MugaSofer comments on Miracle Mineral Supplement - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: gwern 21 February 2014 08:56:44PM * 1 point [-]

Ah, a video. Of course you can trust anything you see in a video edited by a partisan, right? It's not like it's a bunch of snippets put together out of context with a misleading voice over or anything.

http://www.pepijnvanerp.nl/2013/05/fake-and-unethical-trial-video-claims-miracle-mineral-solution-cures-malaria/

Comment author: fatfreddie comment score below threshold [+] (5 children)

Comment author: gwern 21 February 2014 09:53:47PM 3 points [-]

the red cross administering a treatment to malaria to african children

No, it's not showing that. It's showing a dude doing something in Africa, who may or may not be with the Red Cross (they were very quick to disclaim him) doing something which may or may not be a malaria treatment (which was sold to them as a purification agent, hm...) which may or may not have had the results claimed by someone who presents no hard documentation and which my link offers a much more likely explanation for (regression to the mean due to quick first-pass testing with a high false positive rate).

Maybe. If even that. Each cut is a chance to shift film entirely: seeing is not believing. Documentarians know this very well, that it's easy to lie. See propaganda films like Triumph of the Will, modern polemicists like Michael Moore, or heck any of the examples in TvTropes. Just simple juxtaposition of shots can lead to starkly different interpretation of the same exact material by the viewers - the famous Kuleshov Effect. (Why do you think they give an Oscar for best film editing?)

Sadly, 'seeing is believing' for a lot of people...

Comment author: fatfreddie 21 February 2014 10:18:21PM -1 points [-]

I see your point. Watching a video or picture, or whatever, for that reason, is no proof of anything. Those are easy to manipulate, I think we can agree on that. But what I want to hint to here, is the fact that we have vested interests on one side and virtually no profit on the other side. So which one do you belive? You post some link with 'exposing material', which is asserting in its third sentence, that the stuff is dangerous etc. and that that's an established fact... reading is believing, too. I've heard of some people (acquaintences) in africa witnessing the effects of mms, and that made me listen up. Look at this indepentend "help-your-self" community for example:

http://www.globalresourcealliance.org/

It's second hand info in the end again, but with our butts in front of a machine, its the best we can do...

Comment author: gwern 21 February 2014 10:41:33PM * 4 points [-]

Watching a video or picture, or whatever, for that reason, is no proof of anything. Those are easy to manipulate, I think we can agree on that.

Video is not even systematic data. It's beyond easy to manipulate.

But what I want to hint to here, is the fact that we have vested interests on one side and virtually no profit on the other side. So which one do you belive?

Oddly enough, Nature doesn't care what vested interests think. It either works or it doesn't. When we look at systematic reviews and meta-analyses of how Big Pharma biases results (for example, the research summarized in Goldacre's Bad Pharma), we do not see anything like 'Big Pharma has suppressed 100% effective miracle drugs for global killers'. We see things like 'trials conducted by Big Pharma are 10% more likely to favor them than trials of the same drug conducted by neutral third-parties'.

You post some link with 'exposing material', which is asserting in its third sentence, that the stuff is dangerous etc. and that that's an established fact... reading is believing, too.

No, it makes a clear point about video editing which you can confirm by watching the video yourself, and offers a straightforward way in which the results are misleading which is immediately recognized as plausible by anyone familiar with the two-stage approach to medical testing (cheap initial screening with high false positive rate followed by expensive slow accurate test) used the world over which minimizes expenses & time.

I've heard of some people (acquaintences) in africa witnessing the effects of mms

True of all of the thousands of alternative & traditional medicine, none of which work. They all have fans who 'witnessed the effects'.

It's second hand info in the end again, but with our butts in front of a machine, its the best we can do...

No, it's not the best you can do. And this is why I am angry at you and people like you: you are engaged in crappy thinking, you are ignorant, and your ignorance drives out good information. You can do better. You can easily do better. Where are your literature reviews and meta-analyses? Where are your Kickstarters to fund real experiments? Hell, where are your n=1 self-experiments? It is possible to run your own blind self-tests (if you spend even a minute genuinely thinking about it, you can figure out self-blinding), and it is possible to do with MMS: in fact, MMS is especially easy to test because it is dissolved in water. I have run and am running many randomized self-experiments on myself to investigate things that mainstream medicine has not yet resolved to my satisfaction. For example:

http://www.gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing (I put this first because the methodology is almost exactly what you'd want for MMS.)
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#adderall-blind-testing
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#lithium-experiment / http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#lithium
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#modalert-blind-day-trial
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#experiment-2
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#pilot-experiment
http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#followup-experiment
http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#vitamin-d-at-night-hurts
http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#vitamin-d-at-morn-helps
http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#potassium-day-use
http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#potassium-morning-use
http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#redshiftf.lux
http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#meditation-1

You are not part of the solution. You aren't even an innocent bystander. You are part of the problem.

Comment author: fatfreddie 21 February 2014 11:58:43PM * -1 points [-]

<Video is not even systematic data. It's beyond easy to manipulate.> There's zero info in that comment as to the topic; it seems purely polemic to me, since I already agreed to the possibility of manipulating videos etc.

<Oddly enough, Nature doesn't care what vested interests think.> Of course it doesn't, and I never said it would. The whole issue is about which sources to trust, and coming up with some meta-analysis of BigPharma not repressing 100% of what ever doesn't win you a single inch of ground: if that study says BigPharma prefers something they produce to something else by 10%, then mms must be... a fraud? Do they even test mms? You're silent about that, so let me guess: they don't.

<No> Yes, it does mention it in the third sentence, check it out again... weaving the outcome in up front is a telltale sign of insincerity - if you know before, what you'll find out later...

< which minimizes expenses & time> well, maybe they have no money - ever thought about that?

<True of all of the thousands of alternative & traditional medicine, none of which work. They all have fans who 'witnessed the effects'> Interesting, you're so much into "systematic and meta-analysis"... you also tap into some higher knowledge, don't you?

<I am angry at you and people like you> Is that maybe the true reason you're so agitated? Me and my kind... you don't have the slightest clue to what or who I am, but you seem to have an image of "my likes" in your head - let's stick to arguments, okay?

Speaking of which: your links don't seem to cover mms... so why are they in your post? n=1 experiments - the path to truth? You seem not to have tested it, but still know so much about it... how come?

Finally: I never said I was either part of "the solution", nor a "bystander"... so what's the "problem"?

Comment author: gwern 22 February 2014 04:07:51PM 0 points [-]

since I already agreed to the possibility of manipulating videos etc.

Good. I'm glad you'll never show a manipulated video as evidence again. I hope this has been educational.

The whole issue is about which sources to trust, and coming up with some meta-analysis of BigPharma not repressing 100% of what ever doesn't win you a single inch of ground: if that study says BigPharma prefers something they produce to something else by 10%, then mms must be... a fraud? Do they even test mms? You're silent about that, so let me guess: they don't.

Whether they test MMS or not is irrelevant. We have a good idea what Big Pharmai is capable of, and it smashes your conspiracy theory to smithereens.

weaving the outcome in up front is a telltale sign of insincerity

Or it's simply summarizing the conclusion? Like, in an abstract?

well, maybe they have no money - ever thought about that?

...all the more reason to use an efficient two-stage test process. You are not responding to this point or the alternate explanation, which is fatal to your conspiracy theory and your greatest piece of evidence for MMS being a miracle cure. Why is that?

Interesting, you're so much into "systematic and meta-analysis"... you also tap into some higher knowledge, don't you?

This is not a response.

you don't have the slightest clue to what or who I am

You are irresponsibly pushing MMS, a bleach solution, as a miracle cure for real-world problems that kill real people, based on trivially flawed deceptive videos exploiting a mistake a first-year stats student could diagnose after the Bayes theorem section of their stats 101 course. I know everything I need to know about you.

Speaking of which: your links don't seem to cover mms... so why are they in your post?

I don't need to test MMS when there is zero evidence of its help and plenty of evidence of its harm. The burden of proof is on MMS proponents to show that drinking poison can be helpful. (This is a burden which has been passed by many therapies such as chemotherapy, incidentally.)

Finally: I never said I was either part of "the solution", nor a "bystander"... so what's the "problem"?

I never said you said that. You are again not responding and evading. That was my summary, and I also explained what the problem was:

No, it's not the best you can do. And this is why I am angry at you and people like you: you are engaged in crappy thinking, you are ignorant, and your ignorance drives out good information.

Should I add rhetoric or careless reading to my above list of what I know about you?

MugaSofer comments on Miracle Mineral Supplement - Less Wrong

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