NatPhilosopher

Karma: −71

NatPhilosopher 10 Oct 2019 20:52 UTC
6 points
on: Debate on Instrumental Convergence between LeCun, Russell, Bengio, Zador, and More
If you actually want to have any good chance of settling the dispute, You need to settle it point by point. As it is I’m fairly sure that Yann and Stuart still disagree on the central point. and if you want to get any conclusion that is useful, you need some error bar on the likelihood is correct. Yann said that in his subjective opinion it is unlikely an AI will destroy the world, but has never said what that means. if it means there is only a 20% chance, then even in his opinion we have a problem. And since he is being paid millions to develop an AI, his subjective estimate may be subject to bias.
Here is a TruthSift diagram that solve both these problems: https://truthsift.com/graph/If+Artificial+General+Intelligence+is+Built-2C+there+will+be+a+significant+chance+it+will+kill+or+enslave+humanity+/550/0/-1/-1/0/0#lnkNameGraph
Feel free to add to it, or start another.

NatPhilosopher 29 Jan 2015 13:33 UTC
0 points
in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
I could cite other articles showing Wakefield was right on the science. For example, multiple peer reviewed articles showing that vaccine strain measles is in fact found in the guts of autistics but not of normal kids. Also, all the articles you cited talk about whether MMR causes autism. What does that have to do with whether Wakefield was attacked for even saying negative things about vaccines? None of those articles show fraud, or misconduct or that Wakefield was even wrong on anything, (I don’t believe, didn’t always read further than abstract) all they show is data supposedly showing that MMR doesn’t cause autism. Wakefield never claimed it did, he just discussed the issue scientifically. Why did Wakefield have to leave his job and country for publishing science on the other side?

Also, btw, none of those articles shows what their titles say: there isn’t a one of them for example, that looks at whether the aluminum load in vaccines causes autism or is sensitive to the issue. There isn’t a one of them that looks at whether more vaccines earlier is more likely to cause autism than less later (although Stefano is sometimes misrepresented in that fashion.) The evidence on those issues is a resounding yes, if they cared to look at it. They have all carefully cherry-picked the data.

I could also argue the same on Hewitson. Hewitson was the only person I’m aware of to inject actual vaccines into post-natal animals. And she found they damaged the animals. If people don’t like her experiments, my question is: why didn’t anybody repeat them, rather than go on blithely hoping they are wrong and the kids are not being damaged? Shouldn’t such experiments be done before you start injecting dozens and dozens of vaccines into every infant in the country?

But I’m not interested in arguments that are purely about ad hominem attacks. The point here is to prove to you that doctors who speak out about their understanding that actual science is against vaccines are punished and/or prevented from communicating. Here’s another citation. This Dr. has had to cancel her speaking tour because of pro-vaccine terrorism. https://www.facebook.com/vaccineinfo/posts/10152993156565891?fref=nf

NatPhilosopher 18 Jan 2015 4:47 UTC
0 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: vaccination research/reading
I still don’t understand your point. I responded to what he wrote. I said it was at best a bunch of theories. What part of it do you think has some basis in reality? Why should we trust it? BTW, I don’t understand how the self reporting is even relevant, since the patients didn’t know if they had a placebo. Even if all those explanations are true, does that mean the vaccine didn’t damage the immune systems, given that in a blind experiment you got 4.4 times as much disease?

You said some piece of evidence I cited didn’t support the point I thought it did, so I still want to know what one that is.

I guess you are saying the fact that the only RCP test ever conducted on a vaccine (to the best of our knowledge) that looked at actual health, found the patients getting the vaccine much less healthy, (which by the way is supported by lots of other results showing vaccines do collateral damage to the immune system, its hardly an outlier) which is the evidence I cited,

you are I guess saying this didn’t support my case because the authors of the study wrote various speculations that might have partially explained some of it, although a factor of 4.4 takes a lot of explaining, so I doubt it.

Is that your point? Can you spell it out?

NatPhilosopher 18 Jan 2015 2:40 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: William_Quixote’s comment on: vaccination research/reading
In my experience, if there is a field where there is a big consensus opinion among “experts”, and a small group of wacko’s on the internet contesting the “expert’s” finding with their own citations to the scientific literature, if I’ve investigated and read what the science says, the wacko’s have turned out right every time.

The problem with your quick way of investigating is its based on the utterly fallacious theory that annointed “experts” know what they are talking about. In general, they are just spouting crowd think.

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” ― Richard P. Feynman

‘A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.’ —Albert Einstein

“To return to the faculty of observation possessed by crowds, our conclusion is that their collective observations are as erroneous as possible, and that most often they merely represent the illusion of an individual who, by a process of contagion, has suggestioned his fellows… “The events with regard to which there exists the most doubt are certainly those which have been observed by the greatest number of persons. To say that a fact has been simultaneously verified by thousands of witnesses is to say, as a rule, that the real fact is very different from the accepted account of it.” —Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895.

“Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time. Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

NatPhilosopher 18 Jan 2015 1:28 UTC
0 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: vaccination research/reading
He “explained it in the comment” ? He responded with various explanations, which are at best theories. I stated facts.

I didn’t see any pieces of evidence I stated that don’t support the position I think they do. Can you name one?

You think the fact that every animal study injecting animals with viral mimics or aluminum or the like that has been pointed out to exist, all find damage, do you think that supports the vaccine safety position? You think the fact that the only RPC study injecting children with a vaccine or a placebo and following their health reports vaccine getters got 4 times as much infectious disease supports vaccine safety? Or maybe after the explanations it supports vaccine safety? Is that your point?

I’m big on changing my mind. I changed my mind big time, from vaxxing my first two kids to understanding that was a huge mistake. I’ve changed my mind on many other important things too. You all seem resistant. I’ve offered lots of evidence you should change your minds, none of you have offered even an iota of evidence in support of the vaccine safety position. At best you’ve offered rationalizations about the damning evidence I’ve offered. But mostly you’ve just complained that you didn’t like my tone.

NatPhilosopher 17 Jan 2015 17:18 UTC
0 points
in reply to: CellBioGuy’s comment on: vaccination research/reading
I think you should be careful to keep separate your theories or the explanations of “experts” from what is demonstrated. If you rely on authority, you are destined to propagate crowd think.

Its a fact that the only RPC study I know of that injected a vaccine or a genuine placebo into children and followed their health (not whether they got some specific disease) for more than a few months, reported vaccine recipients got 4 times as many respiratory illnesses as placebo recipients. This fact suggests to me not only that vaccines are causing collateral immune system damage, but also that the vaccine literature is hopelessly confirmation biased. The fact that even after this study nobody has repeated it with other flu vaccines is also of interest.

It certainly wouldn’t be surprising a priori that vaccines cause collateral immune system damage, especially in developing children. And I cited a literature indicating reasons for believing this and mechanisms. Where is the evidence against?

As to your comments on the animal studies, I think there are plenty of animal studies that are injecting less into the animals than kids often get. The mouse aluminum study specifically scaled the aluminum by weight and studied both Swedish and American. The studies causing auto-immune disease in non-auto-immune mice are just using 8 injections, not 49 or whatever the kids get. And again, where is the data on the other side?

Also, btw, Hewitson injected macaques with placebo or off the shelf vaccines, and scanned their brains 6 months later, and she reported the ones with vaccines were brain damaged as well. That experiment appeared 5 years ago, hasn’t been repeated either.

NatPhilosopher 17 Jan 2015 15:59 UTC
0 points
in reply to: freyley’s comment on: vaccination research/reading
Did you find anything relevant to any of the questions I address, such as long term effects of total vaccine load, especially of aluminum, and of early vaccine use?

Did you find anything rebutting the extensive animal literature I cited that reports early and often vaccines are a problem? Did you find anything rebutting the epidemiological literature I cited, that suggests similarly.

Did you find anything confirming or refuting Original Antigenic Sin—the phenomenon that a vaccine while training the immune system to a particular type of response to a particular virus, damages other responses of the immune system, such as cellular, both to that virus and to other infections?

Did you find anything interesting on how long immunity lasts, particularly that addresses the question of how soon after their last booster vaccine recipients become susceptible to sub-clinical infections and may become contagious?

NatPhilosopher 17 Jan 2015 15:12 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: ErichBacher’s comment on: vaccination research/reading
I didn’t read that ridiculously long distraction you linked, did you? However every phrase in my statement I believe to be true. Thompson was a collaborator. Thomson issued a statement through his lawyer saying as follows: “My name is William Thompson. I am a Senior Scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where I have worked since 1998. I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/046630_CDC_whistleblower_public_confession_Dr_William_Thompson.html#ixzz3P5iPApOM

I believe there are also phone tapes of him which he wasn’t expecting to be published that take a stronger position, and at the above link you can read old emails from him to the then Head of CDC, (Now Head of Mercks’ Vaccine Division) and others documenting and extending the claims.

If you visit the CDC webpage on the question of whether kids are getting autism from vaccines, the paper they link you to has the same lead author. This is the only primary source they link. So I repeat my question: Does the CDC really need to rely on him as their sole source for arguing vaccines don’t cause autism?”

Incidentally, the more important question is the second one I point out, if you read that paper it is being misrepresented just as the data reportedly was in the earlier paper, to say things it doesn’t say. This study doesn’t indicate that too many vaccines too soon aren’t causing autism. It is blind on that subject. At best it indicates that DTP and the rest of the vaccine series isn’t dramatically more likely to produce autism than DTaP and the rest of the vaccine series.

In addition to that, its my belief that a minor reanalysis of their data, just changing the entries in a column of table 1 from “number of antigens” to “mcg of Al in vaccine” and running the data through their computer again, would give much more interesting results. Also changing the entries from “number of antigens” to “1″ (ie total number of vaccines, counting 1 per vaccine) would give more interesting results. (The actual paper contrived to use a column that contained “3004” for DTP and some single digit number for everything else in common use, so it basically reduced itself to a single vaccine test while being presented as a test of multiple vaccine effects.)

NatPhilosopher 16 Jan 2015 23:24 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
There’s no “inquisition” in medicine. That’s an unsupported opinion I believe is false. Laura Hewitson and Andrew Wakefield are immediate counterexamples that come to mind. I expect any Doctor that took a public position against vaccination would come under a lot of social pressure at least, and may well lose job or opportunities.

What criterion are you using to select what counts as fact and what is immaterial? How would you identify an author who is being reasonably cautious not to make any unjustified statements? I don’t look to authors to make statements or draw conclusions. If I can’t draw the conclusion myself, its not valid. I look to authors to report empirical data, and maybe spell out a proof or calculation of its implications, but if I can’t personally follow the proof or calculation of the implications, then its not valid. The point of the scientific literature is, its supposed to be verifiable by scientists, so I look at it in that spirit. The scientists writing it are really supposed to keep their opinions out of it, but when they can’t help themselves the readers should exercise judgement themselves. I am looking at the questions as semantic, as being questions about the physics of the world, and understanding it as a physicist should. What’s relevant is what’s relevant to answering the physics questions such as “are vaccines causing damage?” and is decided by the physics of the world and rationality.

NatPhilosopher 16 Jan 2015 21:05 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
The article I cited reported that breast fed infants wind up getting up to 1000 times as much aluminum from vaccines as from diet. That is the empirical result that paper was reporting. The rest is window dressing which would be at best the authors opinion. The question of whether getting that amount of aluminum is toxic is more complicated. The natural experiment is to scale it for weight and inject it into post natal mice. That experiment has been done and reports they suffer great developmental damage. There’s also a fair amount of epidemiology that bears on the subject, which also suggests the aluminum is causing damage. Its highly correlated with autism, for example. I reviewed the literature all with links to about 3 dozen citations at http://whyarethingsthisway.com/2014/03/08/example-1-pediatrician-belief-is-opposite-the-published-scientific-evidence-on-early-vaccine-safety/

Also, I suggest to you that there is demonstrably very strong crowd think effects on the subject of vaccines. A phenomenon of crowd think is persecution of heretics. In such a climate, scientists publishing results that challenge the orthodoxy have to tread very sensitively indeed if they wish to avoid the inquisition. And they often respond to this by adding various flowery prose to their publications such as that which you mention, mitigating the distaste of having to report such contrary results. If you wish to understand crowd think better, I recommend: http://whyarethingsthisway.com/2014/03/22/why-are-the-pediatricians-so-confused-about-the-actual-state-of-the-scientific-literature/

NatPhilosopher 16 Jan 2015 19:24 UTC
0 points
in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
Breast fed infants ingest about 7 milligrams. But about 99.75% of that goes straight into the poop, as the dietary system is incredibly good at not absorbing dietary aluminum. By contrast virtually all of the 4.4 mg of aluminum they get injected from vaccines eventually makes it to their systemic flow. That results in a total load of aluminum entering the blood from diet of .0025*7mg= .01 mg compared to the 4.4mg of injected aluminum reaching their system. Or in other words, the ratio of aluminum reaching the blood from vaccine is about 250 times the amount reaching the blood from diet.

Better read the fine print or they will pull the wool over your eyes. See also http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20010978 for some measurements.

But I want to commend you polymathwannabe. You are the first reply I have gotten that attempted to engage any meaningful question.

NatPhilosopher 15 Jan 2015 15:48 UTC
−6 points
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
They didn’t have any data on the toxicities of injected aluminum. They had none. They had never injected an animal and collected any. The only data they had was on oral administration. My clarification is 100% accurate, of what the article conveys if you put the quote in context.

You seem to think the fact that they minimize the extent of their incompetence or corruption by using the euphimism “scant” for “none” is more important than the facts (1) that they had been injecting aluminum into tiny kids for 70 years before checking the toxicity, and (2) since then all of the published peer reviewed data shows its doing great damage, and (3) all of the safety review boards and safety surveys are simply and blithely ignoring the scientific literature on the subject, not bothering to cite it or to rebut it or to offer alternative studies on the issue.

NatPhilosopher 15 Jan 2015 14:27 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
Please say what claim I made it support it wasn’t really supporting or retract your comment and any negative points you may have given me.

I’m quite curious to see what claim you think I made it support.

NatPhilosopher 15 Jan 2015 14:11 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
I pointed out I’m not cherrypicking and have discussed every relevant citation that I’ve found. Please post a citation that I missed that is within the scope of my investigation or retract your comment and any negative points you have given me.

Just to point out one other thing you might be missing: The scope of my investigation is whether the aluminum and many early vaccines are causing developmental damage. It explicitly omits the only things the safety surveys focus on, which is thimerosal and mmr and acute effects . I omitted these because (a) they claim to have removed it from vaccines (except flu) and (b) mmr doesn’t have adjuvants and is normally given second year of life and (c) its the only thing they defend, so why attack it, which will only involve great effort and likely be hard to decide in the end anyway? For aluminum and many early vaccines, there is no defense in the scientific literature of their safety, its a walkover to all intents and purposes, so it made the review task of deciding on the safety straightforward as well as relatively simple.

NatPhilosopher 15 Jan 2015 1:03 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: HungryHobo’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
Actually, Doctors practice reflects little about what the scientific literature says about vaccines, or most anything else. Medical decisions are routinely made worse than randomly. Here’s a recent review article. They reviewed all the articles for 10 years in a high impact journal. The majority of the articles surveyed study a new practice, but of the 27% that test an existing practice, 40% reverse the practice and 38% reaffirm. My remark on this is: 50%-50% would be what you’d expect if the result of the test were random. So this indicates they are doing no better than random in introducing new practices replacing old ones. If you go on a random walk with each step forward or backward, how long does it take before you know nothing? http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2813%2900405-9/abstract

This isn’t unusual. Everybody who looks seriously at medical practice, finds between 10-30% of it is supported by science. Here’s an article with a bunch of references to such studies by the BMJ and the Congress and the like. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/the-mythology-of-science_b_412475.html

And like I pointed out, the vaccine safety surveys routinely ignore all of the actual pertinent scientific literature on dangers, so no wonder they decide they are safe.

If you read naturopaths online, they actually justify what they prescribe much better than Doctors ever will.

Here’s another one Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol). 2004 Dec;16(8):549-60. The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies. Morgan G1, Ward R, Barton M. RESULTS: The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630849

Personally, I’d try some recommendation like Curcumin first. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18386790

NatPhilosopher 15 Jan 2015 0:53 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
It was 100% supporting the claim they didn’t know the first thing about the toxicity of injected aluminum in neo-nates. What claim do you think I made it seem they were supporting? Here’s how I summarized the quote.

“Doctors had been injecting aluminum adjuvants into children for 70 years, committees of doctors and government officials had decided numerous times to inject more aluminum into younger children, but as late as 2002 nobody had empirical data on toxicities of injected aluminum [1].”

I would say my quote was 100% accurate, not out of context, and I don’t have a clue what claim you think I made it seem to support that it wasn’t supporting.

NatPhilosopher 14 Jan 2015 19:45 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
I wasn’t an anti-vaxxer till I started reading the scientific literature on it. I vaxxed my first 2 kid too.

NatPhilosopher 13 Jan 2015 16:08 UTC
−12 points
in reply to: VincentYu’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
I didn’t manipulate it. I quoted it accurately, and I quoted everything it had to say about the relevant empirical results. My quote is an accurate depiction of the state of knowledge, which is what I quote. I didn’t say they had no other conclusions, I said this was “among their conclusions”.

They have no empirical basis to make any other conclusions of relevance once you understand that conclusion.

I am proving to you you are delusional about huge swaths of what you believe, and you in reaction are apparently arguing irrelevant fine points and down grading me. Are you interested in being “less wrong”, or not?

NatPhilosopher 13 Jan 2015 10:31 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
No I’m not. I am looking at every empirical study on aluminum, for example. I’m looking at every study that compares vaccinated to unvaccinated, or even more vaccinated to less vaccinated.

The safety surveys are cherry picking. I am not. I am following the scientific literature to find all the papers that address semantic issues like: is the aluminum in vaccines causing damage? Are vaccines in the first year or two of life inherently dangerous because they disrupt development of the immune system and brain? What studies of vaccinated and unvaccinated address the impact on long term health?

If you know of any studies on the other side of anything I’ve written, I am intensely interested in citations. The safety surveys don’t cite anything, and I haven’t been able to find anything.

I suspect the reason you think I’m cherrypicking is you assume there must be a literature on the other side of these issues that I have ignored. There is not. There is no empirical paper indicating that injecting the aluminum in vaccines into neo-nates is anything but highly toxic that I have found, or any of the rest of it. If you find any, please post a citation.

NatPhilosopher 13 Jan 2015 10:23 UTC
−9 points
in reply to: VincentYu’s comment on: What topics are appropriate for LessWrong?
The actual conclusions are crowd think. The fact of the matter, as they discussed, is they had no empirical basis to assess the toxicity of injected aluminum in neo-nates, or even adults for that matter, in spite of having done it for 70 years. They had never bothered looking. They still have no empirical basis for claiming its safe, in fact, just the opposite. In fact, they are injecting 100′s of times as much aluminum into neo-nates as they get from diet in the first six months, bypassing numerous evolved filters that served to keep it out. When people actually did animal experiments on neo-nates, they reported this was very toxic to development. When people actually look at any epidemiology that’s sensitive to it, they find its very toxic to development. Its highly correlated to autism, for example, as well as infant mortality.

Incidentally, when they talk about “low incidence of adverse events”, they are talking about adverse events within 72 hours. I am talking about the impact of aluminum on development and the immune system and the development of the brain. Much of the aluminum gets stuck in the muscle and only leaks out over periods longer than 72 hours. The total load infants get from vaccines over the first six months is hundreds of times the total load they get from diet, taking into account that the dietary system filters 99.75% of ingested aluminum but virtually all parenterally injected aluminum eventually makes its way into systemic flow.

The results of the various medical surveys are crowd think. The summaries as a general rule present blather that soothes the soul. If you look at the actual empirical results published in the scientific literature, the situation is clear, even though it is the opposite of what all the surveys tell you in their summaries. If you ignore this, you are destined to fail to realize that committees of doctors or government officials are incapable of understanding a scientific literature or making medical decisions that are better for health than random, and more generally that crowd think is an important phenomenon in the world.