>So unless I am given further proof that the trial system was designed such that big pharma can bypass it at a cost, I am saying that it isnt rigged. [emph. mine]

Yup - exactly my point.

We get into that a little bit in that longer reply thread. It's an especially prevalent concern in drug regulation, becuase in the courts, one bad decision can produce a 'defective product' - but with pharmaceuticals, there's so many layers of review, and different types of review to clear before the product is able to be commercialized.

>Do you realize I covered this already,

You did? Where?

>in a way that does not require me to have in-depth knowledge of how regulatory agencies are set up

Why do you think this? If your assumptions about how the regulation is enforced is wrong, why do you think you'll be able to accurately assess how they perform, and whether that performance is 'rigged' or not?

>but not comprehensive Knowledge

Obviously I'd argue that I do have a comprehensive knowledge, becauae it's my job to have comprehensive knowledge.

>Can you tell me why I am doing this?

As far as I can tell - to explain how if, for example, in an agency with 10 departments, 1 of those departments is 'rigged' the agency is therefore 10% rigged. And so when asked the question "is the agency rigged" and looking for a binary yes/no answer. The answer is 'Yes - the agency is 'rigged'' - becuase 10% is greater than 0%.

As I explained before, I think 'rigged' is used poorly here becuase it implies a structure that pre-determines results, instead of results being corrupted after the fact. The entire set up of a regulatory agency is to specifically avoid pre-determining results.

Yeah so your response just makes me think you don't really know or understand how regulatory agencies are set up

>Correct - do you "get" why I am doing this?

Yes, and I think your conclusion is wrong.

>reasonable speculation

It's not just speculation - these agencies are specially set up in such a way to produce multiple independent verification steps. The approval process is not linear.

>Do you have knowledge of what is actually going on, or are you speculating?

I have specific knowledge - I directly produce, assess and report data that is to be submitted to the FDA, and I read and respond to the replies the FDA provides to the data I submit

>"does not 'approve of'" is a conveniently...

I mean that it's quite literally illegal. People end up in jail for corrupting these processes. And there are many hurdles set up in these institutions to catch erroneous results.

>> And we don't have to imagine a system either...

>It is not technically necessary, but to get to the level of detail you are making assertions about, imagination is necessary.

Not really.. your imagined scenario isn't all that applicable, because it doesn't represent the actual set up of these agencies well.

>>that we can examine to assess this rigging claim.

>And the quality of such examinations is equal to the quality of the examinations, which is unknown to you and me

This is not unknown to me. I'm quite familiar with the regulatory set up, and quality control of all three of the agencies noted.

>That's the beauty about humans - we do not use precise definitions for words

In science, precise definitions are what it's all about - so you should be careful accusing a highly precise, well defined and regulated system with imprecise language.

>so if you'd like to decide upon a definition together, I would be game.

You're mostly just talking about corruption from what I can tell.

For exmaple, a system is rigged when the results are pre-determined - a rigged voting machine is when the machine is programmed to record a vote for candidate X, even when a ballot is submitted with candidate W, Y or Z selected.

A system is corrupt when the results are changed after the fact to reflect a more desired outcome. A corrupt voting system is when the machine accurately records the ballot results, and then someone goes in after the fact to change the results to suit their purposes.

A rigged system can not produce good data - it's designed to produce data of a specific nature.

A corrupt system can produce good data, that data may then be corrupted after the fact for some specific purpose.

>What definition are you using for "know" here?

Not sure what you mean - you quoted a section where I'm asking you if you 'know' about the structure of regulatory agencies - in asking if you're aware of how they're set up, organized and how they assess information.

If you're asking about the agency 'knowing' about a corrupt individual - I'm talking about 'instututional awareness' which is essentially enough people in positions of influce who are aware of the situation and can act on it.

>you also have a measurement problem, and and an epistemology problem

... Why? The agencies and people who staff them are well-aware if these hurdles, and things are set up in such away to avoid these issues as much as possible.

>Correct - it is kind of like the difference between lying and speaking untruthfully.

No... Actually there can be very sound and well founded reasons why an agency may approve the use of a specific drug - even if that drug has not cleared all of the traditionally required hurdles. It happens all the time, there's an entire 'emergncy use' regulatory system to address this.

>would saying that the system is partially corrupt not actually be a more accurate representation than saying it is not corrupted?

Sure - it's much more accurate to describe this stuff in terms of %corruption rather than %rigged, IMO at least.

>I wonder if this has ever happened, even once. 🤔

Again, corruption =/= rigging

>Would you mind pasting in a pseudocode representation of your actual cognitive implementation of isRigged()?

No. I'm not a programmer or a philosopher, I don't work with absolutes.

>This has no bearing on whether it is actually rigged

It absolutely does - see the example with voting machines above.

>Actually, it would likely not (note: I literally just made that up

Yeah you're just wrong here. These agencies have incentive structures to correct themselves, they're not corporations.

>Imagine a system...

Yeah I get what you're doing here - but you're reducing the 'rigging' down to smaller active chunks that are not necessarily representative of the system. These chunks are far more dependent on personal corruption than systemic 'rigging'. A 'rigged' system implies that the system is specifically set up in a way to produce erroneous results. A small team or department producing erroneous results for personal profit motives, is quite a bit different then systemic rigging - primarily because the system would want it try remove the offending people, because the system itself does not approve of 'rigging'. And we don't have to imagine a system either - there are lots of drug regulatory agencies, from the FDA to Heath Canada, to the EMA that we can examine to assess this rigging claim.

>I am simply saying that if it is in fact rigged, then it is rigged.

I literally don't know what you mean by 'rigged' in this context. Do you know how complicated the data production and regulatory requirements are to pass something like FDA clearance? Because I do, it just so happens to be a large part of my area of expertise. Just saying that 'the approval of drug X was rigged' is an incredibly vauge statement. There's a thousand different things that a company must produce and provide to a regulatory agency like the FDA to be verified prior to drug approval - there's many ways that companies can 'fudge' or 'massage' data to get it to say what the company wants prior to FDA submission.

>the level of rigged-ness of a system is equal to the level to which the system is rigged - this is better because it cannot possibly be incorrect.

Sure it can. You have to be very clear of what is 'rigging' and what is not 'rigging' - you have to define your terms of they're to be 'correct' or applicable.

Edit: furthermore, 'rigging' implies intentionality behind the decision - which is an accustaion that requires evidence. Just becuase the FDA approves a drug that otherwise wouldn't/shouldn't have been approved is not evidence of rigging, it could be, for exmaple, a mistake, or there may be other confounding variables.

>Is this to say that there are zero corrupt individuals in the system?

Of course not - I'm saying that there's a dramatic difference between Bob the quality control officer at the FDA allowing a drug to pass some quality parameter when company X fudged a data set error rate from 12% to 9%, passing the 10% error threshold set by the FDA, because Bob is friends with Tim, a designer at company X

And systemic rigging that specifically allows for certain companies or individuals to skate by regulatory constrains without question becuase the regulatory agency has some special interest in that company.

Just becuase there are individual corrupt actors acting within a system does not mean that the system is systemically rigged - it's not designed to be rigged. Especially when, if the system was aware of the individual corruption, it would very likely act to expunge that corruption.

>if .01% of a system is genuinely rigged,

What does this even mean? How can a system be 0.01% rigged?

Are you staying that 1 in every 10 thousand drugs is going to erroneously pass a clinical trial - because what? The system chose to rig it in that particular drugs favour? That doesn't make much sense. It's much more likely that in this proposed scenario the drug would be erroneously approved due to the actions of a single, or a few corrupt individuals - which does not represent the system.

Oh that doesn't matter, yes you observe the first two lengths with sight, read the numbers or whatever - but the length and angles of the third length, cannot be observed, nor do they need to be observed for the knowledge about it to be understood.

Well, leaving something like direct brain stimulation aside.. deduction?

For exmaple, if you observe the lengths of 2 sides of a triangle, you can quite easily use a little logic and math to deduce the 'knowledge' of the third side of the triangle.

>... you can get information on things you can't normally see.

Isn't this just the process of createing knowledge through deduction instead of direct observation?

>Each sensory experience helps contextualize the next.

But what about things that are impossible to directly sense? Regardless of how powerful the sensor is, we'll never directly observe a black hole - it just not how physics works. Instead we can only observe indirect evidence of a black hole - such as an accretion disk, or the rapid, unexpected movement of stars - to deduce the existance of a black hole.

>but the knowledge isn't generated by thinking/deducing

But.. this isn't true?

Take the black hole example for instance. It's physcially impossible to directly observe a black hole. Yet, based on the observations of the movement of material around a back hole, we can deduce it's existance, and even begin to characterize the physical laws governing how the black hole 'works' - but this is all based on indirect observation.

The same things occurs the opposite end of the scale too. For example it's impossible for biochemists to directly observe things like bond angle, bond length or the location of an electron in a bond - instead, these things are deduced (to relatively a high decree of certainty) based a combination of a bunch of indirect observation and indirect testing to confirm the theories.

I wasn't able to read through the whole article as I'm busy with work - but maybe someone can help me understand better.

The whole claim that "knowledge is derived only from sensory experience" seems strange to me - especially considering the scientific study of things like astrophysics - or frankly anything that humans cannot directly observe with the natural senses. Like, the human understanding of the existance and dynamics of a black hole, or gravitational waves, is based on numerical data, usually produced by a mechanical sensor of some kind, and then analyzed through an excel spreadsheet. To say that the knowledge derived from that information is based exclusively on the sensory experience of visually reading an excel spreadsheet or graphs seems a little weird.