Author Topic: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness  (Read 165885 times)

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #420 on: November 22, 2014, 12:26:36 PM »
Which science can help with.  Science can make fast food that is healthy.  There just needs to be funding and desire to do so, and time.  It's not an immediate thing.

As for regulation, it doesn't have to be bans.  It can be labels.  The food industry has fought long and hard against the requirement of labeling their products.  If they are required to label them as what they are and do, it can (and has to some extent so far) dissuade people from consuming less healthy things.  The flip side is that healthy things cost more because they have the more desirable labels, and people don't know which labels actually are healthier or are just as healthy as alternatives (or less healthy).  Good example: organic.  The industry for FOR the organic label in many instances because there's no change in the food, but people will pay more, because they think it's better for you when in reality it's not.  Or there's no change (there's literally no difference between organic and non-organic maple syrup, except price.  They come from the same trees)
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #421 on: November 22, 2014, 12:43:45 PM »
Which science can help with.  Science can make fast food that is healthy.  There just needs to be funding and desire to do so, and time.  It's not an immediate thing.

Not what I meant when I said 'convenient'.

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #422 on: November 22, 2014, 01:11:45 PM »
You meant food that keeps long and is easy to prepare/quick, right?
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #423 on: November 22, 2014, 01:19:41 PM »
You meant food that keeps long and is easy to prepare/quick, right?

Yes. Not keeping long requires either feeding a lot of people or buying really small quantities, one of which isn't exactly economical. Also lots of grocery shopping.

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #424 on: November 22, 2014, 01:26:48 PM »
Right, and what I was saying is that with science, we can find foods that meet those qualities and aren't bad for you, but rather, are healthy, maybe even healthier than the alternative.

You know, it can be approached from both sides of the issue too.  Science can make foods that work better with us, and "usses" that work better with our food.  So maybe with advances in genetic programming, introduce a gene that makes use deal with high salt content in a healthier way.  Or gets rid of our reflex to eat as much as we can, the...what's it called?  When you eat a bunch because your body doesn't know that food is plentiful.

Of course, in other nations, small shopping is much more common.  For instance, in France, it's common for people to do food shopping every day.  They have some things that keep for long times in their pantries, but a lot of people there buy food to cook every day, and only enough for that day.
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #425 on: November 22, 2014, 01:39:45 PM »
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Right, and what I was saying is that with science, we can find foods that meet those qualities and aren't bad for you, but rather, are healthy, maybe even healthier than the alternative.

We could also try and make flying pigs. The difference between engineering food to decay slowly and just treating it after is HOW the stuff gets there. And that doesn't cover stuff that messes with the nutrient content but largely prevents it from going off for long periods of time.

You know, it can be approached from both sides of the issue too.  Science can make foods that work better with us, and "usses" that work better with our food.  So maybe with advances in genetic programming, introduce a gene that makes use deal with high salt content in a healthier way.  Or gets rid of our reflex to eat as much as we can, the...what's it called?  When you eat a bunch because your body doesn't know that food is plentiful.

Laziest and most wasteful solution. Also about several thousand times more impractical. :/

Quote
Of course, in other nations, small shopping is much more common.  For instance, in France, it's common for people to do food shopping every day.  They have some things that keep for long times in their pantries, but a lot of people there buy food to cook every day, and only enough for that day.

Really hope they have better food prices than here, then.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2014, 01:41:38 PM by Raineh Daze »

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #426 on: November 22, 2014, 01:57:14 PM »
huh?  I mean, we already have foods that last longer and are healthier than things in the past, because of science (both genetics and chemical sciences, as well as, well, refrigeration.)  Why is it such a leap to think that in the future we can have foods that last longer and are healthier?  Maybe a salt that doesn't get absorbed into our body, so it prevents microbes from taking on our food, still tastes the same, but doesn't give us more sodium than we need/can handle?

And I will give you that it's impractical to engineer the genetics of coming generations....for now.  But eventually, we will be using genetic engineering to remove genetic disorders and diseases, and make people better overall.  Why would how we deal with our environment be any different from those?  We've already engineered foodstuffs to be more nutritious and more abundant, why can't we eventually make us work better with the food?  And to be clear, getting rid of that reflex would make us eat less, not let us deal with eating more.  That's the lazy solution, and the harder one.  The good solution is to engineer us to make us eat more appropriate levels of food.
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #427 on: November 22, 2014, 02:18:44 PM »
huh?  I mean, we already have foods that last longer and are healthier than things in the past, because of science (both genetics and chemical sciences, as well as, well, refrigeration.)  Why is it such a leap to think that in the future we can have foods that last longer and are healthier?  Maybe a salt that doesn't get absorbed into our body, so it prevents microbes from taking on our food, still tastes the same, but doesn't give us more sodium than we need/can handle?

Because what you're proposing doesn't make sense. You're suggesting no mechanism for it 'lasting longer' other than 'SCIENCE', and the idea of something tasting like Sodium Chloride whilst not, in fact, being NaCl doesn't mean it's going to be better for us. It's not the only salt that the body uses (I think Magnesium Chloride is used for nerve connections as well?), and just putting random metal/nonmetal combinations into food probably won't do too much for our health other than poison us.

Specifically, I referred to the chemical one--that's no an option for improving healthiness, since you're just changing whether it's there from the start or you put it on later--and I can't think of many genetic modifications that are going to prevent, say, vegetables from going soft and mouldy. Changing the structure or composition to do that is going to mess with some desirable quality--texture, taste, how it digests (from messing with the structure), nutritional content...

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And I will give you that it's impractical to engineer the genetics of coming generations....for now.  But eventually, we will be using genetic engineering to remove genetic disorders and diseases, and make people better overall.  Why would how we deal with our environment be any different from those?  We've already engineered foodstuffs to be more nutritious and more abundant, why can't we eventually make us work better with the food?  And to be clear, getting rid of that reflex would make us eat less, not let us deal with eating more.  That's the lazy solution, and the harder one.  The good solution is to engineer us to make us eat more appropriate levels of food.

Because it's blindly optimistic. Because genetically engineering billions of people's unborn offspring requires the sort of achievements where 'eating healthy' isn't really a concern, since you apparently assume that some force is available to do this to all of humanity. Or are you proposing creating a class divide bigger than anything the world's ever seen so far? That's not good, either.

And, of course, there's no positive reason to try and optimise something as complicated as the human genome and all the resulting protein interactions: it's going to break. Conditions will change away from that which supported the initial alterations, and you'll have gutted the human body of the 'superfluous' stuff that actually deals with adversity.

For those alterations to even begin to be practical, you need political unification, actual or effective; to remove the risk of possibly starving to death, since you've taken away all mechanisms for dealing with times of scarcity; and a level of scientific knowledge that is essentially 'solved the workings of the human mind, everything about protein folding, the role of every protein and chemical in the human body, and how to intricately control one system without breaking the other myriad interconnected systems.

At which point, I'd really hope anyone trying to do that would be dragged out into the street and tossed in front of a moving vehicle, because it's pretty much a sci-fi dictatorship by that point. :eh

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #428 on: November 22, 2014, 02:31:37 PM »
I'm giving no mechanism because I have no idea what mechanisms will exist.  Or can exist.  Also we use /potassium/ and sodium in nerves, they have different electronegativity values and are different sizes.  Magnesium is another necessary element, but not used in nerve communication.  Anyways, I 'm saying that science will find new ways.  If something can taste like it has salt in it, but not actually have salt, then it means it can be used as a replacement for bulk salting.  Something tastes like it has a lot of salt in it, but isn't actually as bad for you as something that uses real salt.  It's the same principle as artificial sweeteners.  Those taste like sugar, but don't get absorbed by the body.  They (mostly) just pass through to your bladder and out.

I don't know what you mean by this:
Quote
Specifically, I referred to the chemical one--that's no an option for improving healthiness, since you're just changing whether it's there from the start or you put it on later
but with regards to the next part, we already have done that.  We've engineered strains of wheat and corn that are more resistant to the bacteria that causes decay after harvest.  Also strains that work better with chemicals and physical methods of preventing it, like refrigeration and chemical preservatives.  Also we have things like the benzoate ion which inhibits mold growth without harming multi-cellular organisms (like us).

Quote
Because it's blindly optimistic. Because genetically engineering billions of people's unborn offspring requires the sort of achievements where 'eating healthy' isn't really a concern, since you apparently assume that some force is available to do this to all of humanity. Or are you proposing creating a class divide bigger than anything the world's ever seen so far? That's not good, either.

And, of course, there's no positive reason to try and optimise something as complicated as the human genome and all the resulting protein interactions: it's going to break. Conditions will change away from that which supported the initial alterations, and you'll have gutted the human body of the 'superfluous' stuff that actually deals with adversity.

For those alterations to even begin to be practical, you need political unification, actual or effective; to remove the risk of possibly starving to death, since you've taken away all mechanisms for dealing with times of scarcity; and a level of scientific knowledge that is essentially 'solved the workings of the human mind, everything about protein folding, the role of every protein and chemical in the human body, and how to intricately control one system without breaking the other myriad interconnected systems.

At which point, I'd really hope anyone trying to do that would be dragged out into the street and tossed in front of a moving vehicle, because it's pretty much a sci-fi dictatorship by that point.
So?  You say "dictatorship", I say "Star Trek".  I'm punting that one WAY down our timeline, btw.  I'm not saying it will happen, soon, I'm saying it will happen eventually.
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #429 on: November 22, 2014, 02:40:52 PM »
So?  You say "dictatorship", I say "Star Trek".  I'm punting that one WAY down our timeline, btw.  I'm not saying it will happen, soon, I'm saying it will happen eventually.

If you think it'll happen eventually, you're a fucking idiot.

Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #430 on: November 22, 2014, 03:02:20 PM »
You think we won't use genetic knowledge to make people's lives better eventually?  We can get rid of a number of genetic disorders within the next 50 years, why wouldn't we get rid of the rest and make us better?

I subscribe to the Isaac Aasimov vision of the science fiction future.  All the stories about the misuses of technology are not warnings of what will happen if we do these things, but cautions of what will happen if we misuse the technology.  We will have the ability to do great things with science, and we have an obligation to do them right.
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #431 on: November 22, 2014, 03:19:17 PM »
I think if we have the power to do something like that, there's no fucking reason to do it. I also strongly disagree with the idea that getting rid of things that are an inconvenience when scarcity isn't a problem (and, if we have the knowledge to mess with genetics on this level, there's no need to mess with people's eating habits: that's going to cost more than just dealing with eating-related health issues) is a step forwards, because it includes an implicit assumption that it's not going to go wrong and the removed features (including the gall bladder) won't ever be needed.

Improvement through robotics? I can believe that, and it's got an enormous headstart. Improvement through genetics? Nope. There's also the whole problem with mutating genes (better not have anything too fiddly or easily reverted) and enforced swathes of genetic homogeneity then causing more risk to diseases (hi, potato blight). High cost, low reward. Large scale alterations of the human genome aren't going to happen. Fixing defects, yeah. Improvement? Not through genetics.

Offline Kuroimaken

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #432 on: November 22, 2014, 03:29:24 PM »
I don't think genetic engineering on a populational scale is going to be available, or even effective, until sometime in the next couple of centuries. For one thing, the field brings up one too many philosophical issues that we're not going to overcome anytime soon.

However, improving our food is certainly possible, and very much desirable. Keep in mind genetics and chemistry aren't our only options towards food processing that makes it possible to have healthier ingredients and whatnot - an investment in proper organic cryonics, for instance, would enable us to keep food for much longer periods of time, which again goes back to salinization being less of a requirement. It will, at first, be very, very expensive, but it could eventually turn commercially viable. But research into it has to happen first.
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Offline dman11235

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #433 on: November 22, 2014, 03:33:53 PM »
Why would we have no reason to make literally everything better?  The reason is "make things better".

I think you're stuck thinking in the "now" and not the "future".  Right now it's too much, too expensive, too hard.  Why won't that change in the future?  And actually, one of the things I brought up, altering how we intake salt, would NOT be that hard to do.  And it's something most creature on earth deal with (hi there, sea life!).  Of course, you're right.  Robots are cheaper and easier to deal with right now.  That's yet another thing we can use.  We can make nanobots that help regulate nutrients in body!  And robotic farms might be cool, but we're almost there right now.  But /why not do both/.  Why not make things twice as better, instead of just one times better?

@Kuro: I didn't say it would be effective now.  I said "eventually".  Actually, I don't think it will be effective until at least half a millennium from now.  We need better genetics detection equipment, reading, and manipulating.  As of now, we can barely fertilize in vitro.  We can barely affect genetics in large samples.  But a good technology being looked at right now is retroviruses.  However, those can't make genetics from birth, you have to be healthy and grown to receive good treatment, and it's not all that effective, mostly being looked at for cancer treatment.  We cannot reliably work on genetics inside of single cells, such as eggs and sperm.
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Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #434 on: November 22, 2014, 03:47:06 PM »
Why would we have no reason to make literally everything better?  The reason is "make things better".

Because you're not actually making things better, you're just tinkering to fit a post-scarcity food situation. This absolutely shoots humanity in the foot--coping with lowered food then becomes something the human body isn't equipped to do. You've essentially just removed the ability to: A) eat large amounts, and B) deal with large amounts of fatty food at once. Without even going into other changes involving the gut.

... also, now I think about it, you'd be ruining parties. :|

But if civilisation is advanced enough to make this change, why would it need to? Health campaigns have gotten started now, so given several centuries it's not likely to be high priority at all. And anything that does crop up is easily solved.

Using technology when it's unneeded is a waste of resources, a waste of funds, and unnecessarily intrusive. Focusing on why people don't eat healthily is the important thing--and if that's solved, all the transhumanist stuff has no good reason. Though I still think convenience is an issue. And pricing.

Offline bhu

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #435 on: November 22, 2014, 04:00:44 PM »
Alternatively, we could research food that is good for you AND doesn't taste like absolute crap. Yes, the problem lies in excess consumption, but if a healthy diet tastes just as good as a bad one, then at the end of the day, you'd only pick the bad diet out of self-destructive impulse.

Therein lies the problem: Fat and sodium are what makes food taste good.  Remove both of those and you have cardboard, eat too much and you get heart disease.  There's a reason healthy diets are so difficult to get a populace to follow: they require a great deal of effort for little reward in the form of taste.

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #436 on: November 22, 2014, 04:02:29 PM »
Alternatively, we could research food that is good for you AND doesn't taste like absolute crap. Yes, the problem lies in excess consumption, but if a healthy diet tastes just as good as a bad one, then at the end of the day, you'd only pick the bad diet out of self-destructive impulse.

Therein lies the problem: Fat and sodium are what makes food taste good.  Remove both of those and you have cardboard, eat too much and you get heart disease.  There's a reason healthy diets are so difficult to get a populace to follow: they require a great deal of effort for little reward in the form of taste.

You forgot sugar, and the other one I can't be bothered to check the name for.

Offline bhu

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #437 on: November 22, 2014, 04:06:02 PM »
You think we won't use genetic knowledge to make people's lives better eventually?  We can get rid of a number of genetic disorders within the next 50 years, why wouldn't we get rid of the rest and make us better?

I subscribe to the Isaac Aasimov vision of the science fiction future.  All the stories about the misuses of technology are not warnings of what will happen if we do these things, but cautions of what will happen if we misuse the technology.  We will have the ability to do great things with science, and we have an obligation to do them right.
We are almost guaranteed to misuse the technology, we've always misused tech.  Why wouldn't we get rid of genetic disorders?  Think of all the screeching, fear-mongering and absolute paranoid crap regarding fluoride in our water and opposition to vaccines.  How much worse will it be when the fundies start screaming about you trying to go against God by meddling with his Creation?

As to getting rid of problems: How many problems do we have now that could be fixed, if the copyrighted/patented answer weren't in the hands of a greedy few?  If we do discover some means of genetic perfection it will be priced so that only the most wealthy can afford it.  We won't cure societies ills, we'll just make a tiered society.  Those who can afford to be 'perfect', and those who are shit on because they have the misfortune to be poor.  I understand where you're going, but you forget just how selfish and base human nature is.  Very few of us are altruistic, and the selfish bastards of the world produce a lot more children than we do.

Offline bhu

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #438 on: November 22, 2014, 04:06:20 PM »
Alternatively, we could research food that is good for you AND doesn't taste like absolute crap. Yes, the problem lies in excess consumption, but if a healthy diet tastes just as good as a bad one, then at the end of the day, you'd only pick the bad diet out of self-destructive impulse.

Therein lies the problem: Fat and sodium are what makes food taste good.  Remove both of those and you have cardboard, eat too much and you get heart disease.  There's a reason healthy diets are so difficult to get a populace to follow: they require a great deal of effort for little reward in the form of taste.

You forgot sugar, and the other one I can't be bothered to check the name for.

MSG?

Offline Raineh Daze

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Re: The Small Rants Thread IX: Leaping into the Well of Darkness
« Reply #439 on: November 22, 2014, 04:07:06 PM »
Alternatively, we could research food that is good for you AND doesn't taste like absolute crap. Yes, the problem lies in excess consumption, but if a healthy diet tastes just as good as a bad one, then at the end of the day, you'd only pick the bad diet out of self-destructive impulse.

Therein lies the problem: Fat and sodium are what makes food taste good.  Remove both of those and you have cardboard, eat too much and you get heart disease.  There's a reason healthy diets are so difficult to get a populace to follow: they require a great deal of effort for little reward in the form of taste.

You forgot sugar, and the other one I can't be bothered to check the name for.

MSG?

I think it's more than that which gives the taste, but yeah.