Just a quick counterargument from a regular Soylent consumer: I drink a coffiest for breakfast every morning and drink two liquid Soylents on days when I don't have time for a nice lunch or dinner. It's convenient, healthy and tastes good. I've never had any intestinal troubles. I use it as a meal replacement, not a complete food replacement. It sucks that they included this ingredient in their powder and bars that h…
"doing startups is hard, and we all make mistakes along the way" I'd love to see a restaurant use that line. Food safety is hard!
Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a bad attitude though. Experts with authority granted to them in the form of titles have failed us, and keep failing us in so many areas. Ranging from nutrition to psychology, we really shouldn't put their work on a pedestal. Techies are a smart bunch on average and can stomach a lot more complexity than the average joe. It makes sense for them to try to pick up stuff outside of their line of work. Take Elon…
> Deferring to experts is a poor substitute for thinking for yourself. Not deferring to experts when you posses surface level knowledge (or less) of a subject is a sure-fire way to shoot yourself in the foot.
Reinhart has NO obligation to heed the "wisdom" of people who have been killing us with sugar for decades now. We should have nothing but contempt for these charlatans.
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why you would think they are the same. Cooking a whole bean vs cooking a powdered bean is different. Digesting a whole, chewed bean is different from digesting a powdered bean. And what happens at the end of your gut is different. An example of a related principle is "need" vs "what's needed when it's needed". How much vitamin C do you "need"? Oh, wait, it affects iron absorption.
You literally don't understand how someone could draw the conclusion that the same materials produce the same energy, regardless of form? That concept utterly eludes you?
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#664Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you grind beans and rice into a powder, with other stuff, and cook them, do you think that that's the same as cooking whole beans and whole rice with the other stuff? The answer is no. It's not just about molecules.
Can you please expand on how they are different? A powdered bean or powdered rice contains the same macro and micronutrients. Perhaps the quality of the fiber would be different?
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#666hopefully they can figure this out.
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between "thinking for yourself" and "uncritically discouting past work". And that's the difference between asking yourself whether power poses really work and and coming in kicking doors, yelling that psychology is bullshit. First one is engaging in very much reasonable level of critical thought, whereas the second is just thinking "Dunning-Kruger is okay, when I do it". On a side note, I don't q…
I'm not saying Psychology is bullshit, why would you frame what I said as such? I think it's in general super interesting. I'm just saying that you can gain a lot more from it by evaluating things critically than you can from swallowing anything and everything that's in vogue uncritically because some authority figure tells you it's the Truth. Also, to nitpick, Dunning-Kruger is certainly ok when the top performers d…
Prior findings must be indeed critically evaluated. That's not the issue. The issue is refusing to even acknowledge them or to acknowledge current field wisdom due to some unwarranted sense of superiority. Taking the dangerous and daring approach to crossing expertise fields instead of being careful is fine, of course. Everyone is free to do whatever they want! But if the daring do fail, they will look like complete asses. They had been given plenty of warning before hand.
And, this is the key and the real reason why I'm saying all this, the daring will fail more often than the careful. The most frequent reason why people try to enter a new field is because they think they might have some superior insight on the matter, whereas the development of each field is chiefly constrained by the amount of data available to it. Ideas are never in short supply relative to data. This isn't to say that outsiders can't make meaningful contributions, or that cross-field collaboration is useless, far from it. But that there isn't much that can done beyond what's warranted by the data.
I'll pass up the opportunity to talk about Musk, because I don't feel I'm qualified to do it.
But as for your nitpick: I don't see why top performers incorrectly gauging their own ability would be "okay". They would pass up great opportunities because they perceive their ability to be lower than what it actually is, and they might experience unwarranted anxiety and feelings of inadequacy (something like an impostor syndrome) if they incorrectly perceive their ability to be lower that that of their peers. There are many ways in which this might not be "okay".
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm still curious why the soylent thing has hit it off in the HN crowd and not, say, Slimfast. Which is basically the same thing but with more production hardening. Maybe fragile masculinity? IDK.
Your basic premise is wrong they are not the same thing at all. Soylent doesn't replace a meal, it is a meal with all the nutrients. Slimfast was designed to supplement food to lose weight. The nutritional aspects of each are totally different.
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a difference between "thinking for yourself" and "uncritically discouting past work". And that's the difference between asking yourself whether power poses really work and and coming in kicking doors, yelling that psychology is bullshit. First one is engaging in very much reasonable level of critical thought, whereas the second is just thinking "Dunning-Kruger is okay, when I do it". On a side note, I don't q…
I'm not saying Psychology is bullshit, why would you frame what I said as such? I think it's in general super interesting. I'm just saying that you can gain a lot more from it by evaluating things critically than you can from swallowing anything and everything that's in vogue uncritically because some authority figure tells you it's the Truth. Also, to nitpick, Dunning-Kruger is certainly ok when the top performers d…
Re: Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick
#670I'm a big fan of Michael Pollan's manifesto: Eat food . Not too much. Mostly plants. The idea being that processed foods cannot hope to match the nutritional profile found in whole foods, particularly plants. This soylent stuff is about as processed as food comes, so I'm inclined to be very skeptical of it's healthfulness.
…you'd rather eat random shit out of the ground that has been found to not kill you, than to eat something based on studying humans and their nutritional needs? I mean, I can't say I like soylent much but you're just stupid if that's the argument against it.
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