I felt it captured the experience of disaffected youth better than anything else I've seen.
I could believe that based on what I managed to sit through. It's definitely a series I had a strong impression that, if not for a fatal flaw (in this case, rotoscoping), I would have liked it a lot.
it's also paced very slowly
Not actually a problem for me except that it forced me to look at lots of low-res rotoscoping which only exacerbated the problem for me...
I began reading the manga on the recommendation of a friend before the first episode of the anime adaptation aired but after the promising PV for it dropped. I keenly remember not enjoying the plot at all to begin with, and the art is initially horrible, probably even worse than the rotoscoping in the anime.
I persevered with it, however, since this particular friend is yet to supply me with a poor rec, and gradually, the art has become quite pretty, and the story has also developed into an entertaining rollercoaster of events and emotion. I think it improves so much that of currently running manga, AnH is the title I anticipate new chapters of the most out of 50+ I'm following, and it has been consistently so since I first caught up, with each new monthly chapter delivering drama and excitement in spades.
Since the anime's sales were amazingly poor, there will never be a second season, and imo the story only really becomes enjoyable a fair while past where the anime stopped, so I would recommend reading the manga if you ever plan on revisiting the franchise, or for anyone else who wants to pick it up.
As it isn't finished, it could still turn to shit, but it's pretty great right now.
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Edit made months later: It turned to shit. No longer recommended.
Does the search function actually work for people here? It would be nice to find old comments every now and then. For me it just hangs in the loading phase, and very rarely returns anything.
Have tried both Chrome and Firefox.
I have the same problem, although I don't think it's ever returned anything for me.
Bias is something different than having a political affiliation.
Bias means that you make are irrational in some way.
And humans, even lesswrong readers, are all varying degrees of irrational. Therefore understanding the distribution of political affiliation of people that use the site is a significant step towards understanding the site's bias.
I would upvote an attempt to actually measure LW's political bias.
Well, there's a Lesswrong census every year, and that includes questions on political affiliation.
Other than that, I'm not sure how you would measure political bias.
Have you/they thought about other environmental implications? Processing everything down to simple nutrients to make the drink doesn't sound very energy efficient. Might compete with eating meat, but definately not with veganism.
I like my meat, btw.
Personally, I haven't really thought of it. Might be an angle worth looking at the product from, you're right.
I haven't really been following their progress or anything, so I don't know, but it's possible they've touched on it at some point before. You could dig around on the soylent forum or even start the topic yourself if you really felt like it. I think the creators of the product are reasonably active on there.
I didn't know that. What does it use instead of whey?
Rice Protein, it seems.
Relevant blog posts:
Previously the only factor preventing Soylent from being vegan was the use of whey protein. Whey is attractive due to its high absorption rate and complete amino acid profile, granting it a perfect PDCAAS score of 1.0. However, it is an animal product, some whey proteins can trigger allergic responses, and concerns were raised over the potential presence of lactose.
To allay these issues we have switched to a rice protein isolate / pea protein isolate blend. Rice protein is mostly complete except for a lack of Lysine and Leucine. This is why rice and beans became such a staple food, the beans make up for the Lysine deficiency of rice. In our staple food the blend of pea and rice protein isolate provide a complete amino acid profile with minimal risk of inflammation or allergic reactions.
soylent blog, 2013-07-24
We have found that Pea Protein is not available at the scale we demand. To compensate for this, we had to source and integrate pure Lysine into the formula, so everyone will get their complete amino acid profile.
soylent blog, 2013-08-27
So it was whey, then it was rice protein and pea protein, now it's just rice protein.
Their final ingredient list hasn't been finalised yet, they seem to be getting close though. They said they'll post it once it's done.
One of the primary ingredients of soylent is whey protein, which is produced from cow's milk. It is not a vegan product.
Whey is a byproduct of cheesemaking, which is why it is currently relatively inexpensive. If people started consuming whey protein en masse, it would shift the economics of whey production and dairy cow breeding in potentially highly unfavorable directions for both the cows and the soylent enthusiasts (because it would become more expensive).
Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any viable alternative to whey at this point (if there was, they'd use that, but there isn't).
It doesn't use whey for protein any more. Apparently the only issue for veganism (and vegetarianism) at the moment is fish oil for Omega 3s.
I was thinking recently that if soylent kicks something off and 'food replacement' -type things become a big deal, it could have a massive side effect of putting a lot of people onto diets with heavily reduced animal and animal product content. Its possible success could inadvertently be a huge boon for animals and animal activists.
Personally, I'm somewhat sympathetic towards veganism for ethical reasons, but the combination of trivial inconvenience and lack of effect I can have as an individual has prevented me from pursuing such a diet. Soylent would allow me to do so easily, should I want to. Similarly, there are people who have no interest in animal welfare at all. If 'food replacements' become big, it could mean for the incidental conversion of those who might have otherwise never considered veganism or vegetarianism to a lifestyle that fits within those bounds, for only their personal cost or convenience reasons.
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I'm curious what your confidence level about the counterfactual is here. I both would answer that question no, and would honestly expect most other men to genuinely refuse this offer if actually presented with it.
Possibly I'm hitting myself with the typical mind fallacy here (I test as purely-straight when taking analyses of sexual preference, so maybe men who test as mostly-straight would behave differently; I'm also much less materialistic than most people -- I could have chosen more lucrative careers but preferred to do something I enjoy.)
Is there really any experimental evidence for your assertion?
Let's play the money as dead children game for a bit. Now, when the article was written you could plausibly save 1life for about $1000, but these days I think the number is a bit higher. Let's say $10000 just to be safe.
Essentially, you're saying that you would sacrifice the lives of 100 people in order to avoid a brief homosexual experience, using basic consequentialism. Perhaps you won't change your mind even when thinking about the proposition from this perspective, but I know personally it would be too difficult ethically for me to refuse.
It doesn't have to be lives, of course. If you're more of a preferential consequentialist, you can help pay off your mates' crippling student debt or mortgage, or donate to a longevity charity to help your chances of not dying, or even MIRI or something.
In any case, a million dollars has a lot of potential utility. Refusing because you're not 'materialistic' is a bit short-sighted, I think.