From the FI Discord chat (link at bottom)
I didn’t participate in this particular chat but I thought it was good.
curi
the FDA is fucking ridiculous btw
curi
u can do 100 studies just to get 2 successes with 95% confidence to submit
curi
failures don’t matter
curi
this is one of the reasons getting drugs approved can be expensive – they don’t reliably work, but run enough trials and u can get them approved.
Freeze
yikes
Freeze
the p value being 0.05, meaning 5% statistical significance, is what contributes to 95% confidence right? And no negative or null results being published means yeah… you can keep running trials. so if you can afford it, you can get any drug approved eventually?
curi
something like that
Freeze
ah, not exactly, ok
curi
they don’t just write their policies clearly on their website
curi
but i read several things to check on this
Freeze
friend commenting on this:
well that’s why the replication crisis is such a huge problem
another part of the problem is that no one wants to be the replicator
they want to be the one finding results
so no one wants to fact check other people’s work, especially if they’ll probably get a negative (non-present) result
Freeze
i sent him an invite to this group
curi
the underlying cause is govt-funded/run science instead of profit motive. if a for-profit company runs research, they want real results they can use in products. if the govt runs research, it’s a social climbing contest to get in favor with those in power.
curi
also with free market drug effectiveness testers, they would care about their reputation a lot. develop better policies or go out of biz.
Freeze
ah… so capitalism would fix this error too, because results would be prioritized over political bias/promises?
curi
the FDA does not compete in the market and prevents – by force – companies from using better, alternative standards
curi
capitalism was the primary source of major scientific progress in the industrial revolution
curi
roughly: no1 blames companies who say “well the FDA approved it, we used the highest standards anyone could expect of us”. actually companies have somewhat higher standards than the FDA in some ways, some integrity, but it’s a bad system.
curi
many companies. some are just abusive.
curi
and they are pressured to be abusive by the false belief that abusing stuff like that brings profit and that they are required to maximize profit.
curi
which is not a fucking capitalist idea, contrary to all the propaganda. capitalism wants to maximize profits in the sense of being efficient, not wasting money, etc., and taking into account long term factors not just self-destructive money grabs.
curi
making a good product and keeping customers happy is good, profitable biz
Freeze
the best businesses seem to really seek win/wins
Freeze
i remember what you mentioned about… the invention of the iPhone helping far more people than most charity efforts
Freeze
I never thought about innovation that way, but it makes sense
Freeze
and raising the quality of living and wealth of others is a form of reducing suffering/improving happiness, adding choices to their lives, enabling more creativity and freedom etc.
Freeze
The idea of ‘institutions that suppress the creation of moral knowledge are morally bad’ is something i’ve been thinking about. If the FDA is suppressing medical progress/medical knowledge creation, then we have to find some way to improve it. Capitalism seems to work because it lets all of these errors be corrected by incentivizing innovation that gets people what they want.
Freeze
capitalism seems completely compatible with honesty. In fact it seems like being dishonest causes more problems than benefits, but maybe these problems are harder to spot e.g. poor error correction internally, lots of missed opportunities to improve processes and relationships, lower innovation etc. but in the real world it seems difficult to find companies or leaders that believe in and practice honesty.