naturalnews.com’s war on FDA, CDC & Big Pharma

NaturalNews.com is an anti- vaccination, pro- pseudoscientific website, that failed to successfully propagandize their fallacies on the social bookmarking engines. So now they seem to be on an aggressive mission on Digg  to discredit the FDA, CDC & Big Pharma, so that they can use the resultant mistrust of the aforementioned organizations to push their hidden agenda. They portray FDA, CDC as pro- Bush so that they can propel anti- Bush sentiments against science. They have benign articles in between so as to not raise suspicion.

They also seem to have a propaganda army for making comments and voting up NaturalNews.com articles.

Here is my evidence for my above claims:

• A search on Digg shows 645 articles from the website were submitted of which 30 made it to the front page. All of the articles that gained sufficient popularity, where submitted by 2 users, Bukowsky and insaincain02. Some of the articles which made blatant claims were successfully identified by the public as inaccurate. Whereas other articles were not identified by the public as propaganda. Often the articles have benign looking headings like “FDA: 90 Percent of U.S. Infant Formula May Contain Melamine” but in the article they go on to portray the organizations as evil.
• Commenters like these, seem suspicious too.

Either all of these observations is plainly my paranoia of a decentralized phenomena that has no prime mover or there is indeed an aggressive effort by naturalnews.com to publicize lies.

Either way I feel this effort is to resisted.

What is money?

Story 1
Say, you are stranded on an island and you only know how to collect coconuts and catch fish. Then the cost of coconuts is the amount of fish you cannot catch while collecting coconuts. Similarly the cost of fish is number of coconuts you cannot collect while catching fish.

Story 2
Say you are stranded on another island with a beautiful girl. She knows how to forage for watermelons and she can collect coconuts too if she tries really hard. But she is not strong enough to climb on coconut trees. So her costs of coconuts is very high because, she has to sacrifice a lot of watermelons just to get one coconut.

On the other hand you can collect both watermelons and coconuts equally well. (No fishes in the nearby sea this time).

So each on your own, produces what each wants, and this is called self-sufficieny. But your girl, uh.. I mean the girl wishes that she did not have to work so hard and sacrifice so many watermelons just to get a mere balanced diet with one coconut in it. This means she has more utility for coconuts than you do.

In such a situation, it can be proven mathematically that this tiny economy can produce more than what it produces during self-sufficiency (i.e. when each is on its own) if they chooses to specialize in their talents and trade the produce.

So she teams up with you. You collect coconuts all day. She collects watermelons all day. At the end of the day, there will be a particular rate of exchange at which both of you will find it profitable to exchange some coconuts for fish or vice-versa. She would say, “Hmm.. I can get coconuts from this douchebag by sacrificing fewer watermelons than I would have to sacrfice if I were collecting both on my own”. You would say, “Hmm I can collect both equally well, that means I sacrifice one watermelon to get one coconut. But this pretty babe is stupid enough to give me a lot of watermelons just for one coconut!!”.

So you both of you think you are the one who is profiting in the trade, whereas what both of you have done in fact is to have invented a mechanism to effectively produce more by spending less. This is capitalism.

There are 2 pre-requisites for capitalism to work (and let people spend less to achieve the same level of production and happiness as they would have if they produced everything on their own):

• Property Rights: There should be some formal/informal way to own the coconuts or watermelons you produce for them to trade. In a Marxist/Communist economy or in free and open source software, nobody owns their produce.

• Scarcity: There should be an actual scarcity of the goods in question for people to produce more and profit. Coconuts and watermelons available on an island are not infinite in quantity. But there can be infinite copies made for open source software.

Story 3
Let us say you are stranded on the same island with the same girl as in Story 2. After a few years you discover that there are certain pretty stones both of you would like to have, but there is only a fixed supply of these stones. You cannot find more by just looking for more. In such a situation it can be proven that both of you will eventually end up using these stones as the common medium of exchange for all goods. This stone does not perish, and it has become the money of your tiny little economy.

(e.g. in POW camps of WWII, prisoners used to use cigarettes as money to trade for rations because cigarettes were the most scarce).

In modern economies, money is a product whose supply is controlled by the government so that they save the economy if it drops into a depression/inflation/deflation. So when people say prices of everything is going high, it means the money in circulation is high because less people are unemployed.

P.S: Based on the morals of story 2, it is easy to see why globalization is a good thing for the world.

Hiding behind post-modernism

Unable to face the facts about reality, I often see the religious folk hiding behind post-modernism. The gist of post-modernism is cognitive relativism. It is a philosophy that claims the truth or falsity of a statement is relative to a social group or individual. It is the idea that “modern science is nothing more than a ‘myth’, a ‘narration’ or a ’social construction’ among many others”.

It is well known that there are truths beyond the realms explored by science that are not only queerer than we can suppose but queerer than we can imagine. This is a scientific precept and not a post-modernist one. Science acknowledges its weaknesses and inabilities. However as mere humans we have to rely on evidence if we need to explore reality. This is well demonstrated in the modern law and court systems.

If post-modernists had their way, we would not be arresting criminals because no amount evidence would suffice. 

We do not claim for instance that Satan implanted all the evidence for a crime and delay judgment on the criminal with a theological debate on the existence of Satan. I am not saying the courts are perfect. There has been countless instances when the courts and the law failed to work. But the modern justice system is self correcting with the help of new lines evidence from forensics and with the help of democracy which ensures no powers are unchecked.

Science uses the same/better standards of evidence used by the courts to provide justice. There are times when science is wrong. But it corrects itself with time. Science relies on evidence just like the courts. And indeed there are truths Science can’t reach to yet just like there are types of justice courts can’t provide.

Just because courts can’t provide justice all the time do not mean we should practice lynching.

Similarly just because science can’t explore a certain truth does not mean we should rely on non-evidence based world-views.

P.S: “Queerer than we can suppose“ is a talk about the boundaries of what can be explored by science.

This is what the GOP will do with the bailout money

Initially they wanted to use the bailout money to buy out all the toxic bonds. Then they wanted it to give it to incompetent banks to make smart loans. Now they want to give it to the consumers.

OK, here is what is going to happen. The bailout money will be unallocated until Obama takes over in January. Then Obama will take the blame just like Franklin D. Roosevelt for not saving USA quickly enough and GOP will take credit for allocating the bailout money.

Henry Paulson said this: I’m angered by the things that got us here….It may make you angry, it makes me angry. When you ask about the taxpayers being on the hook, guess what? They’re already on the hook. They got put on the hook by the system we have, the system we all let happen, the system that Congress, the administration, future administrations, let exist….

GOP hopes that the people will forget that GOP brought up the bailout idea and hopes to transfer the blame onto the future administration.

Making Souls

I don’t get why AI researchers find it so hard to formally define self-awareness, freewill, consciousness, morality and all other mysterious qualities that make us human. Being an ex- religious zealot, I like to think I have the right to make some comment on this matter.

Everything human boils down to foresight. Foresight about the outcome of a set of events. Alright, Turing proved that perfect foresight is impossible on a Turing machine in his proofs about the halting problem. But I think we shouldn’t give up on it so quickly. Turing sees the glass is half empty.

It is half full. Turing’s proof’s allow for the existence of partial functions that predict whether an algorithm will halt or not. This means algorithms that have foresight most of the time can exist. So why don’t we let it improve its abilities with time?

There has been some effort in this direction. For instance, PAQ8P & PAQ8HP8 compressors use foresight which is right most of the time. But different PAQ algorithms are created by humans. I believe they should be created automatically using a genetic algorithm.

Automatic Theorem Provers are another line of thought in the same direction. These algorithms have foresight because they can know a proposition is true without having to test for all cases. But these provers are restricted in the sense that they are not allowed to conjure up new axioms like the theologians everytime they hit a dead end. I say we should we should let these theorem provers have that luxury and they should rely on PAQs to conjure the new axioms.

Yeah, this will make the foresight algorithms superstitious but thats a small price to pay.

Once a perpetually self improving foresight has been realized, freewill is easy. All the algorithm needs to do is to rebel against the foresight if it predicts all choices are bad. Rebelling is easy, just look at what foresight has to say and then try to contradict it by opting for a bad choice just for a change.

Morality and a lust to be good will inevitably evolve in a community of such algorithms if they are allowed to make choices about the ways to act with each other.

Self-awareness is all about having a foresight about the foresight algorithm. Yeah, it is like a tail recursion with no end, so there has to some criteria to stop trying to have more accurate models of itself. This criteria will depend on the availability of system resources and urgency of reaching a solution etc.

I think that should be it. We will have a spiritual machine on our hands. And it will be moral too, so let us hope it will adopt us as pets..

My Bet On Energy

Energy is the big talk of the day and everybody has his/her own ideas and everybody seems to disagree with each other. Google is against clean coal and for geothermal. T. Boone Pickens is for Natural Gas and against batteries. Vinod Koshla is against traditional conservation and premature optimization. Obama is for clean coal. McCain is for nuclear. Pope is for solar. Everybody has numbers. Everybody can prove they are right.

One thing is sure. There is hell lot of money to be made. This is the chance to become the next Ambani.

So since all the big guys are making bets. The humble egomaniac has to make a bet too. I put my bet on synthetic & computational biology.

However unlike Amyris Biotech, I think we should engineer pathways that are more cheaper than their sucrose fed pathways. We need to hook our yeasts onto the most cheapest source of Carbon.

By cheapest I mean, it has to be cheapest per unit mass and should sort cut through a maximum number of edges on the carbon cycle.

Microsoft’s New Embrace, Extend and Extinguish

The new embrace, extend and extinguish strategy of Microsoft is specifically designed for Web 2.0. It works like this:

1. Clone: Do something somebody else did. This is the usual first step. Example: Microsoft’s Office Web.
2. Provide cross platform friendliness: Initially, the web application works in any browser or any device. i.e. Firefox, Opera, Safari, iPhone, Blackberry etc.
3. Deny cross platform functionality: Suddenly the web application is denied service on every non- MS browser and non- Windows based device. i.e. the web application Firefox, Opera, Safari, iPhone, Blackberry etc. Example: Hotmail stopped working on Firefox.

So after Step 3, users will be forced to move to a MS browser or Windows based device.

The pre-requisite for this srategy is a fast browser and Microsoft is working on that. The hotmail denial of service was a test to see if any alarms of the geek community’s alarms against unethical practices will be set of.

Weapons of Mass Deception

I don’t usually like conspiracies because most of it do not provide evidence for their case but instead rely on a lack of evidence for their case. But there is evidence now  that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. There is also evidence that the media did not conduct independent investigations to confirm the claims from the governments.

I am watching a documentary now by an Emmy award winning independent journalist about the failings of media during war coverage. I think it is good.

I’ve realized somethings as I watch this. Media can become a private military organization.

Hopefully, with the advent of Web 2.0 we can end this once and for all. I can see why the ISPs would want to end neutrality of the Internet. What I am truly amazed is how the fascistic forces of society unite without a leader for ultimately serving their common cause i.e. to slowly eat up the freedoms of a progressive society.

Sounding Cool

The gods envy us. They envy us because we are mortal. Because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovlier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Now go ahead pick on me for stealing these lines and claiming them as mine. But for one moment, think about what they mean. It is true. This is a dream.

How mainstream religions might help mankind

Modern religions seem to be capable of immunizing minds against more sinister cults.

A liberal mind is open to experiences and what most of them believe is that seeing or listening something cannot take control of you. Therefore they go out to experience everything.

However, my own personal experience is that, there are ways to reduce autonomy of a mind by letting it see and listen to things. And it really does work on any mind. If you think your mind is macho and immune to influence, you are wrong. From what I have experienced, there are ways to control anyone against the wishes, no matter how much mentally tough he or she is.

Some things I’ve experienced are:

• Sleep deprivation: Its called a Night Vigil.
• Pattern breaking: This is complicated. Cannot put this one in words.
• Group coercion: They put yourself in the midst of a group all of whom wants you to convert, confess.
• Confession: No not the Catholic one. Although that is one too.
• Fear: They tell you what happens to the unbeliever, or what happened to somebody who rebelled or hid truths about them.
• Urgency: They tell you how there is not much time left.. Times running out.
• Rebuke: They rebuke you
• Consolation: They console you.
• Imprisonment: They won’t let you leave the HQ. You must stay within a geographical area and must take company if you must leave.
• Chanting: Say meaningless things repeatedly.
• Loud sounds
• They ask you to do meaningless things.
• There is a pecking order of piety that anyone can climb and be better than others in the group or to be more accepted. But the truth is you never get to be better than the leaders. You are always second class to them.

But modern religions are somehow a weak version of the virus. They can preserve human autonomy to an extent while preventing people from getting indoctrinated by more evil cults.