The assumption in bold is false and the words in blue are bad advice. All information carries a risk-v-benefit price tag and you have to understand that before you accept novel information. If the risks are greater than the benefits you should not accept the information. One example to illustrate my meaning: the results of a cancer screening test with fairly high rates of false positives and negatives. It can be argued mathematically when the error rate is high enough to cause you to wish to avoid knowing the results of the test. Yet another reason to criticize the NSA for its "grab everything" approach to digital information. I really ought to write these things down.
Ok then, I'm sorry to be one of those nasty skeptical people whose mind is not so open their brains fall out. A person familiar with electronics can look at a circuit and find out what it does. That thing is a digital ohmmeter because that's what the elements in the circuit do. It's not as if it's a particularly complicated circuit. I've put together much more complicated things in my first electronics class. And FYI, the "a lot of people have used it for so many years, therefore it must work" is an extremely bad form of argument. A lot of people have done a lot of things that don't work for hundred of years. Why ? Because the human brain (and that of most higher animals) sees patterns everywhere even where there aren't. We call that superstition. Even pigeons can be made superstitious. That's why personal experience isn't worth much to determine if something works. If you think you can see every little way the surface of contact on that huge electrode varies as a person's hand move consciously or unconsciously, you're far too trusting of your eyes. Why do you think electrodes for electrophysiology studies are small and not controlled by the subject under study ? Do you know the simplest way you could "filtrate" that noise ? By eliminating that large electrode and replacing it by one that is small and stuck to the subject's skin with conducive paste.
IOW, NSA has a very high noise to signal ratio There ya go, using logic and reason. That'll really confuse them.
Yes. If the NSA has no a priori filter, it's collecting mostly noise. Perhaps all that mess gets well filtered once it's archived. But I suspect the machine filtering algorithm has a fuck ton false positives and the false negatives might be unmeasurable. Each false positive will likely incur significant costs. Like a need for human intel to verify if certain records are linked to Abu Baker or Abu Baker's son with the same name. Way to go, retards.
That's a very important concept that people in general fail to understand. I think one of the most striking way to demonstrate it is the positive predictive value, i.e, the proportion of positive results which are true positives. For instance, take a screening test that has 85% sensitivity and 95% specificity - those are fairly representative of everyday medical diagnosis procedures. If the true percentage of tested people which are really affected is say, 1%, positive predictive value is only 16.8%. The rest, 83.2%, are false positives ! Fortunately, these tests are normally done on an enriched sample.
It is your right, Joe Citizen, to have your own personal genetic testing done by our lab via mail order for the low price of $1,500. Our freedom hating government wants to take that right from you, forcing you to go to your doctor. That's so you have to put money into the corrupt BigPharma system that only wants to make you sick for their own profits. Edit: Just to clarify, "enriched sample" means that the people getting the screening test for some disease are at a higher risk of having that disease than the general population. For example, a screening test for prostate cancer might have X false positives if the group being screened are middle aged men with some symptoms of prostate disease. But the false positive rate will be much higher if random men of any age are being screened. So I was making a sad joke when I parodies an ad for mail order genetic testing. These tests will have tons of false positives because the people being tested will not be limited to those who have risk factors.
"Do you know the simplest way you could "filtrate" that noise ? By eliminating that large electrode and replacing it by one that is small and stuck to the subject's skin with conducive paste.[/quote]" the salinity cells i used to work with had a very small surface area. then again, these were used for REAL things, like making sure that the RO membranes were still good. A larger surface area would probably have made things inaccurate. I think that This e-meter nonsense is shaky at best, and illegal at worst. I wonder if they can legally sell these things at the price that they are asking. Also, I have seen a lot of the newer test equipment having disclaimers on them saying that they are both conflict mineral free, AND whether or not they have a carcinogen in them. I see none of this for the "e-meter". There are very strict laws on the books now saying that ALL electronics sold in the USA have to state if they have conflict minerals in them(The SEC enforces this), and if its sold in California, then it has to state if it contains a carcinogen. the only reason why CO$ gets away with anything, is because people are not calling them out. They know that if they get called out, they would go to jail. That is why they pay so much money for lawyers.
That's not a bug, it's a feature! It's actually very easy to interpret: in any way you like. Or to reinterpret as being wrong if the powers that be want to bust an auditor. E.g. the tl;dr tale of the List One R/Sers. Basically, they needed slaves to get a project done, so had an auditor, Paulette Ausley, basically find that people had R/Sed, that is, rockslammed, a meter read with a negative connotation, on "List One," basically a security check list, looking for SPs. Then they were RPFed. When the project was done, they conveniently found that it was all Ausley's fault for incorrectly reading the meter. In short, if the meter read doesn't mean anything, it can mean anything.
Then arrange a test. Set up a repeatable sequence of actions using both types of electrodes, and document the results. (The same people doing the same actions over and over again.) The test can be repeated using the Mark V, VI, and Mark VII (all of which are easily available). Although they are analog meters, they are supposed to be performing the same function. Use the results to predict what the Mark VIII will do, and then see if it can from the schematics. BTW, testing with the regular can electrodes is what they are doing, so it is producing the "signal" that they are using. (By all means, compare it to small button electrodes - but document both.)
The meter may or may not work (for whatever reasons). Ausley may or may not have a clue what she was doing. (She may not have even used a meter. She could have just "inspected" folders.) The only thing this shows is that management does what it wants.
The idea of risk v benefit is not limited to bankers and money. We can talk about risk or "no wants" and benefits or "wants" with respect to other values, such as intellectual progress and innovation. In fact, that's the value I'm most concerned with here: the value of better understanding. I know it's hard to get your head around this idea that more information might mean less understanding, but it's a real concern. This problem arises from the noise or error associated with pieces of information. When the potential for error is significant, multiplying pieces of information can bog you down in a prison of illusions. You won't live long enough to solve the problem of signal versus noise. If you stay engaged with pattern seeking in noisy information you will slip into superstition and magical thinking. That's madness, not progress.
In science we don't accept claims that some intervention is beneficial without evidence of benefit. The default position is, "no benefit" until proven otherwise. This bias against accepting claims until there is evidence in their favor is necessary because for every claim that has good evidence in its favor, there are a zillion others without evidence. Nobody has time for all of that. Another important rule in science is the onus rule. The onus is always on the person making the positive claim to fork over the evidence for that claim.
I'm guessing you meant "invention", since your comment as written seems to be an argument in favor of anarcho-capitalism (the horror... the horror!).
+1 for scientific method. The 'e-meter' is a simple con - it does not possess any of the properties which Scientology claims for it. Even giving it a special Scientology name of its own is misleading - it's a skin galvanometer wrapped up in bullshit, lies, fraud and hype. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_conductance http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/E-Meter
It exists since the freaking 1950s. Other people have had over 60 years to test that device, and found that it does not do what it's purported to do, as the mandatory FDA sticker on it attests. You're still using it. The same rationale has been used to fund the complete waste of money that is NCCAM - the boneheaded research into woo-woo alt med fields that has yielded among others a paper about people who have wasted taxpayer money doing Reiki on neutrophils. NCCAM has stolen funds which could have been used for useful things and driven researchers away from those things in favor of whooly "research" that yields infinitely inconclusive or negative results. As expected, the negative results have not made the slightest dent in any alt med fraud's profits. Besides, the burden of proof is upon you to prove that it does what you say it does, and not upon us to prove that it does not work. That is how it works in the real world when you want to sell new medical diagnosis / measurement devices or drugs.
Sounds like exactly what OSA does, mindlessly collects data regardless of its worth (sort of like the NSA for that matter). This is the behavior of a hoarder, and such behavior is usually considered mentally ill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numismatics#List_of_publicly_displayed_numismatic_collections disagrees.
Exciting news: The new e-meter works on tomato engrams too, just as well as the old one did! (Which is to say, not at all).
The "omus rule" as used in this blog is a great excuse to voice criticism. Unfortunately, it is also used to do no work, and hinder anyone who is willing to try. Let me know if someone is actually willing to "roll up their sleeves" and do some work.
By "this blog" do you mean WWP, this website? Or are you talking about something different? And by "omus rule" do you mean "onus of proof"? The idea of scientific burden of proof stretches a lot further than this forum. It's one of the basic tents of post-Enlightenment thought. If you've ever used any of the products of science or technology then you've benefitted from this rule. The basic idea is that one does not believe something unless/until it's proven. The 'null hypothesis' should be that the thing the scientist is trying to prove is false. It's then up to the scientist to show that it's true. This is how scientific thinking works - it's a pretty good system. It's not something we've invented on this forum, it's more of a distillation of post-medieval thinking. If you'd be equally happy without the products of technology - such as electricity, healthcare, the Internet, large buildings that don't fall down - then feel free to do without it. Please note that this doesn't prevent you from doing anything at all. You can do whatever experiments you like - we're not stopping you in any way. We'll even read your results. No, we don't work for you, and won't do what you tell us. Plenty of experiments of this nature have already been carried out - if you want to ignore the results then that's up to you, but it doesn't provide us with a reason to do anything other than point you to the existing results (guys - is there a convenient summary of experimental results somewhere we could link to?)
True. If I assert that the e-meter doesn't work as Hubbard said, that is a positive claim and the onus to defend that claim is on me. But if I assert the default position, that we can't accept a claim that the e-meter works without evidence, the onus is on the party promoting the idea that the e-meter has value. This claim is basically the same as the other, but is stated more carefully. When everyone knows the default position in science, this problem of erroneously shifting the burden of proof from the shoulders of the positive claimant to the negative claimant doesn't come up. People understand, "x doesn't work" means, "x has not been shown to work," in most cases.
I don't know of experiments using the e-meter. The FDA doesn't do studies. It merely asks for study results, as per the onus rule. At some point a lack of evidence becomes evidence of failure. Every day that passes with no evidence of e-meter benefit demonstrated in spite of ongoing use becomes another piece of circumstantial evidence indicating that e-meter promoters wold prefer to avoid a test of their claims.
That point was December 1962, when the FDA seized the E-meters (4 years after the "Hubbard" version came out), according to this report: Unproven methods of cancer treatment: Hubbard E-Meter and hubbard electrometer American Cancer Society, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Volume 16 Issue 5, October 1966, pages 214-215
That makes perfect sense, and explains everything. Here we are trying to use science to determine what goes on inside the damn thing, when in reality, it is just an electronic fraud box. So simple question about the software inside the stupid thing: Can it be given commands from the "mothership" to give readings? From what we have seen, it knows who owns it, so can it be "told" to give different readings to correlate if someone needs to take classes or get more auditing?Is this a new method to scam the clams while making the cult look more impressive? Also, what happens if shelly miscavage's flag id is used(does she have one?)
Nice historical document thar. It's not a study but a review of some Scientology literature and anything relevant in the medical literature, which was zip as far as I could tell. Check it out, my homeboy Martin Gardner shows up in the references. Notice that doctors in the 1960s had the balls to call a quack a quack. This was before politicians created "alternative medicine" then "complimentary medicine" then "CAM" aka "complimentary and alternative medicine" then "integrative medicine." Just stupid word games, derp. If doctors today were like doctors then, we would not have any of this Narconon bullshit going on. It's just a feeling I have --no dox-- that Hubbard really hated Martin Gardner for writing so eloquently about his fraud. That's why we now have New Agers going out of their way to spit on Martin Gardner's memory, pretending he was cool with quantum woo when really he laughed at it. I will never forget Martin Gardner you sick Zukav Chopra Sheldrake Hubbard New Age fucks. https://whyweprotest.net/community/threads/a-debate-regarding-quantum-woo.114812/#post-2374210
"The FDA doesn't do studies. It merely asks for study results, as per the onus rule." This has always bothered me. The FDA was established for food safety, yet they do not do their own experiments. They simply ask for other peoples research, and hope people were not bribed to falsify results or that the research was done correctly. Then there are the accusations that rival companies have connections with high ranking FDA members to sabotage competition, etc etc etc. do not get me wrong, I am not against the Pharmaceutical industry, they are important. But I feel that the FDA does need to do their own research into the safety of products being sold. Here is an example: http://www.scai.org/SecondsCount/Disease/detail.aspx?cid=135410fb-a293-43e0-82c6-ec0bcc47125f http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/10/22/can-energy-drinks-cause-heart-attacks/ I feel that if there is a huge public health risk, then the government should step in to either verify or disprove what is going on. energy drinks are billion dollar industry, and if there is a serious problem with them, or suspicion of a problem, then this can hurt the economy and affect sales. More importantly, if they are dangerous, then they need to be pulled from the shelves and made safer or discontinued. Yet our government does not do this. It would not be expensive for them to do independent research for public safety, AND it would be a huge benefit to public health and for the economy. It would kill such things as the stupid vitamin and supplement industry, It would encourage scientific innovation, and help the economy by reassuring the public. sorry for the tirade and the derail, but the FDA pisses me off.
The FDA shut down Scientology and kicked ass until it was castrated by Congress, thanks to the chiropractors and their pets, Tom Harkin, Orin Hatch, etc. Also, the FDA shouldn't do studies. We have NIH for that. When the FDA tried to reign in the supplement industry, it was fucked over hard and has never recovered. Only the worst violators of the law seem to get called out.
Updated version of the essay now posted on the Indie site Possibly Helpful Advice: http://possiblyhelpfuladvice.com/?p=15730 It appears new information may include:
The onus rule is useful to filter crap from worthwhile things. It's also used in peer reviewed papers. If you submit a scientific paper to a peer reviewed scientific journal, you will often receive questions from reviewers. Sometimes answering these questions includes performing further experiments. If you don't bother to do them, paper is rejected. Reviewers have their own work to do and won't waste time investigating the claims of someone who does not bother to do their own homework. Else, they'd waste their time studying a whole lot of crap. Besides, were I to shell out the money to buy one of those overpriced things and spend time doing experiments, I'm betting that even if I posted incontrovertible proof that the signal you're looking at, when properly measured, is pure gaussian noise, you'd rationalize that away, as alt med fans do when faced with negative results.
Note, it may be called something like the "paradox of the false positive" but it is not a paradox. It is just something most people don't understand. Anyone who has ever made substantial amounts of money gambling knows this and takes advantage of it ruthlessly.
Well to be fair, there are ways to combine output from relatively inacurate tests (or sensors) to obtain a much more accurate one. One of those is called the Kalman filter. To apply it you need a model of how the system evolves with time and how your tests behave towards negative and positive results. It dynamically computes an optimal, covariance-wise, combination of the tests or sensors. Or you might use a static weighting system.
