Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

Dr. Gregory Clark, a past guest on this podcast, discusses his shocking finding that a simple genetic model explains social status distribution in England. He explains how wealth is passed down equally from mother and father, and that social mobility has remained unchanged for 400 years. Clark also reveals high rates of inheritance of social status in other societies.

We’re about a generation into the “age of genomics,” or as it’s sometimes termed the “post-genomic era.” Today Razib talks to John Logsdon, a professor of biology at the University of Iowa, about what genomics has wrought in relation to our understanding of evolution, and what evolution has taught us about the structure and nature of the genome. In 2014, Logdson and Sarah J Hanson contributed a chapter entitled “Genome Evolution” to the Princeton Guide to Evolution. Razib uses this mid-2010s review to scaffold his discussion with Logdson about where we are in 2023. But first, he asks what the exact difference between genetics and genomics is. It is sometimes said that quantity has a quality all its own, and Razib and Logdson discuss the different analytic challenges of analyzing the evolutionary trajectory of a single gene, a task up the alley of classical genetics, and describing the evolution of the whole genome of an organism like a human, with thousands of genes. They then move on to various issues relating to the architecture and evolution of the genome that are of deep interest and curiosity to researchers but rarely surfaced to the public. Why do bacterial genomes have so much less “junk” than those of complex organisms, like humans? Why is the relationship between organism complexity and genome size still so uncertain? How has evolution impacted the “molecular machinery” of the genome (like promoters)? And what is the difference between those scientists who use genomics to understand evolution and those who attempt to understand the evolutionary forces that shape the nature of the genome? By inspecting where we are on many specific issues relating to evolution and genomics, Razib and Logdson begin a sketch of how the emergence of genomics has changed evolutionary biology, as the entire genetic maps of vast numbers of species are now at our fingertips. The discussion finally concludes with future possibilities in the next few decades, as the post-genomic era moves from a revolution to a background condition, a  banality. Note: Logsdon mentioned HHMI molecular genetic videos. Here is an excellent example:

Christopher Rufo, author of 'America's Cultural Revolution', discusses the historical figures of the mid-to-late 20th century that set the stage for the rise of woke culture and critical race theory. They delve into the significance of left-wing intellectual movements, the cultural revolution of the 1960s-70s, and the impact of personal brand politics.

Sarah Haider, Shadi Hamid, and Murtaza Hussain discuss the effects of the Israel-Palestine conflict on geopolitics and American culture, including eliminationist rhetoric, the divide between the West and the Global South, and potential changes in American foreign policy. They also address the impact of the conflict on American culture, cancel culture concerns, offensive rhetoric, the perception of the conflict in the US, and the compatibility of being a Zionist and a feminist or humanitarian. Additionally, they delve into personal experiences, Twitter personas, age gap discourse, the fracture of the American cultural left, and the importance of humanity amidst escalating tensions.

Richard Hanania, author of The Origins of Woke, discusses the impact of the 1964 Civil Rights Law on American culture and the rise of identity politics. The podcast explores topics such as the expansion of civil rights law, the definition of wokeness, controversies surrounding affirmative action and diversity, and the consequences of not rolling back wokeness and identity politics.

Sundar Iyer and Sudha Jagannathan discuss the intersection of religion, caste, and American law. They explore caste discrimination in the United States, the lawsuit against Cisco Systems, challenges of caste in the US, controversial laws in California, and the importance of truth, justice, and empathy.

In this episode, Razib Khan explores the historical, cultural, and genetic aspects of the Indian caste system. He discusses the concepts of Varna and Jati, the impact of caste in the Indian subcontinent, its relevance to equity considerations, and its expression among Muslims and Christians. The podcast also touches on comparisons with feudal Japan, the consequences of removed Germanic warriors, and the presence of caste systems in different parts of the world. The genetic variation within the caste system, diversity within the Hindu system, and the potential future decline of the Indian caste system and vegetarianism are also discussed.

David Anthony, an expert in archaeology and anthropology, discusses the domestication of horses, the spread of the wheel, and the language of Yamnaya steppe herders. They also explore the rise of Indo-Europeans, controversies over Proto-Indo-European words, limitations of linguistics and archaeology, the Uruk civilization, and the expansion of Yamnaya and Indo-European cultures. The podcast also touches on the genetic ancestry of dogs in Europe and possible contacts between Chinese and Indo-European populations.

Erik Hoel, host of The Intrinsic Perspective, discusses the history and neglect of studying consciousness in neuroscience, the challenges of understanding neuroscience and consciousness, the concept of the brain as modular, and the future of writing online.

On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib talks to internet commentator formerly known as default friend who is perhaps better known today as the internet culture writer Katherine Dee. Dee is a regular contributor to Retvrn, The Washington Examiner, The American Mind, Tablet Magazine and UnHerd. She has also recently written a piece for Compact: Why You’re Never Leaving Twitter.  But first, Razib and Dee discuss how they have known each other for nearly a decade, going back to 2015 on the site formerly known as Twitter, and more substantially as residents of Austin in the late teens. Since 2019 Dee's existence has been a peripatetic one; after leaving Texas and first moving to the Bay Area, she then lived in the Pacific Northwest, before finally settling in Chicago. Working in advertising, and then in big tech, Dee has finally settled on a career as a freelancer, with all the freedom and uncertainty that entails. Razib asks Dee whether there is today, in 2023, any culture that isn’t somehow connected to the internet. She agrees about the pervasive nature of digital and social media, and how thickly it is interleaved into the lives of younger Millennials and Zoomers. And yet as a counterpoint to this conception of a revolution that has transmuted “IRL” life online, Razib argues that ‌social media is just an amplification of “bulletin board system” (BBS) culture which existed as early as the 1980’s. Dee then reflects on her maturation as an observer of all things internet through Twitter and Discord, and the shadow-impact of more obscure platforms like Tumblr and 4chan on our broader culture, beneath the notice of the wider population of “normies,” while Razib reminds her how small Twitter’s user base is compared to platforms like Facebook or YouTube (the latter are measured in billions, while Twitter retains some 450 million active users). In her piece, Why You’re Never Leaving Twitter, Dee argues that the anemic showing of dozens of Twitter clones and pretenders in the last decade argues that the platform just isn’t going to be dethroned from its central role in the media, and thereby wider American culture. From right-wing to left-wing imitators, or Facebook’s Threads, every challenger has failed to eat into Twitter’s critical position as a nexus in the media ecosystem, a central node in transmitting information throughout diverse subcultures. But Razib plays devil's advocate, musing whether Elon Musk’s erratic tenure since assuming ownership of the platform, his change of its brand to X, his petty beefs with publishers like Substack and ex cathedra pronouncements of major feature changes, might actually spell the end of the platform. Though Dee seems skeptical that even Musk could destroy his new property, not seeing any replacement on the horizon, suggests to her that the age of a single central information switchboard for the internet may be ephemeral and one we look back on as a particular and unique moment in history, just as we do the age of three major television networks in the 20th century.