This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again • Hacker News Board

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#461

Post by aetherson » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 3:26 PM UTC

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.

Sure. Specific, well-studied examples abound. You can get scurvy, or gout, or type II diabetes, or other problems from your diet. But "billions" of people don't get scurvy or gout.

If you want to use some kind of idiosyncratic definition of "sick" that pronounces somewhere between a substantial minority and a majority of the world as "sick" at any given time, I guess I can't stop you. But as a practical matter, we're comparing shake-guy's food to the other foods that people actually eat, not to whatever your idea of the best diet in the world is.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#462

Post by grecy » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 3:44 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #388

grecy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saved for ~18 months, then spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina, because I wanted to. I blogged the whole time at http://theroadchoseme.com All the financial details are at http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure You'll be interested to note I only spent $1200/mo on the road, which is almost exactly what I was spending month-to-month to go to work every day. I'm currently back working as a Soft…

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Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#463

Post by locopati » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 3:53 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #187

locopati wrote: post #11

Let's see how well he's doing after a year of living off the stuff. There's probably more complexity to food than breaking it up into vitamins, minerals, and calories.

"There's probably more complexity to food than breaking it up into vitamins, minerals, and calories." A picture perfect display of modern belief in vitalism theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism A fairly stereotypical way to being an organic chemistry class is to start out with traditional vitalism and pivot into the historical first complete synthesis of urea, of all things...

I wasn't referring to vitalism so much as our ability to capture all of the components of food (given that we don't fully understand the effects of micro-levels of nutrients in our body) and determine exactly what we need (given that people vary and not everyone needs the same things in the same proportions).

So, instead of saying the complexity of food, I should have said the complexity of the entire system.

There's a certain arrogance within scientific/rational thinking that everything can be broken up in to parts and understood that way. Life is more complex than that.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#464

Post by jkarni » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 3:53 PM UTC

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…

Yeah, I've also seen this pattern often enough to wonder what the underlying reasons for it are. My inchoate thoughts:

When you study, say, biology, you'll probably learn about all the wrong turns that very smart people made along the road to where we currently stand: self-moving principles in Aristotle; vitalism; spontaneous generation; enzymes as living organism; and many many more. That background gives you a sense of how hard it is to be right, and the importance of modesty and self-doubt.

Whereas with computer science, what you learn about is the (relatively short, historically speaking) string of amazing successes in the field. And the more practical side of it (e.g., what software we produce for consumers) is even more unique in having this underlying exponential growth (Moore's law) foisting it up, and drastically changing at every moment what is possible, so that in fact there are very many opportunities that no one thought about simply because they weren't opportunities three years earlier.

And then programmers start thinking that, not only is improvement easy in all fields, but also the fact that other fields don't have as much to show for themselves by way of these improvements (whereas they do) just indicates how much better and smarter and innovative they are, and how in light of this it really isn't surprising at all that they may, even as outsiders, have a lot to contribute to any given field.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#465

Post by MSM » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 3:57 PM UTC

papsosouid wrote: post #236

I love how all the arm chair biochemists here jump on this as being so dangerous because in theory there could be something he needs and isn't getting. Yet most of them are eating a diet that is deficient in things we know you need. This guy's gross sludge is a hell of a lot healthier than what most people are eating, go bitch at them instead.

I agree with you, but I think the main sentiment is that after just 6 weeks you can't come to any conclusions.

For example smoking is probably one of the worst things you can do for your health long term. I can smoke two packs a day and have absolutely no issues after only six weeks. Eating crap food is bad for you, and it might kill you after 40 or 50 years.

Looking at some of the issues he has having (heart racing) due to lack of iron. What if the symptoms weren't as obvious? He'd have never looked to see why he was experiencing them. It's really hard to get excited about something when he's only been doing it for such a short time and it's fairly obvious he doesn't really know what he's doing.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#466

Post by worldimperator » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

Here's a good food idea:

Don't eat sugar, any fruits which don't have a Greek or Hebrew name or any liquid which is less than 1,000 years old. (Taleb) ;-)

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#467

Post by jtheory » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

chadillac83 wrote: post #382

gph wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also, if you look at the rise of processed foods along with obesity, diabetes, and other health problems that have increased over the past century it's clear that there are some serious problems, and they haven't been explained conclusively by this or that macro-nutrient trend. >So given the state of the evidence, a vague evolutionary assertion that whole foods are generally healthier than a distilled diet of comple…

This guy lost 27lbs on a balanced diet of nothing but junk food snack cakes, cookies, and Doritos. http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...

Ahem:

> Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.

And of course, "he lost weight" doesn't unequivocally mean "he got healthier".

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#468

Post by Kim_Bruning » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 4:39 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #449

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The liver is pretty tolerate of alcohol, but a lifetime of alcohol use can cause liver issues.

Right; the downside of a tolerant system is that it does not fail hard. This does not, however, preclude finding the system limits by use of the scientific method. It just makes it a tad trickier at times.

I'm getting the idea that people profess a "belief in science" in the general case, but then absolutely deny its applicability in the specific case here. ;-)

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#469

Post by papsosouid » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 4:40 PM UTC

Evgeny wrote: post #253

papsosouid wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those low carb diets are also diets that reduce your ability to engage in strenuous activities, and cause muscle wasting. The idea is to be healthy, not to lose weight or treat epilepsy.

and cause muscle wasting Low carb diets do not cause muscle wasting - at least if one continues to exercise. I.e: Very-low-carbohydrate diets and preservation of muscle mass http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1373635/

>Low carb diets do not cause muscle wasting - at least if one continues to exercise.

Which you can't do because your muscles have no glycogen stores.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#470

Post by papsosouid » Thu, Mar 14, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

base698 wrote: post #141

criley wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here is a little summary of what he's saying: The only things we really know about nutrition are related to diets that cause obvious problems quickly. Ie, we know vitamin-c is needed because it causes scurvy. What we know now and are learning is that there are possibly thousands of other interactions and nutrients needed for diet that are more subtle. We do not yet have a complete model for this, and probably won't f…

>What we know now and are learning is that there are possibly thousands of other interactions and nutrients needed for diet that are more subtle.

And the evidence to support this claim is what exactly? People keep acting like nutrition is magic and involves lots of pixie dust. It is not. We have a very thorough understanding down to the exact chemical reactions occurring. Anything he is missing that would cause damage only seen after 50+ years is also causing that same damage to millions of other people as we speak.