CharonY

In the third study you linked to, they looked at puberty suppressors and gender-affirming hormones. In that group, kids around puberty (i.e. at the lower range) received suppressors, whereas the older ones received gender-affirming hormones (as it is not practice to provide them to per-pubteral patients). The other studies focused more on pubertal suppression. Edit: crossposted with a couple of other posts.

Here, I would ask whether there is any evidence that mental health is different in California than elsewhere. But the cited studies had US (nationwide) cohorts, as well as from the Netherlands. But the decision from Sweden highlights that the situation is not settled. Some advocate counselling, for example. However, it will take another couple of years before we can have data to indicate which approach is better or worse.

What about the opposite forcing them through a change in their bodies that just does not fit with their brains? It is a well-established fact that transgender people are at a much higher risk of suicide. They basically have two choices. Pretend what what they don't feel, in order to conform. This potentially can reduce harassment (not sure whether there is data on that), but it increases risk of self-harm. Or they can undergo social transition, which results in short-term benefits in terms of mental health, but can lead to harassment, which in the longer term again increases self-harm risk. What you seem to fail to understand is that puberty blockers and gender-affirming procedures are recommended by medical professionals, because they improve overall health. Let's follow the data a bit. There is a significant body of evidence showing that kids taking puberty blockers are at lower risk of suicide and other forms of self harm (see e.g. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-1725 https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-2958 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/cpp0000288) and improved well-being. Now, it does not mean that it is a one-size fits-all situation, but in contrast to the imagined example, the data at least indicates that it is more likely to be detrimental than harmful. There might be better ways out there, but clearly just let them ride it out currently has the worst outcome in terms of suicide and other mental health challenges. So why do we build homes, eat warm meals regularly take insulin, wear glasses and so on? All of that effects our biology in various ways.

I think there is a bit of an issue with the scope of the problem and our desire to use specific narratives. A specific case of abuse, especially involving known names just feels more emotionally engaging and interesting. However, domestic abuse is a widespread issue and IMO the best way to tackle them is to look and talk about population-wide data and patterns.

I thin you are right. Kids are seeming less confused about that then us older folks. I suspect that this is why in the USA there is this huge homophobic and transphobic backlash in terms books with LGBTQ themes or even characters at school.

From I understood from a cursory reading is that the jury basically finds Heard's claims in the op-ed to be false (i.e. they do not believe that she was a victim of abuse the way outlined in the article) and the counterclaim was a bit more specific but it reads like they don't believe that she faked abuse in a particular context. It is one of the reasons why I think that this prominent case is not a great starting point to talk about domestic abuse in general and abuse of men in particular. I think the OP wanted to argue that the claim of abuse is a form of abuse in itself, but did it in a bit of a roundabout way. I think that is a rather complicated issue as I think a lot of us have certain notions how domestic abuse "should" look like, but I suspect that there is a lot more to it, if we started digging in literature a bit. The classic domestic abuse hinges on material power differential, and since the husband traditionally has the earning power, they are considered more likely to be the abuser. But since then other patterns of abuse have been found and I would suspect that power differentials can be quite difficult to quantify. In this particular context both are public figures and certain common patterns of abuse (including isolation from social networks) did not seem to happen. Just because one is more famous than the other does not mean that they have direct power over the other. In fact, one could interpret the situation between them as an attempt to assert power. I don't think that mutual abuse is impossible as such, as both parties might engage in power struggles, even if coming from a less powerful (but still sufficiently independent) position. But again, I these are all just speculations.

At least part of the data on that website is based on EDGAR and the methodology is outlined here: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/methodology

Fundamentally the question boils down to whether consciousness is binary or a quantitative trait. Considering the range of cognitive abilities of many animals, I am inclined to believe that it is more of a letter and that we are not that unique in that regard. But I think we have already a lot threads discussing this issue?

! Moderator Note Considering that OP was escorted from the premises, there is no further need to debunk the misconceptions/falsehoods outlined by OP in this thread.

It appears that I have not linked to all of the data, which could clear up a few things. The survey also asked explicitly whether vaccines include secret chips to monitor and control behaviour (11% true, 14% not sure/possibly). Which is just a bit lower than the question involving Gates. 19% believe that COVID vaccines have killed many people but it is covered up, with further 25% thinking that it is at least possible. Much of it seems related to public distrust in the government and media, the same trend that is also happening in the US. https://abacusdata.ca/trust-and-disinformation-in-canada/ https://abacusdata.ca/conspiracy-theories-canada-3/

I think with comedy it highly depends on the craft and also we (as we the society) have also deal with the fact that things are not easily forgotten as they used to. Fundamentally comedy is all about context, and context changes. Comedians often try to walk right up to the edge, but where the edge is, will change over time. This used to be much less of an issue when shows where either not widely broadcasted and/or were discussed about but then forgotten again within a few years. With the internet and social media, all utterances are there forever (or close to it). A related issue which folks increasingly have difficulty with to separate the art from the artist. Again, I think the offensive part is highly dependent on how well the joke is constructed. However, I agree that deriding those disagreeing is a bit weak. After all, jokes are not universal and they may bomb with different audiences. As comedian they have the choice to try to appeal to a more specific group and/or adjust for broader consumption. But complaining that their jokes do not have mass appeal or that there are folks who just don't get it, does not show a lot of craftsmanship, in my mind. It is of course more annoying if folks take things out of context, but then they are unlikely to be the target audience, anyway.

The question wasn't whether tracking is feasible though (especially as folks are getting tracked voluntarily, though) but rather whether Bill Gates is using microchips to track and change human behaviour. The background there is that the Gates foundation has supported vaccination efforts (but is not building cell phones or other tracking devices, afaik).

A big challenge is that so many folks are infected at any given time that we get tons of lineages and sub-lineages at a rate where new vaccines might not keep up. It is possible that over time there will be few main lineages sticking around, which would be more similar to what is happening with influenza. But right now we are still in mostly unchartered territory. It also depends a lot on the potential of immune evasion. I.e. how many mutations can the virus undergo to evade recognition, but still remain infectious.

Asked and answered. The last sentence is just stupid. Also regarding natural immunity: Note that breakthrough infections refers to vaccinated individuals who get infected. In other words, the highest neutralization titers was found in individuals who were vaccinated and got infected with Omicron. Suryawanshi, R.K., Chen, I.P., Ma, T. et al. Limited cross-variant immunity from SARS-CoV-2 Omicron without vaccination. Nature (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04865-0 You need to learn to follow evidence to come to a conclusion, not the other way round.

Just to take a break from US crazyness and considering that quite a few folks here actually are Canadians (or live in Canada) I thought it is worthwhile to look at Canadian crazyness. While overall higher competency and not having a professional grifter as the leader, Canada fared better through the pandemic (a bit higher than world average in terms of death rates, for example), we have encountered a fair bit of conspiracy theories among the population when it came to COVID-19, which we had (perhaps unfairly) associated mostly with the US. The question whether vaccines contained tracking chip from Bill Gates was a question that came up too frequently for comfort, for example. A recent poll on Canadian beliefs on conspiracy theories is a bit worrying: https://abacusdata.ca/conspiracy-theories-canada/ There, pollster found that over 40% of the responders believe that big events are controlled by small secret groups that work against folks and that much of our lives is controlled by secret plots. Moreover 37% appear to believe in the replacement theory where native born Canadians (I kind of assume that it ironically does not include First Nations) are going to be replaced with immigrants. 13% think that Gates is using microchips for tracking with an additional 21% think that it is at least possible. These beliefs are most common among PPC voters (the far right party in Canada) with close to 70% agreeing to some of the conspiracy theories, followed by CPC voters (conservative party, ~50%) and with most other parties around 30-40% agreeing. These contrarian beliefs are also associated with vaccination hesitancy (which has been explored in a number of studies, though perhaps often with more focus on the US). While these beliefs are still considered fringe I do see a real risk of a general shift as we are seeing in the USA, if they become weaponized e.g. by media or other (semi-)traditional outlets. So what are you thoughts? Do you think that there better in measures in Canada to keep it in check? Or is it simply a worldwide, likely social media driven trend? And if so, is there a way to combat it, or is that going to be the new normal?

That is seriously backwards reasoning. You cannot just assume that something is true and selective search for evidence of it. I mean you can, but you will end up with false assumptions and conspiracy theories. In most cases this is just sad, but in an ongoing pandemic you are part of the legion of folks who are endangering others. It is rather sad, really.

Considering that you do not seem to understand the studies you linked yourself, using a more accessible source is a good idea.

Bipedalism is not that uniques. There are bipedal dinosaurs, and their descendants. It is rare among mammals, though some at least can be transiently bipedal. From there having few species (including humans) specializing in locomotion using their hind legs is not that unique. One of the rarer qualities is probably the lack of a tail as counterbalance. With regard to brain size, it is not that great of an indicator, as in total size, we are eclipsed by many larger animals and using brain to body ratios typically favours smaller species. In neither measure are we on top of the rankings.

Eh, there have been a lot of issues in Canada, too and at multiple points the conservatives did object a fair bit with regard to things like vaccination mandates and certain provinces (especially conservative ones) had big clashes with their health authorities regarding health messaging (or lack thereof). While in Canada the overall situation is still saner, I am not entirely convinced that it is not only starting to move on that trajectory. The politicians are less pants-on-crazy (yet) but there are definitely fan clubs springing up who are hot for the type of stupid found south of the border. The question is only whether the parties are willing to cash in on that. In the US after the last president left, there were movements in getting some things done and I believe that for some measures there were bipartisan votes.

Nothing you posted suggest that they are dangerous.

Forgot to add, similar as the training argument, the individual circumstances are increasingly recognized as drivers for outcomes, rather than genetics. IIRC the editorial made such an argument.

Part of it, yes. But there is also another issue regarding overall genetic diversity. Due to the bottleneck out of Africa, the genetic diversity for non-African population is lower than for African populations, however in most studies European cohorts are used as reference, which makes comparisons a bit difficult. I probably have to think a bit (or get more sleep) to make a better analogy, but it is a bit like using Chihuahua biology as reference and try to scale all other dog breeds to its specifications. The observed differences are likely going to be a bit biased. Or perhaps it is a bit like going to the urologist and they treat their patient like a person having a hysterectomy and seriously enlarged penis (OK I definitely need to think about it more). But the background is that using a special case as the standard skews basically all comparisons, if that makes sense.

What is wrong is that quite a few studies in the past were set up with the pre-conceived notion that e.g. minority participants were likely outgroups. Together with some general issues of reproducibility in human cohorts (and associated statistical issues) a range of ethnicity-based assumptions have found their way into clinical practice. Some of these have also found their way into medical algorithms, which I have mentioned in another thread. The big issue is that the idea of such studies is to improve health outcomes of everyone involved. If e.g. a certain group benefits more from a particular treatment, then of course it would be better do it. However, over time it was found that many of these assumptions actually deepened race-based disparities. As it turns out, many aspects are likely not genetical (which is or was the default assumption for racial differences) but more of lifestyle and environmental nature. And even in cases with more genetic implications, using race is a very crude proxy (there are also some issues related to the fact that European is seen as a a norm and often dominate a cohort, whereas higher variability in black cohorts are not really accounted for). As such, the mounting evidence suggest that race-based medicine is simply doing more harm then good . See e.g. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2022-057998 for one of those articles, and https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2021/0800/p122.html for an editorial. As such, increasingly medical specialists call for an end to it. That is not to say that this is an universal move. In some areas (e.g. hypertension treatment) some suggest that there are racial differences that one should take into account. A big issue is again that the mechanistic understanding of these differences are often somewhat poor. The third option, which I have to admit to be biased towards due to my research, is trying to really get to the point of precision medicine (also called personalized medicine but got somewhat refocused and rebranded) in which we try to get away from crude generalizations but trying to find markers that actually guide what treatments we should apply. With regard to the Kenyan studies there is by now a fairly large body of lit trying to figure out from the early assumptions of physiological superiority to look at genetic markers and the studies generally came up short. It is not to say that there are none, but even after two decades of research we still are not really closing in convincingly on genetic targets (beyond GWAS). Even ignoring genetics and focusing on physiology and biomechanics, a fairly recent review is not really that provide that much more evidence than the studies years prior, which really just means that it is really complicated: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbmt.2017.11.004 Edit: I should mention that it is probably not that recent, I was working on a related topic quite a while ago, and while it occasionally it my radar, I am not up to date on it and I kind of forgot that it is quite a few years later now.

You can call it bias all day long, but it has become clear that the GOP as a whole has abandoned reality and has been successfully using this tactic to create a devoted cores set of voters. Rational Republicans have been marginalized. They generally only go against the party when they are not facing re-election (as also shown with the recent bill on gun contol, which will die in the senate). The big issue really is that this tactic has been so successful that it basically removes any kind of responsibility. Folks that have been on record condemning the resurrection now suddenly have to lie that they did, just to get in the good graces of their voters. I am not sure how you can compromise with someone who is willing to reverse themselves on some very basic facts that they admitted to before? If some deranged youtube video is considered to be equally valid as careful research, what is the middle ground? I mean, I am happy not to be part of this political system, but I do wonder how fast it is leaking (or is already present, see Hungary) elsewhere.

I need sleep but since I can't get any I might as well say that I don't really have any expertise, well to anything in this thread, really. There are atmospheric gases that are associated with biological activities in conjunction with certain properties of the planets (phosphine was shortly discussed with regard to Venus), for example. But whether those would even be theoretically detectable is beyond my knowledge and would also depend on the available technology of the fictitious alien civilization, I guess.