CharonY

That is pretty much the point, actually. The models often do not take behavioral aspects into account. I was asked at various point to predict likely infection rates and I tend to point to things like large gatherings, mask mandates and similar factors rather than exclusively detection rates.

I was putting together some estimates on SARS-CoV-2 infections and was revisiting some older estimates. It is interesting to see that quite a few of them underestimated death rates in the US by a fair bit. Yeah, that is especially annoying as that level is very unlikely to prevent spread. The argument that now seems to go around that if there are still infections despite vaccinations, the latter obviously does not work and you should not get vaccinated in the first place (never mind that it cuts down fatalities).

Again, it depends on the type of study. Note that in many areas, including biology we often are only able to get correlation. But if they are strong, predictions based on them still yield reproducible results. Much in medicine relies on empirical data pointing to strong correlations whereas the mechanisms can be only poorly understood. For example, one might want to see whether certain steroids alter certain aspects of mood. While one might argue that mood scales are not perfect, they at least capture something. If then blood levels of certain steroids seem to correlate with these measures, it points that they are at least somehow connected. Then, a follow-up could conduct a double-blind placebo study where these steroids are provided in to modify blood levels and then inspect whether the mood changes in the predicted way. With sufficient rigour and large enough cohorts you can get reproducible results that way.

Well, there are a lot of interviews and documents available, too. Moreover, it was not that long ago. After all, the end of the war did not mean that suddenly folks changed their beliefs. There was a vested interest to downplay their ideology, of course. But with distance pretty much the same sentiment started boiling up again. A recent approach in Germany start by diminishing the role of Nazism in German history, which for me, being educated in a German public school, is insane to hear. The general motivations have barely changed throughout human history I would guess. Fear from the others, using that fear as an unifier, play to a "strong man" archetype, use the others as scapegoats for internal failures and so on. What basically has changed (to use a very broad brush) in history seems to be who we designate as the other. Depending on period and group it is often geography, then religion and after the age of enlightenment, race.

Probably. Generally speaking, reducing inflammatory responses (for the most part) seem to be either beneficial or at least not harmful in a rather wide range of conditions. But conversely, the effect size is often difficult to assess and hard to reproduce. Just as a side note, Ingenta is not a journal but a content provider. The title you listed is from the Journal "Current Medicinal Chemistry". The type of article is a so-called review, i.e. it tries to capture the current literature on a given topic (as opposed to presenting novel research). Those types of articles are often a good entry point into a topic, too.

Well, I suppose it depends. However, I have worked a bit with clinical psychologists and I have been reviewing related projects and while there are areas who have less rigour, at least you generally understand what they are getting at and provide evidence for their claims. But I would agree that the whole Jungian Archetype thingy looks a lot like metaphysical woo. It looks strange to me that this would be part of clinical psychology to begin with, if I am honest.

In the spirit of debate, my assessment is a bit different, though I think watching his videos is misleading. The reason is that he is intelligent and he performs well in debates. However, the content is often either inaccurate or depends on narratives rather than data. In other words, in many thinks (at least those he is most famous for) he appears to make a good argument, but if you dissect it, it is actually not based on research but more like anecdotal narratives. I think the reason why folks disagree on what he stands for, is simply because his arguments are often so vague that they are open to interpretation. Instead of laying down an argument which lead to a conclusion, he often veers of mid-argument so that you can take the first couple of sentence to argue for one thing and the last bit to argue the opposite. That is probably good sales and debated but really grates in sciences where it is important to lay out hypotheses that can then be investigated. For that reason, I have looked into the book when I had to (as there are quite a few students liking him and bringing him up in class in the weirdest contexts). But his written style is if anything even less clear. The parts where I actually can comment on, is when he dips into biology (the famous lobster example) and clearly shows that he is using a simple technique. Find a story that kind of sounds like what you want to talk about and then extrapolate the living sh- feces out of it. As even a semi-academic work I find it lacking, as it really tries more to appeal to evoke ideas and emotions rather than relying on research and data. If he was coming from a discipline with less rigour I would probably be more amendable to simply dismiss him. But strangely he seems to be very good in convicting folks that he actually knows what he is talking about, which is somewhat annoying.

Yes of course, and when I started to write it, I wanted to mention it, but then forgot. Fundamentally Nazi ideologies were very popular and not only was there overlap and exchange with what was considered scientific thoughts regarding the human race at that time, there was also quite some cross-fertilization. The California school of thought heavily promoted eugenics and saw Germany as a model in their implementation. It was something that was heavily propagated in the Ivy leagues even way before the rise of the NSDAP. Cold Spring Harbor hosted the Eugenics Record Office (starting 1910) which gathered biological and social information with the explicit idea to promote racial health and assist in targeted sterilization (and limiting immigration, they heavily lobbied for the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924). In other words, much of the rejection of Nazi ideology was borne out of political conflict with the Nazi regime rather than actual disagreement with the ideology. The movement lost popularity as the conflict with the Nazis ramped up. But if the US did not go to war with Germany it would be easy to see how this "science" could have taken a permanent hold. And to a certain degree, some ideas still exist. Some folks associate success with innate talent and link socio-economic status with basically genetic (and ultimately racial) traits. While in recent time that has been changing, that part has tangible influence in laws and law enforcement.

If anything, I feel that folks do not think about the implications of the regime sufficiently. I found that especially for Americans, the rise of the Nazis was something uniquely German and often the thought is that none of the Allies would be susceptible to any of the ideologies and vulnerabilities of the Weimar Republic. But then, there are obvious weaknesses in virtually all democratic systems, that sometimes only maintain democratic because most actors agreed not to abuse the system. There are a lot of things (internet propaganda amongst those) that have shown serious weaknesses. While the democracies are not breaking (yet) quite a few show creaks. Some younger democracies, such as Hungary and Poland are under serious internal attacks. I do not think that because something has worked worked even for a long while is guaranteed to work forever. Societies change and with it there might be new weaknesses to uncover. Folks in the US were seemingly shocked that Trump would be breaking conventions. But as it turned out, there was little to stop him. If the system can creak just by someone not following unwritten rules, it might be necessary to take a good look at what is written and maybe add some writing. It is not necessarily specific to Nazis either (though most cases appear to be right wing populist movements) but about rise of authoritarianism. And just to loop back to COVID-19, it also seems to be the case that these populist movements are also strongly downplaying the risks of the disease.

There is little to disagree here. In fact I would go further and say that one of the critical role of the government is to ensure public health. Similar to other large-scale needs of the population (e.g. infrastructure) it simply cannot be ensured without a central coordination. And obviously, we have seen that folks do not only think differently about things, but they do not even agree on the existence of clear and present dangers.

I suspect that is what it is. I have read that he was out of the media for a bit because he went to rehab and was undergoing some experimental treatment a while ago. I suspect interest in his persona went down for a bit and now he found something else to attach himself to.

It is outside my immediate expertise, but what little I know about the interplay of inflammation cascades, (auto-)immune responses and related conditions points to a hot mess of interplay that would make it very difficult to figure out what is cause, effect and/or just a side consequence. A part of the issue is that the interplay of the various signal cascades and how they together form certain phenotypes are, to my knowledge, only poorly understood and one can therefore not easily look at one end of the cascade and predict whether it was causing it or not. That being said, there are groups looking at a zonulin link an the zonulin antagonist AT-1001 has been in investigation as a potential treatment.

Not really surprising, but more details have emerged how the Trump administration actively inhibited efforts of the CDC to contain the pandemic. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/581322-documents-reveal-new-details-of-trump-political-interference-in-covid

So it appears Peterson has thoughts on vaccines, too. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/11/14/jordan_peterson_i_got_the_damn_vaccine_and_the_government_still_wont_leave_my_the_fck_alone_stupid_me.html There is a lot to unpack in terms what he fails to understand, but I think it is telling that he frames being vaccinated as a means to get left alone from (presumably) the government rather than a means to protect himself and folks around him. While this seems rather stupid and dangerous (as it might fuel vaccine reluctance), it is also possible that he is just too cowardly not to get vaccinated, but is unwilling not at least to try to pander to the anti-vax crowd, either. It is especially a start contrast to the stoic manly behaviour he preaches vs whining about the requirement to get tested.

Don't quote me, but I feel you. Even in the almost two decades in academia (in different capacities) the culture in labs has changed and what you can expect from new students (or even how they interact with you). Some is rather innocuous but requires some recalibration, which can get annoying until you are used to it. But cellphones, god, at least put them down when I am in front of you and directly talk to you!

Oh I see. I overlooked it as I was looking for the broader context and missed that side aspect. But I think iNow has addressed his position on that matter. Cheers.

I only quickly checked whether that was the case (as I have wasted a ton of time already), so I might have missed it. But from my reading iNow's claim was not that social backlashes are isolated events. Rather that he was looking for support of the claim that many folks have lost their jobs originally due to use of wrong pronouns (remember, that definitely was your claim). So at least so far getting fired does not appear to be happening. We had a separate discussion regarding social pressure but I feel that discussing that could require a new thread. After all, social pressures and shaming are not limited to pronoun use. In fact, I am fairly confident that it would be a miniscule element of what is going on. As such, it does not lend much to more OP-related discussion regarding whether Petersons assessment of the bill was accurate or not (as clearly an online mob is not a legal enforcement agency).

Well, going back to the actual point of the article, despite the rift between younger and older folks, overall there is actually little evidence that the perspectives on "woke" matters is noticeably different from the rest of the population. I.e. even if older folks are more concerned, about PC being overboard, the actual proportion of folks agreeing with what seems to be PC notions is actually low and with regard to language use, the popularity of these fall around 30-10%. In other words, folks, regardless whether being college graduates or not, are more concerned about things being too PC rather than agreeing with PC notions. Thus, the worry does not seem to align with the actual existing elements folks are worrying about. This, btw. is in line with what we have experienced in the other thread. Folks being worried about the use of alternative pronouns are far outweighed by actual experiences (in college) regarding requests for the use of these pronouns. College graduates agree more than those without a degree that cancel culture is a bit issue (more than 50% compared to ~40%). So at least this poll does throw a wrench in the notion that the university is overrun by indoctrinated "SJWs". But then if they are not it, who is?

I do not see a contradiction here. That could be a reason for the data that we see and is quintessentially why old folks complain about stuff. Things seem to be different than they are used to (whether it is the case or not) and it makes them angry.

In another thread there has been repeated claims about cancel culture, PC in colleges and I came across this article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/11/young-people-college-grads-wokeness/620674/ So at least some of worries about PC, cancel culture and so on is probably the old man (pardon, person) yelling at clouds issue.

No one (well, but you) said the bill was just a guideline. Rather, the area to which it applies to is not what Peterson and others imagined. This notion is supported by actual lawyers and legal scholars. And I am pretty sure that has also been said a few times here.

Thanks for clarifying, that is very much appreciated. I have the feeling that at least part of your objection (which I sympathize with, and correct me if I am misinterpreting it, or perhaps not express it well- coffee has worn off) is that the public discourse seems to be entirely confrontational, rather a discussion on the matter, and I do feel that a big part of it is because a significant proportion of these is done via twitter/facebook rather than in-person and in a better thought-out manner. I suspect that this is because we (as in the population) have become lazier (or perhaps were always that lazy, and just cared less). Ultimately, we have to live with the fact that many folks won't share all our values, even if we assume they do. In the past it was easy to ignore that, but with the oversharing we see nowadays it has become weird, to say the least. For example, you might have very friendly acquaintance that you share a beer with every now and then, and then during the pandemic you find out that they are conspiracy-driven anti-vaxxers. It creates a difficult situation to navigate, in my mind. Often, one can defuse or at least try to settle issues amicably, assuming we share at least a minimum of respect or trust (and in that regard I am not a fan of dogpiling on issues when folks involved do not at least put in a minimum of effort to understand the situation- you sometimes refer to that as virtue signaling, but I think that this behaviour is common to tons of situations, independent of common political axes). However, with the ongoing polarization of situations and an overarching attempt to frame things as either/or it has become tricky. But anyway, just my 2 cents on that matter.

What we should do is take a look whether that is actually the case. From what I have seen burnout and job-related issues are far more common among academics. That includes dealing with students whining about their grades. BTW, at no point did anyone said that one should be forced to agree. Again, it is just the freedom for either side to say what they think and the freedom of either side to call the other dumbass for that. And in academia specifically most countries have a tenure system, which is supposed to be a safeguard of academic freedom and which, as far as I can tell, has not been violated. So at least in that regard academics are protected. Specifically in this case I see it that the public has the right to object to her claims (whatever they are) and she has very much the right to ignore them and rely on being protected by the tenure system. However, the only protection against public opinion is really only not to become a public figure. I will acknowledge that this becoming more and more difficult these days. Nonetheless, there is a reason why some folks do not have a big social media presence and why some researchers working on potentially dicey projects in the past have not made it very public. Or to put it differently, if someone makes a statement that you personally agree with, do you want to force others not to object to it?

Well, in absolute terms that is certainly true, we just eventually fall apart. The moderate is just referring to risk associated with a certain BMI in a certain age bracket. I.e. relative to other 71 year-olds your BMI-related risk is still comparatively low (but as you mentioned, does not take other health markers into account). And I agree with both, the issue with stroke is that it is just so bloody difficult to predict.

There are age-adjusted charts and roughly I think in either case you fall in roughly around low- moderate risk bracket. Whether that actually means anything is a different matter, of course, it is just based on comparison with age-adjusted cohorts.