CharonY

I think it is also the same in the prairies. If I compare prices with Europe, especially wine, it seems somewhat extreme. A part is of course the need for importing them, but prices were easily triple and more.

Two things. First, legalized does not mean that it super easy obtained. There are levels of availability. In parts of Canada, for example alcohol can only by bought at licensed stores and not in regular supermarkets. Moreover, taxes make them extremely expensive. Not sure whether that limitation has any effect. But more to the point, cannabis is legal in Canada since 2018, and is closely monitored, in case you don't know. Unless we don't (see alcohol) for example. The most common gateway drug remains alcohol. As long as that is easily available I do not see the argument as particularly strong. It should also be noted that there is no compelling data that shows that there is a gateway drug in the first place. Rather, there is a decent correlation between alcohol, cannabis and other drug abuses, but correlation is not causation. I.e. folks that are at risk to to hard drug abuse may start with what is easily available. Conversely, folks that occasionally use drugs recreationally (such as tobacco, alcohol, cannabis etc.) do not seem to be necessarily more susceptible to hard drug abuse (i.e. a lot of folks drink, but do not become heroin addicts, for example). I am pretty sure that this cannot be correct. From I am fairly certain that I have read that the US had rather high levels of alcohol dependency, even among Western countries. I checked out the WHO report https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241565639 From there the US has a 7.7 prevalence of alcohol dependence (compared to Canada 4.1, UK 1.4, Australia, 1.5, Russia 9.3 for example).

The list would be far too long. Even during my time (which is not that long) I have seen female scientists getting shafted. Of course it is not exclusively them, though I'd say disproportionately so. Some of the arguments I have heard was along the line that they are likely going to have kids someday whereas the other guy (who did nothing) could have a brilliant career with more first authorships using her data. Such overt things are slowly dying out, but there are other more subtle ways.

As I mentioned, they do to some degree. And moreover many of those drugs are unlikely to be used in such a large scale, even if legalized (as Canada has shown with cannabis). So that is another part of it: availability and concentration. So from a health perspective it is undoubtedly that sugar and alcohol is harmful the way we use it. Conversely, the use of cannabis so far has a lower health burden than assumed (and certainly way lower than either alcohol or sugar). I think the bigger point is that criminalization has virtually no benefit to in terms of addressing harm of substances. The only question that remains is then really whether legalization increases the harm. For certain substances that could be the case, specifically those with a high potential for addiction. However, here we make an cultural exception because the Western world apparently cannot do without. But using the same logic, drugs used in in other cultures should also be allowed. There is nothing in alcohol that makes it categorically different from the other drugs, other than our familiarity with it (which in itself might be harm-promoting characteristic). As such it would make sense to at least put those less dangerous drugs (which are less addictive and toxic) with cultural history at least on the same level as alcohol.

Question is then why you are in favour banning substances that are clearly less dangerous than alcohol? Because data shows that it is not happening. Portugal to have high levels of drug related deaths. After decriminalization in 2001 the levels dropped significantly and Portugal has remained way lower than the European average throughout. As a comparison, in Scotland the death rates are 50x that of Portugal. So in other words, legalizing drugs do not increase deaths. Likewise, cannabis is legal in Canada for a few years and not much has changed in terms of usage and cannabis-related health incidences. I do not follow that argument at all. Why would one consider banning it? They have fairly low toxicity and it is very difficult to overdose on it. On the same note psilocybin has a lower toxicity than caffeine. If we say coffee is fine, why not also certain mushrooms? Again, this sounds fairly inconsistent to me, and may be based on faulty risk assessment.

I fail to see how this is the middle-ground. At best, it is inconsistent. We know that alcohol does great harm and we gave up on banning due to combination of cultural reasons, law enforcement challenges (including criminalizing large swathes of the population) and the realization that drug addiction are more effectively treated by health intervention rather than by legal enforcement. The opioid crisis which was not limited to the "fringes" of society anymore but also affected "good suburban" folks, further reinforced these findings. But for some reasons, we should just accept alcohol (which, again results in more deaths than any other drugs, education or not) because society accepts it? That sounds like circular logic, really.

No, the values are normalized, otherwise they would not make sense. Also, it is more of a rank score. They used multiple factors, such as mortality, dependence, impairment of cognitive functioning, etc. and the idea was to create scores that reflect their relative relationship to each other. I.e. a drug with double the mortality would receive double the score on that metric. For some, data are more lacking than others and also are shifting. Depending on what you look out for, cannabis has been shifting up and down over the years and depending on cohorts, for example. Long-term data are going to be quite interesting in that regard. That being said, certain harms could increase once the use increases. However, that is not always the case. For example, legalization of cannabis did increase hospitalizations in certain regions, but it was not an universal effect and the trend stabilized within a relatively short time frame. Conversely, if alcohol was not such an accepted social drug, harms, especially those to others, would be massively mitigated. These types of rankings are therefore somewhat tricky, but almost every way folks look at it, it is clear that the top spot belongs to alcohol by a fair margin.

Problem is that anti-abortion sentiments are not entirely party specific. In the 70s most folks were only for abortions being legal in certain cases, with little difference between Reps and Dems. In fact, the support for abortion was slightly higher among Reps and highest among Independents (if we sum up legal support with and without restrictions). The support among Reps for legal under any circumstance really dropped of starting in the 90s when conversely the support among Dems increased. https://news.gallup.com/poll/246278/abortion-trends-party.aspx So for the longest time it was a bit of a split issue, and while I think there were attempts to enshrine abortion as a right, it just had insufficient support.

A leaked draft of the majority opinion shows that in SCOTUS is set to overturn Row vs. Wade, which was a landmark decision which effectively allowed abortions. Effectively conservative states are poised to make abortions impossible, which is like going to cause a significant public health problem.

Well, as it turns out there are "First amendment" folks in Canada, but I suspect it is the 20% rule. As in, get any group together and 20% of them are likely to be idiots. The trick is figuring out if you are one of them. I will also say that also in Canada folks are thinking about the issues and connotations with POCs and coloured folks. Mostly as in the past it all non-white were kind of merged and in part because there was some solidarity among those who are officially termed "visible minorities". But differences in experiences, trajectories and increasing desire for individual recognition have soured those terms, independently on whether folks are using it as a slur or not. It is just the way language works. A new generation sees things slightly different (or wants it to be) and one point or another it is reflected in language. Social media. Not sure if it is true, but I am getting old and I increasingly want to blame someone. Can't blame immigrants, so social media it is.

Well, don't forgot to fill out the field trip approval and the risk assessment form. After all, the Uni wants to be covered in case the search ends up with some very satiated bears.

Nope, there were in the post, including the quote. However, while the urls is give, the second link actually seems broken. I am willing to explain the methodology in those papers, provided you are willing to read. If it is going to be a handwaving session again I am honestly not inclined to waste more time. The reason is that even without actually reading the methodology you are already assuming an faulty methodology, whereas you are also assuming to be right without having any data to support your assertion. I.e. you seem to demand work from others which you yourself are unwilling to provide. I.e. I see no value to continue unless you are willing to enter a discussion in good faith. Meanwhile here is the abstract to the second paper.

Fundamentally he starts of with an assumption (weight/power is important for jockey performance) and arrives at the conclusion that therefore male jockeys must have an advantage, without first establishing whether the premise is true. The issue with the approach is quite apparent. I could for example stipulate that having testicles clearly put riders at an disadvantage as certain postures and situations can result in pain. In a sport where every advantage counts clearly this is an issue. Therefore, any study that does not take testicular discomfort into consideration is clearly flawed. I also like that looking at extreme marathon runners we now suddenly are only allowed to look at the single top performers when we talk about gender differences, as clearly only the guy on the top is really representative of male physiology (the others obviously somehow don't count). It baffles me that the issue with that is not immediately evident. I wonder if we used that approach to any other question that does not involve gender would be equally accepted as fact.

Huh? Did you read the papers? They showed that gender did not influence performance in jockeys. If men had a similar benefit as in running for example, this clearly should show, wouldn't it? So strangely men running faster is evidence for a physiological advantage, which I agree with. But now lack of a performance benefit is suddenly no evidence. If that is not a biased way to approach data I don’t know what is. I also note that you counter analyses of data with merely your opinion. If you have data demonstrating how your power ratio effect improves jockey performance you are free to show it. Yes following data is super scary.

No, I do not have a link. However, if you knew me even a little you would know that I have references. No, only if the ratio actually impact the outcome we are investigating. Otherwise you are biasing the analysis by assuming an advantage (after all this is the very question we want to establish in the first place). Especially if other factors, like, say the horse may be more important factors. So what you need to do before assuming that the advantage plays a role, you'll have to look whether the effect is present in the first place and also whether other, potentially more influential confounding factors are present. In other words, you are doing the exact mistake that many are criticizing. Without first establishing whether your factor has an actual effect you just assume it in all and demand that it has to be incorporated into the research design. And again, this is would be a classic example of bias in the study design. Rather, you would need to first figure out what factors influence race horse performance and then look whether gender is among those and how strong it really is, relative to the system we created around this assumption. For example if we have a huge gender difference, just looking at number of wins really only tells us about how many of each gender are participating, and not that whether is a physiological effect. If experience is a huge contributor and for whatever reason one gender does not stick around for the sport, it does not mean that there is a physiological reason either, and so on. So the challenge here is of course that a perfect data set would have exactly the same race conditions (including same horses) just with the gender swapped (and having an otherwise comparable cohort) in exactly the same races . Since there is not such a data set, one way to one needs to adjust external variables (i.e. physiology independent parameters) that may affect for example the likelihood of receiving higher rated mount (or being able to race at all). When adjusting for these factors the conclusion was that https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1527002520975839 Now there are other papers out there looking at the performance of the horse and the impact of the jockey. After all, the horse does the running. And here a fairly recent study suggest that the gender does of the rider does not seem to impact horse performance. In the same paper they also just calculated winning ratios based on UK and Australian data and here they found that in the UK the winning-rate (again, adjusted for the fact that fewer women are competing) to be not significantly different between men and women. In Australia there was a difference but which vanished if one considers the money spots (i.e. top three positions) in the races. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-1341860/v1 So if the numbers do not immediately show a strong gender-based difference in outcome if one adjusts for the system (in contrast to sprinting, for example) why would one start off with the assumption of a difference and then try to frame the study from a flawed position? And this exactly is the issue with many of these assumptions. We know there are gender differences, but then we immediately jump to the conclusion they must be pervasive in everything we are looking for. And if we look with these blinders on, unsurprisingly we miss other aspects. This is one of the big reasons why there have been so many studies claiming to show that for some reasons folks with darker skin colour are less intellectual or that in general we only find the effects we are looking for (see the replication crisis) or why we have pervasive myths in the medical field. I.e. we first need to establish that there is an effect, then eliminate potential sources until we find the determining factors. In other words, we need to apply the scientific method also for those questions and should not start with a strong preconceptions.

But to be fair, the Trumps and Epsteins are not the folks who are more likely to end up in jail. Also the link between crime and poverty is quite strong.

I want to highlight that as a society we do decide what is evil and how harsh we want to punish someone. The US has demonstrated that we can racialize these decisions, e.g. by punishing crack harsher than cocaine or investigate and jail black drug users more frequently than white. In fact, certain behaviours (such as drug addiction) might be treated better with health intervention strategies than criminalization. I suspect that this is not actually the direction of your argument, but I thought I might want to bring that up, if only to illustrate that things are tricky.

Again, I do not see evidence anyone thinking of the processes as bigoted aside from political opponents. And in fact, being a bigot was actually shown to be a great driver of votes. I may repeat myself but there is increasing understanding that hiring and evaluation systems are not neutral and also not as meritocratic as we often assumed them to be. Assessing something as suitable or a good fit depends on a lot of parameter, not the least of experiences of the hiring committee. Rather obviously folks in the committee are most comfortable evaluating CVs and experiences that track with their own. As such, a committee might all provide similar evaluations and it might appear like a fair and meritocratic process, yet folks with non-standard trajectories might be at a severe disadvantage. This in part can lead to a self-reinforcing "leaky pipeline" issue where certain folks do not get into a spot of power where they can influence hiring and retention and therefore will continue to have a harder time advancing. There is no clear solution to the whole thing and all the EDI/diversity training and other measures really are able to do is pointing out biases that one might want to monitor. But as of yet I have not seen a better way than to have at least one potential contrarian voice (assuming everyone acts in good faith). One gamble that some folks are doing (and again, we are not there yet to have enough data to see whether it works) is to deliberate increase diversity (among suitable candidates) and hope that it sorts out some of the issues on its own. I am not sure whether that will work, either, but considering that it initiates some movement (rather than trying something that clearly has not worked but at least appeared "proper" to some folks) it will at least provide some data.

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that, except that most folks involved in hiring know that if one wants to hire from a smaller pool (i.e. black woman) it is necessary to do focused searches. Entirely open searches simply favour the status quo. In that regard the process would not be more honest as it means that you suggest an open search, but are not actually using that process.

Somewhat related to that, it should also be noted that sports is obviously not free from systemic biases. For example, in horse racing one would probably expect that jockeys should be smaller and lighter, which would, in theory, benefit women. However, in contrast to other equestrian sports, women are vastly underrepresented. There apparently is the perception that men for a given weight are stronger and therefore drive their horse harder (somehow, I am not really sure about the mechanism). Accordingly, the vast majority of jockeys are men, and obviously the top jockeys are therefore also men. However, systematic analyses indicate that there a no significant advantages of men over women and the over-representation of men are driven by these biases. As a lot of money is involved folks hire whoever they think might win and looking at past winners (men) the obvious choice seems to hire men, which creates a self-reinforcing system. In other words, the way we look at and promote performance (as in hiring, training and promoting certain athletes) can actually distort at least some gender-based effects. That being said, much of sports were designed for men to compete so quite a lot of it will benefit male physiology. But then we are in getting better in quantitative physiology and might be able to create sports-specifics cut-offs that are less crude.

Well, I mostly meant folks that are very concerned about transgender involvement.

It is so weird. Folks agree that there should be a women's league as there are physically different and therefore have disadvantages in many sports. Yet if one wants to target those differences as a criterion to create different leagues, suddenly it is impossible to classify those differences. Apparently only the classifiers used in the past, are the only ones we can use forever. Well, it would explain why Americans still use imperial units, I assume.

It is also relevant to note that specifically the context defines meaning. For example, if one announces that one will look for the best candidate, evidence suggests that this means a white male (in the US). Just because race is not used, it does not mean it is not racialized.

With the exception of an Polish attempt all assassination attempts on Hitler were IIRC conducted by Germans and in the later years increasingly as an attempt to save Germany. The big issue is of course that alternative history speculations are just that. It is unclear what the result would be. One might even speculate on wildly successful eugenics (and genocide) plans throughout the world (which were heavily promoted and were very popular in the USA and Canada) without the horrors of the holocaust laid bare. Hitler wasn't an outlier, he just happened to be the one getting into power. As Phi mentioned, what if nazis in the US became more influential? America First was coined by US Nazis, afterwards, who rapidly lost influence once the US entered the war.

A few things here. I think as a whole society has lost the ability (not sure how much there was before, but now it is definitely less) to discuss nuance. The example you mentioned is pretty bad to make your point though, as the 12 year discussion has far more nuance at least in academia and left-leaning areas than on the right wing. Just to make sure we are on the same page, the 12 year deadline was part of an IPCC special report and it was not referring to the demise of the human species, but it was referring to the limiting global warming to 1.5 C which was a seen as a critical factor. In the report we will find quotes such as This is what is part of the discussion in academia and policy and you will note that not even very left leaning governments at any point mentioned death within a decade. I am actually not sure where your claim of a 12 year death deadline came from, but it really sounds like distortion from right wing pundits. Even in left- I am not saying that the left is free from those mistakes, but the example you picked out does not really help your point. But to get back to my earlier point, it is true that outside (and sometimes also within) academia these things are almost never discussed with the necessary detail , and it is quite obvious why. Folks do not want to think. I get that, though in the past there was at least some level of perceived accountability with regard to falsehoods. But also folks were not as easily distracted by social media. We also see it with things which have immediate impact or are just simple facts (Sandy Hook shootings, COVID-19 pandemic) where folks increasingly just design their own reality. Of course this changes the whole discourse as we now have a whole generation of kids growing up with cell phones and social media, and many of those will be in the positions were said nuance would have been important. Yet modern politics demonstrated that facts don't matter, so why shouldn't they choose the easier road?