RenOS
Dadder than dad
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1d ago
In addition togenomic prediction/lifeview, https://www.orchidhealth.com has also recently entered the consumer market afaik. I have little personal info on them, though.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
13d ago
It seems you haven't been here for very long. This forum had this problem a bunch of times and has banned multiple people over it, with different offending topics. Holocaust denial is certainly an all-time-favorite, but there's been a pedo who would constantly top-level-post about age of consent, another who invented a new "scientific" theory of power and would write multiple absurdly long, barely readable screeds about it, and Skookum was quite recent. It's a rule only a certain kind of obsessive tends to run into, but it's important imo.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
8d ago
Yes, I'm also considering writing a post about (the loss of) trust which imo explains large parts of our current problems. Blacks have lost trust in whites ever since the colonial era's blatant racism, and only ideologies that strongly denounce this past manage to successfully build a coalition with them. The right has lost the trust in public institutions since many of them blatantly push a left-wing agenda, sometimes even above the interests of the institutions they nominally belong to. Center-left people disgruntled with wokeness don't trust the right with power due to the moral majority & McCarthy era and more recently the rights failures to replace laws and institutions they got rid of with functional replacements.
The same is happening on the country level; Russia, after briefly moving towards the west shortly after the fall of the USSR, has lost the trust in the west due to consistent "will never happen -> has already happened, sorry" Nato-creep. China, India and many other non-western ascendent countries feel likewise betrayed by a western attitude they interpret as "we totally tolerate all cultures, except everything about them that's not about exotic food and funny clothes, or else you're a fascist and we'll punish you with sanctions".
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1mo ago
Yes, this is the claim that I also encounter most often in medical science, i.e. that the majority of the so-called gender neutral research is actually biased towards men because the majority of consenting subjects is male. And this makes me furious. Yes, medical researchers generally prefer male subjects because having to consider the period, which unfortunately can have a major influence on many medications, is an absolute pain in the ass. But if there was a huge number of female subjects desperately wishing to be included in early phase trials, they'd take them; But women are by and large very risk averse, and in particular when it comes to untested substances that give them no expected benefit. This is well reflected in the data for different phases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5867082/
Phase I is for testing the safety and distribution of medication. There is no benefit for the subject, and hence the percentage of women in these trials is small, only around 22% in this particular review (but this is pretty consistent).
Phase II and later is for testing whether a drug works for humans, and hence most subject actually have a specific disease that they hope the medication will help with. Hence, the percentage of women suddenly reflects the population very well, usually around 45+%.
So somehow if women refuse to sign up for medical research that doesn't benefit them personally so men take up the slack, who is the primary victim? Obviously, the poor women.
And, just to be clear here, kudos to the minority of women who do sign up for early research. I agree this is an issue, but critically it is an issue that can only be solved by women willingly signing up more. And it also is a somewhat minor issue, since a lack of efficacy or the presence of female-specific side effects will still be caught in the later phases when women are well represented.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
8d ago
Vegetarianism/Veganism has already been extremely popular on the left due to animal sympathy, and they can be quite pushy about proselytising. Mandatory Veganism is imo a weakman. Anti-natalism is the same; Having less kids has been quite popular on the left (arguably in general) because it means less obligations, more money you can spend on hedonistic pleasures, more time to do whatever you want. In both cases, climate justifications have come long, long after people argued for & adopted the change in the first place.
Also disagree on the second point. If you're actually seriously trying to tackle a problem, you'll usually end up with some technical, politically agnostic solution. If I notice that a certain widely used statistical measure is biased by, say, base rates, then I'll just recalculate it with a correction term, write a proof that the correction term indeed does what it should and maybe write a paper about it. I don't advocate that more BIPOC representation will somehow solve it (well, maybe I'll advocate for more statisticians, but that's not considered political yet). If engineers notice a turbine having a rare but potentially dangerous unexpected failure mode, they'll add a component to compensate or re-design it.
One point I haven't seen here is that there imo has been a general move towards always pandering to all groups, all at once in our media, and movies are no exception. There's more indie games, sure, but all media that costs a lot of money to produce and is expected to earn lots of money is generally designed to appeal much more to an average perso than to a small niche. As a very different example, look at the casualization of most traditionally nerdy gaming franchises such as Civ.
You might wonder what this has to do with nudity. Simple, women by and large do not like explicit nudity very much, as you can see even when they consume schlocky stupid porn, they read it, they don't watch it, and sex only happens sparingly. So what happens when you want to make an action movie, but also want to get the guys girlfriend to watch it alongside him to earn double the money? The MCU. You make the guys hot but never nude, they're manly but never rude (except to people who clearly deserve it). You include just enough of love stories for the women to not get bored. You include some female heroes, but they're even more idealized than the already-unrealistic male action heroes. All of this is (and more, such as your already-mentioned example of pandering to non-western audiences) imo just the logical endpoint of a slow march of optimization towards earning maximum money with your media.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
13d ago
I was literally taught in a german school that resettlement was a serious option for awhile and that some Nazi officials probably indeed favored it. It's just that when they ran into even moderate difficulties they jumped to "let's just kill them all send them to camps where they mysteriously vanish, then". Which is in no way surprising, since the Nazis are very much on record even before the actual holocaust started how much they'd like to cleanse the world of jewry.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
23d ago
By that definition, most laws are "anti-human". I'm not generally opposed to strict, literal interpretations, but this definition seems to go quite strongly against common sense understanding of "anti".
FWIW, a large part, possibly majority but at least close to 50%, of our college-educated left-leaning friends (and it's not even unpopular among our non-college-educated friends) is some kind of vegetarian. Among those who aren't, the majority is constantly stressing how little meat they're eating. The line between them is pretty fuzzy, since there's a decent number of people who claim to not eat meat at home, but sometimes outside when there's no other option, and these people will sometimes consider themselves vegetarian anyway, sometimes not. Almost nobody is an unabashed meat eater. As justifications go, animal sympathy is at the top for the stricter vegetarians, health benefits for the less strict (this actually includes myself), climate considerations are generally second line ("and btw it's also good for the climate I've heard").
Surprisingly, this did not greatly change when we became parents; Yes there's very few super-militant vegetarian parents, but we know multiple families where only the children eat meat, not the parents, and eating relatively little meat is actually the norm.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
22d ago
See, this is why center-left people don't feel like allying with the right, despite our increasing frustration with the regressive far-left. I dislike their attitude of wanting to define reality and outlaw disagreement, but I just know that if the right gets into power they'll do the same, but harder. As an example, I have several friends who are as frustrated with the far-left as me, but who support palestine. I disagree with them about this, but I don't thing they should lose their job over it! And nor are they just getting what they're dishing out, no, now we have to take punches from both sides.
Even for cases like Claudine Gay, at least my personal conclusion is that she got her job through politics and lost her job through politics. Scientific competence was only involved as a cudgel to beat her with when it was convenient. This is a disgrace for one of the most renown universities, and the only winners of the whole affair are the people who want to control science with politics. Yes if it was up to me she shouldn't have gotten the job in the first place, but I see little indication that the right would do anything better. In fact I don't even have to look back very far to get right-wing movements such as the moral majority.
I always find it funny that in the soft(er) sciences, the "hardest" theories are reliably the most hated. The average psychology enthusiast will gladly cite papers with vague definitions and findings on discrimination, priming, growth mindset and so on, but they'll suddenly be very skeptical for clearly defined and well-quantifiable traits such as IQ, reaction time and so on. Almost any complaint that is thrown at the latter group applies moreso to the former.
In biology, the hardest and most hated theory is, of course, evolution. Pure biologist will try to avoid it if possible because applying it involves too much math, and almost all ideologies hate some part of its implications. On its most basic level, its also rather trivial (though not tautological); In laymans terms, it goes something like:
Axiom 1. There exist things that can replicate themselves
Axiom 2. Different things have different proficiency at replicating themselves, which is called their fitness f
==>
Conclusion: Things with higher fitness will outscale things with lower fitness, irrespective of their original prevalence
You'll notice that while it's easy, you still need to prove the intermediate here, and in the past this was absolutely called into question. There's a lot of theoretically possible growth functions - linear, logarithmic, root, and so on - that would make it mostly implausible for an originally small group to outscale a large group in any feasible amount of time. As we know now, the correct growth function is exponential, which has this explosive property of jumping orders of magnitude quickly. Even better, the exponential has a rather rigid shape, which you'll come to recognize time and time again when you're actually working with biological data, as I do.
This is, as said, the most basic version. It gets even better! We can actually set up different systems of replication, add mutation generation and how these mutations affect individuals, and the theory of evolution will give us different predictions of the exact shape of the course of the population over time and the distribution of mutations we should expect. And we can prove these in simulations! For one of my favorite examples of this rather theoretical portion of biology, see Gunnarson et al https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580921000666. The short version is that we can distinguish between a population that has recently grown fast and one that has been mostly stagnant entirely based on its current distribution of mutations, no time-based data needed. But we need evolutionary principles to explain this. Or for a much older examples, look at the differences between a Moran Process and a Wright-Fisher Process; Both are plausible, albeit very simplified, population models, and they lead to different predictions, which can be quantified and measured. Of course in the lab, as others have pointed out, we can further watch this process in action. Macro-evolution is then simply the only plausible extension of these finding without invoking some magical "essence" of beings that is not stored biologically and thus never changes.
So you're plain wrong that it leads to no new conclusions; In fact we haven't even come close to finding out all the implications. Tbh, you're argument is on the level of arguing against the entirety of modern particle physics by saying: "well, of course there has to be something that is the smallest, which is even the literal meaning of the word atom. Greek philosophist already thought the same!" while ignoring that a) it actually was controversial in the past - yes for almost any basic concept you can find a greek philosopher who argued in favor of it, just as you can find one who argued against it - and b) that particle physics, just as evolution, is well-quantifiable and can be shown to work the same on multiple levels - analytical mathematical proofs, numerical differential equation simulation, stochastic/Monte-Carlo style simulations, and finally in the lab itself. Your distinction between "Evolution" and "Natural Selection", which doesn't really exist in evolutionary theory, doesn't add much conceptual depth imo, either.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
22d ago
I mean, I push hard enough against left-wing orthodoxy both in person and online that I'm regularly reflexively labeled right-wing, and I have the same frustration as you with plenty of other allegedly centrist politicians who fall hard for the "no enemies to the left, all enemies to the right" fallacy. You're really throwing this at the wrong person, sorry.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
16d ago
Tbh if you're at that level, the answer is probably "Please don't buy stocks, you're gonna get ripped to shreds by the professionals'. There's basically just two reasons why I'd say it's a good idea to buy specific stocks by yourself:
-
You're a professional who knows the ins-and-outs on how everyone else does their stock picks, where they get their information from, and generally plays on an equal footing with them
-
You're a domain-specific expert who is extremely bullish/bearish on a certain technology by a specific company due to deep knowledge that traders can't reasonable have
In the first you already know where to look, in the second you only want to trade on a short list of companies you know well anyway.
Disclaimer: Not a trader precisely for this reason
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1mo ago
That's certainly a possibility, but it just does not at all fit with my experience both with IRL nerdy friends and online communities. The old guard just is consistently unhappy with the directions these franchises are taking, but just gets utterly swamped by newcomers who think the old games are weird and customer-unfriendly (admittedly not 100% wrong, a lot of older games had awkward UIs and missed QoL features that are normal nowadays). And while the old guard is almost exclusively socially awkward white and asian nerdy men, the newcomers are genuinely much more mixed along all axis of identity (which isn't surprising given that the whole point of the new direction is making the game more accessible to a larger group of people). And even the newcomers who agree with the old guard turn out to be ... socially awkward nerdy men.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
22d ago
If you want to know, my last vote went to the FDP, which is the german libertarian party. Unlike the US, the FDP is not consistently on either side, but has coalitioned with both sides (currently it's in fact part of a broad left-leaning government). Myself I'm not even a straight-ticket FDP voter, I've considered the CDU (originally center right, though nowadays probably just pure centrist), due to their family-first focus which I find appealing, and the SPD (center left), since I'm in favour of broad redistributive policies if done right. My vote ultimately went to the FDP however since it's the closest thing to free-speech absolutism on the menu and because they currently appear to be the party most concerned with imo common-sense concepts such as "having a functioning economy".
Privately, at work, and online, I primarily push back against left-wing orthodoxy since it's quite common among my acquintances.
Nevertheless, and yes this is precisely what I mean, if you try to force me into a binary left-wing orthodoxy vs right-wing orthodoxy, both enforced equally, I'll choose the left everytime. The right needs to be significantly less orthodox for me to consider it.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
21d ago
Coolness or fuckability seems like a simpler and better classification, though. Rockstars are cool/very fuckable, but generally aren't considered jocks or class clowns, see David Bowie for example.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1mo ago
"Pornography: Harmless Enjoyment That Prevents Rape, or Degradation of Women And Should Be Banned"
For some reason I read this as ""Pornography: Harmless Enjoyment That Prevents Rape or Degradation of Women - And Should Be Banned".
On the main point, hasn't it been pointed out that the lower classes generally tend to have more real sex in general, while the higher classes are too busy studying for the real thing, so they cope through porn? Also, as usual I see no way to properly control for the direction of causality with this kind of study, and almost any negative claim here can just be turned around - of course someone who is unhappier and has poorer wellbeing (maybe due to lack of sex?) is more likely to use porn. They don't even argue chronologically ("Men who have used pornography in the past now are X"), they argue concurrently ("Men who use pornography have higher X"). The former has at least a little bit of a claim for causality in the direction of chronologicity (is that a word in english? I guess you get what I mean), the latter not so much.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
22d ago
What you call milquetoast false-centrism, I'd call regular centrism. I know Corona is your hobbyhorse, but the FDP was if anything overly critical compared to the center (which suits me, since I also was on the critical side).
On the AFD, the FDP is explicitly on the record as being against the Verbotsverfahren. Privately, I've argued multiple times that the AFD has a point, and that as long as the german political establishment is unwilling to tackle the dysfunctional, barely existent border and immigration politics, they will only get stronger. This is reasonably close to the stated position of the FDP, though I suspect that being libertarians they're more in favor of open borders than I'd like, but unfortunately we don't have a topic-based voting law.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
25d ago
Looking at it, it's imo clearly in the tradition of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars, not XCOM. Though the artstyle is still a bit overly cute for my taste, it seems not as bad as some other games.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
30d ago
Yes, this is the point. The archetypical male tyrant rules with an iron fist and emphasizes his own power. He is a major douchebag and his rule is only stable through the excessive application of force to make the opposition cower in fear.
The archetypical female tyrant rules through deception and manipulation. She rules by pitting everyone against everyone else, and then playing the "neutral" arbiter who just wants everyone to get along, you know? She sets up a moralist framework that just-so happens to benefit her (ideally with some mystical source of knowledge that only she has access to), and that is vague enough so that she can switch positions whenever it suits her. She avoids formal positions of power and rules by committee, and so on. The Oppressor/Opressed framework is basically tailor-made for this purpose. The same guy can be an oppressed black body if he is on your side, or a toxic male oppressor if he isn't.
Of course, both of these are a bit too extreme to be practical, real life stable systems seem to mostly coalesce into a small elite group of men wielding the highest explicit/formal power backed up by a moralist framework that is primarily enforced through a much larger group of women, with both of these groups worst tendencies being kept in check by the other. Without that enforced moralist framework societies tend to devolve into chaos and warlordism, while societies without the men tend to simply get conquered by foreign men. But the locus of power can move between these two groups, and currently almost nobody is disputing that women are more powerful than they've ever been - the main discussion is on whether we've not gone far enough on one side or that the pendulum has swung in the other direction on the other side.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
13d ago
This ties in with another argument :re poverty-as-a-cause-of-crime. If you actually do some ballpark estimates for the average criminal, you'll frequently find out that they make money barely on par with a regular minimum wage job, often worse, with the added risk of ending up in jail. This goes against the claims of significant parts of both left and right; The left often thinks that people turn to crime since minimum wage jobs aren't enough to get by, but as it turns out crime isn't actually better so that argument is kinda moot; Many on the right think that criminals are self-serving egoists taking advantage of a well-meaning system for their own gain. As it turns out, the majority of criminals are probably just idiots who are screwing themselves over and others. And at least for me a lot of things clicked into place upon that realisation; For example you'll notice that many people who just barely get by have a certain degree of self-destructive behaviour that holds them back significantly, they just also have some admirable (or at least tolerable) qualities in addition. Your contractor seems like a good example.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
1mo ago
It's a fairly unusual post in many ways. If you really don't know Hlynka, "just ignore & minimize" honestly seems like the best advice. For those of us who've been here literal years, he was like part of the furniture; It's a nice courtesy of the mods to let us know and start a dedicated thread on his ban.
RenOS
Dadder than dad
22d ago
I consider myself primarily a pragmatist, not ideologist, so I can see myself allying with a broader right coalition in principle, if I had the impression that I can fit in under a live and let live paradigm. In particular I'm probably more center than left, so it's not even inconceivable that I'll someday identify as center-right. But nevertheless, I just do not have the impression that free speech absolutism is really something the right is dedicated on (nor the left, which is key to my frustration with them, but at least I agree with them on more other things). Currently I do push hardest against left-wing orthodoxy because it's the only realistic threat to me at the moment since the right-wing has no power whatsoever in science, but I have no illusions that life would be better under the thumb of the right.
I've never been super invested in this debate, but to me one of the most striking features is that almost all the evidence we have available is filtered through people who have a strong incentive for bias in favour of the zoonosis side. The chinese establishment seems to favour a variant of zoonosis with a heavy implication of coming from somewhere abroad, the local chinese lab favors zoonosis for obvious reasons, and even the global biomedical establishment is hardly unbiased on the matter. Further, I find the justifications on the biggest coincidence, the failed grant for a similar furin-cleavage site, very poor - I'm literally currently working on a project which I failed a grant on. I know how labs operate in the west and almost all of the claims that they would never do this or that are ... just BS, honestly. And chinese labs have a well-deserved reputation to be even worse.
I also agree with the rootclaim guy that the wild overconfidence of the zoonosis side is a very poor look. I really don't get how many people apparently got convinced by this debate, though I only read Scott's textual account, not the full video debate.
The self-determination in the current mainstream conception is always individual, though. It makes thus sense once you consider that individuals are indeed more free to live their life in the West than in Russia and self determination is supported on those grounds.
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