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This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

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Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#241
post #194
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read this to understand: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5370816 If nobody has a right nutrition model today(1), including exeprts doing this whole life, somebody who just read a few books has no chance to cover everything that has to be covered long term. Or in other words, don't you think that military with practically infinite funds wouldn't already use his drink or equivalent for all extreme circumsta…

This is one of the weakest defenses I've seen yet. It's complicated so we shouldn't try is basically the excuse. In my opinion: the use of supplemented food like this will only improve our understanding and increase the speed at which those models are made. By approaching the problem from BOTH sides we can create the most full expression of what is needed and why. Still I dislike this excuse because: you run the risk…

> "It's complicated so we shouldn't try is basically the excuse."

I think the actual criticism is more along the lines of "It's so complicated that it's incredibly unlikely this guy has been truly successful."

> "Let the pioneers have fun and play and learn, that's what I say!"

Which is all well and good when they're merely experimenting on themselves. But this guy has gone from tinkering to claiming success and safety and begun distribution.

That's beyond tinkering and well into tampering.

He should absolutely feel free to tinker and explore and even publish his recipes and personal data for anyone similarly-motivated to build upon. But there's a line between doing that and doing what he's begun, the way he's begun it.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#242
post #53

Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day. For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, where you spend your time getting up early every day, doing something all day (hiking, walking, gardening, building, whatever) and go to bed late in the evening (i.e. Full days of activities you want to be doin…

In addition to this, even those of us who sit at a computers for 7-8 hours a day and then spend the rest of our time doing other activities.

I try and go surfing every week day, and most of the weekend, and i don't want to be bothered with taking time out to eat (i've got 2 kids too - so I don't have much time). Sure I can easily go grab some junk food and eat on the go but I really don't want to when I'm trying to keep my body in good shape.

I usually mix a bunch of raw nuts, raisins, fruit/berries, yogurt into a smoothy and have that as food. but it still requires time to make a clean up, not to mention the cost of fruit and nuts. Dinner is usually cooked by my wife, so that's not an issue for me because it's time with the family.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#244
The solving world hunger aspect of this post is laughable. This highly processed shake can be made from local agriculture. Great! Why not just eat the local agriculture itself? You wouldn't have to build the infrastructure to process real food down into a powder. You also benefit from all the nutrients we haven't discovered yet. We're just at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we know about nutrition. So far we know a lot about nutrients in isolation, not as whole foods. Maybe that's why this seems like a good idea to this guy. I'm glad he's doing at least two real meals a week. That should keep him alive.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#245
post #53

Eating to me is a leisure activity, like going to the movies, but I don't want to go to the movies three times a day. For anyone that doesn't understand that statement, I recommend taking a few years off work, where you spend your time getting up early every day, doing something all day (hiking, walking, gardening, building, whatever) and go to bed late in the evening (i.e. Full days of activities you want to be doin…

I don't know what your situation is, but personally, being married, I love spending time cooking with my wife. For example, last night we spent 2 hours cooking crab cakes, chocolate souffle, kale chips... it was fantastic. We both enjoy one another's company while cooking.

For some people, it may seem like a waste of time, but for me, it's a way to connect to other people.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#246

> a 24-year-old software engineer > ... > Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet What utter bollocks. We're (as in, scientists studying nutrition and how utterly wrong food industry has gotten that in the 20th and early 21st century) finally starting to get our collective heads around the benefits of whole foods vs. highly processed foods, and just how badly our bodies deal with the latte…

> it seems to be form of the software "everything is just an [easy] problem" mindset

> when software/CS types wander off to do experimental science...

When a random nutter makes some woo, we just call them random nutters and ignore them.

...But when that random nutter happens to be a software engineer during the day, suddenly it is game on for slagging engineers? Clearly it must be indicative of some sort of common hubris in the industry?

There is some selection bias going on here.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#247
post #134
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk designed the rocket? All by himself? Wow! What a renaissance man. I figured he had physicists, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, chemists, and you name it. But I guess he just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket. This guy is a hobbyist who is claiming his diet has cured most of his ails. You aren't the least bit suspicious of that claim?

>I guess [Musk] just read a few books on his weekends and that was enough to design and launch the rocket Ah, I love it when people think they're sarcastic but they're correct: >"I was sitting behind [Elon Musk] on the flight back to London when he looked at me over the seat and said, 'I think we can build a rocket ourselves.'" He showed Cantrell the spreadsheet he'd been working on. "I looked at it and said, I'll be…

If the fellow from the article read a few books and then proceeded to hire a team of the best and brightest specialists to help refine and perfect his concept, I'm thinking the response would be different.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#248
post #109

> a 24-year-old software engineer > ... > Soylent contains all of the nutritive components of a balanced diet What utter bollocks. We're (as in, scientists studying nutrition and how utterly wrong food industry has gotten that in the 20th and early 21st century) finally starting to get our collective heads around the benefits of whole foods vs. highly processed foods, and just how badly our bodies deal with the latte…

>an impatient _software engineer_ comes along and claims to have [succeeded with a] task that specialists have so far failed at The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Nutrition is a field full of pseudoscience and highly susceptible to disruptio…

I think Elon Musk is a prime example of why this guy is probably wrong. Elon Musk needed quite some time and money to organise sending a rocket successfully into space. He hired a lot of people for their expertise, because he didn't know everything and didn't have the time to learn everything by himself, let alone build it.

If an Elon Musk were to attack this problem in the way such a problem needs to be attacked, then things would be interesting. Humans are more complex than rockets.

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