Don't Outsource Your Thinking (2015)

https://medium.com/@blakeross/don-t-outsource-your-thinking-ad825a9b4653

by objections • 10 years ago

128 32 10 years ago

alexashka2• 10 years ago

'Earlier this year, the New York AG investigated supplements at major retailers and found that four out of five didn’t contain any of the labelled herbs'

The article could've been simply this, followed by ...

I don't know how people are not in prison for this. If you printed counterfeit money, you'd be so done with. If you sell quackery in a bottle, for money, you're fine?

Makes sense.

What this tells me is the system is completely rotten, where even the most blatant loopholes are being exploited in broad daylight, with no fear of repercussions.

Reminds me that empires fall apart at the weight of stupidity and incompetence of it's own citizens, no need for an enemy.

Kronopath• 10 years ago

The article isn't really about the supplement industry, though. It's about news media's complete inability to do anything investigative, as evidenced by the fact that this guy, with a handful of publicly accessible tools and websites, was able to find more information on this scandal in an hour then the journalists who were covering this case.

alexashka2• 10 years ago

There is no consequence for selling quackery/products that suck.

There is no consequence for writing quackery/products that suck.

They are not separate phenomena. They are one and the same, done by different organizations. I should go a step further and say sometimes the way incentives align - you are actually encouraged to sell quackery, it is very profitable. Any system that doesn't actively discourage the possibility of quackery being profitable is mediocre at it's root.

It's just mediocrity that goes unchecked. It is the same problem every time.

eldavido• 10 years ago

Yep.

The lesson I take from this: don't be so quick to denigrate liberal arts and traditional university education. The kind of skills one learns in college, namely, the ability to do independent research, to write well, to think critically, and to make moral judgments, are precisely what's been taught as part of a classic liberal curriculum since Roman times.

We can talk about how expensive it is, and that there may be better delivery methods, but per se liberal arts education will only become more important as the clickbait / spam / dreck-production machine of ads / neutraceuticals, etc. kicks into higher gear.

Animats2• 10 years ago

This loophole exists because of heavy lobbying by the "neutraceutical" and "natural supplement" industry. For phamaceuticals, the FDA requires that they be demonstrated "safe" and "effective" through clinical testing. (Most new drugs fail in clinical testing, incidentally.) For "neutraceuticals", only "safe" is required, and clinical testing is not required.

55555• 10 years ago

The New York AG actually dropped all of those lawsuits (and frankly should pay those companies damages) because it was wrong and simply failed to understand how DNA testing worked. There is plenty of fraud in the supplement industry but that is irrelevant to the AG scandal. Look it up.

Which, amusingly, proves the same point as the author is making.

jasonkostempski• 10 years ago

Counterfeit money introduces fake money into an economy, selling quackery just moves money from idiots to asshats. This case is pretty clearly on the "shouldn't be allowed" side of the line but I think most sales involve various levels of idiocy and asshatery.

rokhayakebe• 10 years ago

You know the thing about supplements is very simple: Don't take them unless a doctor recommends it. I recently found (but have not verified this) that the burden is on the FDA to prove a supplement is not safe. With drugs the burden is on the manufacturer. The FDA just does not have the resources to prove tens of thousands of supplements are safe to use.

nommm-nommm• 10 years ago

Its more complicated than that, actually.

Even if a doctor tells you to use it (and doctors aren't immune to quackery) there is still a problem, you have no idea if the bottle of Vitamin D actually contains Vitamin D or just sawdust, or worse.

This was actually the case here, the bottle of "herbal Viagria" was actually just Viagria. Weight loss/bodybuilding supplements are also known to contain prescription stimulants.

You also can't know if the dosage is what it says on the label. Frontline showed an example where the Vitamin D content of a pill was double the stated dosage on the label.

nine_k• 10 years ago

A person finds more contact info about a mystery drug producer in an hour than big media in days, in a dietary supplement scandal. "Don't outsource your thinking".

fabulist• 10 years ago

Is this sarcasm?

Animats2• 10 years ago

This guy hasn't dug very hard.

"American Labs" - who are they. Probably not American Laboratories, Inc, of Omaha, NB, "Manufacturing Enzymes, Proteins and Flavors since 1967"[1] The PO box was in southern California, so the next check is the California Secretary of State business search.[2] This brings up:

    AMERICAN LABS, INC.
    Entity Number:	C0846085
    Date Filed:	        05/09/1978
    Status:	        FTB SUSPENDED
    Jurisdiction:	CALIFORNIA
    Entity Address:	5701 S COMPTON AVE
    Entity City, State, Zip:	LOS ANGELES CA 90011
    Agent for Service of Process:	LIONEL BENTKOWER
    Agent Address:	5701 S COMPTON
    Agent City, State, Zip:	LOS ANGELES CA 90011

That's old; it may not be them. The location is visible in Google Street View.[4] It's a concrete building with a street number and no name, with a semitrailer out front being loaded with boxes of something. Possible. The building is owned by an LLC. There's a hazardous waste cleanup order for the business, and it names some names.[5] But that's from 2005.

Let's try LA county DBA names.[3] We have a hit:

    AMERICAN LABS 2012141731 7/12/2012

That's a reasonably likely hit. More info is available during business hours from the LA County office in Norwalk. So that's it for now.

(When I did "sitetruth.com", my goal was to do all this automatically for any web site. That works for most legit and even semi-legit business in the US. For non-legit businesses, you need databases that aren't as easy to get and access. But they exist.)

[1] http://americanlaboratories.com/ [2] http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/ [3] http://rrcc.lacounty.gov/clerk/ [4] https://goo.gl/maps/pRPygz9dzH82 [5] https://www.dtsc.ca.gov/HazardousWaste/Projects/upload/Ameri...

angelbob• 10 years ago

Sure. He said what he did was basic and "table stakes." He was clearly not trying hard to reveal the company in question, just to show that the journalists had done almost nothing.

Rauchg4• 10 years ago

While the intention of the article is noble (it's an empowering thought), I feel like it's missing out on a more important idea.

That is: while ideally we would critically and deeply analyze every aspect of our life, we have limited time and energy. The reason we've been able to accomplish so much as a civilization is because we delegate thinking to others.

"Always doubt the media" is bad advice. It's similar to "always doubt your parents" because they told you Santa Claus was real. Always doubting the media is exhausting, and the author probably doesn't do it anyways, because he gets things done.

What's perhaps worth investigating is how technology can help us reduce the amount of trust we put in a single entity. The trend from news sites away from user-submitted comments is worrying, because that's an example of how one can read a story and immediately read critiques and reviews of it.

Quite ironically, Blake's platform of choice for this post (Medium) removed our ability to make inline comments on his writing, which is perhaps the best way to accomplish that.

lmm2• 10 years ago

Huh? Medium has an excellent system for both inline comments and long-form responses. It's the best platform out there in that regard, IME.

Rauchg4• 10 years ago

The inline notes are now private. Just between you, the author and their editors.

xlayn2• 10 years ago

I disagree. Your post is the total opposite opinion of the article. Trust others, that would free you to accomplish.

How are you going to accomplish something without spending energy and time on it?

Both approaches are wrong in the sense that they are reductions to absurd.

  -Everyone is lying, doubt everything, think about
   everything
   vs
  -Trust everything so you have time to accomplish (by
   thinking I guess)

The right hand approach would be, think about things in the proportion they are important to you.

Edit: add example

You would not spend the same amount of time or energy making sure you are not being scammed on some site that sells you the product you want to buy at half the price (e.g. 3bay.com or amazing.com) vs reading google news.

Edit2:

"Always doubt the media" is bad advice. It's similar to "always doubt your parents"

this is totally wrong, your parents (most of the time) would want to see you thrive; news on the other hand want to tell you anything to keep you on the channel to get more views and more money.

Rauchg4• 10 years ago

A lot of the media also wants to see the world thrive. "Us vs them" scenarios are counterproductive and cynical.

EugeneOZ• 10 years ago

Author of the post on Medium is trying to get some fame, using first approach from your list. We can't be specialists in all fields, and journalists can't - it's just one case where knowledge of the Internet helped some guy to find some info. "News should be checked by experts" would be good title, "don't trust nobody, check everything" is absurd title.

atmosx• 10 years ago

"Always doubt the media" is bad advice.

It is a very good advice if you live in my country.

blfr2• 10 years ago

"Always doubt the media" is bad advice.

It's solid advice. Journalists have really become the used car salesmen of the 21st century. They should be doubted by default.

With declining revenues the salaries dropped and people attracted to the profession are more and more often outright propagandists for whom the ability to push their views is part of the compensation package. For the same reason sponsors get more control over content. Not to mention changes in ownership. Even the esteemed NYT is on life support provided by Carlos Slim who is now its biggest shareholder.

And let's not overestimate the energy required to doubt the media. You could probably stop consuming any reporting or journalism, stop watching tv, stop reading newspapers and live just fine. It's just not that important to know about all the events you cannot influence anyway.

tomhoward• 10 years ago

Though I can agree with those who say he sometimes goes too far with his bullying, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has worthwhile things to say that align with this.

In the past journalism was an act of courage, revealing truths in the face of powerful establishments and risking jail or even death. Today (except in such repressive regimes as as Syria or Russia and except for war correspondents) it is becoming the refuge of disconnected cowards. In my entire career I have never seen a financial journalist go to "the other side", that is pull the trigger or engage in risk taking or in any situation in which one can be exposed to harm from one's opinion. This can be generalized to journalists in general, who rarely, if ever, switch to doing, all the while pontificating on "Steve Job's mistakes" or similar purported errors of others, or praising Geithner and other powerful frauds. Jazi Zilber wondered why journalists seemingly so knowledgeable about politics never become politicians. It is the same problem: modern journalists are designed to be either cowards, or have a need to escape reality. Yet the tragedy is that doers are in contact with the world through journalists. [1]

In his podcast with James Altucher, he explains how he makes a point of taking a bit of time out each week to publicly troll egotistical journalists, because, hey, someone has to. [2]

And though I don't have a citation, I recall one his tips for better living is to avoid spending time/brain cycles consuming mainstream news at all. If something is important enough that you must know about it, he argues, someone will tell you about it.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/nntaleb/?target_post=10151318978788...

[2] http://www.stansberryradio.com/Frank-Curzio/Latest-Episodes/...

superuser2• 10 years ago

You'll be fine in the short term. But in 30 years, when there is no one even pretending to serve as a check against institutional abuses, when 0% of the electorate has any idea at all what is happening in the world, when if you find that something unconscionable there is absolutely no way to get people to know or care about it... what then?

In a world without press that is listened to, a bad actor could literally remount the Holocaust in plain sight and no one would stop it because no one would know.

Public officials act in the public interest because their constituencies read the news and demand that something be done about it. Sure, this isn't what they do all or even most of the time, but can you imagine a world where it doesn't happen at all?

Many facets of government and business cannot function without some sort of professional collection and analysis of facts about what's happening in the world. I expect that in our post-journalism society, public and private intelligence agencies will expand enormously and start doing something that looks an awful lot like journalism, except for very small and inordinately wealthy institutional readers instead of the public.

vu3rdd• 10 years ago

I forget where I read it, but it was many years ago. But paraphrased, it read "never believe anything you read in print". It was quite an eye opening statement for me.

evv555• 10 years ago

That is: while ideally we would critically and deeply analyze every aspect of our life, we have limited time and energy. The reason we've been able to accomplish so much as a civilization is because we delegate thinking to others.

It's not an either/or proposition. I approach ideas as multiple constellations of possibilities without taking a definitive position on them. I think many other people do the same.

gluczywo• 10 years ago

You are probably referring to the quote from Whitehead:

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

And while it is a powerful line, in case of media and journalists I made a habit of thinking deeply about every message I receive in terms of what is the hidden agenda their mighty landlords try to convey.

Rauchg4• 10 years ago

I wasn't aware of that quote, but it's wonderful. Thank you

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

Journalism doesn't work like people seem to think it does, and hasn't for a long, long time - if it ever did. Journalists don't research. Most media outlets just get press releases in, or articles from AP, Reuters and other aggregators, and they paraphrase.

This is why you see the same errors across the grid. It's not that they've all done the same poor research - it's that they have done no research, and have simply rehashed for their audience. They outsource their thinking too.

Then of course you have outlets eating each others' messes, and regurgitating "facts" that copy-editors ("journalists") put in to garner appeal to their audience, and the feedback cycle distorts as it goes.

This is how you end up with shit like the "piano man" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Grassl), and much, much worse.

Don't Outsource Your Thinking (2015)

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