jimrandomh comments on Miracle Mineral Supplement - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 November 2012 09:17PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (81)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: jimrandomh 21 November 2012 12:28:40AM 2 points [-]

There are two things going wrong here. The first problem is failing to call things by their true names. This is a widespread problem when people use drugs and supplements: they refer to them by slang terms or brand names. This cuts them off from information; if they knew it was bleach, they'd think twice before using it. There was a similar problem with "bath salts" (a term that does not identify a drug, but rather means "unidentified substance that's labeled as maybe poison".)

The second problem is failing to observe the first level of precaution, which requires, at a minimum, doing some internet research, either being qualified or consulting someone qualified to judge the risks and benefits, and knowing how to measure out a correct dose and what the consequences are if you screw it up. (This last one appears to have killed some people: they didn't water the bleach down enough to be survivable).

I will say this, though: it makes the quacks promoting ascorbic acid (vitamin C) for everything look a whole lot better by comparison.