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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

#421

Post by tracker1 »

acqq wrote: post #406
aetherson wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If human GI systems are so fragile that this shake could conceivably be considered "poisonous," how come people aren't dropping dead all over the world from such "poisons"? The shake may well not be an optimal awesome diet -- I'd bet it won't be -- but billions of humans survive on non-optimal, awesome diets. The idea that the incredibly varied, constantly evolving, often appalling diets of the whole world all fulfil…

> but billions of humans survive on non-optimal, awesome diets Billions of people get sick because they don't have a diet varied enogh. Specific, well studied examples abound.

Historically speaking, I don't think that man ate too much of a variety over the course of a given day, maybe weeks... And the guy mentions he does eat a couple times a week. I couldn't do it... but without high yield GM crops, we couldn't even feed 1/2 of the world's population, anything that stretches that isn't a bad thing...

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#422

Post by sheri »

criley wrote: post #103
saidajigumi wrote: post #75

> 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…

You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. "They're too young!" "They don't have the experience" "We've devoted our LIVES to figuring this out, one kid in his basement didn't do it in a few weeks!" Etc etc No offense but we've heard the exact same thing about every successful idea. And what's more: People look at the human GI totally wrong anyway. They think, what can I put in to get t…

Impossible? No, but not very probable either. I am not an expert on human physiology, but I presume it is very complex, and doesn't lend itself to hobbyists making large breakthroughs. If tomorrow I read an article saying a biologist has solved P = NP, I would treat that with a lot of skepticism. It is possible that he gained enough expertise to do so, but given that some very smart people have been spending a good portion of the lives on this, I wouldn't consider it likely.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#423

Post by stef25 »

LIfe being reduced to 1's and 0's, this is the worst thing I've read in a long time. Eating fresh tasty food is one of the joys of life, why on earth would you want to cut that out of your life. What's next, a way of reproducing without having to have sex? What's better than a home made burger, English breakfast, pasta with sauce from fresh tomatoes and basil, seafood fried rice?

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#424

Post by mikkom »

dasil003 wrote: post #209
criley wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof, or GTFO." > "I see this guy's protocol as nothing but poisonous in the long run." You place a burden of evidence on him that you yourself in this very post violated on a number of occasions. You CANNOT call his diet poisonous simply because you disagree with it. You admitted it yourself: > "Current research is showing that we are only just beginning to gain understanding…

> You place a burden of evidence on him that you yourself in this very post violated on a number of occasions. You CANNOT call his diet poisonous simply because you disagree with it. Nutrition science is in its infancy. It's clear that the complexity of the interaction of food as it is digested and interacting with our organism has barely had the surface scratched. Also, if you look at the rise of processed foods alo…

> If this guy wants to experiment on himself than I'm happy to reap the benefits, but I do believe it's risky.

What I'm wondering is is this any more risky than, let's say - eating at McDonalds instead of drinking this stuff?

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#425

Post by FooBarWidget »

bgilroy26 wrote: post #378
vidarh wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seems to be very conscious that this is in effect an experiment, that might be risky as well. E.g. from his site ( http://robrhinehart.com/ ): "I am reticent to provide exact brand names and instructions because I am not fully convinced of the diet's safety for a physiology different than mine. What if I missed something that's essential for someone of a different race or age group" But he is interested in actuall…

This might be a different tack, but what if you take Mr. Taleb's "nature" to be human nature [1]? People don't tend to eat poison mushrooms as a rule. In that case, his rule would be a good one. If you drift in to a new area of human endevour, the people who follow you out there are taking a risk until the area is well-traveled [1] In the Aristotelian sense: human nature is the proportionate sum of all human activity…

You define nature as activities that people perform most? By that reasoning the culture with the largest population is representative of typical human nature. That just seems wrong.

There are almost 2 billion Chinese. They love to eat chicken paws and cow intestines. So that is human's natural diet?

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#426

Post by Loic »

criley wrote: post #103
saidajigumi wrote: post #75

> 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…

You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. "They're too young!" "They don't have the experience" "We've devoted our LIVES to figuring this out, one kid in his basement didn't do it in a few weeks!" Etc etc No offense but we've heard the exact same thing about every successful idea. And what's more: People look at the human GI totally wrong anyway. They think, what can I put in to get t…

Side note for comprehension, if like me you wonder: GI means GastroIntestinal. It is used in the comments both as adjective but also to refer to the whole gastrointestinal track and connected organs.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#427

Post by zwischenzug »

robotresearcher wrote: post #399
dougk16 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can cure cancer with diet, along with generally healthy living. "Cure" perhaps isn't the best word though, because bad diet (combined with other things like stress, lack of exercise, etc.) is frequently the cause of cancer in the first place. EDIT: I didn't mean to say that changing to a healthy diet/lifestyle after being diagnosed will magically cure you (if that's why I'm being downvoted) but I believe it certa…

Steve Jobs observed very strict diets which he believed would keep him super healthy. Result: dead at 56 despite essentially unlimited resources.

His cancer was caused by his diet? Or are you saying that choosing diet over medicine killed him earlier than could otherwise have been the case.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#428

Post by Kim_Bruning »

saidajigumi wrote: post #75

> 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…

Eh? It's early days, and he's approaching it more like an engineer than a scientist; but it looks like he has the right end of the stick (for some sort of stick). He's synthesizing his food de novo, so it's very easy to control the inputs and eliminate confounding factors. He's also doing occasional measurements (albeit not regularly enough for Proper Science, perhaps), and he is offering his replacement for free to other people on the condition that they do the same measurements. His hypotheses are not ideal, because he's not a domain expert yet, but that just means he's going to be a bit slower until he reads more papers and starts avoiding other people's mistakes ;-)

One key thing I learned in university: Once you start reading papers, you're quickly going to turn into the world's leading expert on the tiny corner of science that you're reading on. (Of course, this has nothing to do with being a genius, and everything to do with no one else ever having cared about that corner before. :-P )

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#429

Post by Kim_Bruning »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #332
Dylan16807 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he doesn't have a 'miracle drink'. He has a generic food mash and his only claim is 'contains basic nutrients and calories'.

It's a curious statement about our society where the idea that the fuel for the human body could be simple. "Basic nutrients and calories" It's all produced by self replicating lifeforms we've only begun to comprehend, right?

Right, but those sophisticated replicators are so sophisticated that they tend to be rather tolerant of their input.

There's no reason to think we can't science out what that input needs to be, or at least to be able to find one or more valid subsets of input.

This is a rather large improvement over what most people do; one typically applies little to no science whatsoever. :-P

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#430

Post by Confusion »

J_ wrote: post #367
Confusion wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

He's not building a human though. He's building food. Modern rocketry has been around for about a century, and food has been with us since the beginning. I don't see why it would be that complex. Like pg said, the top comment for every new product posted on HN is always something dismissive that doesn't really add to the discussion, and this thread is no exception.

Human females contain an environment in which an organism, after being bootstrapped, can assemble itself into a human using mostly food as input. I would argue that building the correct input for that environment and process is exactly as complex as building a human.
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