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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

#431

Post by Kim_Bruning »

acqq wrote: post #268
roc wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 safe…

Or even "It's so complicated that it's certain this guy fails." We know for sure that he can't include all the stuff that we know that exists but for which we absolutely don't know how we can avoid eating the real things.

Well, that's what science is for. If something is complicated and we don't understand it, we need to develop hypotheses and experiment. Over time our understanding grows.

What we don't do is go all "hurr durr it's too complicated, let's not even try".

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#432

Post by Kim_Bruning »

yanowitz wrote: post #116
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…

I think that's a total misreading of the criticisms. This actually is a hard problem and the science well short of consensus. The surface area of the problem seems to grow every year as scientists publish new research. That seems like a good indication that the odds of this (relatively) uninformed approach being a great one is low.

The novel aspect here is that his experimental methodology looks promising; not that he has some magic silver bullet.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#433

Post by Kim_Bruning »

reinhardt wrote: post #271
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…

You sound like a software dilettante explaining why (formal) education is obsolete. "So what if it's a triple nested loop, hardware is cheap" "Encapsulation? Relational algebra? Who cares about this CS mumbo jumbo just show me teh codez". No offence but we've heard the exact same thing from every amateur that "learned programming" by toying with Wordpress or Jquery copypasta.

There are also a lot of smart and thoughtful coders who are self-taught, however. It depends on your approach, your mental toolkit, and how much self-discipline you have to recognize that what you are doing is crap and how to learn more.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#434

Post by Kim_Bruning »

jbaudanza wrote: post #16

I read a textbook on physiological chemistry and took to the internet to see if I could find every known essential nutrient. The danger is that there are far more essential nutrients that we don't know about, than nutrients that we do. And the only way to get these nutrients is to eat a well balanced diet. That being said, this would be amazing if it works and I applaud him for trying.

One of the comments on his blog remarks about him being a one man experiment to discover new vitamins. He acknowledges that this is likely. :-P

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#435

Post by dougk16 »

robotresearcher wrote: post #401
dougk16 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I could link you to a bunch of studies that say otherwise, but then you would tell me all the reasons that those studies are bogus, and then show me a bunch of studies that show there is no connection (probably sponsored by those peddling chemotherapy et al.), so I guess we'll just avoid the rathole and stay convinced of our own opinions :)

"peddling chemotherapy" This is the most stupid and obnoxious thing I've ever seen on HN. Chemotherapy saves lives every day. You can believe that good diets are healthy and helpful for sick people without insulting people that sell nasty but powerful medicine that is proven to work.

Agreed. Posting those two comments was a mistake.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#436

Post by elisehein »

Discussions about how to save time on eating and cooking -- essentially the ultimate life hacking -- always make me think about early man and his lifestyle that must have consisted mostly of hunting trips that may well have taken up days at a time, and then returning home with the prey and enjoying every bit of the reward. I wonder if they ever contemplated on how they could minimise all this time they spent on keeping themselves alive to make room for .. ehm, what else was there to do anyway?

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#437

Post by petermlm »

smalter wrote: post #86
grecy wrote: 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…

Oddly enough, for me, playing The Sims taught me how much time is spent eating, defecating, and sleeping.

In The Sims that effect sometimes happens because time in that game is so much faster. It's like "The ride for work will arrive in one hour." -> Well I'll just make my Sim eat breakfasts. Suddenly, The Sim arrives at the kitchen after crossing the house to get there and two hours passe.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#438

Post by lyudmil »

criley wrote: post #172
saidajigumi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You sound like an industry-insider explaining why a new startup will fail. I certainly don't want to rain on some new visionary's parade, but I spend a lot of time tracking folks who I consider to be the real visionaries in this field. As in we are currently in the midst of the greatest revolution in human health of our lives, and this guy is running in the wrong direction. We're seeing astonishing results with die…

> "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…

I'm not a person whose opinion on the subject matter should matter to anyone, so I'm not commenting because of a vested interest in this argument. I'm commenting because I think you're misapplying the principles of the scientific method, which makes your criticism unfair.

> You place a burden of evidence on him...

It isn't saidajigumi placing the burden of proof on him, it's the scientific method. Everything we know about nutrition tells us that we don't understand it enough to pull something like this off. It would be a breakthrough if it turned out we can, but the null hypothesis is that it won't work, so that's what our position should be.

If our default position is that this doesn't work, and the guy is really relying on his mix for most of his sustenance, that means we think he's going to experience adverse health effects because of his diet. Perhaps we have no evidence to suggest they'll be adverse enough to qualify his diet as "poisonous", but the assumption isn't completely baseless, as you've asserted.

Again, I have no idea who's right and who's wrong, but the two claims are certainly not equally likely.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#439

Post by chousuke »

zwischenzug wrote: post #427
robotresearcher wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His diet probably wasn't the cause for his illness, but as far as I understand, he refused ordinary medical procedures (surgery) that had a good track record against his particular type of cancer, in favour of observing a special diet. The diet didn't help and the cancer progressed to the point where surgery was no longer an efficient treatment.

Re: This Man Thinks He Never Has to Eat Again

#440

Post by xyzzy123 »

greggman wrote: post #407
tobyjsullivan wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is any argument that cooking can be a pleasant activity. However, the truth is that's the only option because we need to eat every day. Tonight I can get home from work and spend time with my partner cooking and it'll be great. And after work tomorrow, if we want to spend time together, we can cook or eat out. And the day after that... more cooking. The opportunity here is not that we'll never coo…

Another option is to live somewhere where there are healthy options (for whatever definition of healthy you choose) that you can purchase. You can then (or I can) be done in 10-15 minutes. Whether that's a cafeteria, a convenience store, a restaurant, a waiter. Examples: Working at a company that serves breakfast lunch and dinner I can leave my desk, get food, eat and be back at my desk in 15 minutes. Or I can grab f…

I so miss the convenience stores with actual edible food. In NZ they generally just have a pie warmer :(
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