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These issues are simpler to explain than the author realizes--and without any special invocation of Kant. Simply put, technology has made sex a lot safer at the

These issues are simpler to explain than the author realizes--and without any special invocation of Kant. Simply put, technology has made sex a lot safer at the same time as it has made food a lot more dangerous. Sex is safer (in the sense of creating fewer risks and uncertainties), as we all know, thanks to developments like condoms, STD testing, contraception, and legalized abortion. Meanwhile, food is a lot more dangerous, thanks to food science being used to create "hyperpalatable" junk food--cf. Paul Graham's "The Acceleration of Addictiveness."[1] As a 20-something in the U.S., I look around me and see obesity as an almost guaranteed outcome once people reach a certain age (with diabetes and heart disease not far behind)--and like many of my peers, I'm spooked. In response to this, I wouldn't exactly say people have made healthy eating into a new Categorical Imperative. Instead, they've become paranoid and superstitious about what it is in modern food that's hurting them. Hence we get ridiculous cargo cults like gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, everything Dr. Oz pushes, etc. Meanwhile, evidence-based approaches to the issue have not yet produced a diet that is optimal, practical, and that provides the level of enjoyment that we're used to from food. I personally think that Soylent is off to a promising start, although it has a long way to go. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

slapshot 12y ago
> made food a lot more dangerous You are almost certainly too young to remember it in the United States, but it wasn't that long ago that food was terribly dangerous. Start at non-sterile meat, bad canning practices (botulism killed 2,000+ per year in the United States until around WWII, down to a handful today) and go all the way to pellagra (an easily-solved Vitamin B deficiency that still killed 7500 people per year in the US in the 1930s; effectively 0 today). Remember Wonder Bread? It seems like evil simple carbs today, but it was initially popular precisely because the color and texture proved that it wasn't adulterated like many local bakers did at the time (flour was expensive, sawdust was cheap and could stretch meager supplies). Food was not safe for a long time.
- craigwblake 12y ago
  Let's put those numbers in perspective, though. The CDC [1] claims that 600,000 people die per year due to heart disease, most of the causes of which (again according to the CDC) are people's choices in food and drink. That's pretty good evidence that food, on the whole, is not safer now. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm
  - schoen 12y ago
    Seems to be an interesting difficult in terms of whether the dangers in food are ones that people consuming it can expect to perceive. In an era when food poisoning was more common, maybe a lot of people knew quickly whether the food they ate had harmed them; now folks eating junk food might have to wait years to experience some of the adverse effects, and can't really relate those effects to a particular purchase or product or vendor. I worry about a similar thing for computer security. A lot of the threats that we used to think about in terms of, say, viruses, wanted to get the user's attention either through innocuous mischief, or by showing off with spectacularly destructive behavior, like deleting files or crashing the machine or even erasing the hard drive. "Look at me, I infected your computer!" And later we saw adware which tries to get the user's attention for marketing purposes (which is definitely still a thing). But now a whole lot of attackers have a goal of long-term, pervasive, convert compromise, to be used selectively later on -- botnets for DDoS attacks and spam, keyloggers for delayed financial fraud or government surveillance, "advanced persistent threats" to compromise infrastructure, maybe in service of transitively compromising other infrastructure. http://www.isaca.org/chapters2/Norway/NordicConference/Documents/14.pdf http://www.isaca.org/chapters2/Norway/NordicConference/Docum... So in the past there was a common expectation that a virus would do something that the user could notice, or else what's the point? Whereas nowadays if someone says "the government is spying on me, my computer displayed a weird security warning message" it tends to reduce the credibility of the claim, because we expect that botnet developers and government hackers are as covert as possible, delaying the moment when victims of compromise would notice anything's wrong for as far as possible, trying to break or obfuscate the link between the attack and its results as much as possible. So in one sense computers have also gotten more dangerous because there are more powerful and pervasive attackers, but in another sense there may be a trend away from risks of getting any kind of malware whose effects you will notice any time soon.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ambler0 12y ago
Whether or not an organic diet (whatever that may be exactly) ultimately proves to be healthier, it's wrong to describe the movement to eat such food as a "ridiculous cargo cult". It's clear what people are worried about (dangerous pesticides, environmental pollutants) and the expectation that food labeled as organic is better in this respect is not unreasonable. Whether or not labeling food "certified organic" makes enough of a difference is a different discussion; clearly there is no substitute for knowing where your food comes from. The fact that you lump this in with gluten-free and anti-GMO, which are themselves interesting and unique topics of discussion that have in common only their faddishness, and then lump all three of these in with a charlatan like Dr. Oz, shows to me that you have an oversimplified view of these issues.
- sowhatquestion 12y ago
  > you have an oversimplified view of these issues Nice try, but no. "On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries." (emphasis mine) http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0111629 http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone... "Study of 100 Billion Animals Finds GMOs Safe" http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/comprehensive-study-100-billion-animals-finds-gmos-safe-livestock http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/comprehensive-s... "A recent study has shown that for those with non-Celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), the gluten itself might not be to blame for GI troubles." http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/does-non-celiac-gluten-intolerance-actually-exist http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/does-non-celia... "Organic food no more nutritious than conventionally grown food" http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutritious-than-conventionally-grown-food-201209055264 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutr... ... Admittedly, the issue of organic food is more controversial than the others. There was also a study showing that organic foods had higher levels of antioxidants: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-organic-foods-20140715-story.html http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-organic-foods-20140715... But given the amount of money people spend on organic food and the level of enthusiasm for it, you would think it cured cancer--not that there was inconclusive evidence that it might have somewhat higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticide residue. In any case, antioxidants can be supplemented, much more cheaply than buying organic food. But that doesn't provide the level of enjoyment (or for some people, the pseudo-religious experience) of buying organic produce. And THAT is as complex as I think the issue is. The term "cargo cult" hits close enough to the mark, for me.
pizza234 12y ago
> Hence we get ridiculous cargo cults like gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, everything Dr. Oz pushes As a 20-something in the US, you're certainly very uninformed. Gluten free, organic and anti-gmo have nothing to do with cargo cults and food fanatism. Essentially nobody buys gluten-free products because they're gluten free (except who needs it). GF products are a very little minority, because the lack of gluten is a serious limitation in food preparation. Plus, such products are very expesive. Nobody turns "gluten-free" unless he has to. Organic is part of a bigger cultural picture. In some countries, the majority of the people eat [much] organic. Nobody expects to become super fit and super healthy from it. It's just a choice judged to be healthier as a whole. It's actually the opposite of a cargo cult, since people who choose organic, do it for life, not to follow a fad who lasts a short time (which is essential to cargo culting). And finally, it's not smart to bash anti-GMO just because smart people are supposed to be pro-GMO. There are also rational reasons for being anti-GMO and cretinic reasons for being pro-GMO (like assuming that the increased yield of a crop automatically implies economic convenience). If Soylent is optimal and provides enjoyment, well, you better move to another country and try real food. Besides, in the bigger picture, Soylent carries the assumption that human nutrition is nothing else than intake of isolated nutritional elements, which is foolish.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > not to follow a fad who lasts a short time (which is essential to cargo culting). Cargo cults are groups who follow rituals they don't understand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult If a group is following a diet without understanding it, I think it's apt (though perhaps needlessly divisive) to call that group a cargo cult. If someone doesn't eat gluten and can't describe what gluten is and why it's bad, he or she is exhibiting the behavior of a member of a cargo cult.
  - ambler0 12y ago
    Thanks for bringing this up for the people who aren't familiar with the history of the term. In my opinion, "cargo cult" is overused and overly specific. We have a perfectly good word for these kinds of behaviors, i.e. "superstition"

slapshot 12y ago

> made food a lot more dangerous You are almost certainly too young to remember it in the United States, but it wasn't that long ago that food was terribly dangerous. Start at non-sterile meat, bad canning practices (botulism killed 2,000+ per year in the United States until around WWII, down to a handful today) and go all the way to pellagra (an easily-solved Vitamin B deficiency that still killed 7500 people per year in the US in the 1930s; effectively 0 today). Remember Wonder Bread? It seems like evil simple carbs today, but it was initially popular precisely because the color and texture proved that it wasn't adulterated like many local bakers did at the time (flour was expensive, sawdust was cheap and could stretch meager supplies). Food was not safe for a long time.

craigwblake 12y ago
Let's put those numbers in perspective, though. The CDC [1] claims that 600,000 people die per year due to heart disease, most of the causes of which (again according to the CDC) are people's choices in food and drink. That's pretty good evidence that food, on the whole, is not safer now. 1. http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm
- schoen 12y ago
  Seems to be an interesting difficult in terms of whether the dangers in food are ones that people consuming it can expect to perceive. In an era when food poisoning was more common, maybe a lot of people knew quickly whether the food they ate had harmed them; now folks eating junk food might have to wait years to experience some of the adverse effects, and can't really relate those effects to a particular purchase or product or vendor. I worry about a similar thing for computer security. A lot of the threats that we used to think about in terms of, say, viruses, wanted to get the user's attention either through innocuous mischief, or by showing off with spectacularly destructive behavior, like deleting files or crashing the machine or even erasing the hard drive. "Look at me, I infected your computer!" And later we saw adware which tries to get the user's attention for marketing purposes (which is definitely still a thing). But now a whole lot of attackers have a goal of long-term, pervasive, convert compromise, to be used selectively later on -- botnets for DDoS attacks and spam, keyloggers for delayed financial fraud or government surveillance, "advanced persistent threats" to compromise infrastructure, maybe in service of transitively compromising other infrastructure. http://www.isaca.org/chapters2/Norway/NordicConference/Documents/14.pdf http://www.isaca.org/chapters2/Norway/NordicConference/Docum... So in the past there was a common expectation that a virus would do something that the user could notice, or else what's the point? Whereas nowadays if someone says "the government is spying on me, my computer displayed a weird security warning message" it tends to reduce the credibility of the claim, because we expect that botnet developers and government hackers are as covert as possible, delaying the moment when victims of compromise would notice anything's wrong for as far as possible, trying to break or obfuscate the link between the attack and its results as much as possible. So in one sense computers have also gotten more dangerous because there are more powerful and pervasive attackers, but in another sense there may be a trend away from risks of getting any kind of malware whose effects you will notice any time soon.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ambler0 12y ago

Whether or not an organic diet (whatever that may be exactly) ultimately proves to be healthier, it's wrong to describe the movement to eat such food as a "ridiculous cargo cult". It's clear what people are worried about (dangerous pesticides, environmental pollutants) and the expectation that food labeled as organic is better in this respect is not unreasonable. Whether or not labeling food "certified organic" makes enough of a difference is a different discussion; clearly there is no substitute for knowing where your food comes from. The fact that you lump this in with gluten-free and anti-GMO, which are themselves interesting and unique topics of discussion that have in common only their faddishness, and then lump all three of these in with a charlatan like Dr. Oz, shows to me that you have an oversimplified view of these issues.

sowhatquestion 12y ago
> you have an oversimplified view of these issues Nice try, but no. "On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries." (emphasis mine) http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0111629 http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone... "Study of 100 Billion Animals Finds GMOs Safe" http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/comprehensive-study-100-billion-animals-finds-gmos-safe-livestock http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/comprehensive-s... "A recent study has shown that for those with non-Celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), the gluten itself might not be to blame for GI troubles." http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/does-non-celiac-gluten-intolerance-actually-exist http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/does-non-celia... "Organic food no more nutritious than conventionally grown food" http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutritious-than-conventionally-grown-food-201209055264 http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutr... ... Admittedly, the issue of organic food is more controversial than the others. There was also a study showing that organic foods had higher levels of antioxidants: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-organic-foods-20140715-story.html http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-organic-foods-20140715... But given the amount of money people spend on organic food and the level of enthusiasm for it, you would think it cured cancer--not that there was inconclusive evidence that it might have somewhat higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticide residue. In any case, antioxidants can be supplemented, much more cheaply than buying organic food. But that doesn't provide the level of enjoyment (or for some people, the pseudo-religious experience) of buying organic produce. And THAT is as complex as I think the issue is. The term "cargo cult" hits close enough to the mark, for me.

pizza234 12y ago

> Hence we get ridiculous cargo cults like gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, everything Dr. Oz pushes As a 20-something in the US, you're certainly very uninformed. Gluten free, organic and anti-gmo have nothing to do with cargo cults and food fanatism. Essentially nobody buys gluten-free products because they're gluten free (except who needs it). GF products are a very little minority, because the lack of gluten is a serious limitation in food preparation. Plus, such products are very expesive. Nobody turns "gluten-free" unless he has to. Organic is part of a bigger cultural picture. In some countries, the majority of the people eat [much] organic. Nobody expects to become super fit and super healthy from it. It's just a choice judged to be healthier as a whole. It's actually the opposite of a cargo cult, since people who choose organic, do it for life, not to follow a fad who lasts a short time (which is essential to cargo culting). And finally, it's not smart to bash anti-GMO just because smart people are supposed to be pro-GMO. There are also rational reasons for being anti-GMO and cretinic reasons for being pro-GMO (like assuming that the increased yield of a crop automatically implies economic convenience). If Soylent is optimal and provides enjoyment, well, you better move to another country and try real food. Besides, in the bigger picture, Soylent carries the assumption that human nutrition is nothing else than intake of isolated nutritional elements, which is foolish.

humanrebar 12y ago
> not to follow a fad who lasts a short time (which is essential to cargo culting). Cargo cults are groups who follow rituals they don't understand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult If a group is following a diet without understanding it, I think it's apt (though perhaps needlessly divisive) to call that group a cargo cult. If someone doesn't eat gluten and can't describe what gluten is and why it's bad, he or she is exhibiting the behavior of a member of a cargo cult.
- ambler0 12y ago
  Thanks for bringing this up for the people who aren't familiar with the history of the term. In my opinion, "cargo cult" is overused and overly specific. We have a perfectly good word for these kinds of behaviors, i.e. "superstition"