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Soylent on the latest Vice piece

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Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#51

Post by mahyarm »

contextual wrote: post #10

Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry. It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together. Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Studies show that families that dine together stay t…

An low focus activity that you do together achieves the same thing as a meal together. Going for walks, etc.

But people are not going to just replace all family dinners with the foods they love with a meal replacement shake.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#52

Post by darkxanthos »

nether wrote: post #22
contextual wrote: post #10

Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry. It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together. Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Studies show that families that dine together stay t…

Except liquid meal replacements already exist (Ensure etc.), and the entire world isn't Valley geeks. You could eat cheap fast calories everyday but gourmet restaurants still thrive. Not everyone is obsessed with food practicality.

What this really means is Ensure and the like just need an image overall. Rebrand something like that and they're probably on equal footing again.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#53

Post by spurgu »

jebus989 wrote: post #33

The fact a rat was spotted in a dusty old warehouse isn't really worth addressing. From what I've learned so far, the only factor letting this product down for me is the price. I'd guess $65/w is around what I'm spending on food now. Do we have any idea of their margin? Is the price expected to decrease once they get a decent production line up?

Yeah, I spend even less than that. The price would have to be somewhere around half of that to make it attractive for me.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#54

Post by md224 »

contextual wrote: post #10

Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry. It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together. Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Studies show that families that dine together stay t…

> I'm glad to see so many people disagree with me. It means I'm on the right track.

Does anyone else find this "first they ignore you" style of belief-reinforcement to be vaguely troubling? Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't just believe your critics without further inquiry, but the presence of critics shouldn't be used as supporting evidence in and of itself. You risk creating a kind of insular belief system where any threat can be transformed into reinforcement.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#55

Post by k-mcgrady »

sker wrote: post #31
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has practically disappeared and the submitted link was substituted[1]. I think this is a first. I doubt that PG is aware of this type of orchestrated manipulation going on. It is quite dangerous for the credibility of HN. Soylent seems interesting and potentially disruptive. However, it is FOOD and deserves to be put under the microscope. Anyone conniving to make them dodge scrutiny (especially via underhand moves…

It's not a first. It happens all the time. And for the first time I'm glad we have editorializing mods. The original article was blatant blogspam. It even said so in the title: Oh look, let's focus only on the negative aspects of the original source.

Then it's up to the community to read it and flag it. Having mods change title's is one thing but this if the first I've ever seen links change (and it's actually only one of two articles today where I've seen links change). Although I'm against mods changing things there should at least be a system where it's made clear that a change has happened.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#56

Post by acuozzo »

Yver wrote: post #41
contextual wrote: post #10

Soylent will likely become a billion dollar global enterprise, and even "disrupt" the food industry. It will also ultimately be a failure and frowned upon in modern society. Why? Because a Soylent-saturated world would rob families and loved ones of the ritual and benefits of eating together. Eating together civilizes people. It's emotionally and socially edifying. Studies show that families that dine together stay t…

Your comment reads like you're living in the 60s. I don't think that modern families have the kind of "ritualistic" meals you're describing.

Anecdote: My family ate together at the dinner table nearly every evening. I look back on our engaging discussions with fondness.

I grew up in the '90s.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#57

Post by cgh »

lnanek2 wrote: post #38

I don't really understand why Soylent needs a factory anyway. Just white label some generic meal replacement shake like Ensure and they are done. The only thing interesting about the company is they managed to market a product that already exists as something new to a new audience.

Please see this discussion, in particular the response from "rob": http://discourse.soylent.me/t/comparing-soylent-to-existing-...

Summary: Soylent aims for something more ideal than a suboptimal solution. It's a day to day meal replacement for otherwise healthy, active people. Given the ingredients of Ensure, I wouldn't want to try to live on it for 30 days. It's like Google vs. Altavista, if you'll pardon the strained analogy.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#59

Post by solarmist »

smspence wrote: post #36
nether wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except liquid meal replacements already exist (Ensure etc.), and the entire world isn't Valley geeks. You could eat cheap fast calories everyday but gourmet restaurants still thrive. Not everyone is obsessed with food practicality.

In my mind, I think of Soylent as "food for people who don't like food". In the same way I think of Nickelback or American Idol as "music for people who don't like music". There are millions of these people worldwide. But yes, obviously this doesn't apply to 100% of all people.

I personally see food in two lights a necessity and a luxury. Most of the time it is simply a necessity and Soylent will do. The rest of the time it is a luxury and I'll go cook a nice meal or go to a restaurant.

Re: Soylent on the latest Vice piece

#60

Post by aaronem »

thinkalone wrote: post #23
aaronem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure calling it anything other than Soylent Red and Green would be a really, really good idea. Call it a hunch.

Yeah, I was pretty disheartened in the Motherboard video that the founder liked the name Soylent.

Nothing I've seen about the Soylent project makes me imagine that its founder lives on quite the same planet inhabited by most other humans. He has an interesting idea and he certainly seems able to execute, at least so far, but I can't help but be a little more skeptical than I would be otherwise; the first time I saw mention of it, it took me a good fifteen minutes to convince myself that it was what it appeared to be, and not a prop for some sort of "alternate reality game". Even now, I still find myself waiting for another shoe to drop.
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