed attitude I am talking about. Soylent, used as hyped, should not need to be proved hazardous. Soylent, used as hyped, should be shown to be safe.
    - lowboy 13y ago
      Going back to lawnmowers, it would be like not wrapping the handle with leather for comfort because we can't prove that it's safe for the lawnmower. We think it's safe, we're pretty sure from our understanding that it's safe, but we can't prove it. I say give it a try. Let's wrap the handle, observe in operation, and then react when we have more data.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Back to your hyper-relaxed "the human body is no more complicated or serious than a machine" thing? I can't believe I have not made myself clear on this already, but I'll give it one more go: You can fuck around with lawn mowers because breaking one typically doesn't fucking kill somebody. If you break your fucking lawnmower, you buy a new one. You don't get to buy another human. Such a lazy attitude towards human safety is positively chilling. Have you learned absolutely nothing from the horrors seen over past centuries of people treating human lives like any other test subject?
        lowboy 13y ago
        It's only a problem if it harms a human suddenly and irreversibly. I'm guessing that anyone who was suffering problems from a dietary change would have time to correct. Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. I'm guessing that you won't, or can't. Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        > Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. > If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible. Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted. Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.
jckt 13y ago
Maybe not as violent, but a bad diet can quickly lead to disease. We never see it in the affluent West but micronutrient disease was and still is a pretty big problem -- you are getting enough food energy, so while you're not starving, you're still dying from your diet. We've only begun to start understanding some of these diseases (like Pellagra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology), and we don't really have it all nailed down yet.
- lowboy 13y ago
  Yeah, I agree that there's a lot that we don't know about the human body, and I disliked any claims by Soylent that overreached in this way. But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human. I think my main problem with the backlash is with the argument that boils down to "We don't know, so let's not risk it". I don't see why we can't try it, and then monitor and react. If I started using Soylent and then 30 days down the road I was feeling ill, I'd probably stop using it first thing while exploring other causes.
  - timr 13y ago
    "But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human." We really, really don't. You could be excused for thinking we've got it all figured out if you listened only to news reporting on nutrition studies, but there's so much contradictory information out there that it's difficult to know which end is up. For example: Soylent, according to the story, is partially fish oil. Did you know that there's a study out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that strongly suggests that fish oil supplementation increases the incidence of aggressive, fatal prostate cancers? What was once a nutrient panacea is likely now contraindicated in men. Does this mean that Soylent shouldn't be using fish oil? Hard to say. I doubt that even the creators have any idea.
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    The backlash is "We don't know, and you dumbass without a degree are trying to figure this out without any formal training". I welcome doctors, researchers, and people who know what they are doing to experiment with the human body. But when a computer science major armed with nothing but a few textbooks in body chemistry claims that he has "figured the body out", I am going to assume otherwise. Does he have any cooking experience? What is his medical background? Its not so much that "we don't know", but "the creator of Soylent clearly doesn't know", and yet he wants us to believe that he does.

by lowboy 13y ago

jlgreco 13y ago

You have failed to understand the analogy. Hitting things with a wrench is how I fix things. Hitting things with a wrench is not analogous to eating Soylent, hitting things with a wrench is analogous to the medical care required when you break yourself. The fear is that Soylent, used as hyped, has the potential to break a human. Breaking yourself, or much worse, others, is a far more serious than breaking a machine. That sort of relaxed attitude towards health is exactly why I would not trust a product like this from people like this. Soylent really should not be banking on "it is difficult to kill a human", and neither should you.

lowboy 13y ago
Ah. That wasn't very clear in your comment. Yes, breaking humans is bad. Is there any indication that Soylent is going to break people though? As far as I can tell, it's unknown what the long term effects will be, but we have some evidence that it should be just fine. Do you have any evidence that points to Soylent being harmful?
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Stronger: more harmful than many irresponsible diets e.g. McJunk, fat, sugar?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6720683
- jlgreco 13y ago
  This is exactly the relaxed attitude I am talking about. Soylent, used as hyped, should not need to be proved hazardous. Soylent, used as hyped, should be shown to be safe.
  - lowboy 13y ago
    Going back to lawnmowers, it would be like not wrapping the handle with leather for comfort because we can't prove that it's safe for the lawnmower. We think it's safe, we're pretty sure from our understanding that it's safe, but we can't prove it. I say give it a try. Let's wrap the handle, observe in operation, and then react when we have more data.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Back to your hyper-relaxed "the human body is no more complicated or serious than a machine" thing? I can't believe I have not made myself clear on this already, but I'll give it one more go: You can fuck around with lawn mowers because breaking one typically doesn't fucking kill somebody. If you break your fucking lawnmower, you buy a new one. You don't get to buy another human. Such a lazy attitude towards human safety is positively chilling. Have you learned absolutely nothing from the horrors seen over past centuries of people treating human lives like any other test subject?
      - lowboy 13y ago
        It's only a problem if it harms a human suddenly and irreversibly. I'm guessing that anyone who was suffering problems from a dietary change would have time to correct. Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. I'm guessing that you won't, or can't. Your argument is "We don't know, so let's not risk it". The risk here is minimal. If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        > Show me some evidence or even some indication that Soylent will result in an irreversible and sudden decline in health. > If it fails to live up to the hype, it's reversible. Once again, demanding evidence that something is unsafe instead of providing evidence that it is not, then in the same breath taking that it is not for granted. Is that all you are wired to do? It's like what I'm saying is going in one ear and coming out the other.

jckt 13y ago

Maybe not as violent, but a bad diet can quickly lead to disease. We never see it in the affluent West but micronutrient disease was and still is a pretty big problem -- you are getting enough food energy, so while you're not starving, you're still dying from your diet. We've only begun to start understanding some of these diseases (like Pellagra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra#Epidemiology), and we don't really have it all nailed down yet.

lowboy 13y ago
Yeah, I agree that there's a lot that we don't know about the human body, and I disliked any claims by Soylent that overreached in this way. But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human. I think my main problem with the backlash is with the argument that boils down to "We don't know, so let's not risk it". I don't see why we can't try it, and then monitor and react. If I started using Soylent and then 30 days down the road I was feeling ill, I'd probably stop using it first thing while exploring other causes.
- timr 13y ago
  "But we do know about nutrients and have a good idea of the proportion of them for the avg human." We really, really don't. You could be excused for thinking we've got it all figured out if you listened only to news reporting on nutrition studies, but there's so much contradictory information out there that it's difficult to know which end is up. For example: Soylent, according to the story, is partially fish oil. Did you know that there's a study out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that strongly suggests that fish oil supplementation increases the incidence of aggressive, fatal prostate cancers? What was once a nutrient panacea is likely now contraindicated in men. Does this mean that Soylent shouldn't be using fish oil? Hard to say. I doubt that even the creators have any idea.
- dragontamer 13y ago
  The backlash is "We don't know, and you dumbass without a degree are trying to figure this out without any formal training". I welcome doctors, researchers, and people who know what they are doing to experiment with the human body. But when a computer science major armed with nothing but a few textbooks in body chemistry claims that he has "figured the body out", I am going to assume otherwise. Does he have any cooking experience? What is his medical background? Its not so much that "we don't know", but "the creator of Soylent clearly doesn't know", and yet he wants us to believe that he does.