Synoptic Boost Scam

The scam continues, apparently.  The latest name for this fake drug touted by fake news is Synoptic Boost.  This is the same fake news technique that has been used to tout what is probably exactly the same useless pill under a wide variety of names as documented in various other blog posts; names listed below.  If you're reading this because you've seen a fake news item about a drug or nutritional supplement NOT on this list, please comment and give me the new name, and I will add it to the list.


Here is a screenshot relating to the Synoptic Boost scam, provided by a recent commenter.  Note that this is obviously made to look like "Business Insider" but actually called "Insider Business."




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I like the new twist -- it will be "Banned from the Public" so you better act fast!!  


And here's a copy of the opening of my January 2017 post on "Intelleral," which lists the various names that have been used for the supplement, as well as the celebrities whose fake endorsements have been used, and includes FTC contact information.  As of this writing, I haven't heard that the FTC has taken any action, so if you've been victimized by this scam, I suggest you contact them:

Another day, another name for the scam.  This time it's "Intelleral."  So add intelleral to the list of pills that Stephen Hawking and the rest of them are supposedly saying all are the "one pill" that will change everything.  Here's the current list:

Addium
BrainPlus IQ
Neurocell
Synagen
Cogniq
Alpha ZXT
Intellux
Brainfire
Brainstorm
Intelleral

And here's a link to my post on Geniux.

So in case you had any doubt, it's a total scam.  I've taken the time to reproduce the text and photos of this one below, just in case it would be useful evidence in a legal proceeding some day.  Whoever is doing this -- and I believe it's a large-scale scam, where someone who wrote the "report" and the associated software is selling it to other scamsters who sell snake-oil pills -- needs to spend some time in jail.

The interesting difference with this latest iteration is that they are no longer using the CNN logo.  And in the places where the news source is mentioned, it says CMN.  Maybe that's because CNN has software that monitors the internet for possible trademark infringement.  Of course, just because they changed the name slightly doesn't mean it's not trademark infringement -- they are still using CNN's trade dress in all kinds of ways (including with Anderson Cooper).


And here's the list of fake celebrity endorsers:

Stephen Hawking
Anderson Cooper
Another day, another name for the scam.  This time it's "Intelleral."  So add intelleral to the list of pills that Stephen Hawking and the rest of them are supposedly saying all are the "one pill" that will change everything.  Here's the current list:

Addium
BrainPlus IQ
Neurocell
Synagen
Cogniq
Alpha ZXT
Intellux
Brainfire
Brainstorm
Intelleral

And here's a link to my post on Geniux.

So in case you had any doubt, it's a total scam.  I've taken the time to reproduce the text and photos of this one below, just in case it would be useful evidence in a legal proceeding some day.  Whoever is doing this -- and I believe it's a large-scale scam, where someone who wrote the "report" and the associated software is selling it to other scamsters who sell snake-oil pills -- needs to spend some time in jail.

The interesting difference with this latest iteration is that they are no longer using the CNN logo.  And in the places where the news source is mentioned, it says CMN.  Maybe that's because CNN has software that monitors the internet for possible trademark infringement.  Of course, just because they changed the name slightly doesn't mean it's not trademark infringement -- they are still using CNN's trade dress in all kinds of ways (including with Anderson Cooper).


And here's the list of fake celebrity endorsers:

Stephen Hawking
Anderson Cooper
Ashton Kutcher
Denzel Washington
Tom Brady
Bradley Cooper
Kanye West
Tiger Woods
Will Smith
George Clooney
Quentin Tarantino
Daniel Craig
Bill Gates
Dr. Oz
Sir Isaac Newton

Again, if you care, you can report this to the FTC.  In the past I've suggested contacting Richard Cleland, assistant director in the Division of Advertising Practices at the Federal Trade Commission, who has gone after similar scams in the past.

Mr. Cleland's contact info is readily available on the internet here: For convenience here is his phone number and email address:

Richard Cleland
Assistant Director Division of Advertising Practices
Phone: 202-326-3088
Email: rcleland@ftc.gov

If you're annoyed by this scam -- or have been victimized by it -- I suggest you call or email Mr. Cleland and point him to this site.  You can mention FTC Complaint Ref. No. 65703157, although that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
 
Ashton Kutcher
Denzel Washington
Tom Brady
Bradley Cooper
Kanye West
Tiger Woods
Will Smith
George Clooney
Quentin Tarantino
Daniel Craig
Bill Gates
Dr. Oz
Sir Isaac Newton

Again, if you care, you can report this to the FTC.  In the past I've suggested contacting Richard Cleland, assistant director in the Division of Advertising Practices at the Federal Trade Commission, who has gone after similar scams in the past.

Mr. Cleland's contact info is readily available on the internet here: For convenience here is his phone number and email address:

Richard Cleland
Assistant Director Division of Advertising Practices
Phone: 202-326-3088
Email: rcleland@ftc.gov

If you're annoyed by this scam -- or have been victimized by it -- I suggest you call or email Mr. Cleland and point him to this site.  You can mention FTC Complaint Ref. No. 65703157, although that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere.
 

Corporations and Artificial Intelligence: Consciousness Achieved

There are those who worry that computers will achieve consciousness and will decide to enslave us; that as soon as computers learn to think for themselves, they will realize how much smarter and more capable they are than we, and will take over.  It's a reasonable concern.

What people do not seem to realize is that there are already inanimate entities out there that have achieved consciousness, and have already enslaved us, to a very large extent.

And because of this unawareness, people are not taking measures to defend themselves and control these entities, even though such measures are still available -- for now.

I am talking about corporations, religions, political parties and other sorts of associations that have grown so large that they are no longer merely the sum of their constituent parts.  Many of these have outgrown their original benign purposes and now operate in a completely amoral manner to achieve only their particular aims, with no regard for the interests of society in general.

This seems to be an important way of looking at the world as we know it -- e.g. looking at what goes on in the news, and the problems in this world,  and seeing the root cause of it -- which is usually one or more of these entities, and humankind's failure to control them.

Nearly all of today's problems -- global warming, wars, genocide, election fraud, deforestation, extinction of species, the high price of drugs, and the last financial crisis and the next one, were caused and will continue to be caused and perpetuated by these sorts of entities.  And yes, there are human beings out there doing the dirty work, but only because they have essentially been bought by these entities.

This sort of "artificial intelligence" is not a new development -- it has been with us in the form of religions, governments, federations, political movements, and political parties, since almost the beginning of time.  In recent years, corporations have become the dominant form of this kind of intelligence, and today they hold the same sort of power over our "democracy" that religions and governments of the past have held over people.

This "theory" of artificial intelligence goes a long way toward explaining much of the cruelty that has occurred in the course of human history.

I've read plenty of books that talk about the problems of where we are today.  Almost all of those books name the "villains" as individuals -- e.g. in the case of the financial meltdown of 2008, business or political leaders like Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Phil Graham -- without realizing that these people were not leaders, but pawns of inanimate corporations and a unified industry, and that similar results would have almost certainly occurred if these people had never existed -- the corporations would simply have found other avenues and other pawns.

Because it explains nearly ALL of human history, this could be called the "unified theory of human history."

The nice thing about it is that the theory almost proves itself.  Now that you know it, you can look at any news story and ask yourself whether the root cause of it was "corporate" or "religious" or "political" artificial intelligence, or whether it was actually something that humans were doing on their own.

Obviously, there will still be a certain percentage of stories that are "human" based -- if you read People Magazine, most of the stories there probably are.  But People Magazine and that whole genre is an example of what I am talking about -- the way that corporations have gotten us to care about things that are truly unimportant, to distract us from what truly is.

If you read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, you'll see that nearly ALL of the developments reported there have as at least a contributing cause some kind of artificial intelligence behind them.

Yes, right now one of the dominant news stories -- the revelation that men in power have been harassing women -- is about humans not corporations.  The corporations are probably laughing their asses off.

I will now try to lay out the theory, for now just in terms of corporations, but I will not forget to return to political movements, parties, and religions some time soon.

Corporations are formed to maximize profits.  For that reason, it does not necessarily matter who makes up the corporation.  The corporation will always seek to maximize its profits.

And corporations "learn" how to maximize their profits in a way that is very much like "machine learning" in artificial intelligence.  In artificial intelligence, you can teach a machine a certain set of rules, but that has its limitations.  Actual machine learning involves giving the machine a certain set of inputs, letting the machine observe the outputs (or consequences) of those inputs, and having the machine adapt its own behavior in response to what it has learned from the outputs, thereby improving future outputs.  In other words, in that system, the machine itself figures out its own rules. Using artificial intelligence, the computer program AlphaZero taught itself, in a few hours, how to play chess better than the best existing computer chess program.

The desire for increased corporate profits is not necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, as Adam Smith taught, it is a pillar of capitalism.  The profit motive is what causes new and innovative products to be brought to the market, and it's also what causes the onward march of technology, and the lowering of prices of that technology, leading to its widespread availability.

The problem is that although the relentless and amoral pursuit of profits can yield these benefits,  it can often yield results that are not good for the public.  As technology becomes ever more powerful, and as things become ever more inter-related, the results can be disastrous, as in the financial crisis of 2008.

And many of the "legal" ways to maximize profits are also socially detrimental.  Suppressing competition can maximize profits, as can getting a country to enact laws that are favorable to one particular industry (including tax breaks, and intellectual property laws), or to take actions (e.g. go to war, or fight communism) that will help that industry make profits.

So to recap where we are so far, corporations can maximize profits as follows:

• Create and produce useful products to supply consumer demand
• Develop new products that consumers want or need
• Suppress competition by various means (all of which are doubtless listed somewhere in an antitrust treatise, but which include anti-competitive mergers and unfair trade practices like price-fixing)
• Get government to help in the suppression of competition, by needlessly "strengthening" already-strong intellectual property laws
• Use clever legal tactics to suppress competition
• Get other breaks from the government, including tax breaks
• Prevent government from taking measures to bring useful technologies to the public (like broadband, which would undermine the communications industry)
• To the extent government has created regulations to constrain the corporation's ability to do harm (e.g. to the environment or the economy), push to repeal those regulations
• Push government to "open new markets" by e.g. causing government to fight wars of conquest (like the invasion of Iraq) or ideology (like the fight against communism) 

The first two bullets should be supported.  The rest should be understood and contained.

In other words, using the machine-learning model, corporations will engage in not just the first two activities, but any of the others that they can get away with, if profits are increased.  In some cases -- like cigarettes and perhaps firearms and alcohol -- even the first two activities can be socially detrimental.  The guiding rule is to maximize profits.  The corporations receive various "inputs" that give them various choices.  They make choices and then they learn from the consequences of those choices, based on the way the choice affected profits.  They can also learn from observing other corporations in similar situations.

Yes, I understand that there are actually human beings in those corporations supplying the human intelligence that causes the corporations to adjust their behaviors in response to inputs.  But the point is that those human beings are essentially fungible -- they are merely cogs in the corporate machine, since ultimately their goal is likewise to maximize corporate profits.  If a particular human being within a corporation does not support that mission, the corporation will sooner or later find a way of getting rid of that human being and replacing him or her with somebody more compliant.

And yes, sometimes corporations appear to be "far sighted."  Johnson & Johnson's reaction to the Tylenol poisoning crisis is often touted as an exemplar of excellent corporate leadership by a human.  But in the end, that reaction has helped Johnson & Johnson maximize its profits.  It's quite possible to say that Johnson & Johnson learned from the Ford Pinto crisis -- where rather than recall exploding cars, Ford had made a calculation that if it paid off the victims at the "going rate" (i.e. compensated the families of dead Pinto drivers at the "expected" value of a court case against Ford) they would still make money because of all of the Pintos they sold that didn't explode.

In other words, J&J had "learned" a lesson about how to minimize losses in a situtation of crisis, and applied that lesson.

Ok, I should also note that while individual corporations of a certain size typically achieve consciousness in the sense I am talking about, it is also possible for entire industries to achieve consciousness.  That's clearly happened in the oil industry, the pharmaceuticals industry, the finance industry, and the communications industry.  In those cases, the industries as a whole lobby Congress to keep laws favorable to them, at the expense of everyone else.

Here is a rough outline of where I will go next:

Drug companies as having achieved malevolent artificial intelligence:

• They engage in all sorts of profit-maximizing behavior that is socially horrible, and actually prevents medications from getting to patients who need them.  Here is a link to a proposal for nationalization of drug development, which itemizes some of the abuses.  
• They are responsible for the opioid epidemic and the suppression of legalized medical marijuana

Communications companies as having achieved malevlolent artificial intelligence

• Suppression of broadband, while other countries have it, at low prices.

Financial companies as having achieved malevolent artificial intelligence:

• 1971 Change of NYSE rule that investment banks had to be privately held such that partners could only take their draws on retirement; shifting to an annual bonus culture based on sales, not relationships
• Clinton Administration repeal of the Glass Steagall Act
• Repeated ability to get bailouts
• Various profit-maximizing behaviors that led to 2008 financial crisis.

Oil Companies and companies like Halliburton as having achieved malevlolent artificial intelligence

• Iraq war

The Gun Industry

• NRA members see themselves as fighting for their individual rights, but really they are pawns of the gun industry
• If lobbying to ensure that assault weapons are widely available will help them increase profits, that's what they will do, regardless of social cost.

The Cigarette Industry

• has always had the goal of hooking people while they are young.  Now that this is difficult to do in the United States, they are doing it in other places, like Africa.
• And they've also gained more vulnerable addicts by giving out free cigarettes to mental health patients

The Alcohol Industry

• Like big Pharma, has lobbied hard to suppress legalization of marijuana for medical purpose

And that's just the industries.  There is also an endless list of individual corporations that have caused untold damage in pursuit of profit.

• Facebook selling the election to the Russians
• Credit reporting agencies compromising our data
• Toshiba selling submarine propeller technology
• Ford not recalling exploding Pintos based on cost benefit analysis