5 ms·

I don't know if that's really true. How much can an uncontrolled, unrandomized, unmonitored nutritional experiment really tell us? OK, it can confirm that i) So

I don't know if that's really true. How much can an uncontrolled, unrandomized, unmonitored nutritional experiment really tell us? OK, it can confirm that i) Soylent isn't poisonous, and ii) Soylent isn't the key to everlasting life. But I'm not sure what other data it can yield outside of a clinical trial setting.

ekianjo 13y ago
I'm not going to say you will have a ton of valuable data, but safety confirmation is certainly something you will get from large numbers of participants. If nobody gets extremely sick, dies or develops some kind of illness after years of Soylent consumption, at least you'll know that it could be an acceptable form of food.
- gabemart 13y ago
  > If nobody gets extremely sick, dies or develops some kind of illness after years of Soylent consumption, at least you'll know that it could be an acceptable form of food. If Soylent is used by even a modest number of people, the probability approaches 1 that some people will get sick, develop a chronic illness or die after years of Soylent consumption. The probability is the same for a modestly-sized group eating a regular diet over the same timespan. Is the morbidity caused by Soylent? Is it caused by a regular diet? Is it caused by uncontrolled variables, or random chance? In an uncontrolled environment, it would be extremely difficult to establish a causal link between Soylent consumption and a particular health outcome, even if that health outcome were so radically more or less prevalent in the Soylent group vs. the general population that it was actually noticed as a trend and people went looking for it. But it's far likelier that, if Soylent consumption were associated with a particular health outcome, the trend wouldn't be so clear-cut or obvious as to stand out outside of a controlled environment, and people wouldn't go looking for it. Especially if it took years or decades to manifest.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > If Soylent is used by even a modest number of people, the probability approaches 1 that some people will get sick, develop a chronic illness or die after years of Soylent consumption. The probability is the same for a modestly-sized group eating a regular diet over the same timespan. Is the morbidity caused by Soylent? Is it caused by a regular diet? Is it caused by uncontrolled variables, or random chance? You can easily confirm or infirm that with statistics. If Soylent is used by hundred of thousands of people and the health issues reported are about the same rates as issues reported in general population, it means there's no additional risk. The only bad thing it may get is more media attention, but media is well known to care shit about statistics.

ekianjo 13y ago

I'm not going to say you will have a ton of valuable data, but safety confirmation is certainly something you will get from large numbers of participants. If nobody gets extremely sick, dies or develops some kind of illness after years of Soylent consumption, at least you'll know that it could be an acceptable form of food.

gabemart 13y ago
> If nobody gets extremely sick, dies or develops some kind of illness after years of Soylent consumption, at least you'll know that it could be an acceptable form of food. If Soylent is used by even a modest number of people, the probability approaches 1 that some people will get sick, develop a chronic illness or die after years of Soylent consumption. The probability is the same for a modestly-sized group eating a regular diet over the same timespan. Is the morbidity caused by Soylent? Is it caused by a regular diet? Is it caused by uncontrolled variables, or random chance? In an uncontrolled environment, it would be extremely difficult to establish a causal link between Soylent consumption and a particular health outcome, even if that health outcome were so radically more or less prevalent in the Soylent group vs. the general population that it was actually noticed as a trend and people went looking for it. But it's far likelier that, if Soylent consumption were associated with a particular health outcome, the trend wouldn't be so clear-cut or obvious as to stand out outside of a controlled environment, and people wouldn't go looking for it. Especially if it took years or decades to manifest.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > If Soylent is used by even a modest number of people, the probability approaches 1 that some people will get sick, develop a chronic illness or die after years of Soylent consumption. The probability is the same for a modestly-sized group eating a regular diet over the same timespan. Is the morbidity caused by Soylent? Is it caused by a regular diet? Is it caused by uncontrolled variables, or random chance? You can easily confirm or infirm that with statistics. If Soylent is used by hundred of thousands of people and the health issues reported are about the same rates as issues reported in general population, it means there's no additional risk. The only bad thing it may get is more media attention, but media is well known to care shit about statistics.