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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on [LINK] Soylent crowdfunding - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 21 May 2013 07:09PM

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Comment author: gwern 21 May 2013 09:15:10PM *  37 points [-]

Factors why I have not and probably will not:

  1. Soylent costs more than my current diet, limiting gains
  2. it is a priori highly likely to fail since we know for a fact that severe nutrition deficiencies can be due to subtle & misunderstood factors (see: the forgetting of scurvy cures) and that nutrition is one of the least reliable scientific areas
  3. his work is even more likely than that to have problems because he hasn't consulted the existing work on food replacements (yes, it's a thing; how exactly do you think people in comas or with broken jaws get fed?)
  4. given #2, the negative effects are likely to be subtle and long-term means that on basic statistical power grounds, you'll want long and well-powered self-experiments to go from 'crappy self-experiment' to 'good self-experiment'*
  5. given the low odds of success (#2-3), the expensive powerful self-experiments necessary to shift our original expectations substantially due to long-term effects and subtlety (#4), and the small benefits (#1), the VoI is low here
  6. my other self-experiments, in progress and planned, suffer from many fewer of Soylent's defects, hence have reasonable VoIs (Specifically: I am or will be investigating Noopept, melatonin, magnesium l-threonate & citrate, coluracetam, meditation, Redshift, and lithium orotate.)
  7. VoI current/planned self-experiments (#6) > VoI Soylent cloning/tweaking (#5)
  8. hence, the opportunity cost of Soylent is higher than not, so I will continue my existing plans

* although see my reply to Qiaochu, at this point Rob isn't even at the 'crappy' level

EDIT: as of June 2015, I would amend my list of complaints to de-emphasize #3 as it seems that Soylent Inc has revised the formulation a number of times, run it by some experts, and has now been field-tested to some degree; most of my self-experiments in #6 have since finished (right now the only relevant ones are another magnesium self-experiment, trying to find the right dosage, and nonrandomized bacopa ABA quasiexperiment); and for point #1, between increasing the protein in my diet and official Soylent lowering prices, now Soylent is more like 2x my current food expenditures than 3x+.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 May 2013 09:45:47PM 3 points [-]

Guess we're all stuck with Soylent then! In for $65.

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5746844

Comment author: gwern 21 May 2013 10:25:06PM 14 points [-]

I look forward to your self-experiments...

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 22 May 2013 08:37:46PM *  0 points [-]

Considering the amount of time, effort, money, and pain you have been or are willing to put in to decrease your fatness, I want to make sure that you've actually considered what your evidence is for whatever benefits and costs you perceive in decreasing your fatness. I haven't looked into studies in detail, but I think even reflecting on the discourse surrounding fat has a large effect on one's probability estimate for 'fat is evil'. By a noticeable (though not necessarily decisive) margin, I find the most plausible explanation for what little I know about fat to be that the world is crazy, people are mad and bigoted, fatness in itself does not on average cause any actionable (i.e. calling for large intervention) significant net loss of health, the medical community has failed to convincingly demonstrate such massive ill effects after controlling for other more plausible causes despite trying extremely hard to because it is privileging a false hypothesis, and that this research agenda is both motivated by and feeds into the aforementioned societal craziness.

(I claim that I'm not counter-other-optimizing-Eliezer_Yudkowsky / epistemic other-optimizing, but I suspect it'd be epistemic other-optimizing to insist you believe that.)

Comment author: [deleted] 25 May 2013 08:47:29AM *  0 points [-]

the medical community has failed to convincingly demonstrate such massive ill effects after controlling for other more plausible causes

This did control for lots of stuff.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 May 2013 08:38:15PM *  0 points [-]

I'm curious why you're apparently optimistic that this will work for you, when nothing else has.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 22 May 2013 08:43:36PM *  3 points [-]

Depends on what you mean by "optimistic that this will work." Presumably Eliezer at least thinks this is positive expected value (and so do I). That doesn't have to be because he assigns a high probability to it having positive value, it could be because he assigns a moderate probability to it having moderately high positive value or because he assigns a low probability to it having extremely high positive value, etc.

When computing the expected value, keep in mind that Soylent displaces other food, so the actual cost (assuming the project meets its funding goals) is not $65 but $65 minus however much Eliezer would otherwise have spent on food in a week. For me, and I suspect for Eliezer as well, this number is more than $65, so Eliezer can think that the expected value of replacing his food with Soylent is somewhat negative and still think it's a good idea to try it for a week. Soylent instead of other food also saves food preparation time in addition to saving money.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 May 2013 08:54:34PM *  0 points [-]

Depends on what you mean by "optimistic that this will work."

I mean buying in at the $65 for a week level.

That doesn't have to be because he assigns a high probability to it having positive value, it could be because he assigns a moderate probability to it having moderately high positive value or because he assigns a low probability to it having extremely high positive value, etc.

I'm trying to understand the "moderate probability" part. EY's been on so many non-working diets; this is evidence against a dietary solution working, unless there's a reason why Soylent isn't in that reference class.

When computing the expected value, keep in mind that Soylent displaces other food, so the actual cost (assuming the project meets its funding goals) is not $65 but $65 minus however much Eliezer would otherwise have spent on food in a week.

Obviously.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 22 May 2013 08:58:07PM 3 points [-]

unless there's a reason why Soylent isn't in that reference class.

All of the other diets involve food?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 May 2013 01:18:50AM 0 points [-]

Yep.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 24 May 2013 07:29:41AM 4 points [-]

Have you not come across "meal replacement diet" (which may be partial or total) until now? There is a bunch of articles about it in Google Scholars, not to mention the popular media.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 May 2013 08:49:51AM -1 points [-]

The meal replacements I've seen look a lot more like regular food than Soylent does.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 25 May 2013 09:33:59AM 4 points [-]

I don't understand. Soylent contains maltodextrin, oat powder, whey protein from milk, olive oil, various vitamins and minerals, whereas, Slim-Fast, for example, contains milk, milk protein concentrate, sugar, maltodextrin, canola oil, various vitamins and minerals, etc. How is one more like regular food than the other?

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