17/ No, not at all. I just hate listening to people spout politically correct nonsense that pleases the power structure, like the greengrocer in Havel's essay. https://twitter.com/lomas_scot/status/1135338315765301248?s=19 …
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28/ "you have nothing" No, I have a statement that attribute X causally leads to behavior Y with a very very high probability, and behavior Y leads to risk damage Z. https://twitter.com/TBDenham/status/1135581873961226240 …
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29/ You may choose to discount all attributes like this, but then you have to argue e.g. schizophrenia has fine outcomes, because it's merely CORRELATED with running into traffic, and does not biochemically CAUSE a shattered skull (the car does that!).
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30/ There are four ways that two things A and B can be correlated. A causes B. B causes A. Unknown factor C causes both A and B. Sheer coincidence. Given that homosexuality is correlated with HIV deaths, do you posit #4 "sheer coincidence" ?
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31/ Being a young male is, in fact, a cause of suicide. High testosterone increases incidents of violence, and suicide is a form of violence. That's not a correlation; it's causality. https://twitter.com/TBDenham/status/1135583789457915904 …
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32/ I think your argument is: "unless (a) there is a biochemical pathway from X to Y WITHOUT behavior as an intermediate step, and (b) the rate of incidence is exactly 100%, it can never be causation but must always be mere correlation"
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33/ Again, you're conflating two things. It doesn't matter if you can choose to be a young male or not; it's still a risk. Your insistence on moving topic back to "yes, but if they can't change ..." is very weird. You are conflating 2 distinct things. https://twitter.com/TBDenham/status/1135584891238735873 …
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34/ There are extra variables in EVERYTHING. Not every gay man gets HIV. Not every wingsuit person crashes into a mountain. Not every heroin injector has a bad outcome. Not every cloistered nun avoids getting murdered. https://twitter.com/TBDenham/status/1135585240427065344 …
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35/ It is tho. https://twitter.com/TBDenham/status/1135585477635977216 …
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36/ You're 2/3 correct, but you're saying it in a confused way. Have you ever done coding of data, or multivariate regressions? If p(x) is associated w gender & males are more likely to x, then we might code female as 0 and male as 1, and call 1 "risk" https://twitter.com/TBDenham/status/1135587716031115267 …
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37/ So if we're trying to look at dying by self inflicted gunshot, we'd say p(x) = 0.002 x g + 0.003 x h + ... where 0.002 is the risk coefficient associated with being male, and g is 0 for female and 1 for male and 0.003 is the risk coefficient for some other trait and h ...
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38/ So in this example, no, we would NOT say that being female is a risk factor. We would say that being male is a risk factor. So it's not, contrary to your framing, the case that EVERYTHING is a risk factor.
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39/ 1) I wasn't being snide. 2) the debate is not, and has never been (scroll up!) over whether gays can choose to be gay or not. The debate has only EVER been over whether homosexuality is a risk factor. https://twitter.com/TBDenham/status/1135603752637935618 …
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40/ Also, you casually say that "obesity is controllable". question for you: is the success rate of long term weight loss better or worse than that of "conversion therapy"?
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41/ Also, re "risk factors" and "but if someone is X and they can't change X..." We all understand that being Jewish is a risk factor for Tay Sachs disease, right? That being black is a risk factor for sickle cell anemia? That being Native American is a risk factor for alcoho-
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