Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Alex Young of UCLA and James Lee of the University of Minnesota about quantitative genetics and its relationship to complex traits and the genomic revolution. Young, trained as a mathematician, and Lee, trained as a psychologist, have both converged upon research programs exploring the role of genetics in generating variation in human behavior and disease. First, the trio reviews quantitative genetics’ modern basis in R. A. Fisher’s 1918 paper The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance, and how the field emerged from the same intellectual root as population genetics in the first decades of the 20th century. They then discuss phenomena closely associated with quantitative characteristics: polygenicity, heritability and the central limit theorem. Razib also outlines the role of population genetic parameters like mutation, selection and drift in shaping the distribution of any given trait, particularly the characteristic’s variation and median values.

After a deep dive into major concerns like the difference between heritability in the “broad sense” and “narrow sense,” what additive genetic variance is and why it’s so important to evolution and applied breeding and contemporary heritability estimates of traits like height and intelligence using twin studies and family-based genomic analyses, the conversation concludes with a discussion of Gregory Clark’s new PNAS paper, The inheritance of social status: England, 1600 to 2022. What are its implications? Why did it ignite a firestorm on social media? Lee in fact contributed a comment on the paper to PNAS, while Young has tackled its methods and conclusions on social media.

In a conversation that stretches on for over two hours, Razib, Lee and Young touch upon many aspects of a discipline that combines the statistical insights of the 20th century with the genomic technologies of the 21st. Lee also expounds on a result from one of his papers that didn’t make it into the final publication due to reviewer skepticism: what he calls a “beer-chugging phenotype” reported from the study of twins.

Today the Supreme Court ended affirmative action when it comes to university admissions as we know it. Anticipating this decision, Razib recorded a conversation with Renu Mukherjee a few months back. But today they also added a timely prologue reflecting on the decision, which shook out exactly as she expected (also see her report, Friends of the Court? Advocacy Groups as Amici in Students for Fair Admissions).

Mukherjee is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute and a Ph.D. student in American politics at Boston College, where her dissertation will focus on affirmative action. Razib asks Mukherjee to discuss the origin of affirmative action as it is practiced in the US today, starting with the Bakke decision in 1978, and then moving on to Grutter vs. Bollinger in 2003. She then moves to the details of the current cases, in particular Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, where the plaintiffs assert that Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions, and engages in “racial balancing.”

Razib and Mukherjee then explore the implications of the decision. Razib wonders about the implication for Harvard in particular, which is, to great extent, the finishing school of the American ruling class. Is Harvard’s mission sustainable if 40% of the student body is Asian American? Mukherjee points out that these demographic trends, the rise of Asian Americans proportionally and the decline of historically represented groups, have been occurring despite affirmative action, for example, the decline of Jewish Americans in the Ivy League over the last generation. Additionally, both Razib and Mukherjee agree universities are certain to engage in both evasion and massive resistance to the ruling. Mukherjee argues that the current moves against standardized testing anticipate the program of evasion that we can expect in the future, where holistic admissions can allow the administrators’ preferences to continue.

Note: Today we also released another podcast on Muslims and their recent confrontations with the LGBTQIA+ movement with Sarah Haider of A Special Place in Hell (and her own Substack), Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institute (and Wisdom of the Crowds and his own Substack) and Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept (and his own Substack).

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Life comes at you fast. Sometimes faster than others. Given the events that have upended assumptions about international relations, shaken the financial system and riveted the world since Razib pre-recorded this week’s paid-subscriber podcast with Samo Burja, founder of political risk consultancy Bismarck Analysis, we recorded a bonus mini-episode for all subscribers. On this extra episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks with Burja again, focusing solely on current geopolitical events. 

Are things going according to the Russian plan? How long will the Russians stay, and how will this impact Europe? And what are the long-term consequences of the Western economic response to Russia’s incursion for the world’s geopolitical balance? Samo addresses head-on what he believes are the likely ramifications for the US, Europe, Russia and Asia.

Welcome back to the multipolar world, dominated by Keynes’ old animal spirits (paying subscribers, I highly recommend the week’s premium podcast with Samo where he talks about his firm Bismarck Analysis, and how they see the world). If you are among the many struck by the irrationality of Putin’s behavior, Samo’s approach to breaking it down without cant or emotion should be required listening.

Related: Putin’s Bet, A Contrarian View on Ukraine/Russia, Samo Burja and Drone Adoption Favors Quantity Over Quality In Warfare.

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Rav Arora came to public prominence in 2020 with a column for The New York Post provocatively titled “The Fallacy of White Privilege.” He suffered personal and professional blowback, but today the 20-year-old Canadian undergraduate has a semi-regular column in The New York Post, and is interviewed by the likes of Glenn Loury. Arora’s fearlessness in expressing his opinions on a wide range of topics, in particular politically controversial ones, combined with a dogged work ethic has earned him a wide platform, publishing in The New York Post, The Global and Mail and Quillette. He’s also already had guests on his podcast as prominent as Sam Harris. Not too shabby for someone who hasn’t even graduated university. But on this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Arora discusses a new passion, the intersection of psychedelics, therapy and mysticism. When he’s not writing about social and political topics, he is now exploring “science of mystical experience and psychedelics” on his new Substack, The Noble Truths with Rav Arora.

Razib first lays his cards on the table and admits that he has no firsthand knowledge of psychedelics and no personal interest or understanding of mysticism. And yet, he acknowledges that discussion of drugs like psilocybin is pervasive across society. Rav disabuses Razib of the idea that psilocybin and other psychedelics are dangerous, a case where Generation-Z has to enlighten a member of Generation-X who was inculcated with the “Just Say No To Drugs” message of the 1980’s. For Rav, psychedelics are a means to an end, a tool like any other.

But much of the discussion goes deeper into issues of metaphysics. What is spirituality, and what does Rav say to people who express no interest in mysticism or religion? Rav contends that the utility of psychedelics for spirituality doesn’t have anything to do with religion, making the point that the atheist Sam Harris has long been intrigued by the potential of psychedelics in bringing about heightened mental awareness. Though Razib remains skeptical, it’s clear that this decade will see more discussion of this topic, and Rav also notes the extensive research in psychotherapy showing that psychedelics are proving effective in treating mental illness.

The substack is The Noble Truths with Rav Arora, where he posts essays on the science of mystical experience and psychedelics. Paid subscribers can also get Rav’s post-psychedelic trip audio recordings and FaceTime podcasts with ‘IDW’ figures.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

The day after Christmas 2021, the great entomologist and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson died at the age of 92. Carl Zimmer in The New York Times wrote an obituary that highlighted his seminal early contributions to science, as well as his role as a public intellectual after the publication of 1975’s Sociobiology. Wilson also wrote an autobiography, Naturalist, telling the story of his life in science from his own perspective.

In the days after his passing, I wanted to touch base with those who knew him, collaborated with him, and even had disputes with him. The evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson (no genetic relation) has talked in his books about how he was influenced by the elder Wilson early in his career, and also how they eventually became colleagues and allies in scientific debates. Recently he published The Six Legacies of Edward O. Wilson as a reflection on E. O. Wilson’s career and influence. These six were his contributions to evolutionary biology, biodiversity, human sociobiology, the unification of knowledge, his encouraging stance toward young scientists and other learners, and finally, the frontier of ecosystems studies (his very last project).

I’ve talked to David before about his work on multi-level selection as well as his ambition toward utilizing evolutionary biological frameworks in the context of social science and policy, so I reached out to discuss the piece he wrote about E. O. Wilson’s life. Knowing that the elder Wilson had encouraged David's interest in group selection as a graduate student, I expected to focus on the late scientist’s great contributions. But in fact, we addressed the reality that the elder Wilson often had greater aspirations than concrete paths of execution. No one can deny E. O. Wilson’s original contributions to ecology and his mastery of entomology, but David Sloan Wilson points out that some of his recent books sketch out grand plans, but do not deliver any roadmap on how to achieve those ends. Rather than a hagiography, the conversation emphasizes that we shouldn’t make icons out of scientists, that science is a collective enterprise, and that too often it is depicted as the products of singular “Great Men.” Nevertheless, over the course of the discussion, David Sloan Wilson and I do discuss the late Wilson’s positive and important contributions to entomology and mentorship, as well as his last forays into scientific debates when he became involved in a controversy around the utility of W. D. Hamilton’s inclusive fitness framework in 2010, and their collaboration in the 2000’s on multi-level selection theory.

One of the things about E. O. Wilson’s life that many have observed was his great range. In addition to his contributions to evolutionary biology, over the last few decades of his life, Wilson became a promoter of conservation and biodiversity (a term he helped popularize in the late 1980’s). But his activism was not without controversy. In the last third of the podcast, I talk to the science writer Charles C. Mann about his run-ins with Wilson in relation to environmentalism, where the scientist’s love of nature seems to have driven him beyond what conservation biology may have entailed. Mann also recounts Wilson’s dismissals of his pointed questions in relation to predictions made by his scientific theories about island biodiversity, reiterating that even the greatest of scientists are not necessarily dispassionate when it comes to their own scholarship. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

This is a “bonus episode” of the Unsupervised Learning Podcast. Due to the time-sensitivity of the discussion, I am posting this simultaneously to Substack and Libsyn, so both free and paid subscribers are receiving this email.

Your regularly scheduled weekly subscribers-only podcast will still be released this Thursday.

Recently Yale Law School (YLS) student Trent Colbert wrote Why I Didn’t Apologize For That Yale Law School Email: We must end the culture of performative repentance for Persuasion. I was broadly familiar with the culture-war saga that Colbert was caught up in, having read a piece a few weeks ago in The Washington Post describing how a seemingly innocent and jocular email triggered accusations of racism at YLS (as well as Aaron Sibarium’s piece in The Washington Free Beacon). Colbert’s piece in Persuasion made me curious about him, and I reached out to talk about what he had seen, and the lessons that we as a society and individuals might take from it.

First, Colbert gives us his own perspective of what transpired at YLS to make him a “trending topic” on social media. Perhaps to the surprise of Millennials, the 23-year-old Zoomer seemed not entirely familiar with the well-known podcast Chapo Trap House. As a member of Gen X, I have to admit it's a little unnerving to hear Millennials viewed as geriatric elders. But Colbert grew up in a world of super-charged cultural change and perhaps perceives the passage of time differently than those of us who came into adulthood before smartphones. He contended that some of the offense others perceived might be a matter of cohort differences and even just his casual Zoomer manner. Even a few years' difference today might mean an entirely alternative landscape of memes and sensibilities, so a subtle and wry reference among his age-mates could strike an individual only a few years older as offensive, opaque and “tone-deaf.”

With that in mind, I was curious about his background, and where he got the strength to stand up to the YLS administrative bureaucracy. We explored his relationship to his Cherokee background, as well as growing up in a moderately conservative household where religion was important. Colbert takes the idea of right and wrong seriously, and he felt that his own conscience would not allow him to agree to an apology that was premised on lies. Importantly, he also had a supportive group of friends at YLS and a wider circle of backers in the community.

Eventually, we moved to broader social forces, and how his individual choices and decisions might impact others. By doing the right thing, rather than the easy thing, Colbert hopes to show that it is possible to defeat the kind of bureaucratic machine that was unleashed upon him and trigger a preference cascade that changes the culture on campus. And doing the right thing has not been entirely easy, as Colbert admits to being uncomfortable with realizing how others at YLS viewed him purely through a racial lens, as well as the fact that many prominent organizations accused him of being a racist.

Overall, perhaps the take-home lesson is that it doesn’t take an exceptional person to take on the system. Just someone who has a core set of principles and friends and family who support them when they might have to make decisions that lead to socially unpopular outcomes.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

Today on this bonus episode of Unsupervised Learning I’m excited to talk to Patrick Wyman about his new book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World.

Full disclosure, I enjoyed The Verge, and a review will be posted from me on National Review Online within the next week.

Wyman is the host of Tides of History, a podcast about history and assorted topics which I recommend to everyone (I’ve been a guest). If you’ve listened to him speak at length, you won’t be very surprised by the topics and style of writing in The Verge. The narrative does a great job balancing the academic with the engaging.

After reading his book I was curious to ask Wyman about how he wove social and economic history into a persona-driven narrative. We talk at length about the particular details of the significance of the 40-year-period he covers, and whether Martin Luther was a necessary man (as opposed to just being sufficient).

Patrick and I also tackle meta-historical questions such as the importance of “great men” versus forces-of-history, and whether the Protestant Reformation was inevitable due to technological changes. It’s a wide-ranging conversation, so if you are interested in the nitty-gritty of historical processes I think you’ll enjoy it.

Cross-promotion: The six-part series on Finland is done, check it out:

* Part one: Duke Tales: shades of Finnish cultural weirdness in my own backyard

* Part two: Weirdness as a national pastime: culture

* Part three: Go West Young Siberian: genetics findings

* Part four: From deepest Siberia to Europe’s edge: more genetics

* Part five: Frontier Finns: cabins, rakes & Indians

* Part six: Finnish brains, baiting and bottlenecks: education and medical genetics

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

Last week two new hominin fossils were published in the scientific literature, and extensively reported on in the media. “Dragon Man”, discovered in Harbin, China, and dating to 140,000 years ago is claimed to be a new species that is the closest to the modern human lineage. Meanwhile, the hominin discovered at Nesha Ramla in Israel dates to 120,000-140,000 years ago, and it seems most similar to Neanderthals (though its tools are no different from modern humans to the south and west in Africa).

I’ve given some thought to the implications of these results, and how to interpret them. But I wanted to get the sense of another geneticist, my friend Vagheesh Narasimhan. I’ve talked to Vagheesh before in relation to his blockbuster paper, The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. My goal for this podcast was to “nerd out” on human evolution from a genomics perspective, and see if he had the same impressions that I did of these papers.

We discussed population structure in Denisovans, the importance of ancient DNA and proteins, whether the “Out of Africa” theory even makes sense, as well as new work on methylation patterns in the genome and predicting physical characteristics. I did bring up statistical power in “skull science,” and both of us expounded on why DNA, in particular, is so powerful as a method of inference in comparison to traditional morphology.

It was an hour spent slashing back and forth across these two papers and circling around from a genetic perspective.

Both of us agreed that we can’t conclude Dragon Man is closest to modern humans.

Past paleoanthropology podcasts:

* Chris Stringer: 1,000,000 years of human evolution

* Chris Stringer on paleoanthropology in 2020

* Chris Stringer and The Human Revolution

* Multiregionalism is Dead...Long Live Multiregionalism!

* A conversation with John Hawks: a life in paleoanthropology

* John Hawks on Neanderthals: part 1, part 2

* Lee Berger and the Dawn of "Big Data" in Paleoanthropology

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

Richard Hanania is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI). He also runs a Substack and a podcast that are “must-read/listen.” Richard is perceived as something of a contrarian, so I wanted to ask him about Israel and its role in American politics because he has opinions on that topic somewhat outside of the mainstream.

But since I scheduled this podcast he’s “blown up” due to a piece he wrote, Woke Institutions is Just Civil Rights Law. Eliciting responses from the Right and Left, this is the sort of work that has made Richard’s name. He goes where angels fear to tread. His profile has certainly gotten higher since I got to know him several years ago. He was recently on the Tucker Carlson show.

On this podcast we talk about:

* The incessant attention given over to the Israel-Palestine conflict in the USA

* His thesis that in relation to “wokeness” culture is downstream of politics

* The inevitability of Chinese dominance in the 21st century

* The mass hysteria in reaction COVID-19

* What it’s like running a “Think Tank”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe

I will be posting my usual weekly subscribers-only podcast with Cathy Young on the French Revolution soon. The French Revolution is a current passion of Cathy’s (well, the topic, not revolution!). 

But since today is not the most “usual” Friday (I for one am just over 24 hours into regaining electricity), I’ve also thrown together a free series of conversations with friends who have a range of relevant areas of expertise (or just plain bad luck this week) who are united in having survived this week’s lingering polar front, a nearly Texas-wide power outage, and its many discontents. Millions were left without power for days in sub-zero temperatures, lost their water service, or both. 

This week’s guests made time to chat at a moment’s notice over the last 24 hours as the luckiest of us are just beginning to get back to normal life (though many here remain without water even after power was restored). This is very much a rough draft of history, not my usual evergreen type of content. I’m learning something new daily and I hope you’ll get something out of it, too.

My guests:

* Jon Stokes, a deputy editor at The Prepared. Jon talks about how and why even he was caught flat-footed, even though he has long been a prepper.

* Gareth Highnam, a scientist in Austin who managed to lose not one but two roofs over his head in a single day, thanks to condo sprinkler systems bursting.

* Marina Roberts, of Austin DSA and Homes not Handcuffs, talks about how the crisis has impacted the large population of homeless in the metro area.

* Lisa Mahapatra, a tech worker who recently relocated to Austin from California talks about what it’s like being a new homeowner in a new city in the grips of a local disaster.

* Finally, I caught up with two friends for a discussion of power grids, supply chains, and American decline: Josiah Neeley, an Austin-based energy analyst at R Street, and of the Urbane Cowboys podcast, and Byrne Hobart, a recent Brooklyn-to-Austin transplant who writes The Diff, a finance and economics Substack.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.razibkhan.com/subscribe