check in

diff --git a/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md b/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md
index 906a854..614365d 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md
+++ b/content/drafts/the-causality-of-ethnic-differences-in-covid-19-outcomes-is-an-open-empirical-question.md
@@ -8,13 +8,12 @@ The ongoing pandemic which continues to disrupt—and take—lives across Societ
 
 > There's nothing about being Black, in and of itself, that makes people more biologically susceptible to Covid-19. Instead, the disproportionate impact is due to an accumulation of factors from centuries of systemic racism.
 
-But how does Samuel _know_ this? I agree that an accumulation of factors from centuries of systemic racism is almost certainly going to be a significant _part_ the explanation for ethnic differences. But the claim that "there's _nothing_ about being Black, in and of itself" (emphasis mine) affecting susceptibility to this disease is a _much_ stronger assertion, one that I think has a substantial probability of being false, if it turns out that one of the various minor ways in which humans vary by genetic ancestry happens to be relevant to the progression of this particular disease.
+But how does Samuel _know_ this? I agree that an accumulation of factors from centuries of systemic racism is almost certainly going to be a significant _part_ the explanation for the observed differences. But the claim that "there's _nothing_ about being Black, in and of itself" (emphasis mine) affecting susceptibility to this disease is a _much_ stronger assertion, one that I think has a substantial probability of being false, if it turns out that one of the various minor ways in which humans vary by genetic ancestry happens to be relevant to the progression of this particular disease.
 
-I remember back in February-ish there was a claim being floated around that Asians might be more susceptible to COVID-19 due to differences in [angiotensin-converting enzyme 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiotensin-converting_enzyme_2) activity. So, I don't think that panned out, and I'm sure many people with domain expertise who [actually read the paper](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1.full) called it. (Seriously, _n_=8?!) But the claim wasn't a priori _absurd_—genetic differences in disease risk are a thing that happens sometimes!
-
-In the case of people of African descent, I think we _do_ have a specific candidate for a biological difference affecting COVID-19 outcomes.
+In the case of people of African descent, I think we _do_ have a specific candidate for a biological difference affecting COVID-19 outcomes. A randomized clinical trial found that 
 
 
+https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764
 
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
@@ -23,6 +22,8 @@ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_graph
 
+Jablonski–Chaplin
+
 (I ordinary would have written _racialism_ here—)
 
 

diff --git a/notes/epigraph_quotes.md b/notes/epigraph_quotes.md
index b7594a1..ddf300e 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/epigraph_quotes.md
+++ b/notes/epigraph_quotes.md
@@ -349,3 +349,7 @@ https://xkcd.com/1942/
 > STEVEN: That's _exactly_ what a test is!
 >
 > —_Steven Universe_, "The Test"
+
+> He shrugged apologetically. "The question really has no meaning. _Why_ anything? The laws of physics and the boundary conditions of space-time. What more can I say?"
+>
+> —"Eugene" by Greg Egan

diff --git a/notes/notes.txt b/notes/notes.txt
index bdea668..05a3528 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/notes.txt
+++ b/notes/notes.txt
@@ -2058,3 +2058,24 @@ https://ideasanddata.wordpress.com/2020/09/30/on-proposed-environmental-causes-o
 https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/09/22/men-of-character-on-the-rise-cold-numbers-fading/
 
 https://gript.ie/female-guards-raped-in-prison-by-trans-inmates-says-former-minister/
+
+https://uncommongroundmedia.com/the-four-horsemen-of-the-gender-critical-apocalypse/
+
+https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/7333.html "Markets launder history"—the analogy to trans history-rewriting makes me way more sympathetic to leftists
+
+https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/j165sq/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_september_28/g7iydmv/
+> But your family, clan, kin are naturally biased in your favor by simple oxytocin-driven mechanics of attachment, and family provides you with more support as it grows; and men have been helplessly biased in favor of their women since time immemorial (but you can think no farther than Esther). Your "identity", on the other hand, owes you nothing: instead, you owe everything to it, as it is in the power of your identity's political representatives to paint you a champion or a traitor, and you become more replaceable the bigger your alliance grows. It is a much less robust, much more adversarial and suspicious and cold, much less humane way to run a society
+
+digraph G {
+"systemic racism"->culture;
+"systemic racism"->"COVID risk";
+culture->"COVID risk";
+culture->"vitamin D";
+genetics->culture;
+genetics->"COVID risk";
+genetics->"skin color";
+genetics->"vitamin D";
+"skin color"->"vitamin D";
+"vitamin D"->"COVID risk";
+}
+

diff --git a/notes/post_ideas.txt b/notes/post_ideas.txt
index edb2631..1ecd564 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/post_ideas.txt
+++ b/notes/post_ideas.txt
@@ -10,14 +10,14 @@ Marketing channels—
 _ I think I do want to ping V.K.?
 _ comment to V."C."S. on "Maybe Lying Can't Exist?!"
 _ comment on W.D. on "Maybe Lying Doesn't Exist"
-_ epilogue email to S.A.
+_ "epilogue, thank you, theory of C., goodbye, &c." email to S.A.
 _ explain "algorthimic" playing dumb to S.A.
 _ comment to G.J.M.??
 _ message to P."O".L.??
 _ Twitter
 _ Reddit submissions: /r/philosophy and /r/TheMotte 
 _ S. Finley share
-_ tag "Motivation and Political Context" & "The SF Bay Area" with "Criticisms of the Rationalist Movement"
+_ tag "Motivation and Political Context": "The SF Bay Area", "Criticisms of the Rationalist Movement", "Postmortems & Retrospectives"
 
 _ Persongen/univariate fallacy/typical set
 _ reply on psych prison https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/io1iih/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_september_07/g4uvgb4/?context=3
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ _ Elision _vs_. Choice (working title)
 _ Phenotypic Identity and Memetic Capture
 _ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data prior: https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2019/07/19/how-many-trans-folk-are-there-really/ https://sillyolme.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/getting-lost-in-the-crowd/
 _ "More Than We Can Say": High-Dimensional Social Science and the Conjunction of Small Effect Sizes
+_ Comment on "Towards decolonising computational sciences" https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.14258
 
 I should email caption bliggers and ask if they know about AGP
 https://ericatgswapcaps.blogspot.com/2020/03/swap-clinic-testimonial-i-can-work-with.html

diff --git a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
index 2d91ad0..c61a772 100644 (file)
--- a/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
+++ b/notes/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-notes.md
@@ -52,4 +52,10 @@ changing emotions/accent fantasies: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/wAW4ENCSE
 
 [TODO: sentence about how "gender identity" was offensive to me, link to "A Beacon"]
 
-heresy
\ No newline at end of file
+heresy
+
+learned things in the wrong order
+
+Anyway, I kind of spent the next ten years reading everything I could about sex and gender and transgender and feminism and evopsych and doing various things with my social presentation—sometimes things I regretted and reverted after a lot of pain—to try to seem not-masculine, all the while assuming that my gender problems were clearly not the same thing as the gender problems of actual trans women, because the standard narrative is that that's about gender identity being discordant from sex assigned at birth, which was clearly not what my thing was. I thought, essentially, "Gee, it's too bad this beautiful word which so perfectly describes the beautiful feeling at the center of my life happened to be coined in the context of this controversial theory about the etiology of MtF transsexualism which is probably false because everyone says it's obviously false."
+
+