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Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

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131–140 of 178 posts

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#131
post #87

... electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship ... Industrial and Systems engineering. He has worked in finance, procurement, and logistics ...sales, finance, and marketing.... early stage technology companies ... Big Data ... operations and sales ... drives the sales channels ... sales engineer in the desktop video conferencing market ... ...and that's it. So I'm supposed to upend the foundations…

Are you really concerned about health of people who otherwise eat food that is PROVEN to be extremely unhealthy, or the idea of drinking nothing but one-of-a-kind liquid is so alien to you that you can't believe it could actually work?

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#132
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Bitcoin a bad idea, and how do we not know what we are doing?

If bitcoin circulation is, in practice, much lower than it's generally believed to be - “We isolated all the large (≥ 50,000 Bitcoins) transactions which were ever recorded in the system, and analyzed how these amounts were accumulated and then spent. We discovered that almost all these large transactions were the descendants of a single large transaction involving 90,000 Bitcoins which took place on November 8th 201…

Don't recall who said it, but powerful disruptive innovations are overhyped in the short term but under-hyped in the long term.

That's how I feel about Bitcoin. Circulation might not be a lot, and signs probably show that is not a lot, but it is disruptive. You also have to consider that perceived value is always reckoned into the 'actual' price. It depends on what market theories you ascribe to, but it is generally accepted that current prices reflect the market's capability to guess (and judge) futuer value. So, perceived value is often difficult to 'divorce' from the actual value, especially in the case with something like Bitcoin, where it is seen as both an asset and currency.

Another thing is the continuing trend of providing off-chain transactions (through companies such as Coinbase en Inputs.io).

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#133
post #58
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I don't trust anyone who uses the phrase "Big ______". Your argument isn't even coherent. You're just making a fallacious appeal by putting the scary capital-B "Big" in front of a random noun and acting like that's supposed to mean something. Who makes up "Big Food"? Who controls "Big Food"? Why does "Big Food" necessarily make less healthy products than "independents"? I agree that a lot of mass produced…

He's not allowed to say "Big", but you can say "mass produced"? Those are pretty close. Why does "Big Food" necessarily make less healthy products than "independents"? I agree that a lot of mass produced food is unhealthy and probably excessively seasoned and sweetened to improve market appeal Take out that hedgey "necessarily" and you've answered your own question. that isn't really an argument To say that Ensure is…

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Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#134
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: 4. Deflation is bad for the asset rich, but good for the asset poor. Inflation is good for the rich and bad for the poor. Those who usually spout the 'inflation is better than deflation' argument are the rich. The argument that inflationary expectation is better than deflationary expectation because during period of deflation purchasing stops because 'it will be cheaper tomorrow' is flawed because such periods of…

No, deflation is bad, period, for the economic actors who depend on deflationary currencies, and this is verified simply by looking at pretty much any historical instance of deflation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples Notice how nothing good ever comes of deflation? That should be a hint. I would be highly suspicious of the unsourced "In Ireland" section: http://byline.timetric.com/2010/11/2…

You are confusing the short lived deflation that could be caused by a deflationary currency, with the deflation caused by all the other problems mentioned in the wikipedia article, like "technological progress that created significant economic growth", "great advances in productivity", etc. Apparently the only problem brought by gold and silver was that there was a scarcity of coins (a physical problem), which would never happen with Bitcoin (a digital currency).

> Perhaps Satoshi simply felt it was easier to implement finite Bitcoins than a constantly increasing supply. I don't think he can be blamed for that. Bitcoin is, if nothing else, certainly intriguing.

No, he was against inflation. In the first block of the blockchain, he added a message; it was something about Bernake approving a new bailout for the banks.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#135
post #87

... electrical engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship ... Industrial and Systems engineering. He has worked in finance, procurement, and logistics ...sales, finance, and marketing.... early stage technology companies ... Big Data ... operations and sales ... drives the sales channels ... sales engineer in the desktop video conferencing market ... ...and that's it. So I'm supposed to upend the foundations…

Marketers have used the fake "experts" card so extensively, that it diminished the value of the opinion of the expert to near zero. He chooses fundamentally pure approach of giving the actual details of the product to you to judge. The information is there, read it, analyze the books used by the medics and nutritionists and judge by yourself. If you feel the need of an opinion of an expert, you are willingly trusting any potential scamer with the "nutritionist" or "doctor" title. Those experts are not some all-knowing gods that can single-handedly approve as safe, or disprove as harmful. They are the same people with the same access to information you and me has. And since nobody has experience with that kind of products, opinion of people who have given some title by someone is not much more valuable than anyone else who learns about nutrition himself.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#136
post #78
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not allowed to say "Big", but you can say "mass produced"? Those are pretty close. Why does "Big Food" necessarily make less healthy products than "independents"? I agree that a lot of mass produced food is unhealthy and probably excessively seasoned and sweetened to improve market appeal Take out that hedgey "necessarily" and you've answered your own question. that isn't really an argument To say that Ensure is…

> He's not allowed to say "Big", but you can say "mass produced"? Those are pretty close. No, because "Big _____" is a Progressive catchphrase that is normally used to villify whatever their target is and rationalize taking away some freedom from the marketplace, wheras "mass produced" just means "mass produced." Of course, some people might use "Big _____" in a useful way, but it's definitely like a code smell but f…

Properly "Big X" refers to the biggest players in the X industry, particularly with regard to trade groups and lobbying. It's useful because often this section of the industry will have unique qualities compared to the industry as a whole or other industries (such as how much they spend on lobbying, how much innovation they are responsible for, etc)

It is true that people will often use it as a lazy and fallacious way of vilifying but please note this is not exclusively a progressive phenomenon. Many of these groups lobby for things like govt subsidies, laws which restrict personal freedoms in ways that help their industry, etc...many conservatives aren't thrilled with such behavior.

In a brief non scientific survey of a few subreddits (r/libertarian, r/socialism, etc) phrases like "big oil" appear roughly comparably.

People on both ends of the political spectrum are (perhaps rightly) displeased with some of the actions of such groups and vilify them - they just disagree about what the root cause is and how to prevent such behavior.

The fallacy comes in when people use some particular actions of some players in an industry to invalidate everything that comes out of it. (such as implying that anything produced by a startup is ipso facto healthier than something produced by a large pharmaceutical company)

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: 4. Deflation is bad for the asset rich, but good for the asset poor. Inflation is good for the rich and bad for the poor. Those who usually spout the 'inflation is better than deflation' argument are the rich. The argument that inflationary expectation is better than deflationary expectation because during period of deflation purchasing stops because 'it will be cheaper tomorrow' is flawed because such periods of…

You absolutely have 4 backwards. Deflation is good for those rich enough to have money sitting around, and who can make money just by sitting on it and not investing it. Inflation is bad for the rich because suddenly they have to DO something with the money, or it disappears.

Inflation is good for the rich's income. Deflation is good for the rich's savings. Seems like they win in both cases? Though I would argue they win more in the first case, since inflation don't necessarily force them to do something with the money. Eg: They could just sit on gold or real estate if they wanted to. But most rich people didn't get there by doing nothing, so they tend to do something anyway, no need to force them.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#138
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, marketing?

Well, sure, everything can be thrown under "marketing," because obviously if no one knew about it no one would be talking about it.

Just because marketing lets people know about a product's advantages doesn't mean every improvement can be labelled as marketing.

And it certainly doesn't make a product whose only improvement is marketing something worthy of equal attention to a product that actually improves some other aspect.

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#139
post #2

Just as Soylent is disrupting the traditional food industry Huh? I've asked this before and never got an answer. How is Soylent different from Ensure Complete? Is it cheaper? Better made? Easier to order? Tastes better? Better for me? Higher quality? Because if it isn't really any different then what Soylent will need to do is market better than those other companies. Because I'd definitely trust Abbott with my healt…

The 1st question for me is still this one:

Why on earth should I not eat natural and unprocessed foods?

It seems to me that this is what our bodies are trained to process. Why change that?

Re: Soylent now accepting Bitcoin for preorders

#140
post #47

Every time I see a Soylent article on HN I hope that it's all just a sick joke that will soon be revealed as an elaborate hoax and forgotten about. Why the hell would anyone in their right mind base their entire diet off of some liquid concoction made up by some random guy who is clearly not a nutritionist? Why don't you guys just learn to eat a healthy and balanced diet?

"just learn to eat a healthy and balanced diet".

Can anyone recommend an authoritative compendium of what that is please? Preferably linking to multi-year statistically significant studies that take into account the obvious externalities ( local weather, amount of exercise, genetics, time of eating etc). I don't really want to make nutrition research another time-consuming hobby, but I don't want to unnecessarily kill myself faster either.

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