Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning

Latest Episodes:

In Search of Indo-Europeans in 2024: of Catacombs and Corded Ware Jan 20, 2025

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On this episode of Unsuperivsed Learning reviews what we know about Indo-Europeans as 2024 comes to a close. This is prompted by a new preprint Ancient genomics support deep divergence between Eastern and Western Mediterranean Indo-European languages, which finally establishes that populations in Northern and Southwestern Europe derived from a different steppe-origin population than the Greeks and Ilyrians of the Balkans, as well as Armenians. Razib talks about how ancient DNA is resolving long-standing disputes in historical linguistics, and coming down on the side of very particular sets of hypotheses. He discusses Peter Bellwood's First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, and its models about the origins of Indo-European languages, and how they have been falsified by paleogenomics. Razib also steps through the relationship of particular Indo-European groups to ancestral archaeological cultures like the Corded Ware, Bell Beaker and Catacomb Cultures. He also talks about the connections between charioteers and the early Mycenaeans, and looks at Robert Drews' ideas in Coming of the Greeks. Finally, he addresses outliers in the ancient DNA data that indicate connections between locales as disparate as Scandinavia and Cyprus 4,000 years ago.

Megan McArdle: American food culture, artisanal to industrial Jan 17, 2025

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This week on Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Megan McArdle, author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success and Washington Post columnist and op-ed board member. McArdle was raised in New York City and attended Riverdale Country School. She obtained an undergraduate degree in English from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Chicago. A pioneering blogger based out of New York City and covering the site of the WTC in the wake of 9/11, McArdle went on to work at The Economist, The Atlantic and Newsweek.

In this episode, the discussion largely focuses on McArdle's research about the cultural history of food and cooking in the US. But first they discuss the economic implications of Donald Trump's election, and the domestic consequences shifting toward a tariff-heavy trade regime. McArdle lays out the case that a massive tariff would have the same impact as a tax, not to mention the broad disruptive economic effects on large companies' supply chains.

Then they move on to the changes in American cuisine over the last few centuries, and the shifts driven by technology and innovation. McArdle points out that in the 19th century, gelatin dessert was a luxury and an exotic treat because it was labor intensive to prepare. But by the middle of the 20th century industrial-scale food processing made gelatin, in particular Jell-o, a cheap commodity, and it became associated with the lower classes. Similarly, before factory farming, chicken and eggs were more expensive than red meat, and thus viewed as high-end ingredient (whereas today, chicken is far cheaper than beef). Finally Razib and McArdle talk about how the plentitude of food available in the 21st century contributes to the obesity epidemic that has only ceased its relentless expansion with the advent of Ozempic.

Nikolai Yakovenko: the Singularity is not here Jan 14, 2025

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib catches up with Nikolai Yakovenko about the state of AI at the end of 2024. Yakovenko is a former professional poker player,and research scientist at Google, Twitter and Nvidia. With a decade in computer science, Yakovenko has been at the forefront of the large-language-model revolution that has given rise to multi-billion dollar companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity and hundreds of smaller startups. Currently, he is the CEO of DeepNewz, an AI-driven news startup that leverages OpenAI's latest model. Full disclosure: Razib actively uses and recommends the service and is an advisor to the company.

Razib and Yakovenko first review what makes the last few years special, the rise of large-language-models on top of neural network architecture of transformers. Yakovenkoi discusses how far they've come since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in the fall of 2022, and how people have been using the underlying technology to develop applications atop it. Despite predictions of mass unemployment, Razib points out that two years later America is at full employment, and only niche fields like translation have been impacted. In contrast, Yakovenko points out that most software developers use artificial intelligence in some form to aid in their daily engineering work, noting the possibility that the AI revolution is integrating itself seamlessly as a utility for preexistent jobs. They also discuss the fact that though AI is a booming field, only one brand-name company has so far emerged in the industry, OpenAI. Though they agree that the current hype cycle is now abating, it is clear that the major investments in the field like data centers will continue from major players as AI-driven applications like self-driving cars become more and more mainstream.

Yascha Mounk: American democracy in 2024 Jan 11, 2025

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks to Yasha Mounk. The founder of Persuasion, a contributor to The Atlantic and a professor at Johns Hopkins, Mounk now has his own Substack, where he hosts his weekly column and podcast. He is the author of The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It and The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.

Razib and Mounk first discuss Mounk's immediate reaction to the 2024 election, and how the Democrats might pick up the pieces going forward. Mounk believes that the argument in his book The Identity Trap, neatly captures many of the problems for the party. Democrats leaned in on the inevitably of racial polarization in an age of progressive depolarization. Razib also asks Mounk for his retrospective on the COVID-19 epidemic, in which he was a commentator who argued in The Atlantic for more stringent habits and then later, for an opening up. They also discuss how the Public Health establishment COVID interventions threw the whole field into disrepute, and what it tells us about the nature of expertise.

Then Razib asks Mounk about European nations and their future. In particular, whether their low productivity and fertility rates combined with mass migration doom them to a future of irrelevance and national dissolution. Mounk highlights the unfortunate case of the UK in particular, though he notes that his home nation of Germany is finding itself in a precarious situation with China competing with its manufacturers and Russia cutting off its gas supply. Finally, Razib closes by asking Mounk whether he is still as worried about American democracy in the wake of the 2024 Trump win as he was in 2016.

Anatoly Karlin: Russian nationalism to American globalism Jan 08, 2025

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Today Razib talks to Russian commentator and transhumanist Anatoly Karlin. Karlin has a BA in political economy from U C Berkeley. For most of the 21st century he had positioned himself as part of the right wing of the transhumanist movement. He returned to Russia after living in California's Bay Area for several years, and from there he promoted a nationalistic vision in opposition to American military and cultural power. With the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he joined a chorus of Russian warbloggers cheering on the inevitable conquest.

And then, like Richard Hanania, he did an about-face on the Russian invasion, reversing many of his views. Today Karlin is a digital nomad, and aligns firmly with American cultural and technological progressivism. He endorsed Kamala Harris and promotes what he terms a "Biosingularity." His Substack is "Elite Human Capital," a term popularized by Hanania. Arguably Karlin has gone further than Hanania in endorsing the new American global order, underpinned both by the US's technological and cultural dominance.

Razib and Karlin talk about how he came to invert so many of his views, while at the same time remaining fundamentally committed to the transhumanist project, like combating aging. They discuss the contrast between Russia and the US, and how Karlin came to see Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine and stand against the West as folly. Karlin also discusses his peripatetic lifestyle, the new friends made and those lost due to his conversion to what he would have previously called "globalism."

The Horse: Man's Most Useful Companion Jan 05, 2025

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During the Ice Age our ancestors often painted the horse in caves

On this week's episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib covers the archaeology, genetics and history of the horse. Dogs may be man's best friend, but for thousands of years horses were humanity's most valuable domesticate. While pigs, cattle and goat were essential elements of the world's subsistence economies, the horse in its military roles was a luxury good, with Chinese emperors sending delegations to Central Asia in search of "heavenly steeds."

But while dogs have been humanity's sidekick for at least 20,000 years, and cattle and caprids for about 10,000 years, the horse is a relatively new addition, tamed on the Central Asia steppe only some 5,500 years ago. But despite their late entrance, horses quickly proved economically critical, opening up trade routes, increasing farming productivity and remaining weapons of war down until the last futile Polish cavalry charges in 1939 against invading Nazis. The horse's role as a loyal steed was not inevitable; repeat attempts to domesticate tropical zebras have failed, while most other Eurasian megafauna, from moose to elephants, remain wild.

The horse is part of the "secondary products revolution," with high-fat milk and manes that can be refashioned to adorn human helmets, but just as importantly it was a pre-modern information technology revolution. Mongolian cavalry-messengers were able to cut a year-long trek across Eurasia down to a month. And between about 300 AD and 1500 AD, mounted cavalry dominated the Eurasian continent, driving the emergence of new empires and hastening the collapse of old ones. Since its domestication on the Pontic steppe in 2500 BC, which may have saved the species from extinction, the horse has played a critical part in world history, only really finally passing into obsolescence on the farm, the road and the battlefield in the past century and a half.

Wilfred Reilly: confronting historical myths propagated in schools Jan 02, 2025

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to returning guest Wilfred Reilly about his new book, Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me: Debunking the False Narratives Defining America's School Curricula. Reilly holds a Ph.D. in political science from Southern Illinois and a J.D. from the University of Illinois. Raised in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, he worked in the private sector before his career in academia, including stints as a political canvasser, real estate investor and a corporate sales executive. He is also the author of Taboo: 10 Facts [You Can't Talk About] and Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left Is Selling a Fake Race War. His writing appears in a wide array of publications like Commentary, National Review and Quillette.

Razib and Reilly tackle the reality that over the last few decades the American education system has reoriented itself to teach values by slanting a neutral historical narrative not specific to a particular viewpoint in the direction of what is arguably distortion and misinformation. Perhaps the most egregious case of this is the narrative about slavery, making the institution a uniquely American sin when the reality is that until the 19th century it was a widespread practice across almost all societies. In fact, as Reilly points out, it was the West, and in particular Britain, that ended the practice across much of the world. An aspect of counterfactually reorienting the historical narrative for didactic purposes is that many educators have reinvented peoples and places to serve their own idealism; Native Americans for example have become repurposed into premodern environmentalist activists, even though their arrival in the New World over 10,000 years ago was indisputably associated with megafaunal extinction. Reilly shows that this pattern of reinterpreting and shading the past applies even to events within the lifetimes of the living. The various retellings of the "Red Scare" periods of American history after World War I and World War II obfuscate the reality that the US in the 20th century did have a Communist movement that infiltrated the professions and even the diplomatic corps; Joe McCarthy's excesses seem to have ended up justifying amnesia about a global political movement that transformed much of the world and had very real aims to take over the USA.

Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me highlights that current attempts to retell history are not actually even liberal, but simply radical, and reflect the capture of education schools by Leftist activists since the 1970s. Rather than equipping children for the modern economy and expanding their understanding of the world, the regnant generation of educational practitioners seems intent on creating a cadre of 21st century radicals whose vague view of the past is rooted in ideology rather than any observable reality.

Leighton Woodhouse: chaos and corruption in urban America Dec 30, 2024

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib welcomes Leighton Akira Woodhouse back to the podcast. Woodhouse is a freelance journalist and a documentary filmmaker, currently based in Oakland, California. He grew up in Berkeley, and was a doctoral student in Sociology at UC Berkeley. After leaving academia he contributed to outlets like The Intercept and The Nation, before starting his own Substack, Social Studies, as well as working with Michael Shellenberger. He also has a new podcast with Lee Fang, Le Pod.

Woodhouse and Razib discuss the broader issue of the necessity of order in cities, how important cities are to American economic dynamism, and how the problems of cities impact us all. One of Woodhouse's beats has been crime and public disorder, and living in the Bay Area he has been unwitting witness to some of the most flagrant dysfunction of the current era. He outlines ‌the culpability of the judicial system in the rise of petty crime and details organized crime's opportunistic manipulation of the system.

Razib inquires about the political elite's role in fostering disorder, in particular the policies and views of the mayor of Oakland and the Alameda County district attorney. They address the rise of the movement against law and order on the West coast, its connection to social libertarianism, and how that differs from East-coast big city liberalism. Woodhouse believes that the West coast's homelessness crisis emerges in particular from its unique political configuration accelerated by a judicial system that aids and abets social libertarianism that is operationally pro-crime. Finally, they discuss the possibility that the 2024 elections will throw out of office many of the mayors and district attorneys brought in in the last few years on a plan of social justice activism.

Lyman Stone: a demographer against the birth dearth Dec 27, 2024

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to Lyman Stone, a soon to be PhD in sociology from McGill University specializing in population dynamics. Stone runs the Pro-natalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, and has had appointments at AEI, and has written for The Atlantic and The New York Times. Well known for his social media presence, Stone is a published academic who has explored COVID policies, religion and divorce rates. Stone has previously been on Unsupervised Learning to discuss his work on religion, but this episode they shiftto his bread and butter: demographics and the preconditions for a pro-natalist society.

First, Razib and Stone discuss the variables behind the fertility crash in the USA since 2008, and Stone debunks the notion that it is driven purely by decline in teen births. Despite the reality that teen births have dropped, disproportionately among Hispanics, Stone notes that since 2008 there has been an increase in both the age of first birth and age of marriage, resulting in reduced lifetime fertility. Stone also addresses worldwide patterns, and notes that aside from Niger almost the whole of Africa seems to have been impacted by the demographic transition that is leading to reduced fertility on other continents. He does note that the gap between the number of children women want, and the number they have, is particularly large in Africa. Razib and Stone also discuss the fiscal/monetary rationales for reduced fertility, as well as social and cultural changes. They also discuss the genetics and heritability of pro-natal dispositions, concluding that the changes we see in total fertility rate are driven by cultural change.

Peachy Keenan: cosmopolitan radical traditionalist Dec 19, 2024

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On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib talks to the pseudonymous commentator "Peachy Keenan." A native of Los Angeles with an Ivy League education, Keenan worked in entertainment before detouring into punditry, writing for the Claremont Institute's The American Mind, appearing on Fox News and penning Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War.

Razib and Keenan discuss her peripatetic and unique journey from a relatively apolitical member of America's liberal professional managerial class to a conservative Catholic housewife with a large family. Keenan talks about her ability to connect with audiences of all stripes despite her partisan leanings as the product of her cosmopolitan upbringing among coastal elites. Though in her values and practices she lives the life of the "domestic extremist," she still retains an aesthetic appreciation of the broader culture in which she grew up. Domestic Extremist is to a great extent a roadmap from where she was, to where she is. Keenan offers a sort of primer on how to change the "factory settings" for the American professional class, proposing traditional family life as an exit out of the endless rat race.

They also discuss the reality that the modern conservative culture falls short of produce any art for its own sake, at most putting out fare that ranges from overly didactic films produced by the Daily Wire to the cringe-inducing Christian film industry. Keenan emphasizes that good art must be good art, first and foremost, and whatever ideological valence should be layered in with subtlety and taste. She also discusses the problems with raising consciousness among conservative philanthropists about the problem of right-wing philistinism, and why aesthetic excellence would be a boon in any attempt to recapture the cultural high ground.

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