CharonY

Yes, if you think men are not suited or should not be teachers or nurses, it is clearly discriminatory (and society clearly does not see it that way, male nurses and teachers have on average a higher salary than their female counterparts). And this is even worse as we are talking about positions of power. Excluding groups from access to power can lead to pretty bad and discriminatory policies, of which we have plenty of examples. Many of these have been explored in various threads, so I am not digging them up again. I did not mean to imply that there are not alternatives. However, it seemed to me that progressives seem to need to fulfill a way higher standard than folks apply to conservative views. As a matter of fact, I do not see a lot of nuance in any group. Where do we see moderates distancing themselves from anti-immigrant sentiments and associated implicit assumptions regarding foreigners? We can ask those questions all day long, but the truth is that if oversimplify groups (does not really matter which leaning) we are going to criticize a caricature which adds little substance. One also could ask who in your mind is a progressive vs non-progressive? Ultimately attitudes overlap in various segments of the population. You complained about folks associating anti-abortion sentiments with misogyny, I provided evidence that there is at least some overlap. So depending on where you stand you could agree more or less how important it is, but dismissing it, is at this point not supported by evidence.

Going through the thread I think the common theme is that we need to provide options. This might include opportunities to contact or non-contact sports and potentially (there might some disagreement here) less inhibition in terms of what kids choose to play. I think to a certain degree one can apply common sense without necessary planning for every possible contingency here. Especially on the recreational level participants together with coaches could figure out how "hard" they want to go into. From my experience at least it worked reasonably well. For example, we had one boy who was developing much faster than the rest of us but was asked to hold back a bit when playing against girls (and I wished he had held back against me, too).

When I was in school there was a bit like that. Essentially at some grade folks could choose among different sports (volleyball, basketball, gymnastics etc.). So for those not wanting to get into contact sports they could essentially opt out. I.e. they were not sorted in or or excluded from the sport that way (and as far as I am of there were no regulations in that regard, just some level of common sense, I guess). Self-sorting vs regulated sorting, if you will. Agreed. I think kids are more resilient than they get credit for and I do think that certain GenX/Millenial parents are too obsessed in providing their kids with the perfect of optimal childhood, which seems (at best) to make them more anxious than they should be (and social media does the rest).

I think I disagree on that one. In Germany school sports is much less competitive, but we often played in mixed teams until graduation. But even in clubs (where the real competition is) kids are sorted according to skill (where eventually boys will be on top) but the most talented girls will play with boys until age 17 (to foster abilities as much as possible). I have not found anything suggesting higher injuries.

Huh, didn't actually know that. Cheers.

Where does it say that Kissinger was banned from the Ukraine. The article seems only to mention that Russia was banned from the event.

Why do you think that they need to do that? Do you expect conservatives to line up when and decry every lack of nuance they their folks bring up? And this point is not defamatory as such either. After all, there are a range of studies that have shown that indicators of sexism (and racism) were the strongest predictors of Trump voters (i.e. we are looking a sizeable proportion of folks). Likewise, surveys have shown that anti-abortion voters are those most opposed to measures of equality. Looking at folks who want abortion to be illegal in all or most cases for example, we find that 54% of them think that men are generally better political leaders, and only 47% think that the same number of women as men should be in positions of power. Note that women were oversampled in this survey https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1647-supermajority-survey-on-women/429aa78e37ebdf2fe686/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 Likewise studies looking at left-right divides in matters of abortion to be associated with sexism (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.07.044). So instead of the right decrying sexism in their group, you think progressives should be more nuanced and perhaps state that up to 50% of anti-abortionists are sexists? Sorry I still am unclear what this means. Are "they" the progressives? Who is faking what? Not trying to be obtuse, but I find it difficult to figure out who is doing what in your sentence.

Eh, seems that we were saying the same thing, then. I also doubt that offending folks is really an issue if in the end it maximizes profit (but again I think there are easier ways to do that than weighing folks). Thinking a bit more about existing policies, I think the current rule is that if folks cannot sit with the armrest down, they cannot fly, unless the seat next to them is available (and/or they bought a second seat). I suspect that especially for some budget airlines, buying two seats is unavoidable for certain overweight folks.

I think the issue here is that it is a fairly one-dimensional view. There are many different reasons why folks are against abortion, and conversely, there are plenty of folks who acknowledge but disagree these notions and do not simply break it down to misogyny. Saying that all pro-choice folks think about it in terms of misogyny is a clear oversimplification and at best. I am not sure what that means, though. You oppose folks that oppose abortion because they oppose stem cell research? Wouldn't it better to be for or against these ethical problems not because what certain folks think about it or whether they are hypocritical about it, but rather think about the issue based on, well the issues themselves? Like in case of abortion the right of the unborn vs that of the mother? Doesn't basing ones own value system based on whether you like what or how someone thinks about something seem a bit backwards?

Well, they have to take it into account for sure. But it is unclear to me whether weighing folks would help their business model. OldChemE has mentioned some aspects. Also if folks universally are getting heavier and obese folks are become the norm, then it might be that everyone just gets charged more. Or if there a niche developing, some airlines might cater specifically to the heavy/light segment, but only if the market is worth it.

I think one can summarize a lot of these things with a few quotes the first couple of pages. Essentially we need to understand the biology of transitioning better and find a more nuanced view on sex vs performance. There may be some disciplines where advantages are maintained, in which case transgender athletes are better suited to perform in the high performance class, which will be dominated by folks born male, in others that won't be the case. Chris Mosier, a transgender men won national championships in race walking, for example. There are different solutions and scaling for that. Golf was mentioned were handicaps can be introduced. This does not mean that easy solutions exist nor that it is unnecessary to figure out a system where biological women are not (further) disadvantage in earning potential, for example.

They likely introduced it because so many folks were overweight. But it also does show that no one really looked at it and considered it to be worthwhile to pursue.

Actually I think I read of a small airline had tried it out, but I am not sure if they are still doing that. Edit: Found it: it was Samoa Air who did it in 2013 but it went out of business 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoa_Air

Marxism at its core is not a ruling system, but philosophy encompassing social, political and economic thoughts. There are also theories of histories embedded in it, which are mostly discarded in the more postmodernist intellectual system, where folks became highly skeptical of grand narratives of modernism (which includes for example Marx' historic view or simplification of class struggles and his predictions- something that seems to confuse Peterson as he likes to conflate those things). In its modern form it is has become more of a framework to look at social aspects, typically in a capitalist society. Neo-Marxism for example clearly state that the freedom of the individual is a a paramount political value and also acknowledges that capitalism provides these liberties of multiple levels. However, it also explores where limits of autonomy might arise e.g. due to inequalities. As such it does not tend more to totalitarianism as, say capitalism. That seems to disparage a whole swath of scholars without really any argument. Of course there are idiots in each profession including in humanities (take Peterson for example...https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-intellectual-we-deserve), but using those to disparage the whole discipline is a bit silly. It depends on precisely what you are mean. In terms of impact on health? If so, these two are not interchangeable while being somewhat connected. First in capitalist societies we will always have wealth disparity. It is just how the system works. Associated with that, we have found in pretty much any country, including those with socialized health system that there those with lower education and lower income are disadvantaged in terms of health measures including life expectancy. In Canada, Statscan has for example data that shows that this gap has increased over time (1996-2011). So this definitely has an impact. However, when we intersect it with race, things are complicated. There are several levels where it impacts the outcome. On the highest, we can simply talk about bad medical science. Here, there are racial assumptions (e.g. assumptions that there are racial differences in creatinine levels, which eventually resulted in specifically black folks being undertreated for renal issues). These are not necessarily malevolent, but because minorities are considered different, limited studies (or even without studies) the medical community is more ready to believe and treat folks differently and even ineffectively. A very prominent example of medical make-believe is sodium glutamate, which got an incredibly bad rep without any medical data. It was enough that it was a staple in Asian, but not in Western cooking. Then there are biases on the treatment level- medical professionals at least used to treat foreigners often pretty badly. In part because of communication issues, but in part also because of personal biases. Some example of such mistreatments could be forced or coerced sterilization, but there are also many other examples (even from my family). Moving on from there, there are also structural issues. Often folks of a given race live in similar regions, and there you might simply not have access to good care, even if it was free. Then there are issues with access to affordable and healthy food, transportation and so on. Another factor that has been identified is that of environmental racism- areas inhabited by low income minorities are more likely to be close to environmental hazards (in the US these include superfund sites) and poor access to clean water and similar issues. There are overlaps with certain under-serviced communities, but minorities are typically overrepresented. Then, we have the issue of lived experiences. Many minorities face some level of societal discrimination. It is similar to what e.g. a white person of low status might encounter, when predominantly interaction with folks of higher status. The difference is that this discrimination also happens among social peers. This is not only theoretical, but can actually be measured. Studies looking at health biomarkers of stress show that e.g. black folks with the same status as white folks have higher stress markers which are associated with a range of long-term health issues. Conversely at least theoretically (as studies in that regard are still lacking) minorities who grew up in a privileged environment and have control over where they go to (e.g. ex-pats vs working class immigrants) are likely to be better off. This complexity has resulted in more efforts to look into intersectionality of these parameters, but these are relatively new efforts (as historically such work was underfunded) and require quite a bit of effort to in order to get the data from sufficiently large cohorts. So on the question whether racial disparity can be fixed entirely by giving everyone money (which, is kind of funny, because fixing wealth inequality is some original Marxist thinking...) is a bit tricky. It will alleviate some aspects of it, certainly. But studies still show that many minorities (especially black and Hispanic folks) are still disadvantaged at equal wealth (and with African Americans specifically the difference is really big) so the other factors mentioned above (plus potentially more yet undiscovered ones) are likely going to factor in. And this is only when considering health outcomes (and not e.g. why there are racial wealth inequalities). Many things we only start to understand now. The historic (one could potentially say "modernist") way to look at it was to blame the minorities. There is something wrong with them, that is why their outcome is different. This has been a pervasive narrative for a long time. In the 90s for example maybe a few dozen articles were published looking at racial inequality and quite a few of those were either historic studies or argued that racial inequalities are tied to cognitive capabilities. Since maybe 2010 the number of studies have increased and diversified, providing counter-narratives. Only after that, funding became more accessible for this area of research, though quite a few reviewers were still disinterested examining cohorts who are not considered to be representative (aka white). Given the recency of this information, it is not very surprising that society is struggling to catch up with these new narratives and also that most folks might (on either side of the issue) do not fully understand it yet. We have ignored the issue and now we are just barely intellectually catching up.

The Second Amendment is has also not been clear on whether it actually protects the right of citizens to bear arms. While it has been upheld as such, the decisions were split:

Yes obviously the athletes should be part of the conversation, no doubt about that. That does include transgender athletes. And rather unfortunately quite a few of the laws and rulings do not include consultations with said athletes which, as you said, is patronizing. Note that discussions on this board are purely speculative as AFAIK no one here has ruling power for any sports. It should also add that there is also the issue that sometimes a women's league is desired as women have less support in certain sports due to certain performance assumptions (which we discussed in context of jockeys). That is not what was proposed, from what I can see. I think that (or some variation of it) seems to be what most advocating to integrate transgender athletes are basically proposing. I should add that the differences should not be sexual, but performance traits relevant for a given sports that are likely to be sex-associated.

Ok, that confirms that you indeed do not get follow the gist of the argument. I am trying one more time and then I suggest that we give up on that as it does not seem to go anywhere. The argument of segregation is based on the fact that boys at some point become stronger than girls. Agreed? From there it follows that there is a physiological difference, and let us just call it strength to make it simple. After all if there is a difference, we should be able to measure by whatever means (otherwise there would be no difference). So let's say at girls have an average strength of 5 going up to 7, whereas boys have an average of 8 going up to 10. So let's say individuals with a strength of 8 or above are too dangerous to put together with folks with, say, more than two levels of difference. So let's say then that we put a threshold of 8 for the higher league. As no woman might reach it, it will be only men. However, men who do not reach that threshold (and therefore would be at similar risk of injury as women), would also not qualify. Conversely, transgender and potentially some other rare women who cross that threshold would then compete in that league, which would minimize risk of injury.

In other words, if we split the league according to the factors you describe we will automatically segregate folks which will, for the most part, follow sex lines. So what is the issue with that then?

The CDC has published a report in which they estimated the prevalence of long-COVID. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7121e1.htm?s_cid=mm7121e1_w I know students that got diabetic and/or had complications after getting infected with SARS-CoV-2. It really does some nasty things with the immune system.

I think you are missing the core idea behind the suggestions. If we put in a set of metrics (just a random and likely bad example: lift strength at a given body mass) and use that to define leagues, then likely we will create a group that will almost entirely male. However, it would give an in for transgender athletes to be sorted due to their physiology (e.g. if after transition they maintain a stronger physique, they would qualify for that league, if their physique is much closer the the female average, they would qualify for the other). Again, it is not about finding criteria that would equalize female and male performance but about checking whether we can find criteria that correlate with performance and not entirely based on genitals. Moreover, if we can define those criteria specific to a sports, we may have also a better idea where mixed competition makes the most sense, rather than our gut feeling at what women are better at and what men are better at.

And the CDC is not allowed to study or track gun violence. I always found that defenders of the second amendment use arguments of fear to justify having guns on coffee tables within easy reach (including for toddlers and dogs). In fact, I found it astonishing how fearful in general the US population seems to be and how violent the response to perceived threats are, compared to many other countries (including Canada) When radical religious fanatics killed folks, trillions of dollars were spent to curb their influence (whether successful or not). But kids getting randomly murdered is apparently just the price folks have to pay (for what?).

I'd say there is a reason why he did not go beyond the point of a PhD candidate.

First of all you would need to define what you refer to. Peterson use it as a catch-all phrase of things he dislikes socially, so it is not particularly helpful. Marxism in the modern academic sense (I believe, it is not my field so I might get it wrong) incorporate some of thoughts of Marx, especially the issues of capitalism and its impact on society. It still rather influential and is one of the reasons why there are no purely capitalist systems without social components. I doubt that Peterson means that thought. If you refer to what many folks using that term mean is research and investigation of things we believe to be true without much evidence and potentially undermining deep-held beliefs. You know, science. Unless you refer to what students are doing. This is called being young.

Peterson is a weasel and has cast himself in many, often opposing roles. And his understanding Nazism or Marxism is, let's say not necessarily mainstream. For example, he often uses the term cultural Marxism, which is actually an anti-semitic conspiracy theory. Wiki puts its root in the 90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory#Origins), but some academics have argued that it is just an updated version of the Judeobolshevik myth, which is at least 100 years old. But of course it is always impossible to ascertain whether Peterson just doesn't know something or knowingly pretends not to know. One of the few areas where he kind of makes a stance is subscribing to the idea that of a patriarchal world social order as the natural state of thing (where men bring and determine the order of things). Where the borders are blurry is because a lot of modern racist and fascist ideologies also have this strong man at the center of things type of ideology. So while there is not direct overlap, there is some adjacency that makes it quite appealing to the fringe. I think there is also some discussion to be had in terms of asking (or claiming) that some one is racist, sexist or any other short-hand label. It is quite possible to have ideological stances that would promote things like racial disparities without subscribing to any overtly specific racial theories. I think society is used to shut down the outliers (or hammering down the nail that sticks out, comes to mind). Historically this could be folks of with a given sexual orientation, non-mainstream ideologies, but also minorities who do not know their place. I therefore think we has society have never been good with dealing this types of nuances, but in the past it was easier to walk away or just to keep your mouth shut and no one will know. Or folks just accept it (e.g. they are one of the good guys) as positive personal interaction can override ideological issues. With interactions being much wider and increasingly impersonal that is no longer an option. The big issue that I see is that we then fail to educate each other of these nuances and discuss why certain things may or may not be harmful. In short, we do not have a pathway of change (or redemption). Going to Peterson, he might not be racist or at least from what little I have seen he does not openly promote clearly racist ideologies. However, he often rages against the idea of structural or systemic racism (without being specific enough to really nail down what he means with it, which is kind of his modus operandi). This leads (fake) academic credence to certain folks to discredit the quite well established understanding that there are structural elements in society that can lead to racialized outcomes. He then retreats to right-wing talking points that by talking about racism one only pits groups against each other. Implicitly the idea is that if we do not acknowledge the issue it somehow will vanish, which it clearly does not. Again, not saying that the ideology is racist, but it is valuable fuel for racists.

I would need to go through all of them again, but most of the time income as a measure is used. That being said, there are a few studies looking at wealth separate from income and overall it seems that income had a higher effect on improving health outcomes rather than incorporating wealth. An older study showed that African Americans had a 67% higher likelihood of dying than White Americans when accounting for age sex and marital status. Including wealth reduced it to 54% and introducing income (without wealth) the difference was "only" 43%. So while wealth and income attenuate issues, it clearly does not come close to closing it. The other observation in other studies is that whenever there is an economic downturn, black folks are more vulnerable to these effects. That is an interesting question, and there is no clear answer, mostly as universal health care system differ quite a lot. In Canada provincial differences are huge and depending on racial composition it could be difficult to compare national data. However, I do expect that with improved access much of the bigger issues we see in the US to be attenuated. A lot will also depend on the characteristics of the non-white population. In the US native black Americans fare much worse than recent black immigrants, for example. And in the UK and Canada, recent immigration of highly educated folks with high income would need to be separated out from these issues. That being said, there are still erroneous assumption and mistreatments in happening in universal health care system even fairly recently (forced or coerced sterilization, for example), but I would need to see what is out there in literature. I should also add that for about the last 10 years the medical community has become more aware of racial inequities and also has allowed more research in that area to happen. As such, practices are (slowly) changing relevant to racial disparities and I know that these conversations are also happening in Canada. I would need to take some time to find numbers but I will say that in order to uncover issues, it would be necessary to conduct research that actually tries to quantify inequities. As an anecdote, when I was doing more research looking at biomarkers of health, several of my proposals were shot down because the area I had collaborations with serviced more black folks. The reviewers contended that those were not representative of the majority white population and were therefore not of interest. I am moderately sure that today I had a much better show to have this cohort included. It depends on the definition of racism, and I think you might think of something else. Racism in this context is refers to a system that does something that somehow results in different outcomes, depending on your race. It may or may not have roots in some racists ideology and it really does not matter for this. Often, it is a mix. As I mentioned, wealth or income affect the outcome, but do not explain it sufficiently. Others include things like living in an area with little to know medical services or with underfunded schools or any of the dozen positive factors that even poor white folks have access to. The way to think about it is that we have a black box (the complete system that affects health) and if we put a white person in and a black person with same income wealth and so on, we get different outcomes. This is the issue with systemic racism. It is not about someone being shitty to someone or even someone thinks badly about a race. It is a system (such as a medical algorithm) that somehow and even inadvertently creates inequity, even if it was not designed to so. As such race-blind measures require at minimum non-race blind analyses to figure out whether they do create equity. Historically, we have been really bad at it. Of course, not political party in pretty much any country is free from blame. I am not sure why it seems to be a kind of revelation to you. The main difference I would say is that at least in recent times Dems try to say they are better than that whereas the GOP has weaponized racism to rally their base. So I think the way to look at it is that there is a weak hope that the Dems are willing to undo some of the harm they have done and the GOP is hellbent not to, as it seems to be their new identity fetish. Not sure, but the GOP has shown how powerful identity politics is. You can do whatever you want and lie the heck out of it and still escape repercussions. Meanwhile, Dems have to acknowledge that black folks exist lest they lose their elections.