CharonY

To address the creationist part, it is not so much that creationists introduced the term. Instead, they try to introduce qualitative difference to distinguish these two terms as different entities rather than the same processes on different scales.

I think, and I am only guessing, is that objects to the whole concept of blaming gender or race in principle. The examples he created were independent of that statement to highlight obviously bad arguments, I presume. But again, I am only guessing at this point. Specifically to racial supremacy it is probably difficult to separate, well, at least race from the matter, as it is the core element of the movement. BTW, one of the things that I am procrastinating from is reading a student's lab report because I just can't figure out what he actually did and why. Serves me right, I suppose.

Wait, so you are saying that if someone says all nazis are white males, it sounds to you as if he was saying that all white males are therefore nazis? Disregarding the wikipedia link, would you at least consider believing me if I tell you that in formal discourse this is a conclusion that is not valid (in the formal sense) even if it feels like it is? The reason I am asking is that for a discourse we have to at least agree on what sentences mean before we interpret them. Note that I have trouble understanding your perception of things if you do not describe them in a way that I understand, and the reverse, of course (which is why I initially linked the article because I thought that would clear things up objectively. And yes, I type a lot when on this forum when I am dead tired as I use as a light exercise and, frankly, procrastinate so that I do not have to do my actual work.

I am utterly confused. Was the description I provided inaccurate? Is saying that white supremacists are white controversial? Or didn't you like the male part? Can we agree on the fallacy part? Excuse me, but it is far from clear to me. And I am not seeing how discussions in general can be conducted when there are presumptions on motives without explanation on what they are based on.

I am dead tired anyway, so let me try to see if I can clarify things (or whether it gets muddier). Statement: KKK (P) -> white male (Q). Meaning the if you got a KKK member, it is most likely a white male (disregarding female KKKs for now). The reverse based on that : white male (Q)-> KKK (P) is a common logical fallacy called affirming the consequent. Likewise are the statements (my bold) However, since this is a common fallacy, iNow qualified the statement specifically to state that which is basically

I would like to address the issue of left(ish) and science-based privilege on this board. The science part is quite trivial. Due to the fact that most members are interested in science, certain basic aspects (evolution, GR, climate change) are con-controversially accepted as fact. Not everyone has the expertise to fully understand the concepts, but at minimum one accepts them as trivially true and gets suspicious when someone addresses these or similar topics in an adversarial manner. In the best case scenario, ignorance is countered by knowledge and hopefully leads to education, willful ignorance almost always leads to argument. Still, it is easy to suspect untoward motivation, when the subject matter and tone is more adversarial than potentially intended (and it does not help that there seem to be more of those not arguing in good faith). On policy sides thing are even trickier. I do not consider myself left leaning and I clearly do not associate myself with any party. However, I am very data-driven (in case you have not noticed, if so I am doing a bad job) and I tend to base my policy preferences on available data (even when imperfect) rather than a specific ideology. This results with me often agreeing with left-leaning stances, which on most issues is more dominant on this board. Although different members may have different reasons (ranging from evidence-based readings to ideological conviction) we do have a hegemony on many views (such as, I imagine, the utility of social intervention to solve crime rather than merely a punishment-based one). Especially for those that have done a lot of reading on that matter an alternative view based on demonstrably false assumptions can be seen as an attempt of trolling or the initiation of a discussion that is not considered to be in good faith. While many may reply that they do show evidence, it has to be acknowledge that long-held convictions cannot be overturned by single articles and it may be worthwhile to engage in a deeper conversation. That, unfortunately requires a lot of introspection from both sides. Although it is tempting (and I admit that I am getting annoyed at times, although no one forces me to participate here) I believe it is worthwhile to propose a conversation in good faith and at least acknowledge that deviating convictions, even if they seemingly clash with data or reality should be explored. Especially when one is part of the lefty-science hegemony on this board (a term I just made up) one should try to acknowledge not necessarily that the opposing view is correct. But rather we have to acknowledge that they feel that this aspect is important to them and if both sides agree to explore this, we may be able to find common ground. There is an inherent bias that we need to realize and acknowledge, as we are more likely to forgive someone using bad data to reach the same conclusion as we do, rather than someone who uses bad data to reach a different conclusion. On a different note, this feeling of marginalization is is similar to what it feels to be not on the upper side of racial or other privilege. The hegemony has behavioral rules and aspects that appear to be fair and make sense (based it on science, show the maths) yet may feel unfair on the receiving end. Opposition to divergent views appear to be amplified yet it is not acknowledged as such. People act as if they are fair and reasonable but why does it not feel that way? Why are my grievances not acknowledged? Why am I being marginalized for what I assume to be fairly reasonable? This intangibility of these dynamics that merely arise from group composition rather than of adversarial bias (people do not think that they hate people with differing political opinions for example) is at the heart of issue of privilege (and the subconscious elements of racism, sexism etc.). It is also more common than aggressive bigotry and requires introspection to be recognized. I like the concept of second thoughts that Pratchett mentioned: No one thinks that they are unfair or biases, otherwise they would behave that way. Left-leaning folks here do not think that they are being unfair to differing views. But for those on the receiving end it sure feels different, no?

I think iNow and MigL have clearly qualified their statements to ensure that it precisely does not read like that. The second sentence in the quoted part directly negates the logical fallacy in your statement.

I do not see an egregious issue with that statement in itself. I would probably qualify it with Islamic terror groups rather than global terror, as there are plenty of groups around that happen not to be Muslims. KKK and Nazis and other supremacy group are obviously white (I am not sure about the gender statistic), and ISIS terrorist do at least at some point call themselves Muslims. I note that because of the curious new terrorists that appear to not be devout for the most part (with reports of being heavy drinkers, for example) and seem to undergo a flash conversion to radical Islam... ..I am not sure, what was the point again? Actually no, in Europe (at least in Germany with personal experience, and second hand stories from other countries) the bias is still there but has a different background and is expressed differently. As I have noted above, rates are the same. However, in contrast to North America Europe, for the most part, does not consider itself an immigrant country and treats visible minorities less like citizen but more like partial guests. Due to differences in law you do, on occasion hear what hiring people really think. Among the things I have heard were stuff like "nah, she is too young, if we hire her and she gets pregnant it will be a problem for us" or, "I am not sure that people coming in want to see a black dude first thing". So it is pretty much a problem amplified with the fact that nationality in many parts of Europe are still coupled to ethnicity (for historic reasons). However, up recently, visible minorities were very rare. During my childhood schools were almost 100% white. But although demographics have changed, the thinking follows only slowly. Only recently Germany acknowledged that Germany is in fact an immigration country (and before that the most worry was about East European immigrants after the fall of the Iron Curtain). The sudden realization in Europe that one cannot no longer ignore the foreign-looking part of the citizenry has sent political shockwaves through the population with calls to close borders (which is silly as most by now are the second or third generation citizens already....). Anyway, short story is that many European countries pride themselves of having no racial issues and being no basis either by a) ignoring the problem or b) frankly not having many non-whites to begin with. The good thing I found in the USA or Canada, for that matter, is that at least there are open discussions about issues and the fact that they are more accepting of people who look differently but declare themselves to be citizens.

It is a litigation issue. However, the legislation is in place partially because it has been shown that these types of often (but not always) subconscious racism is persistent. Obviously it is difficult to directly compare data between countries, but similar studies in Europe have resulted in pretty much the same results along ethnic lines. The fact that one is getting evaluated worse solely due to a name (or in some cases, pictures, again, an European thing) shows that there is consistent bias. Note that you use the term racist in a derogatory fashion, implying that they have active discriminatory practices, whereas I am saying that internal bias, potentially at least partially driven by ethnic hegemony can lead to certain groups being consistently evaluated worse despite the same qualification. Interestingly a study in the UK showed that very large corporation as well as public sectors tend to have lower discrimination rates.

If you think that people get preferentially hired by ethnicity... that is not what happens. Neither statistic nor actual hiring practice support that. Rather, it is a bit of legislative thing here that is required to cover your arse. Essentially companies are prohibited to discriminate based on religion, race or gender and collecting information from applicants helps them to document that they are not doing that. For example if they can show that they only had a 10% application rate from women to begin with, they have some ammo to counter a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination, for example. There are quite a few studies around where people sent out identical CVs and looked for calls for interviews or even simple assessment of fit. Rather consistently names associated with black people scored the lowest whereas white names got more callbacks. Gender difference is strongly associated with the type of jobs. Administrative jobs has higher callback for female names, management jobs has a bias for male names. To provide some numbers I have here randomly a paper (I really need to clean my desks at some point) from Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004 Am. Econom Rev) in which they sent out 5000 resumes using white and African American names, respectively. Throughout all job groups, the callback was consistently (on average 50%) lower for African American sounding names than for white names, using identical resumes. There are quite a few of those out there, but in all of them minorities were consistently evaluated lower. That is not to say that similar discrimination does not exist within racial groups. White names associated with lower social classes (more common in Europe) also score lower, for example. For your specific situation, if you are not an US citizen or have a greencard your options are, frankly, limited. Unless you are in a highly specialized profession with few experts, or having strong connections it will be very difficult to even make them look at your CV.

I can't see anything in the post indicating white privilege or white privilege being mentioned. Only that it was white males running around, which, afaik is the main demogrpahics of white supremacists (there are also white women, though both numerically, as well as structurally they traditionally played a lesser role and often where considered to be responsible for breeding). But based on the usage of the term I feel that there is still a misconception of the academic concept of white privilege. of which white male is presumably a subcategory. It does not help that the term has also undergo historic shifts and has regional variations. I feel that it is a bit in vain as typically everyone just interjects their view on it by since apparently I am a sucker for punishment but here is a short outline for the typical academic use in the USA - around and before the Civil Rights Act (1964) the term denotes the structural and especially governmental privileges provided specifically to whites. The most notorious example were the limitation of voter rights of non-whites but also other forms of active discrimination. - in more modern usage this has shifted (often also denoted as racial privilege to be used as an universal term) in order to describe prevalent, often subconscious factors that result in some level of relative burden to groups that are not considered the norm. This results in systemic differences in treatment and perceptionHowever, it does not mean that any group has access to more rights per se. It can often be trivial, like entering a group of people and not immediate appear as an outsider (like e.g. walking in a bar and realize that one is the only white person there). But it can have significant impact on everyday life (e.g. certain groups getting higher punishments and higher conviction rates despite similar offense rates, or more likely to get bail, or getting hired, underdeveloping certain areas etc.). The advantage is typically not visible to the majority group, and sometimes makes it different to appreciate that effect. As a whole, it has developed as an outgrowth of racial hegemony in which assumptions and actions are borne out of a limited set of experiences. As an anecdote I chatted with a black student a few years back who told me that she had issues at posh school (she had a huge Afro, which was considered ethnic and disruptive (like having a punk hairdo). It was just not clear to them that if she simply washes and dries her hair it becomes and afro and that it takes huge efforts to straighten them to make them more European. Another common theme is that students from immigrant background feel that they have to work harder just to perceived as equals and so on. - due to historic reason, white privilege and white male privilege is sometimes conflated as historically, men were the political actors (after all, women in the USA got their voting rights after African Americans, though the latter were severely limited in their ability to do so). There is a growing tendency to take apart gender roles which some desire to have some fine-grained analyses. Much of the racial studies is still relatively gender blind, though.

Take a look at the atomic force microscope, which is a further development of that principle. One of my favorite toys.

The issue is not with your description of the individual processes. Rather that your initial claim was : and Which oversells one aspect of the puzzle as the whole picture. However in your last couple of posts you have switched to a more differential view which is far better than the initial declarative stance. One part that you seem to dismiss (if I understand you correctly) is that neuronal activity during sleep itself is required for memory consolidation (which is a pretty mainstream view) and that potentially amyloid deposition could be disruptive. Conversely it means that even if the clearance works perfectly and we disrupt neuronal activity, it would still inhibit memory consolidation. With regard to pannexins take a look at Kovalzon et al. (Beh. Brain Res 2017) for a simple mouse study and Shestopalov et al. (Fornt Cell Neurosci 2017) for a very recent review. I just re-read my earlier post and realized that I made a number of rash mistakes, as it should read non-vesicular (I was working on a vascular paper hence the blunder) . Also, I should have said ATP, which is degraded to adenosine in the ECS.

You are arguing on different levels. Originally you made a firm association between the glymphatic processes and memory as the main process. Now you acknowledge that there are more involved but still quite clear. These two are different things. The first is the understanding of the complete processes with a consolidated model that explains the mechanisms, ideally from the biochemical to the neurophysiological level, which is lacking, as I have pointed out. The second is finding, and continue to find new processes that are elements of the former. And even in the smaller parts there is uncertainty. As your own source indicate the role of glycogen is far less certain as its levels themselves are not part of sleep regulation. It may play a role, or it may be a secondary effect of another mechanism. If you continue your reading you will find more bits and pieces and I assure you, it is going to be quite some work if you want to integrate them into a whole picture. Just because ATP is involved, it may not relate to energy balance per se, but more to anabolic processes that are only favorable under sleep conditions, for example. More likely, there are many aspects that act in parallel. Some key players, such as adenosine, are known. But how they precisely interact with other elements and in which sleep phases which interaction occurs is still subject to a lot of ongoing research. Only recently the role of pannexins as means of non-vascular release of adenosines with control over NREM sleep has been recognized, for example. One big issue of course is that there functions of various levels that need to be investigated (from cell to organismal function) and many of those functions are interconnected with other general organismal functions. Typically, it is incredibly hard to dissect those pathways independent of each other. But my suggestion is: keep reading, there is a ton to learn still.

So why not move the statues or some of them into a museum to depict the Jim Crow era? At least that would contextualize their symbolism. And what do you mean with a good idea in that context? Not bringing down the swastikas and Hitler statues after the war would be a good idea? Do you really think a swastika on the Reichstag would send the wrong message? Or do you mean putting them up 50 years later and then keep it? I am thoroughly confused by your comments but I will say this: If your point is that they should be a reminder of the civil war: they were never intended as such and they were put in half a century later for the new (white) generation to glorify their past and forward looking to put blacks in their place. If your point is that they should be kept as shameful symbols of the Jim Crow era, they need proper contextualization as they were designed to do the former.

It would only work if one added a plaque or something to contextualize it. You don't think that putting up a swastika in Germany as a reminder of dark times would be giving the wrong idea? Edit: I realize that perhaps, you think, that there is enough distance so that people clearly see what the statues actually represent. As a counter I will remind you what the President said and the fact that he is echoing a non-trivial part of the population. The divide caused by racism is far from healed. Unless, of course you mean that it is a good symbolism for ongoing racism, which would be an extremely convoluted train of thought.

There is a difference between a memorial and a monument. After the civil war a number of memorials were erected as symbols of mourning (often in graveyards. The next wave, however, were tributes to the confederacy and often intended to be a symbol of white supremacy placed half a century after the civil war. Historians have argued that especially placements of theses statues in front of court houses was a clear declaration of the power (im)balance. The equivalent would be to erect statues of prominent German WWII generals near synagogues in the year 2000. And, using a logic of another poster here, especially republicans should be keen to get rid of them. After all many of those, I assume, were built by then-democrats.

If one engages in baiting people, one should not be surprised if someone eventually bites. I thought that was the goal, after all? Safe spaces and so on...

One hypothesis is that the pathways and activity of retrieval (i.e. recalling memories) and consolidating memories are the same or at least associated with each other. Only when most of your brain is not active is it able to switch from one to the other.

Oh the mid-90s Motorolas were fine. Try to use a Motorola DynaTac (mid 80s). About a kilo of heftiness.

I think you are misunderstanding the concept what is typically meant with white privilege. It is the acknowledgement that certain racial inequalities are not (exclusively) caused by active discrimination. Rather, it is confluence of factors that may disadvantage certain groups. This could for example be previous systematic discrimination that resulted in families not being able to create a network of financial and other support, which the majority folks could (on average) take advantage of. Or confinements of groups into high poverty areas with low access to good schools and other services. Even if one removed discriminatory practices, it would take efforts and time to address these issues (such as improving infrastructure, access to schools or even accumulation of family wealth). There can also be subtle effects that are harder even to identify. For example if there are jobs that are traditionally held by males of females, the opposing gender may have a harder time to get into because of preconceptions. Even if one puts up rules to to outlaw discrimination by gender, the people doing the hiring (especially when it comes to high qualified jobs) may have predominant experience with one particular gender and may entirely consist of said gender. That may put candidates that appear differently at a disadvantage as esp in those jobs intangible aspects can be considered a bad fit. That is, white privilege is used to acknowledge structural inequalities that are not necessarily easily addressed by just passing equality laws, for example. Rather, by being part of the majority or the presumed norm, an individual is more likely to interact and be perceived by their peers who, in turn, are more likely to evaluate a person based on their individual characteristics rather than by the overall perception of the group one may belong to. Note that none of these examples call for the removal of rights or privileges of the majority class. In order to have the same privileges for everyone, it would be needed to put everyone on the same starting line and eliminate differential perception of other groups. However, it is quite uncertain how that can be achieved in practical terms.

Actually, I do not think that blaming liberals is bigotry in itself. It is more that currently bigots prefer to associate themselves with the GOP (due to the lack of an ultra-right party in the US system), which is big issue for many moderate conservatives. The latter were getting marginalized since the rise of the tea party (potentially earlier) and quite a few lost to the crazes within their own party.

The connection between amyloids and consolidation as well as the mechanisms of inhibition are still under investigation. I would very much like to see an actual paper that proposes that it cannot occur when that process is limited. Rather, they may inhibit the actual consolidation mechanisms, but to what extent is fairly unclear. People are still developing models to explore this connection and it is far from being resolved. The ATP link is a different aspect as to my knowledge I have not seen a link to the recently proposed clearance functions. And here we have at least three separate mechanisms that may be involved in memory consolidation: neuronal activity, potential disruption of said activities (specifically slow-wave activity) from amyloid accumulation (though different models of interaction between sleep, memory and amyloid deposition are under discussion) it is as well as energy balance. It is not a simple resupply issue either, as obviously transport of nutrients and oxygen has to occur continuously. Moreover, the connection to energy is also complex as the ATP levels are not higher after sleep than before. Rather, there is a phase where surge occurs and one could speculate that it is then used for anabolic processes. Again, clearly not in support of a simple resupply model as proposed (and it is not clear to my how that is supposed to connect with the removal of amyloids). The processes involved in memory and sleep are complex and there is no simple answer as of yet. And again, one should be careful to highlight one aspect and presume it to be the answer to all.

It is probably a trivial observation, but it is very dependent on how much you can identify with the perpetrators. If one (subconsciously or not) feel more similar to them, one starts to wonder how one can deviate so much from oneself. If the people exhibit outward differences, it is far easier to attribute whatever happens to the differences. Same in the opposite direction, you are more likely to have positive feeling and/or excuse gaffes in another person that exhibit traits that you can identify with (which is often very apparent in hiring processes or other evaluations, for example).

While not contentious in itself there are some issues in the reasoning. One being that clearing toxins somehow leads to better connection (to paraphrase it). It is not clear what a "better" vs. a worse connection is, for example. In addition, there is significant brain activity that utilizes the same pathways for recall and there is a large body of evidence indicating that these activities are relevant for consolidating memory (there are many, many reviews to this point). I.e. not only metabolic function play a role but also functions and mechanisms pertaining to overall plasticity. In fact, the amyloid hypothesis, while compelling, is still at the early stages of research and it has in fact been speculated that the effects of amyloid-beta impairs memory by affecting the sleep and associated consolidation processes (see the work from Holtzman, for example). So, saying sleep is just detoxification does not do the process(es) justice and characterizing it as the sole/main/fully explained mechanism is a distortion of literature. In contrast is clear is that the desire to sleep is physiological and the signaling mechanisms leading sleepiness or sleep itself are quite well understood and fall under the larger set of circadian rhythm systems.