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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on [LINK] Soylent crowdfunding - Less Wrong
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Why not?
Because if something goes wrong, the things you are breaking will be people's well-being. There were two instances where Rob noticed that he was feeling ill and had to correct a nutritional deficiency on the fly. It's less likely that this will happen during large-scale production, but if it does, the people consuming exclusively Soylent will not have all the knowledge Rob did wrt the formula or the symptoms of nutritional deficiency.
I think Soylent is a good idea, and ordered a week's supply, but I'm going to try it slowly; I think the chance that they screw up the production is large enough to merit caution.
I agree that nutritional deficiencies are a problem to watch out for but disagree that consuming Soylent would vastly increase my risk of nutritional deficiencies relative to my current diet. I don't think you're taking into account how bad many people's current diets are / could be. The question is not whether eating Soylent is dangerous but whether it's substantially more dangerous than whatever people are already eating.
Anecdotally, I know nobody who has suffered a nutritional deficiency as lethal as zero iron, and the diets in my circle of college students are not very good. I think Soylent will be healthier than my current diet, but I also think the chance of serious nutritional deficiencies is higher.
Edit: To be clear, I'm talking about nutritional deficiencies where one's metabolism starts to fail for want of a crucial element, not deficiencies where someone is consuming marginally less of a nutrient than the optimal amount. I think Soylent will be better than my current diet in the latter category.
Fair point.