431 karma · joined March 21, 2012
At least that's true for people like me who put more stock in the economic explanation for inequality (technology + globalization) than the political explanation.
Schoen's comment below makes an excellent, related point: older generations might have a lower, or at least different standard of what constitutes "dangerous" food. It used to be that dangerous food would immediately give you an infectious disease; whereas today, dangerous food very slowly gives you a chronic non-communicable diease.
Nice try, but no.
"On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries." (emphasis mine)
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...
"Study of 100 Billion Animals Finds GMOs Safe"
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/comprehensive-s...
"A recent study has shown that for those with non-Celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS), the gluten itself might not be to blame for GI troubles."
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/does-non-celia...
"Organic food no more nutritious than conventionally grown food"
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/organic-food-no-more-nutr...
...
Admittedly, the issue of organic food is more controversial than the others. There was also a study showing that organic foods had higher levels of antioxidants: http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-organic-foods-20140715...
But given the amount of money people spend on organic food and the level of enthusiasm for it, you would think it cured cancer--not that there was inconclusive evidence that it might have somewhat higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticide residue. In any case, antioxidants can be supplemented, much more cheaply than buying organic food. But that doesn't provide the level of enjoyment (or for some people, the pseudo-religious experience) of buying organic produce.
And THAT is as complex as I think the issue is. The term "cargo cult" hits close enough to the mark, for me.
In response to this, I wouldn't exactly say people have made healthy eating into a new Categorical Imperative. Instead, they've become paranoid and superstitious about what it is in modern food that's hurting them. Hence we get ridiculous cargo cults like gluten-free, organic, anti-GMO, everything Dr. Oz pushes, etc. Meanwhile, evidence-based approaches to the issue have not yet produced a diet that is optimal, practical, and that provides the level of enjoyment that we're used to from food. I personally think that Soylent is off to a promising start, although it has a long way to go.
Edit: I know this is a terrible comment that contributes nothing, please don't downvote it just for that... :3
Indeed, why isn't anyone willing to take this logic as far as it should go? Publicly funded highways have facilitated trillions of dollars of economic activity. How much more growth could be enabled via publicly subsidized gigabit fiber?
Better stop eating then, since any plants or animals you might ingest have been bred by humans over thousands of years. Knowledge of our nutritional needs--this knowledge that we allegedly "don't have"--has completely transformed them.
> any skepticism about long-term effects is well-warranted given the history of the processed food industry
The whole point of Soylent (the creators have basically stated as much) is to take the tools of "processed food" and use them for good, not evil. Seriously, Soylent is not McDonald's. The Atlantic explored this idea in a recent article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/07/how-junk...
Rhinehart is an engineer by background, and his blog posts ( http://www.robrhinehart.com ) evince a serious respect for the scientific method. Now that version 1.0 has been finalized and is shipping, I think we will definitely see a lot more testing of Soylent from both inside and outside the organization.
-- True, there aren't double-blind, peer-reviewed studies (give it time, though...). But the product was developed over the course of a year, with the help of ~100 volunteers who beta tested it and offered feedback [1].
-- The article you linked correctly identifies the importance of low-glycemic carbs, but it loses me when it argues that all "processed" foods are high-glycemic. Not only does "processed" strike me as a weasel word here, the person they're citing as an authority on this issue is Dr. Dean Ornish, whom many regard as a quack [2]. Soylent's carbs are designed to be low-glycemic. They use a form of maltodextrin ("low DE") that is designed to be low-glycemic, as well as whole-grain oat flour. These ingredients are indeed "processed." But (forgive me) the proof of the Soylent is in the eating: all the beta testers took regular blood tests, and these were checked for any abnormalities, including blood sugar levels. Rob Rhinehart actually had a glucose monitor implanted in his chest to test Soylent's glycemic index directly. The result: "Soylent has a pretty low GI" [3].
[1] http://blog.soylent.me/post/69009837729/last-month-five-boxe... [2] http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/03/05/dr-dean-ornish-... [3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qpjh4/im_rob_rhinehar...
The title drew me in, but I didn't find this very insightful. I clicked on it expecting a righteous rant; instead, I found a list of things the author likes and dislikes, framed by some clever quotes.
The real problem here is that many advocates of net neutrality frame their support of neutrality strictly in terms of enabling free-market innovation. Perhaps because they're afraid to lose the support of the many libertarians who still walk among us, net neutrality supporters are afraid to give a fully fleshed-out narrative of what should happen: the government either makes a massive direct investment in increasing information bandwidth (as it has done with transportation bandwidth), or it assimilates the telcos and makes them do so. Finally, the current wave of market-based innovation can continue, supported (as markets always are) by a robust public infrastructure. There is a properly dialectical relationship here: you can't have one of these moments without the other, even though they are contradictory.
Is this plan perfect? No, but it sounds a million times more preferable than Comcast and Verizon picking which startups live or die.
What I was trying to imagine in my post, though, was some hypothetical DB where all this would be abstracted away--i.e., it would expose a NoSQL-like interface for all data, while working behind the scenes to provide SQL-like speed for frequent queries. Hence the analogy that it would be the "tracing JIT" of databases.
Not to stray too far off topic, but this article raised a question that I've had since starting software development in earnest... Why do we have to choose between heavily "normalized" relational databases that structure all data & thus allow more arbitrary queries, OR un-structured databases that are fast and flexible but often slow to query in complex ways? Why can't there be a hybrid "smart" database that dynamically generates indexes (to use the term loosely) based on how it's queried, in order to speed up similar queries in the future? With some kind of additional weight given to the most frequent queries. Granted, it would need some time to "warm up" (not unlike a tracing JIT compiler?), and the implementation might be fairly complex, but other than that, I can't think of any downsides...?
"[W]hile I have no sympathy with the idea that making the lower upper class return to Clinton-era tax rates is too hard on them, I think you could have some sympathy with the idea that your person earning $250,000 shouldn’t pay the same marginal rate as much as someone making $1.25 million or $6.25 million. Why not add additional marginal brackets?" ( http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2009/03/10/192079/mobilizi... )
I found this post via an old bookmark to some insightful commentary on it by Nate Silver: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/missing-1000000-tax-b...
The problem is, while these "new rich"--the "petty bourgeoisie," as Marx called them--are all too eager to declare themselves "not rich" for tax purposes, they are just as eager to see themselves as being like the rich. They see themselves as the truly productive class, the ones who really keep the economy going. It's ultimately for ideological reasons, moreso than pragmatic ones, that they end up opposed to redistribution (even in the face of increasingly sickening, 1920s-esque levels of inequality).
Recently, my dentist and dental hygienist tried to strike up a conversation with me after a routine cleaning. My dentist was just so dismayed that unemployment benefits were still being extended when the recession had "ended" years ago (which is true only in terms of GDP growth, not in terms of the effects on employment and income). But in response, the hygienist--who probably makes one-third what the dentist does, for doing three times the work--upped the ante, approvingly quoting her fiance's suggestion that "the unemployed shouldn't be able to vote until they find a job." Of course, the dentist was delighted by this proposal!
The point is, progressives have plenty to offer the petty bourgeoisie: more customers for their small businesses, via boosting aggregate demand; a better educated and healthier workforce "below" them, via treating education and health care as public goods--but what we could never offer is the feeling of saintly victimhood they get from libertarianism. Not only do they nurture this spirituality in themselves, they evangelize it to every promising young worker (e.g., the hygienist) who might someday join the fold.
^ almost died laughing at that one just now
That said, it's attracted quite a crowd of haters--who, it seems, would like nothing more than for Rhinehart et al. to be repeating mistakes that would be obvious to anyone who had done an hour of research on the history of nutritional drinks...
Soylent will be not only one of the highest-quality products in its category, but also perhaps the first one that isn't "for the well-off." I anticipate that it will shrink my food budget substantially. Not to mention the future savings on food-related things like dishes and silverware. Hell, if I really switch to it full time, I might even be able to save on electricity by unplugging my refrigerator!
Much scarier than the idea that the education system is failing, is the idea that it's succeeding, but succeeding at the increasingly meager role that our society assigns it. As OP points out, there isn't a textbook with the answers for meaningful real-world problems--but there is one that tells you precisely how many pumps of chocolate syrup go in a grande mocha.
HN readers may be a priori more prepared to accept the watered-down version of this idea. "Of course the system needs creative problem solving, that's the most important part of my job!" If this describes you, congratulations, you are one of the priviliged few who has what the economist David Autor calls an "analytic" job. In fact, it's increasingly likely that the very purpose of your job is to ensure that there's no middle ground between you and those textbook-following Starbucks workers[1].
1: http://decomplecting.org/blog/2013/03/11/confessions-of-a-jo...
No. He has a group of volunteers who are testing it with him, see the second post: http://robrhinehart.com/?p=474
Not to mention the community that's sprung up around it, on http://discourse.soylent.me and elsewhere
That would be incredible. Any PyPy devs care to comment on this possibility? :3
This is not about CISPA. This is about drilling the message into Congress that we don't need any new regulation of the Internet--or any expansion of the post-9/11 surveillance regime, period--no matter how well-intentioned.
[1] http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/ (kudos to another commenter who reminded me of this fantastic article by posting it elsewhere in the thread)
[2] http://www.frbsf.org/economics/conferences/0311/alm-skillcon...
[3] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robo...
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/28/h...