Links - 9th September 2019 (1)

Alcohol abstinence policy for liver transplants discriminatory, Indigenous advocates say - "Advocates say a policy that requires potential organ transplant recipients to abstain from alcohol for six months is unfair towards Indigenous people and people with alcohol use disorder.David Dennis says the rule disproportionately affects Indigenous people and has teamed with the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) to take his fight to the BC Human Rights Tribunal... Dr. Atul Humar, director of transplantation at the University Health Network in Toronto, said one of the reasons for the widely-applied policy is that there is research suggesting some alcoholics who receive transplants will resume drinking, causing their new organ to fail"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 183 - L. A. Paul on "Transformative Experiences" - "'You're faced with a choice where you could become a vampire, but as a mere human, you just can't understand what it's like to become a vampire, and so if you become a vampire that's gonna change the way that you understand reality. And your relationship to reality's gonna change how you experience the world. It's also gonna change you personally.So that's a good example I think about a fictional case of, if you were thinking about undergoing a massive transformation. Real life cases, I think involve having a woman's first child'
'Later in the book you introduce the idea of becoming a parent, and after introducing it you say, "And I should point out this has some parallels to the choice of whether or not to become a vampire."'...
'People who have been through the transformative experience wax rhapsodic about it and say they're so glad they did it, but to you it seems like not clearly a good experience. But they have been through it, and they say that it's great and you just can't understand.It's a little less interesting I guess when the person says, "You can't understand how terrible this was. You just have no way of imagining how terrible this is." And I'm like, "Great, I will take your word for it and not undergo that transformative experience."'
'With the case of going to battle it's interesting because people will say, "Oh yeah, it's terrible to be in battle," but then they'll also tell you things like, "I was forged in that battle," and that they're stronger now as a result, or their positive characteristics have come out of it.So sometimes you get this kind of interesting, weird, "Oh it was terrible, but I'm glad that I went through it." Or, "I wouldn't be the person I am now if I hadn't."'"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 177 - Dylan Matthews on "The science and ethics of kidney donation" - "I did read about one study... World War II soldiers who had sustained an injury to one of their kidneys. You could consider that random… Their long term outcomes, I think they were just looking at life expectancy actually, were comparable to people who had not gotten injured in one kidney. That was interesting."

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 185 - Hans Noel on "The role of ideology in politics" - "Those Southerners that were in the Democratic party weren't just pro segregation, they're also conservative on a lot of other things, actually. They're the most intense in fighting Communism and concerned about the threat of Communism. They're probably also the most vocal and concerned about changes in gender relations and evolution of woman's movement. The woman's movement had been very much at home in the Republican party for a long time, and the Southern Democrats were the opposite of that.That group, now they were not all of the Democratic party, but a big part of the Democratic party ... Basically, you had this agreement in the Democratic party, you have to set aside disagreements and focus on things you can get along with. The Democratic party in the 1950s said, "Okay. In exchange for labor movement progress," that a lot Southern conservatives were skeptical of, "in exchange for that, we will hold back on any progress or change on civil rights."So, the North got labor and the South got continued segregation. That was a pretty stable coalition that existed in the United States for a good chunk of time"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 187 - Jason Weeden on "Do people vote based on self-interest?" - "'The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind, which is that when voters make choices about which politicians to vote for, or which policies they support, they are significantly motivated by their own self-interest. Maybe not 100%, but a lot more than we like to think -- and also a lot more than political scientists, or a lot of political scientists, think voters are.'...
'People who spend a lot of time sexually active but not wanting to have a lot of kids. It turns out those people are especially pro-choice. We think that's a kind of self-interest even though it doesn't relate to getting any money in the short term. It relates more to seeking advantages for your own lifestyle.'...
Normally you'd think about abortion rights as, "Well, it's this philosophical conflict about when life begins."We would say, "No. Deep down, it's really about regulating promiscuity." That's why, for example, with abortion rights, you see things like, in surveys you ask people, "Should a woman be able to get an abortion if she's raped, or if the child has a developmental problem?" A lot of people say yes, including a lot of people who think of themselves as pro life.Then you ask things like, Well, what if she's just single and doesn't want to marry the man? “No. No, no, no. She shouldn't be able to get an abortion then.”This is the kind of thing that we think gives evidence that abortion, the deep conflict of abortion is not about when life begins. The deep conflict about abortion is about regulating lifestyles...
I'm not sure a priori that it would have been obvious to me to expect that ring bearers -- people with this pattern, of having fewer sexual partners and having children earlier -- to expect them to be the ones voting in favor of abortion restrictions. As opposed to, say, men being more likely to vote in favor of abortion restrictions and women to be more likely to oppose abortion restrictions. To be in favor of, you know, pro choice policies."
This would explain why women are more anti-abortion than men - they are more against promiscuity

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 180 - David Roodman on "The Worm Wars" - "That's a message that's important that often gets lost in the, overall very good and useful, message that skeptics and science communicators and statistics promoters like me promote. Which is that these are all really important elements of rigor, and you should be less trusting of a study if it didn't use blinding or randomization, et cetera. But the takeaway that people often get from that is, "This is my excuse to ignore anything that doesn't meet every single one of these standards."Honestly, even for the gold standard, randomized, controlled, blinded, long term study in the field, there's always problems that you're gonna be able to find"
The perfect is the enemy of the good. An imperfect study is better than none - and no study is perfect

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 181 - William MacAskill on "Moral Uncertainty" - "Despite current voting systems, there's this huge amount of research that's been done on different voting systems, their mathematical properties, and which are more and less desirable.All of the ones you have heard of through voting systems that are actually used are among the worst in terms of their mathematical properties. “First past the post” is about as bad a voting system as you can get.A single transferrable vote, or the alternative vote, which is what Australia uses, is probably second-worst out of the commonly discussed ones. It's actually so bad that, in some circumstances ... If I was going to vote for, let's use the US example ... if I was initially planning to vote Republican and put Democrat second, and then I changed my mind, and switched from Democrats second to Democrats first -- that can cause the Democrats to lose. It violates a property called monotonicity, where having one person increase their level of preferredness for a candidate can make that candidate do worse."

Best thing – and the worst – about each state in the US - "Maine
Best: Lowest violent crime rate
Maine ranks as the safest state in the country, as there were just 124 violent crimes reported for every 100,000 residents -- less than a third of the national rate.
Worst: Least diverse
According to the latest Census data, 94.4 percent of Maine's population is white, beating out nearby Vermont and New Hampshire as the least diverse states...
The typical New York resident who commutes to work every day spends 34 minutes in their vehicles, or in public transit, the longest commute of any state...
Oregon
Best: Most environmentally friendly
According to a 24/7 Wall St. index, Oregon ranks as the most environmentally friendly in the country.
Worst: Homelessness is a serious problem
Soaring rents have contributed to Oregon's homelessness problem. In some counties, homelessness has risen by more than 100 percent...
Vermont
Best: Most doctors per capita
There are 112 primary care physicians per capita in Vermont, the most of any state in the U.S.
Worst: Opioid epidemic
In 2014, the opioid crisis became so bad in Vermont that the state declared an emergency...
West Virginia
Best: Fewest excessive drinkers
While some parts of West Virginia face addiction problems, that does not extend to alcohol. According to the latest CDC figures, less than 12% of state adults drink to excess, which is the lowest share among states.
Worst: Most smokers
Almost one in four West Virginian adults smoke, the highest share in the country."
34 minutes is a long commute, apparently

Political Shitposting & Senseless Economics - Posts - "When will it end?"
"Lilly Diabetes has pulled its sponsorship of Conor Daly's No. 6 car in the NASCAR Xfinity race at Road America, citing a racially insensitive remark made by the driver’s father in the 1980s that surfaced this week."
"The dude wasn’t even born yet."
Some liberals claim political correctness is just not being an asshole. Apparently you are responsible for things that happened before your were born, or you are an asshole

Special Episode 2: A Short History of Sexuality in Singapore - "Because many homosexual and trans people live in a closeted social environment. And so they have to rely on certain figures of speech or body gestures as a kind of sign language as well to communicate their romantic or social interest to each other to one another. So in essence, we, we can, to a certain extent, classify homosexual and trans people on par with people of disability. They are disabled by the social norms that deny their ability to express themselves in terms of thinking, talking or behaving... For the people who identify or are label;ed as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans, or LGBT in short, there are actually another five Cs that we can see that actually concern their everyday life… coming out, capitalism, censorship, cruising and condoms. These are the five C's...
'You're saying this coming out is not just for homosexual people. But for example, for myself as a teenager when I first realized, okay, I like girls that's also a process of coming out'...
This was also a time when the region itself, the Southeast Asian region was was also in in a unstable political climate, because we can see that in Indonesia there was the Suharto's regime was rather authoritarian on, over in Indonesia. On the other hand in Malaysia they were trying to form an ethno national conservative government for the UMNO so Singapore's decision or the PAP government during that time had to be very strategic in in ensuring that the way they manage homosexual and trans people are equally standardize with accord to how the moral compass of our neighbours"
The joys of victim culture

Historian Adrian Tinniswood on Britain's Royals | History Extra Podcast - History Extra - "The Tudor kings, their beds would be made every evening. You know, we see a four poster bed in one of the royal palaces now and think, oh, you know, that's just how it was like, it wasn't. The beds were stripped every day, they were made up every night. And as they were made up, they were made up with an enormous amount of ritual, you know, where an usher’s hands touched the royal sheet, they would then kiss their hands and genuflect because this was a sacred thing. So that sort of ritual. And there's a reason for the ritual... to separate us from them. You know, a king or a queen is not just like us, they are special. And if they were just like us, then what will be the point? Even today it’s true. You know, you can aspire to be a prime minister. You can't aspire be a king or a queen, you know, they're different. And there is a mystical quality still, I think. I mean it comes out in the coronation service where the sovereign is anointed, you know, and it's a mystical union of, of a human being with God...
In the Middle Ages, they didn't tend to come in for criticism, because if you criticized the monarch, you get your head chopped off... George the Fourth was constantly criticized for his bad behavior. And interestingly, Victoria was constantly criticized for her spending. The criticism usually is not directly of the monarch, it's of his or her advisors. It says, you know, they’re being, rather like Charles the First was never at fault. It was always his advisors’, Parliament's…
The Palace of Whitehall, which until 1698, is you know, from Tudor times through is the primary royal residence, it wasn't patrolled. People wandered in and out. I mean, there were kind of brothels in corners, there were beggars, there were shops. There were barber shops and milleners [sp?] and things just set up stations all over the place. And people came and went... In theory, you've got a strict, most monarchs had strict household regulations about who was entitled to eat in the palace, about who was entitled to candles, who was entitled to, kind of, you know, clothing allowances. And that was all set down. And the porters had lists of who was allowed in and who wasn't. And it just didn't work. A senior courtier would have servants. His servants would have servants, they would have mates, you know, come round, come round for tea kind of thing. And there was never any real control. You've constantly got monarchs and their advisors and their Lord stewards usually who are the people who are doing the books. You've got monarchs saying, you know, I've got a household of 1,500, I'm feeding 3,000 people. How is that? And nobody could say... people nicked the pewter. You know, they they had a right to eat in the palace. But they didn't tend to eat in the palace, they would go and get their dinner, and take it away with them. And they wouldn't bring the plates back. And it would cost a fortune... that chaos, that barely controlled chaos is a theme right through certainly in the 19th century, I think...
In order for a regent to act in place of the king, the king has to sign the Regency bill. But if the king isn't capable, if he isn’t legally responsible, how can he sign an act allowing somebody else to take over? And it was a tremendous constitutional problem in the late 18th century."