Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib discusses the genetic and archaeological history of Europe from the arrival of modern humans (permanently) 45,000 years ago, to the end of the Bronze Age in the decades after 1200 BC. He covers these time periods:

* Pre-Aurignacian (before 43 kya) 

* Aurignacian (43-26 kya) 

* Gravettian (33-21 kya) 

* Solutrean (22-17 kya) 

* Magdalenian (17-12 kya) 

* Epigravettian (21-10 kya) 

* Mesolithic (12-7 kya) 

* Neolithic (9-5 kya) 

* Bronze Age (5-3 kya)

Relevant papers:

* Reconstructing contact and a potential interbreeding geographical zone between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans

* The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal

* A genome sequence from a modern human skull over 45,000 years old from Zlatý kůň in Czechia

* An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor

* Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers

* Survival of Late Pleistocene Hunter-Gatherer Ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula

* A 23,000-year-old southern Iberian individual links human groups that lived in Western Europe before and after the Last Glacial Maximum

* Population genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia: Investigating early postglacial migration routes and high-latitude adaptation

* Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia

* Genomic Evidence Establishes Anatolia as the Source of the European Neolithic Gene Pool

* ​​Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe

* The genomic ancestry of the Scandinavian Battle Axe Culture people and their relation to the broader Corded Ware horizon

* The genomic history of the Iberian Peninsula over the past 8000 years

* Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Misha Saul, the host of the Kvetch Substack. Saul is a first-generation Jewish Australian, born in Georgia (former Soviet republic), who grew up in Adelaide and now lives in Sydney. He graduated from the University of Adelaide with degrees in commerce and law. His day job is in finance, but the Kvetch highlights his interests in history and Jewish culture.

Razib and Saul discuss extensively the differences and similarities between the US and Australia, and how each relates to other Anglophone nations like Canada, New Zealand and of course the UK. Saul asserts though Australia leans into its frontier reputation, in reality it is much more of a bureaucratic-ruled nation than the US, albeit with more of a Scots-Irish flavor than comparatively middle-class New Zealand. He also contrasts the relatively generous welfare-state of Australia and America’s inequality, which he describes by analogy to the film 2013 Elysium, with its contrast between an earth dominated by favelas and a well-manicured low-earth orbit utopia for the super rich. They also discuss the geographical and cultural coherency of a vast nation like Australia, which has a desert at its center. Saul mentions it is often actually cheaper to fly to and vacation in Bali or another Asian locale than going to Perth from Sydney. Despite the reality that Australia has exotic fauna, it is notably an overwhelmingly urban society, where few have any interaction with the “bush.” Though Australians appreciate archetypes like “Crocodile Dundee,” Saul paints a picture of a much more urbane reality. Razib asks about the phenomenon of “white-presenting” Aboriginals, and Saul argues all societies look somewhat crazy from the outside because of their shibboleths, and the debates around Aboriginality are Australia’s.

As an immigrant and first-generation Australian, Saul also discusses Australia’s immigration system, which strictly controls and regulates migration. Saul argues that because of the high educational and skill qualifications most Australian immigrants assimilate well, and he contends that there is a broad consensus to maintain strict limits on inflows. He argues that the Anglo-Australian identity is strong enough that the assimilative process continues to work even with the large number of Asians from China and India, who have triggered nativist worries and political activism.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of "Unsupervised Learning," Razib talks to Rachel Haywire, who writes at Cultural Futurist. Haywire is the author of Acidexia and began her career in futurism as an event planner for the Singularity Institute. She got her start as part of the "right-brain" faction around the Bay Area transhumanist and futurist scene circa 2010. Currently, she is working on starting an art gallery in New York City that serves as an event space for avant-garde creators who are not encumbered by mainstream or "woke" cultural sensibilities.

Haywire recounts her experience as a creator in the early 2010s in the Bay Area and the transition from a socially libertarian milieu where diverse groups mixed freely to one more defined by a progressive cultural script, with the threat of cancel culture beginning to be noticeable. She points to the 2013 cancellation of Pax Dickinson for edgy tweets as a turning point. Razib and Haywire also allude to the role that the reclusive accelerationist philosopher  Nick Land played in seeding certain ideas and influencing movements like the  Dark Enlightenment.

Jumping to the present, Haywire now lives in New York City, and she addresses the Dimes Square scene centered around the neighborhood in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Haywire points out that the actual artistic production from Dimes Square luminaries is quite low, with an almost total lack of music and a focus on online personas. Her goal with her salons and soon-to-open gallery is to put the emphasis on art above politics or e-celebrity culture.

Finally, Razib discusses the impact of AI on creativity and whether it will abolish the artist. Haywire believes that AI is just another tool and has had mixed success leveraging it for her own artistic works in areas like industrial music. She believes that the real use of AI will be to create drafts and prototypes that artists will have to polish and reshape so that they reflect human creativity rather than just some averaged algorithm.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Halie May, the host of the Substack The Sequence, and a genetic counselor at Natera. May has a B.S. in chemical biology from Stevens Institute of Technology and a M.S. in human genetics from Sarah Lawrence. Before working at Natera she was a researcher and instructor at Columbia University and designed testing panels at genetics start-up, Tomorrow’s Health.

Razib and May discuss how much the field has changed even in her short career, in large part because genetic counseling is a 50-year-old profession that has been transformed in the last decade by the introduction of genome-wide datasets. May highlights the changes in the last ten years, and how they have impacted counselors and end users, in particular the ubiquity of noninvasive prenatal screening tests. Here, she mentions that whole-genome analysis isn’t quite where she had expected when she began studying these issues six years ago, and Razib brings up the fact that it’s already a decade ago he had his son whole-genome sequenced. They discuss the hold-ups in the progress of genetic testing and analysis, and May points out that a major issue is likely the utter lack of federal guidelines, with oversight of genetic healthcare mostly being left to the states. This lack of coordination means that there is no top-down signal, and localities and institutions are left to cobble together frameworks in an ad hoc manner. Razib also asks May about how private companies, like Natera, might fill the gap in what hospitals can provide, and the potential pathways and promise of the democratization of genetic results.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of Unsuperivsed Learning Razib talks to native Californian, Inez Stepman. Stepman has an undergraduate degree in philosophy from UC San Diego, and obtained her J.D. from University of Virginia. She is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a contributor to The Federalist. Stepman is also a co-host of the High Noon podcast.

Razib and Stepman first talk about her reaction to Marxist author Malcom Harris’ Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism and the World, exemplified by her piece in First Things, Ambitious Nihilism. A native of Palto Alto who went to high school with Harris in the early 21st century, Stepman believes that the left-wing narrative in Palo Alto is misleading. Though Silicon Valley avows fashionable social liberalism and radicalism, Harris argues that it is actually a seedbed for right-wing neo-Neo-Reaganism and capitalism. Stepman disagrees; though it is true that from a Marxist and explicitly socialist perspective Silicon Valley falls short, the overall political tenor was firmly on the left. She recalls even after 9/11 that her Palo Alto milieu took a dim view of American patriotism. For Stepman, Silicon Valley was more a laboratory of fashionable woke shibboleths, about a decade ahead of its time, as well as being the training ground for conformist grinds who were geared toward jumping over the next academic or professional hurdle.

Stepman sees this narrow and short-sighted ethos throughout Silicon Valley, and the broader sense in American culture that technology will allow us to transcend our limits to humanity. She argues that wealthy tech entrepreneurs who aim to defeat death, like Bryan Johnson, are fundamentally inhuman in their goals and orientation. Razib and Stepman discuss extensively advances in biotechnology and fertility in particular that American society seems to take for granted, like noninvasive prenatal testing and gene editing, which are rolling out without much discussion.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Christina Buttons, who writes at Buttons Lives. A native Californian and erstwhile artist, Buttons switched to journalism two years ago, writing about gender medicine. A contributor to Quillette, The Post-Millennial and The Daily Wire, Buttons is now a freelance journalist living in Nashville, Tennessee.

The first part of the conversation breaks down what “gender medicine” entails in its gory details. In April Razib had a conversation with Colin Wright about the relationship between sex and gender, and the broader philosophical issues entailed by the ideas of gender ideology. But in the discussion with Buttons, Razib asks what it means for a child to transition medically. What are the surgeries that transition a boy to a girl and a girl to a boy? They also discuss different hormone regimes, from those that block normal puberty to those that enhance the secondary sexual characteristics of the target gender to which the individual aims to transition. Buttons discusses why she got interested in the topic, the fraught area of medically transitioning children. She distinguishes her circumspect and focused critiques of gender transition from the catchall broadsides of so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminists and religious conservatives.

Razib asks Buttons about her departure from The Daily Wire due to ideological differences, and what it feels like to be a moderate between militant factions to both her left and right. Though originally on the Left, and even woke, today Buttons identifies as a centrist classical liberal, which naturally means she tends to offend a great variety of factions with her individualistic viewpoints.

Finally, they discuss youth treatment centers, group homes where self-destructive young people are sent to recover and be rehabilitated. Recently these have been in the news, with Paris Hilton claiming that she and others had been subject to abuse at these centers. Buttons herself spent much of her teens in youth treatment centers, and she believes that Hilton’s case is weak, and shutting down these facilities will result in higher rates of self-harm. Buttons plans on moving to this issue as her next project, because she believes people need to know the truth beyond the sensational headlines.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to returning guest, Sarah Haider. Haider is the co-host of the podcast A Special Place in Hell and the Substack Hold That Thought. A native of Houston, graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, Haider is the founder and former executive director of Ex Muslims of North America. Today Razib asks her about her move out of the nonprofit world, and into being a full-time public intellectual, speaking and writing on topics of interest to her beyond that of Muslim-born who become secular. And then, more specifically, Razib probes Haider about her thoughts on gender and politics. He asks her how becoming a mother in the last few years and idiosyncratic aspects of her personality may lend themselves to a comfortable home in the heterodox intellectual space.

They extensively consider the different dynamics of male and female podcasters, and the comparative surfeit of men versus women willing to offer their opinions on all and sundry topics. Haider also contends that women, by their very nature, are going to be perceived differently than men, resulting in a different way of arguing and engaging with audiences, guests and co-hosts. They also discuss the reality that both their podcast audiences have a male tilt, and whether that is a direct outcome of their communication styles. Outside of the realm of podcasting Razib and Haider explore the implications of there being two ways of speaking and thinking when it comes to men and women, and how that shapes how you talk, think and value issues.

Haider also discusses how her pregnancy, and becoming a mother, have changed her politics and social views. When Razib brings up Erik Hoel’s idea of “cultural billionaires,” Haider asks how many women are on the list of such individuals? She argues that becoming a mother is such an all-consuming task that it is no surprise that most of the prominent public women who contribute to opinion and academia are childless; Haider points that Betty Friedan was exceptional among second-wave feminists in having children.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Dr. Eliah Overbey, assistant professor of bioastronautics at the University of Austin. Dr. Overbey has an undergraduate degree in computer science from UC San Diego, a Ph.D. in genomics from the University of Washington, and did her postdoctoral fellowship at the Weill Cornell Medical School. She joined University of Austin in the summer of 2024, and is setting up a genomics core facility in the fall.

First, Razib asks Overbey what bioastronautics as a field is, and what it attempts to discover. In short, bioastronautics focuses on the impact of spaceflight and zero gravity on the biological functioning of human astronauts and the organisms that have been taken into space. Overbey focuses on genomics and related fields, and talks about the difficulties of small sample size (only 600 humans have thus far been astronauts), as well as the funding difficulties in a field that falls between conventional disciplines (physics and biology). Razib and Overbey also discuss the possibilities opened by private space flight, and the likelihood in the near future of much larger sample sizes for studies given the efforts of SpaceX and Blue Origin. Overbey also talks about the biological difficulties in manned space flight, and the difficulties that might occur on a mission to Mars, from bone loss to radiation.

Overbey is optimistic in particular about the expansion of near-Ear

th space travel in the next decade due to the privatization of space flight, and the greater flexibility of some private actors in funding research studies than NASA enjoys. Anticipating larger sample sizes, she has begun a biobank focused on samples in space, and has begun engaging in widespread collaborations with other researchers in the nascent but growing field.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

Today Razib talks to Aria Babu, a British think-thank professional who is part of the growing number of young men and women who are taking an interest in population decline and promoting pro-natalism. Babu has a degree in chemistry from University College London, and has long worked in areas related to the study of economic growth and entrepreneurship. Prior to her interest in pro-natalism Babu held conventional views about population growth and its ties to environmental alarmism. But she quickly saw that actually fertility is crashing worldwide, and with that there might be dire economic and social consequences. If that trend is left unchecked, she foresees a worst case scenario of massive economic decline and the replacement of our riotously varied modern civilization by a select few narrow subcultures, like the Amish or Somalis, who continue to favor reproduction as a social value. On the state level, declining populations will likely lead to the rise of culturally stagnant and politically authoritarian societies reminiscent of The Children of Men.

Babu and Razib also discuss what it is like living as an urban professional in Britain in 2024. While the fact that the UK has one megacity can lead to disproportionate focus on London, Babu points out that it allows the entire nation’s intellectual and cultural class to be in close proximity, resulting in powerful synergies. She also argues that the problem in the UK is not immigration, but insufficient housing for larger populations and the lack of a system to allow in very skilled and value-add migrants. Rather than integration into the EU or an American-system, Babu favors an approach closer to Singapore, where the UK goes its own way and crafts its policies to take advantage of specific opportunities offered by blindspots in EU or American politics.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.razibkhan.com

If you have a sibling with autism, your future child’s risk for an autism diagnosis is increased by a factor of 2 to 3.5×. Orchid’s whole genome embryo reports can help mitigate your child’s risk by screening for over 200 genetic variants definitively linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Discuss your situation with a genetics expert.

On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Louise Perry. A British journalist known for her commentary on feminism and gender issues, Perry is the author of the book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. She also contributes to The New Statesman, UnHerd, and The Daily Mail, and has a Substack at Maiden Mother Matriarch. Perry is a graduate of University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, with a degree in anthropology.

Perry and Razib first discuss Britain’s current housing crisis, the reasons and possible solutions. Though the Office for National Statistics estimates the UK’s population at 67.1 million, Perry believes that the true number is likely higher because individuals who are present illegally or have a “gray” status are unlikely to respond. But even this population would make the UK over eight times more densely populated than the US, with England being 13 times denser. In fact, England’s population density is similar to India’s. Perry also brings up the reality of massive immigration flows over the last few years; where before 2020 net migration was around ~200,000 per year, since 2021 the figure has been closer to ~500,000. Additionally, many of these immigrants are placed in “social housing,” subsidized or owned by the government. Perry also points out that the legal regulations in Britain stipulate that about 30% of new developments be allocated for social housing, which incentivizes incumbent homeowners to block construction. Additionally, the rate of population growth is much higher than the British construction industry’s capacity to keep up with the theoretical demand. The UK does not produce enough bricks, nor does it have the labor pool of homebuilders.

The conversation continues to a broader discussion of the ennui in modern British society. Perry asserts that a major problem driving the housing crisis is that the UK has only one major city, London, and any professional who wants to settle in a more affordable region must also take a major salary cut. Setting aside London, and its economic engines of finance and commerce, Perry characterizes the rest of the UK as more akin to a developing Eastern Europe nation. She also believes that the next decade will see a mass flight of the upper-middle-class, the primary tax base of the state. Perry herself has Australian citizenship through her parents (who immigrated from Australia to the UK), while her husband has an American mother. Her situation is common to many upper-middle-class Britons, who have connections to Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia. Perry believes this is one reason the British political culture is not reforming itself: so many have in the back of their head that they can jump ship if it starts sinking. Ultimately, her thesis is that British openness and intellectual curiosity make the national character a poor seedbed for nationalism, and it may be inevitable that the UK is caught up and tossed about in a vortex of globalization.