Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to human geneticist Cesar Fortes-Lima about his paper from earlier this year, Population history and admixture of the Fulani people from the Sahel. Fortes-Lima has a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology, and his primary research areas include African genetic diversity, the African diaspora, the transatlantic slave trade, demographic inference, admixture dynamics and mass migrations. Formerly a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Human Evolution at Uppsala University, Forest-Lima is now an instructor in genetic medicine at the Johns Hopkins University. He is also a returning guest to the podcast, having earlier come on to discuss his paper The genetic legacy of the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples in Africa.

Razib and Fortes-Lima first contextualize who the Fulani are in the West African socio-historical context, in particular, their role as transmitters of Islam across the Sahel. They also discuss the importance of having numerous Fulani subpopulations in the publication; earlier work had generalized about the Fulani from a small number of samples from a single tribe. Fortes-Lima highlights the primary finding, in particular, that the Fulani seem to have what we now call "Ancient North African" (ANA) ancestry. That people was related to, but not descended from, the "out of Africa" population which gave rise to Eurasians. They also explore the role of natural selection in allowing the Fulani to subsist on a diet high in milk, and how the Fulani lactase persistence mutation is exact same with Eurasians rather than East Africans. Fortest-Lima also reviews some of the earlier 20th-century anthropological speculations about the origins of the Fulani, and what his results show about their affinities (or lack thereof) to groups in West Asia and the Maghreb.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Jack Despain Zhou, executive director of the Center for Educational Progress (CEP). Despain Zhou is a graduate of Western Governors University, and is completing his J.D. at Temple University. A former cryptographic analyst for the US Air Force, Despain Zhou is better known as a former producer for Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog at Blocked and Reported under the pseudonym Tracie Woodgrains.

Despain Zhou's mission with CEP is to push for individualized learning programs "where every student can advance as far and as fast as their curiosity and determination will take them." In short, not only does CEP support tracking, but it believes that more individualized learning environments are what allow students to flourish. Despain Zhou talks about how his own life informed his interest in this topic, going from a precocious and curious toddler to a sullen elementary school student. He explained to his mother at the time how the boring, regimented one-size-fits-all mentality of the public school system removed all his passion for learning. Despain Zhou talks about how the levelling and equity oriented philosophy of the modern educational establishment is extremely unpopular, but has nevertheless taken root in ed schools and therefore has advocates among both teachers and administrators. He makes the case that CEP's advocacy is needed given the educational theorists' intense and passionate fixation on keeping students of all talents at the same level; this is a case where Despain Zhou argues common sense is far superior to esoteric research for which there is truly no robust evidence.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, in the wake of Elon Musk's xAI Grok chatbot turning anti-Semitic following a recent update, Razib catches up with Nikolai Yakovenko about the state of AI in the summer of 2025. Nearly three years after their first conversations on the topic, the catch up, covering ChatGPT's release and the anticipation of massive macroeconomic transformations driven by automation of knowledge-work. Yakovenko is a former professional poker player and research scientist at Google, Twitter (now X) and Nvidia (now the first $4 trillion company). With more than a decade on the leading edge computer science, Yakovenko has been at the forefront of the large-language-model revolution that was a necessary precursor to the rise of companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity, as well as hundreds of smaller startups. Currently, he is the CEO of DeepNewz, an AI-driven news startup that leverages the latest models to retrieve the ground-truth on news-stories. Disclosure: Razib actively uses and recommends the service and is an advisor to the company.

Razib and Yakovenko first tackle why Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is offering individual pay packages north of $200 million, poaching some of OpenAI's top individual contributors. Yakovenko observes that it seems Meta is giving up on its open-source Llama project, their competitor to the models that underpin OpenAI and ChatGPT (he also comments that it seems that engineers at xAI are disappointed in the latest version of Grok). Overall, though the pay-packages of AI engineers and researchers are high; there is now a big shakeout as massive companies with the money and engineering researchers pull away from their competitors. Additionally, in terms of cutting-edge models, the US and China are the only two international players (Yakovenko notes parenthetically that Chinese engineers are also the primary labor base of American AI firms). They also discuss how it is notable that almost three years after the beginning of the current booming repeated hype-cycles of artificial intelligence began to crest, we are still no closer to "artificial general intelligence" and the "intelligence super-explosion" that Ray Kurzweil has been predicting for generations. AI is partially behind the rise of companies like Waymo that are on the verge of transforming the economy, but overall, even though AI is still casting around for its killer app, big-tech has fully bought in and believes that the next decade will determine who wins the future.

Today on Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to David van Ofwegen, a philosophy teacher based in Thailand. Razib and Ofwegen first met by chance while he was traveling in the US in 2003. A Dutch national, educated at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and then the University of Hawaii, specializing in the philosophical underpinnings of Social Darwinism, Ofwegen has been based in Thailand for the last 15 years.

Razib and Ofwegen's initial connection was over their shared interest in the turmoil in Europe post-9/11 and the 2002 assassination of the right-wing Dutch politician Pim Fortyun. They discuss what has happened in the Netherlands over the last generation, with both immigrant assimilation into Dutch society, and the assimilation of Dutch society to immigrants. Ofwegen reflects on returning to a homeland where he encounters bartenders who don't speak Dutch, only English, and youth culture where white Dutch affect the accents of Moroccan immigrants. He also observes that in his hometown of the Hague, it is as common to hear Arabic or Turkish on the streets as Dutch. This is in contrast with the countryside outside of the large cities, which remain overwhelmingly white and native-born. Ofwegen also notes that global multiculturalism has had an impact on the practice of some Dutch customs, in particular the traditions surrounding Black Pete (Zwarte Piet), a character in Dutch Christmas celebrations that is wildly offensive to American sensibilities, given the longtime convention of blackface. Ofwegen argues that the Netherlands is becoming less Dutch and more global, homogenizing into a node in the pan-American cultural sphere.

They also discuss the contrasts between Thailand and the Netherlands, and what it is like living outside the developed world. Though in nominal terms the GDP per capita of Thailand is about 10% of that of the Netherlands, Ofwegen does not feel that his adopted homeland is particularly underdeveloped or behind the times. Bangkok in particular is fully in the modern world, with all the comforts and technologies we avail ourselves of in the West. Ofwegen also observes that while the poor in the West live in deprived ghettos, in Thailand, the poor are usually rural peasants who own their own property. Nevertheless, he is clearly a guest. Though married to a Thai native and with a child who has Thai citizenship, he is legally an expatriate of the Netherlands. He notes that the same is true of Thailand's large Burmese and Cambodian populations. The Thai have a very clear idea of their nation and its identity, in contrast to the more globalized vision common among Western elites.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to returning guest Claire Lehmann. Lehmann has an undergraduate degrees in psychology and English from the University of Adelaide. She was enrolled in a graduate program in psychology, but left it after becoming disillusioned with moral relativism, she went on to found the online magazine Quillette to reflect a more traditionally pro-reason and pro-evidence-based worldview. Within three years Lehmann was profiled in 2018 in The New York Times as a major figure within the nascent "intellectual dark web."

Razib and Claire discuss the evolution and current state of Quillette, a publication founded in 2015 to counter anti-enlightenment thinking, and later a platform for many thinkers associated with the intellectual dark web. Initially anti-left and anti-post-modernist, it later became known for its stance against cancel culture and woke ideologies, albeit without ever explicitly aligning with the American right. Lehmann clarifies her publication's classically liberal stance. They also touch on the evolution and disintegration of the intellectual dark web, the corrosive impact of woke culture on academia over the last decade, and the likely future role of AI in disrupting traditional education.

Lehmann also discusses the changing landscape of social media and public discourse, particularly the impact of Elon Musk's interventions at Twitter over the last few years. They also explore the "woke right" debate, alluding to the authoritarian tendencies emerging among ascendant conservatives, citing discussions of the topic by former Quillette contributor and editor Colin Wright and journalist Jesse Singal. Razib asks about the future of Quillette, and Lehmann talks about its new focus on long-form articles on culture, science and the arts, and addresses the magazine's pro-Israel stance, which has polarized some American readers that don't understand why an Australia-based publication should take a strong pro-Zionist stance.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to philosopher of science Nathan Cofnas, whose specialty is biology and ethics. An American, Cofnas is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Columbia University, and his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford. His Substack is here.

First, they discuss Kevin MacDonald's theory of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy, which is outlined in his three-book series, A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements. Cofnas reviews his own critiques of MacDonald's theory, and the reception they received professionally and from MacDonald's large cohort of online fans. He also discusses the impossibility in obtaining a hearing for MacDonald's response to Cofnas' arguments in academia given anxieties today about so much as "platforming" offensive ideas. Razib brings up the evolutionary biological aspects of MacDonald's theory, and why there are reasons to be skeptical due to the unrealistic parameters of mathematical models required by MacDonald's theories.

They then turn to attempts to cancel Cofnas over his hereditarian views. Cofnas articulates his perspective that actually a woke-Left egalitarian perspective is probably the most rational position if you utterly reject hereditarianism, especially as regards group differences. Cofnas believes conservative arguments about the importance of culture in shaping outcomes have run their course. Finally, Razib presses Cofnas on the actual career prospects for a heterodox academic in the 21st century, and possible alternate routes to become a public intellectual.

Today Razib talks to repeat guest Steve Hsu about China, a topic with so many currently relevant dimensions gIven the PRC's clear emergence as an economic, military and political rival to the US. Hsu is a Caltech‑trained theoretical physicist who migrated from black holes to big data, co‑invented privacy tech at SafeWeb, helped found the biotech company Genomic Prediction, all while remaining a prominent public voice on genetics, intelligence and the future of human enhancement. He is also a professor of physics at Michigan State, and from 2012-2020 was vice president for research and graduate studies there.

Razib and Hsu discuss whether China is innovating and how meanwhile American regulation and culture are stifling its domestic creativity. A proud Iowan, Hsu rebuts the notion that he is pro-China, seeing himself simply as a realist convinced that it is important to face the PRC head on and assess its strengths candidly. He and Razib talk about China's demographic headwinds. Hsu points out the reality of demographic inertia. The generation already born in the 21st century is an abundant young workforce who will power the nation's rise for the next 30-40 years; that disastrously plummeting fertility making headlines today is a concern post-dated for at least a generation down the road. They also discuss the quality of Chinese higher education, and the reality that the population today is far more educated than it was 25 years ago. Hsu also talks about possible cultural and biobehavioral differences between East Asians and Europeans, and addresses why South Asians seem to be better adapted to succeed in American corporate culture.

Today Razib talks to David Gress, a Danish historian. The son of an American literary scholar and a Danish writer, he grew up in Denmark, read Classics at Cambridge, and then earned a Ph.D. in medieval history from Bryn Mawr College in the US in 1981. During a fellowship form 1982-1992 at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, he published on Cold‑War strategy, German political culture, and Nordic security. He has been a visiting fellow and lecturer at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, fellow at the Danish Institute of International Affairs, an assistant professor of Classics at Aarhus University, and professor of the history of civilization at Boston University. He co‑directed the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and remains a senior fellow of the Danish free‑market think tank CEPOS while writing a regular column for Jyllands‑Posten. His breakthrough book, From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents (1998), argues that Western success sprang from a hard‑edged fusion of Roman order, Germanic liberty, Christian morality, and Smithian economics, rather than being a single disgraceful arc from Greco‑Roman‐paganism to secular Enlightenment that bypassed the Middle Ages.

Razib asks Gress how he would have written Plato to NATO today, more than 25 years later, and he says he would have emphasized Christianity's role in creating a unified Western culture out of Greco-Roman and Germanic diversity more. Gress also reiterates that he does not deny the Greek foundation of Western Civilization, but rather, his work was a corrective to a very thin and excessively motivated and partisan narrative that stripped out vast periods of European history. They also discuss Gress' own own peculiar identity, the son of an American, born to a Danish mother, raised in Denmark who converted to Catholicism as an adult, and how that all fits into a broader European identity. They also discuss the impact of mass immigration on the national identities of Europe in the last generation, and Gress' opinions as to the European future. Razib also asks Gress about the role that evolutionary ideas may have in shaping human history, and how his own views may have changed since From Plato to NATO. They also discuss when it is plausible to say that the West was a coherent idea, and whether the Protestant Reformation was the beginning of the end for the unitary civilization that was Latin Christendom.

On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib welcomes back Ethan Strauss, a writer who has covered sports and culture for the past decade, including in the book The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty. More recently his writing is to be found at his Substack, House of Strauss, which is notable for offering a candid take on the cross-pollination between broader culture and athletics, notably in the piece Nike's End of Men: Why Nike no longer wants us to Be Like Mike.

Strauss and Razib first discuss professional sports and the different representation of various nationalities. Strauss recounts the generational attempt by the NBA to get Chinese representation to gin up a lucrative rivalry, and how it sputtered due to the reality that 1.4 billion Han Chinese seem to have less basketball talent than small nations like Croatia. Razib also asks about how and why baseball is popular in parts of Latin America and East Asia, and why there are so many more Dominicans in MLB than Mexicans. Strauss says differences between populations are so obvious in sports there's no need for complex social explanations.

Then they explore the role of DEI in professional sports, and especially the NBA, and how it might be impacting decisions in the league. They recall the years around 2020, when a drive for minority representation, and in particular of blacks, was prevalent across the corporate world, and how thatimpacted professional sports. Strauss then offers his theory for why the Dallas Mavericks inexplicably traded away a potentially generational talent, Luka Dončić, and Mark Cuban's role in the choice. Finally, he highlights the racism that Jeremy Lin, one of the few Asian American stars in the 2010's, faced from fellow players.

Today Razib talks to Manvir Singh about shamanism, religion and anthropology. Singh is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. An artist and essayist, he is also now a regular contributor to The New Yorker. His academic interests lie in explaining why most human societies, from preliterate foragers to urbanites, develop cultural phenomena like "witchcraft, origin myths, property rights, sharing norms, lullabies, dance music, and gods." He just came out with his first book, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion.

First Razib asks what Singh exactly means by shamanism, and whether it is a religion or not. Singh argues that shamanism is religion, that in some ways it is the primal religion. While many would contrast institutional religions like Christianity with shamanism, Singh points out that even Christianity includes shamanic practices, as in the Acts of the Apostles, or in some of the Pentecostal sects of Protestantism. He also discusses how his theoretical understanding of religion was complemented by field-work among the Mentawai tribe of Indonesia, who have a rich shamanic tradition. Razib then foregrounds the question of whether shamanism was invented in a particular place and time, like Siberia as argued by some 20th-century scholars, or whether it is universal in our psychology. Singh argues for the latter position, illustrating the fact that many cultures seem to lose shamanism when the number of adherents falls low enough, but that they seem to regain it once their popularity bounces back. Humanity's shamanic impulse is always there, at the ready. Razib and Singh also discuss the ubiquity of shamanic practices across East Asia, especially in Korea and Japan. In the latter society, shamanism forms the foundation of one of the people's two major religions, Shinto. Finally, they address the role of psychedelic drugs in the emergence of shamanism cross-culturally.