Razib Khan - Genomics, Intelligence, and The Church of Science

Razib Khan is a writer, geneticist, and blogger with an interest in history, genetics, culture, and evolutionary psychology. Watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/aagyRGKv66g. Listen on Apple Podcasts, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/25-razib-khan-genomics-intelligence-and-the/id1516093381?i=1000559160207 Spotify https://spoti.fi/3pW2dyS, or any other podcast platform. Podcast website here https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/razib-khan. Follow Razib on Twitter https://twitter.com/razibkhan. Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp for updates on future episodes Thanks for reading The Lunar Society! Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Time Stamps (0:00:05) Razib's Background (0:01:34) Dysgenics of Intelligence (0:04:23) Endogamy and Genetic traits in India (0:08:58) Similar Examples of Endogamy (0:14:28) Why So Many Brahmin CEOs (0:19:55) Razib the Globe Trotter, Geography Expert (0:25:04) Male/Female Genetic Variance (0:30:04) Agricultural Man and Our Tiny Brains (0:34:40) The Church of Science (0:42:33) Professorship, a family business (0:44:23) Long History (0:52:42) Future of Human-Computer Interfacing (0:56:30) Near Future of Gene Editing (0:59:19) Meta Questions and Closing Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com https://www.dwarkesh.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Dwarkesh Patel?

  All right. Today the pleasure of speaking with Razib Khan. He's one of the top science bloggers in the world. He writes about genetics, history, and evolution on his blog, Unsupervised Learnings, and he has a podcast of the same name. And you can find it at razeed.substack.com. So Razib, thanks for coming on the podcast.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  It was my pleasure, man.

• 0:25Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah. So can you can you give my audience a little bit of background about you, how you got into all this stuff?

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, you know, I've always been interested in topics like history, demographics, etc. And I've also been interested in science, so a scientific background, scientific training. And over the last 20 years, genetics has become just a really big deal. In terms of, you know, just as a tool to do various things, whether it's in the biomedical space or historical inference. And, you know, so obviously I'm interested in demographics, historical inference, and, you know, genetics is a tool I can use as a geneticist, and so I do.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  So, you know, like, like, as we're recording right now, I decided to do a bunch of pairwise genetic distances between populations and stuff, just because I could for a post, you know? So, you know, I do a lot of things by myself, where I replicate what's been done. Yeah, so I mean, that's a lot of what I do. Yeah.

• 1:33Dwarkesh Patel?

  Okay, interesting. All right, so I just like to jump into it. So my first question is, assuming there's no gene editing in the near future, what is the long-term equilibrium for intelligence look like? So there's like multiple visions, right? Like, one, one view is like, you know, Charles Murray and Coming Apart. You have, you know, you have fat tails because there's assortative mating. Another is there's like a slight dysgenic effect because there's lower fertility among higher intelligence people. So what does equilibrium look like if there's no gene editing?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  More like the second, in terms of not an equilibrium yet. We're not going to have an equilibrium until, you know, the reproductive differentials equilibrate. They will at some point, you know, but it could be centuries. So like, at this point,

• 2:22Speaker 01

  People with genes for educational attainment had to delay childbearing to the point where a lot of them do not have children. You know, uh, because they invest in educational attainment in the short term. So. You know, they don't have as many children and their generation times are longer, like the math is difficult there, right? Um, so, uh, right now there's a strong native selection. Not strong, there's there's negative selection on genes for educational attainment. I mean, everyone who's looked at says that, at least in the developed world.

• 2:50Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right. I, is this something we can expect in the long term? Cause like naively, I would expect like. People who are more intelligent, as long as there's, you know, some sort of selection pressure in the long term. Um, you know, like there, there should be selection for, um, I guess educated, smart, uh, people because. They, they will just have the cognitive tools to, uh, you know, actually, uh, reproduce. Uh, or, you know, survive and thrive, right? You, as long as like some smart people want to survive and thrive.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, survive and thrive is one thing, but have a re, have offspring is a different thing. Uh, you know, the incentives in our society, um, are such that a lot of people believe that. Thriving is being child free, or you know, what usually happens, I think, is. People want to establish themselves in their twenties. And they don't want to put too many, too much thought. I mean, at least, you know, professional managerial, you know, college educated people. And then in their thirties, they start thinking about it. And sometimes people wait too long. Uh, there's fertility issues or just they just wait too long. They can't find someone else. You know, so, um, yeah, in the, in the long term, obviously there's a limit, there's limiting principle, but you don't need to be that bright to. You know, survive and have a lot of children. And on the contrary, um, there's clear evidence that.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Uh, not being bright is good for your reproductive output. So. You know.

• 4:14Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  The movie about that, two thousand six, so.

• 4:18Dwarkesh Patel?

  The movie's called 2006?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  No, 2006, the Idiocracy.

• 4:23Dwarkesh Patel?

  Oh, I see.

• 4:26Dwarkesh Patel?

  What explains the level of endogamy you see in, between Indian Jathis, like Indian subcast? Because you have a very excellent blog post about this. And so apparently, as you say, there's genetic evidence that for thousands of years, these Jathis, like, were living in the same village. You know, they're not intermarrying, they're not having kids together. You know, even within the context of like, you know, slaves in America, this is not a thing that happens, right? Like, you have Sully Hemings, you know, Thomas Jefferson's misfits. So, I like, I don't, how is it possible for thousands of people, what kind of social structure could lead to this?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, nobody really knows, is the short answer. So, the math is like, you know, there's like, there is evidence from, from Andhra Pradesh, South India. David Reich looked at it, and it's like, if you run the math, it's like, oh, like, their endogamy rate is like, you know, point, you know, it's like ninety-nine point five percent per generation, like, you know, super high. So, I mean, you know, when, when I was younger, you know, the endogamy rate for like, black Americans was like ninety-five percent, which is high, and today it's like eighty-five percent, you know? But, you know, five percent is like, ten times bigger than what I'm talking about, you know?

• 5:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, like you said, average black American is twenty percent European in ancestry, et cetera, et cetera. So, it's just like, there's really high barriers in the Indian subcontinent, in terms of like, how can we maintain? One thing that I, I wonder about is infanticide.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Perhaps, I mean, maybe there's like, the social taboos, reproductive fitness is really low, I don't know. I, I, it doesn't, you know, for humans, it doesn't make sense, but the, the data is what it is. Indians are just really good at endogamy, for some reason, you know? Whereas in other populations, the general pattern is, you know, I mean...

• 6:26Speaker 01

  You see someone, you're like, oh, they're fine, you know?

• 6:30Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  One thing leads to, you know, I just like, that's, you know, this isn't a, it's not rocket science, it's universal human nature, right? But somehow Indians were able to escape that. No one know really, no one really knows. I mean, I've had multiple of genetics come up to me and be like, what's up with this? I don't know. And it's like, why are you asking me? And I'm like, well, I mean, you know, you're brown, so maybe you know. It's like they're trying to figure out whether there's a secret sauce here, because it's just not, it doesn't make any sense for a, for a mammal where the males in particular are highly, um, polygynous, you know, an ideal, so.

• 7:07Dwarkesh Patel?

  I mean, are there any hypotheses out there about that and try to explain this?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Uh, not really. I mean, you know, it's like, oh, like caste system, blah, blah, blah, you know, but,

• 7:19Speaker 01

  again, I mean, you know, sexual exploitation of lower caste women by upper caste men has been a thing. So I do wonder like, what's up with that? I mean, there are some cases where you see things, so like on the Nair, the Nair group in Kerala, um, you know, many of them, uh, many of the women traditionally, not always, but they had these relationships with, uh, Kerala Brahmins, Napa Theory Brahmins, uh, that weren't marriages, but there was like consort, there were consorts and, uh, you know, Carol, I think the Nairs also did polyandry and other things, but you know, you see the Nairs, you see like a very range of like genetic distance to Napa Theory Brahmins, and that's just because their biological fathers are fathers. I mean, I don't know if they call them fathers, but you know, I mean,

• 8:03Speaker 01

  eh, are of that group. So that there, so there are exceptions to this, um, but you know, like, like you're telling me, yeah, like in general, in general, I can like, look at someone, um, most Indians like figure out like what their community, as they say, is from. It's just like not like typical. You know, most, most of, like, most of the world's not like that. It's basically like if, if all of India is populated by people like Ashkenazi Jews. You know, very, very endogamous people. Cause people are like, you know, people are like, oh, well, there's no other example. I'm like, actually, there is like astronauti Jews, the Roma, who themselves are of part Indian origin. You know, there, there, there's, there's a few examples.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  The issue was just like having a whole society like this is pretty weird. That is, that is the, the innovation is like, oh, let's have a whole society that's stratified. So, you know.

• 8:56Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, it's, it's very interesting. Um, uh, speaking of astronauti Jews, so I, I thought, I thought your, uh, I thought your post on that was very interesting. And, you know, you talk about how, um, you know, before, before Jews were, uh, kind of liberated in Europe in the 18th century. Or sorry, was it 19th century? There just wasn't that much Jewish achievement. Yep. Um, there, there, there, there wasn't that much Jewish achievement. And it kind of made me wonder, are there like, are there some other, uh, population groups in the world today that are, that were bottlenecked by a similar process? Um, and who are also very endogamous that, you know, once they get to a point of prosperity and, uh, and liberation that Jews went through in 19th century. You know, in the future, we'll just be talking about how they're outputting, uh, a greater portion of the world's cultural heritage.

• 9:41Dwarkesh Patel?

  Um, like, uh, it, it, you know, like parts of the world that are just going through industrialization now. And might have like small populations like astronauti Jews, right? Uh, is there potential for like a new astronauti Jew in the next century or two is like, I guess what I'm asking.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  So what you need, so astronauti Jews are highly endogamous, were.

• 9:59Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, they, they emerged in the context of Central East Europe. As a middle men minority, um, you know, what, what the whole thing is like, you know, uh, Haredi Jews dressed like Polish nobles, you know, cause. They worked for these Polish nobles as factors and tax collectors and administrators and whatnot. Um, so I guess you have to look for something like that. Um. One, you know, this isn't totally equivalent because uh dogme is not a big issue here, but like Fujianese. You know, uh Chinese from Fujian have traditionally done better on examinations going back a thousand years, like Song Dynasty. Uh so there were like um affirmative action quotas on people from Fujian.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  So if you look at like who, so Fujian people basically. A lot of the rich Chinese, not all obviously, um but you know traditionally like in Hong Kong. Uh the elite families are um, you know, Shanghai, some Fujianese. And so like these coastal, Southeast coastal people in China have traditionally been extremely enterprising. And central government in China has often clamped down on them. Obviously, this government is not, um the modern economy cannot. And so I think these these populations might come into their own, you know?

• 11:18Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah. Although, didn't you write somewhere else that there the Chinese government for a long time, like not just, you know. The CCP, but like, I guess China, uh you know, in Chinese history, there's been uh many instances of the government. Trying to um get rid of like genetically distinct groups by, I guess, breeding them into the larger stock. So potentially that reduces the odds of some uh, you know, outlier endogamous group.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in China, the only equivalent like like the U C and Ashwadji Jews or the Hakka. In South China and the Hakka are descended from northern Chinese migrants and so they speak like a dialect of Mandarin. Um northern Chinese, you know, dialect in the south like in Guangdong, where the Cantonese and Taiwanese are. And you know, they they still kind of tend to intermarry. I mean, they're they're they're spatially isolated, but you know, again, like um the Hakka. And the Hakka are not like Ashwadji Jews and having an ideological reason for their endogamy. Uh you know, Chinese uh lineages, some are like Indian lineages, but um are paternal.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  You know, um, so your identity and who you are and your clan is determined by who your father is. So, um, you know, that's, I mean, you might have a lower status if your mother is an ethnic minority like Zhuang or Uyghur or something like that. But, you know, informally, but still officially, you're part of the clan. And so that's, I think, how assimilation has happened genetically. People Guangdong, like the Cantonese, like they have a minority of, um, you know, indigenous or south, south ethnic group, you know, uh, ancestry. Some of their practices are clearly not Han Chinese, especially like, um, certain marriage practices, certain things that women do.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Um, and most of the gene flow is probably from females, from non, from non Han that were assimilated in the area. So, yeah, Han, the Han identity is very assimilative. North of, um, north of the Yangtze, pretty much every Han sample that I have has a little bit of West Eurasian ancestry. South the Yangtze, none of them have it. And so I think most of that West Eurasia is probably assimilated Mongols and other things like that. Cause the Mongols are about ten percent, assimilated Mongol, yeah. I think that's what it is. Cause the Mongols are about ten percent West Eurasian. Uh, and the tell for me is, um, uh, you know, like about one percent of northern Chinese Han men have, uh, R one A.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Eight point five percent. It's not super high, but, um, R one A is, you know, mostly kind of Indo Iranians and Slavs. And Mongols have it. They have the Indo Iranian version because they assimilated Sivians and Sarmatians and other Iranian steppe people. So I think that's probably where that comes into the Chinese. And, you know, you can go back to, um, the Tobat Turks and, and other groups after the fall of the Han dynasty. You know, fifteen hundred or actually seventeen hundred years ago, seventeen, eighteen, eighteen hundred years ago. I mean, I think that's when they started introducing that genetic element to northern China. North the Yangtze.

• 14:26Dwarkesh Patel?

  Uh huh. Interesting. Um, uh, but by the way, so there's, uh, going back to India, there's been a lot of talk about how, uh, a lot of American CEOs of big tech companies are Indians. Specifically, uh, for, you know, uh, from Brahman Jathis. Um, is there, is there some particular reason that, that, that seems to be happening?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Wait, what, what seems to hap- can you repeat that again?

• 14:47Dwarkesh Patel?

  Well, why are a lot of, uh, big tech CEOs Indians and specifically a lot of them from, uh, Brahman, uh, you know, Brahmins?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the guy from TikTok's not, he's Baniya. Um, well, I mean, I think the the the Indian explanation, which you probably know is like Brahmins are literate, they're symbolic manipulators. Um, and so obviously, you know, if you work at Microsoft or Google, um, they tend to be particularly South Indian Brahmins, actually. Uh, as opposed to North Indian Brahmins, there aren't that many of those. Um, and and this goes back to the colonial period, actually, um, South Indian Brahmins would migrate to the cities of North India to work in the Indian service. You know, the reverse would not happen. So, um, you know, this is like a longstanding issue or issue or phenomenon of South Indian English speaking Brahmin, at least in particular.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Um, availing themselves of technology, higher education, um, you know, Tamil Brahmins, for example, are very well represented in engineering and software, and that's obviously the pipeline that Indian Americans are going in into as CEOs, highly overrepresented. Um, you know, so I think, um, you know, the CEO of Microsoft and CEO of Google are both South Indian Brahmins, they're both Telugu Brahmins, there's some, there's some like debates, I think, whether, um, whether the guy at Microsoft, uh, is a Brahmin online, because I don't know, I can't tell these sorts of things, I mean, I can, but not like, I don't have a good instinct, you know what I'm saying?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  But, um, anyway, yeah, so I think Brahmins are, you know, like Ashkenazi Jews, you know, they analogize themselves, particularly South Indian Brahmins, I think we do have to distinguish that because I, you know, you know, like, one of you heard about a Guju Brahmin or a UP Brahmin, you know, it's like, those people just stay where they are, you know, they're not, um, you know, they're they're local landed elites, but they're not like well known outside of the Indian subcontinent, or, you know, to be honest, within the Indian subcontinent, right, I can see.

• 16:49Dwarkesh Patel?

  Uh, wha- what explains that? I mean, I, so I read, um, I I read a part of Satya, he's the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, and he he talked about how his like, uh, da- uh, parents were like these Marxist philosophers, uh, you know, Brahmin philosophers. Um, but anyway, so so what explains, um? What explains why these North Indians were, I guess, complacent and these South Indians were availing themselves of, uh, you know, the, the resources.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think in UP, UP and Bihar in particular are the elites. They tend to be, they tend to like to be big fish in small ponds. So it's not like there's like Rajput Thakurs all over the world either from UP, right? Uh, Punjab is different. Uh, there's a lot of Punjabis all over the world of various groups. Uh, you know, a lot of Jats, uh, agricultural farmers in Central Valley, Khatreys all over the place, you know? Um, in contrast, in UP, Bihar, these North Indian states, uh, there's just like, there's less dynamism, less cultural dynamism. The behavioral economic literature shows like a really strong preference for zero sum gains. Um, wanting to be like at the, um, at the pinnacle of the local, this is not always true, you know?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  But they, they prefer to be at the pinnacle of the local, uh, power structure. Rather than taking a risk going to somewhere else where they might not be at the peak. You know, they might be way well, more well off in the aggregate, but you know, they wouldn't be at the peak. And so for example, someone like, um, like Chandrakar, Chandrakar Limit, he's a Tamil Brahmin by background. Obviously he settled in the United States eventually, but, um, you know, I think he was born in Lahore. His dad was working for the Indian Civil Service. And, you know, if you read his biography, they experienced like some kind of discrimination, you know,

• 18:33Speaker 01

  prejudice being South Indians in the North and then Chandrakar went to the United States and during the time of segregation. You know, and they tried to like put him in the blacks only area in St. Louis, like for some, uh, sports games, just like all sorts of things that happened, you know? And then he experienced prejudice at the hand of, I think, like Arthur Eddington in particular was, was pretty prejudiced against Indians and their ability to contribute to physics. So.

• 19:00Dwarkesh Patel?

  Is that the guy who approved Einstein's, uh, or the, approved relativity, right?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think empirically, yeah, yeah. So.

• 19:08Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  But I mean, I mean, at least that's Chandrakar's take. Like, you know, you don't know if it's like 100% true that anything was really, you know? Who knows? Cause sometimes it turns out that there's personal beefs going on. I don't think anything ever told his side. He died a long time ago. Chandrakar lived until like, it wasn't like until 10 years ago. I think he died 10 years ago.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Oh, no, not ten years ago, like nineteen ninety five, so a while ago.

• 19:40Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, ninety five, so twenty five years ago, but yeah, I mean, he was still, I mean, so he was still around when I was in high school. I remember someone did a report on him and, you know, it's hard to find information back then, but, you know, you could, he was still around giving quotes, so, yeah.

• 19:56Dwarkesh Patel?

  Um, there's a work you do involve a lot of traveling, I mean, you're writing about all these different areas of the world, uh, and, you know, there are, um, anthropological and genetic history. Uh, I wonder if that, if that requires you or if it helps you to like just travel to all these places, or are you able to do that just from, uh, just from here?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I, I do mostly in the United States, I mean, I've traveled a little bit, but not too much, I'm not a big traveler internationally, I'm not a, you know, I'm not, yeah, I don't, I don't do that. Um, some people do, you know, Spencer Wells, who I worked with, former boss, uh, he's, you know, traveled all over the world and, you know, with National Geographic and stuff. That adds a lot of local color in terms of things you see, things you know, whenever we talked about the Eurasian steppe, he's been there a lot. So, um, you know, he can add a lot to that, um, and a few places, um, if, if, if, I mean, I don't know if you read the Finland series, I've been to Finland, you know? So there are certain things that I know about Finland, I've been to Finland, I've been to Italy, I don't know, England just seemed like the United States, but whiter.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  You know, so, I mean, there was, there wasn't like, ooh, like, whoa, like, I really understand the British people now, just like, okay, they're drinking a lot. I, I think I, I think I am not surprised by that, just judging by, you know, like all those British sitcoms and TV shows where they're like drinking in the morning, I get it now, you know, so.

• 21:19Dwarkesh Patel?

  Huh, yeah, so that's, that's one thing I was wondering is, uh, knowing all that you should know about, uh, the history of these different places. Do you feel that, uh, when you visit a place or when you learn more about a place, you're like, oh, I, I, what they're doing today, that makes sense to me, like, why, why it is the way it is? Given what I know about, you know, the, the roots of what, what happened in that place thousands of years ago, or does it feel that it's just kind of random?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  No, it's not random, sometimes it do, I mean, there, there's sometimes where it's like, you know, someone does this, or their family does this, and I'm like, oh, it's because of this, and they're like, what? Oh. You know, like they don't, because you don't know the antecedents of, you know, we don't know the antecedents of everything we do. And so a lot of times I do, and you know, I mean, the thing was like, you know, for example, like, um, Americans are really ignorant in geography, so, uh. Um, so twenty nineteen, I'm a scientific conference, American study, human genetics. You know, I'm meeting these people, you know, each networking, you're meeting, um, so I'm at this Chinese geneticist. Uh, she's officially grad school in the United States, and I was like, oh, like, where are you from? She was just like, oh, I'm from a city between Beijing.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  And Guangdong, like exactly in the middle. Okay, so here's my, my train of thought. And so I immediately blurred out Wuhan. And she was like, whoa, how'd you guess that? You know, okay, so one, she was shocked that I knew Wuhan, that I knew of Wuhan, right? Because most Americans don't. Two, Shanghai's in the middle, but if she was from Shanghai, she would say Shanghai. So it had to be another city. I happen to know that there's a high-speed line, rail line between, um, Beijing and Guangdong. Uh, between Guangzhou and, uh, it's, it's middle point is Wuhan. So I knew Wuhan was exactly at the middle, right? And so I was like, you know, these are the sort of things, I mean, it's like, ooh, like an American, it's like super amazing, because we don't know any geography, like.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Her friend was like, you know, I was like, looking at him, I was like, oh, you, you're pretty tall, like, you know, are you from the Chinese? Like, yeah, yeah, I'm from the east, and I'm like. Shandong, and then he was just like, whoa, how'd you know that? I'm like, what's the easternmost province? I mean, I mean, it's just an educated, you know what I'm saying? If someone's like, someone's like, has like, um, they're talking about chowder, you know, and drinking tonic. And it's like wicked smart, and I'm just like, are you from Boston? They're like, whoa. That's wicked crazy, how'd you know that? And I'm just like, uh. You know what I'm saying? But it's because, because I know, like, everybody outside of America rightfully assumes that Americans do not know anything about where they're from, like, nothing.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  You know, and so it's just like an incredible party trick with an American accent to be like, you are from Praha. You know, they're like, what? You know?

• 24:02Dwarkesh Patel?

  Uh, but by the way, can you guess my Jati?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I mean, I know you're Guju, right?

• 24:07Dwarkesh Patel?

  Uh huh.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  But I, I couldn't, I didn't guess it, um, I don't know by the name, I mean, you look, uh, are you like half Patel, half Bonnie? I'm just guessing.

• 24:16Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Did I guess right?

• 24:18Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Why am I doing that? I don't even know, man.

• 24:24Dwarkesh Patel?

  My mom, my dad, uh, my, my, yeah, my dad is Patel and my mom is, uh, Mania, yeah.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Okay, alright.

• 24:30Dwarkesh Patel?

  That's exactly correct.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Okay, guys, um, this was not a conspiracy between us. Like, he literally, like, just, I, I didn't know that question was gonna be asked and I actually didn't have any, I just, like, looked at him and I was just like, this is my guess, this is my educated guess.

• 24:45Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right, right, so that alone should justify your subscription. Um, yeah, uh, okay, so I, I've had this question about, um, you know, the greater male variance, uh, theory, uh, for a long time, which is that, uh, you, so the, basically the idea is, um, um, men produce more geniuses but also more idiots. Uh, so I've always wondered, like, uh, why is that the case? Because you, so is, is there some, there must be some mechanism that, like, just increases the variation, um, like, you know, gives you a higher odds of being a genius, but at the cost of higher odds of also being an idiot, um, that is, like, more activated than men, right? Like, wh- wh- why, what is the trade-off that, um, involves, uh, if you activate the trade-off, you might be, have a higher odds of becoming a genius, but also a higher odds of becoming an idiot?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, so, I mean, you gotta, like, BS a little bit of a molecular mechanism, or, like, I haven't looked at it in detail in a while, but, one of the hypotheses is, for example, we have one X chromosome, so with X chromosomes, normally with women, um, there's, uh, inactivation of one X chromosome randomly in the cell, right? Or in the tissue, or whatever, in the tissue, we have bar bodies, right? So every cell has an X chromosome, and they tend to clump, where it's like, there are these, like, bar bodies, like, X chromosomes that are inactivated, they're not expressing, they're like,

• 26:05Speaker 01

  they're like, euchromatic, okay, people are gonna be like, oh my god, like, he's getting euchromatic and heterochromatic mixed. I always get them mixed up, okay, I'm not a molecular geneticist. But anyway, um, so, like, one of the X chromosomes has to inactivate, and that's random, okay? So, let's say, um, a woman has, like, a major mutation in the X chromosome, you know that, like, she has another copy, right? But, you know, it could be that in that cell, there's a malfunction, because the other copy is the one that's inactivated, the one that's functional. Now, if you're a man, there's no choice, it's only one X chromosome.

• 26:38Dwarkesh Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Right? So, obviously, that's limiting the degrees of freedom, right? And so, if that's a good copy, if it's got some good stuff going on there... Well, that's good. But if it's got bad stuff going on there, well, you're you're screwed. So I mean, the easiest explanation for why the at the low end, men have problems is probably. Okay, well, we have a load of deleterious alleles on our X chromosomes that are not masked. Because we only have one of them, right? So that's one thing. Um, in terms of we are the heterogametic sex. So we're the sex that has like so in in birds, I think it's the opposite. Or I know it is the opposite. Um, females are the heterogametic sex, the sex determination happens through them.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  And males have like the equivalent of two X, Z W, and I think the males are. ZZ anyway. Um, so that's one issue. And when you think developmentally, you know, we all start out as females, the female is the template. Um, and so men have to go through extra processes. So the end of life is the opposite, like women go through menopause, which is a proactive physiological shutdown. Not just like a long, slow decline like we go through in our reproductive processes. But at the beginning of life, I think it's at the end of the first trimester, we go through this testosterone burst, right? S R Y, the sex, um, you know.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, the sex chromosome, the you know, the sex determining region kicks in. And we become male, we can masculized. So when you have a situation, when you have extra developmental steps, hey, guess what? That can mess things up. Okay. So we also have higher testosterone, testosterone is antagonistic to immune response. Um, so there are more males born than females, probably because of Y chromosome of the male. A section of the sperm of a male Y chromosome is lighter than when it has an X chromosome. Okay, so probably male sperm, well, male sperm have an advantage in speed. There's about a hundred and four, a hundred and five males born.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  For a hundred females, but in utero, there's a strong suspicion from people that have done like sampling on miscarriage miscarried fetuses. The males are overrepresented. So we actually start out with a bigger advantage. And we're already cold because of our genetic abnormalities, something on the order of like ten to fifty percent of fetuses miscarry. It's still kind of not clear with the total numbers. It's really hard to track miscarriages early on, right? And so so that that explains like the downward, the low end in terms of why there might be more male quote geniuses. I think the way you might want to look at it is. There's really no reproductive value with the high end. It's just kind of like a freak thing. And if we're less developmentally stable.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Uh, we can go off target a little bit more is the way I think of it. There's no reason you need you need to have your IQ be like once. There's no reason you need to be able to do algebraic topology easily. Okay, there's there's no reason. And there there is some evidence. There is some evidence. In the genomic literature now with the most recent work that. There is some enrichment for schizophrenia and other things with some of these educational attainment genes. Like some, there's some evidence.

• 30:05Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, uh, but i- is there some reason in the ancestral environment why, I don't know, having a brain capable of algebraic topology would be. Advantageous like is there something that a human would need to do? Okay, and then. Uh, but it it's a separate question, I guess, you can answer at the same time. It it do we have explanation for why brain size decreased by like, uh, what was it? Uh, what was ten percent or something like that?

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're just smaller. So our our bodies got smaller like it got when it got warmer, we got smaller, but also agriculture seems to have given us really, really weak bones. We got more fragile, more grassile. We shrunk some with agriculture and so that natural process of that, the smaller brains, I bet you average nutrition probably decreased some. And in terms of like quality. As opposed to reliability and consistency, that probably meant that, you know, smaller brain sizes are. More optimal to survive through the event. But we know smaller body sizes are. For sure. Um, we know small, smaller body sizes are, um, there's been a lot of negative selection uh, in Southern Europe and in Asia for small body size.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  And um, last I checked, seems pretty clear that people in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent are shorter genetically. And some of it is like East Asian ancestry, but like, I mean, clearly like Bengalis are just a short people, you know? Uh, if you just like meet like people from Bangladesh or West Bengal in the West and like they're chubby AF because they get a lot to eat. So it's not like genetics, you know? Like I used to, when I was, or not, or not genetic, but like environment. I used to, I was like, when I was little, people would say like, oh, well, you know, people, people, you know, your, your parents, because my dad's short, your, your parents didn't eat a lot of meat. I was just like, okay, but like now that I know about genetics, nutrition and class background, I'm like, no, like my, my family like,

• 31:56Speaker 01

  like, you know, like people were like obese in my family, like they had enough to eat. They didn't suffer from the Bengal famine. And also my family's Muslim, so they eat beef and they got protein. No, they're just short because genetics. You know, and why? Well, we know the Bangladesh Bengali populations, Bangladesh, they have cholera resistance. Obviously because, you know, the issues with flooding and water, um, that's different than others has in the Indians subcontinental populations. Uh, there's some reasons why they're small too. I don't know why, why, why Bengalis are small, but that's obviously true.

• 32:26Dwarkesh Patel?

  Uh, so sorry, what's the link between cholera and the height?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  There's no link. I'm just saying like, there's been studies in selection. Uh, there's selection for resistance to cholera in Bengal. It's one of the canonical examples, like the vibria, whatever, like that, the, the micro. There's clearly strong selection because of the cholera uh, over the last couple of centuries.

• 32:45Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah. And then what do you make of the self domestication hypothesis? The idea that there's like a, uh, there's a set of genes that um, uh, I guess they happen together, they're, they're associated in many different mammals with um, um, domestication, you know, like smaller jaws. Um, males and females uh, looking uh, similar and then, you know, uh, less intelligent. There, there's a cluster of other things, but so basically the idea is that the same thing happened to humans during the agricultural revolution. What do you make of that idea?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's plausible. I think um, um, it hasn't really um, uh.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Uh, it hasn't really panned out in terms of the genomics. Let's just put it that way because this hypothesis has been around for a generation and it hasn't really panned out in terms of the genomics. So, um, I guess what I would say is like, um, it could be that, uh, um, and, uh, let's see.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Let's see. Um, what I would say is it could be humans are special in some distinct ways. Okay. Um, because, because like it's been studied in foxes and other organisms extensively. But, um, it hasn't been and dogs, you know, and there's a spackling and some of the things. Let's talk about what you're talking about. Like there's certain like spackling patterns, um, floppy ears, just really, really common patterns across mammals because the same developmental pathways are tuned. We obviously don't have floppy ears and we don't show high ball patterning. So, um, I think this, I think it's a great idea. I just don't know for sure like how it, how it operationalizes in humans. Just put it that way.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  I mean, it's been, it's been a generation. We have genomic resources and it hasn't really, I haven't seen too much advancement in that direction.

• 34:40Dwarkesh Patel?

  Gotcha. Um, okay. So this morning you tweeted, um, if everyone who attends a church thinks that the point of church is to bask in the work of the fellow parishioners rather than worshiping God, the church won't last long. And then you followed that up, uh, with a tweet that said, uh, uh, in parentheses, I'm not talking about religion. So I generally don't know, uh, what you're, what you're referring to that tweet. I, I don't know if you meant, meant to keep it, uh, unsaid, but I was just kind of curious.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was being sarcastic and I was just having a discussion. Um, I'll, I'll tell you what it was. Just having a discussion with a scientist friend of mine. We're talking about collegiality, uh, and truth. And, um, you know, it's like sometimes, sometimes it seems like in science today, um, and it's just not just online, but just in general, uh, you know, like the community. Um, and just like, you know, comfort, I guess, uh, I don't know, is like prioritized. And a lot of it's fake. Uh, you know, science is like, is like, um, is like, uh,

• 35:41Speaker 01

  It's like uh, it's like management consulting, it's up or out, you know? So all this stuff about like support and it's just fake, right? Like one percent of, one percent of incoming graduate students will have like a tenured R1, research one, like top research one position, like you know, relevant one, right? So all this stuff about how we were here to support you, no, like we're here to like separate the wheat from the chaff. So that's kind of like fake right there. But you know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, this kind of the community and not making people uncomfortable and inclusion and equity. And I'm just like, science is like super inequitous.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Right? It's not like, it's not like um, it's not like pediatrics or something, right? Yeah, there are superstar pediatricians, but look, the average pediatrician makes a difference and pediatrician is a pediatrician. In science, it, you have like a few superstars who, I mean, like it's hyper Pareto principle, right? Uh, it's not like the twenty eighty, it's like, you know, the five to ninety five, you know? So um, anyway, it's just like a little strange there and um, you know, the whole idea is like truth and, you know, I, you know, I'm, I, I've just seen things where it's like, oh, like people are like, that's just uncomfortable. You can't say that, that makes people blah, blah, blah. I'm just like, and one, it's a very, very widowing profession. They haven't changed that, no matter what you say.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Like you can repeat these mantras, but it doesn't matter. Like it's a widowing profession. And the other thing is um,

• 37:16Speaker 01

  you know, like if the science was here for the truth, like if that's not the primary focus, if you're here for like quality of life,

• 37:24Speaker 01

  you know?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I don't know, like, why are we funding it then? You know, I don't know. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:33Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, it makes sense. It's not only unequal in the sense that there's like a logic curve where a small minority of scientists make the largest, much larger portion of the total contribution to science, but it's also unequal. I think it was you who said this or wrote about this. I don't know where I saw this. But professors, the career of professorship has the highest heredity in the sense that the highest correlation between the parent being a professor and the child being a professor. Yeah, was that you? Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Uh, I didn't, I mean, I probably retweeted it. I mean, that's not, that's obvious. I didn't talk about it extensively because like, okay, everyone knows this. Everybody in science knows this. My dad was a professor, by the way. But anyway, I'm not, but I'm just saying that like everybody who, so one thing is, so I have a friend, like I'm, you know, so people in science, people who go into graduate school and scientific, academic science, they, you know, reason first generation is a thing is because it's so skewed toward professional managerial class people in general. It's very, very class bias. You know, um, so.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, anyway, it's very class biased, but even people who come from professional managerial backgrounds, if they didn't come from academia, they don't always know everything. So I have a friend who came from like very upper, upper middle class background. And, you know, he admitted like, yeah, like he had to learn some things in terms of what you do. To make it in science because, you know, his, I think his dad's a lawyer. I don't know. I think his dad's a lawyer. But, you know, so he know, I mean, it's the same thing in medicine. Like I have a friend, he's in medicine. I think his parents are engineers and, you know, he's, he said that they told him from medical school interviews, it's going to count against you that your parents aren't doctors. Because they just assume you don't know as much about like how to make it in the profession, right?

• 39:15Speaker 01

  And so there's tacit stuff that gets passed on. Like I have a friend, he's, um, he is a research one professor. He does have tenure. I mean, he has succeeded, but he comes from very working class background. And by the time he got to the postdoctoral fellow stage, which is after PhD before professor, uh, he was like talking to people. And they were talking about their choices that they made as undergrads and blah, blah, blah. He just thought to himself and, you know, he's, um.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  He's in like in his field, he's in a top ten institution. He's not at like Harvard, but he's in a top. So he's doing really well, so I don't want to under undersell how how much he's accomplished. But, you know, he literally told me, he was like, you know, I just thought to myself, I was like, I never had a chance.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  You know, he just, I mean, he did well, obviously, but like he never planned this way. He never optimized his own life because he just, he didn't have that background, you know?

• 40:07Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  It's like, he never had a chance, so um, you know, that is what it, on the margin, um, it makes a big difference. And I think this is why there's a lot of virtue signaling from some people. Um, who, you know, like some of the most, um, where is it? There's a, like, there's a professor, I'm not gonna name who it is explicitly, but people who follow academic Twitter probably know who I'm talking about. Um, they work in biomedical science and, you know, they do periodic virtual signaling, uh, just like standard progressive stuff. Uh, but like, I think their uncle was like a Nobel Prize winner and they did research in their uncle's lab when they were in high school. So, I mean, this is a person who got a huge leg up by family, I mean, they're smart, okay?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  But, okay, like, they knew exactly how to succeed in science because they had all the family connections in the world. And, um, you know, so now I think they overcompensate. I think she overcompensates, to be honest, that's what everyone assumes privately, that's what they say. And I think it's probably true. You know, there's other people like that where, um, you know, online, there's a couple, there's, there's, there's one guy online who's super, super progressive. But a friend of mine told me he's like notorious dick. Um, to his, to people in his lab, where it's like, he's a really bad boss, he's really mean, really demanding. So obviously, he's just covering his butt, like, on social media.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  So, anyway, like, my tweet was basically alluding to the fact that, like, well, if you're not there for the right reasons. If everyone's just there to like collect a salary or they don't know what to do with their life. Um, or like they like hanging out with this crew and being. On the same, like, I don't know, ideological team, kinda, like, okay, like, I mean, what is the? What is the point of science then? You know, what is the point of where, why are you here? Why aren't you an accountant or CPA or something like that? I don't know. Doesn't, it doesn't make sense, you know? Um, you're supposed to be here for a higher calling. Uh, and so, okay, so the tweet was the parishioner, the parishioner would be like the person involved in laboratory, the research institution, and God is the truth. And if you're not there for the truth,

• 42:18Speaker 01

  uh, eventually, the, the institution's not going to make it. It's just gonna kinda dissolve because at the end of the day, if you don't have passion for research, if you don't have passion for the truth, uh, what's the point?

• 42:32Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, there's this professor, we both know, but I, obviously, I'm not gonna say who it is. Um, and so his, um, his, his, his kids also wanna become professors. So, it, it, the, um, uh, the, the, the kid, uh, they, um, just graduated, uh, high school. And then, so they had a peer-reviewed published paper while they were in high school, because, you know, obviously, the professor had guided, uh, guided them so that they would be in a good position to become a professor, uh, themselves, right? So, when you consider that kinda advantage, and somebody who just goes to college, like, oh, this subject seems interesting to me, maybe I should consider a graduate, uh, academic career here. Obviously, there's like no comparison, and they'll, in, in just the level of advantage you have, if you, if you have been planning it out, uh.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I, I don't know what's going on here. Um, I've talked to multiple friends who are like in postdoc level, and they just talk about, like, they can see over the last ten years, a massive inflation in publication, where they're postdocs now, and like, some of their graduate students have like two or three publications coming in. And like, they didn't have any publications until their, like, third, fourth year of graduate school, and they went to the same university, so what's happening here? Um, you know, and we, I mean, you know this, like, okay, like, in the past, they didn't publish as much, but they did a lot of science. So, this is, this is like one of those issues when you devise a metric.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  To measure something, eventually the metric gets distorted, right? It's just like the truth, the metric's getting distorted. There are people who are like producing. I mean, look, I mean, some of these researchers who are like, who have like thirty papers a year, what, what, what? You know, I mean, you're not contributing, you're just, you're not really contributing to it, you know? So.

• 44:14Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's like, uh, there's like full-time bloggers who don't output as many blog posts as you are outputting papers, right?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.

• 44:26Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah. Um, okay, so within the spheres that I travel in, maybe that you travel in as well, like EA just and stuff. There's this idea that we are living in, uh, like a very important time in history and then there's like, um. There's like a step function, right? So that you have like different steps, like agriculture, domestication, metallurgy, um, and industrialization. And like, we're at another step right now. Um, so I, I, from all the people I know, you, you know the most about history, especially ancient history. Um, so do you view history as a sort of, um, a, a series of step functions? Each one, the newest one more important than the last? Or do you view it as just like a sort of gradual exponential curve? Like, what is your view of, your long view of history?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  I think it's mostly gradual. Uh, we, we reify it into a step. But I think we might actually be at a step now.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  I mean, if the slope is steep enough, it's a step.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Right? Um, so I think we might be at a step now. Um, and there have been steps in the past, but mostly we reify. So the industrial revolution, my understanding from economic history is, is really more gradual and exponential. Uh, than like quote revolution, agriculture was probably like that as well. Uh, Peter Turchin's work with some of his collaborators indicates that the axial age was actually more gradual. Uh, some of the coalescing of ideas, it wasn't like a step within one century, you know, around six hundred B.C. or whatever. So, um, you know, this is just a situation where most of the time I think we, we tend to like simplify it as a step. But, you know, uh, you know, right now.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  We live in an age of miracles that we don't take for granted because, you know, me, you, everybody were just scrambling. You know, we have supercomputers in our pockets. They're called phones. You know, we're doing, you know, science fictional video stuff. And uh my kids uh who are like, my oldest kid is say ten. My youngest is like five, right? Something like that. So they're they're a little dubious about this idea. Sometimes you use the phone uh for these non-video calls. And they're very confused why people would do that. And they're very skeptical of this idea that that's what this phone was actually originally designed for.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  You know? So I mean, like, this is to the point where it's like, okay, like, and like, also, like, they um they see a flip phone. And they're very confused with how that could be a phone. Like, what is this ancient technology from two thousand and seven? You know, so it's just like, you know, because we have like a, like a lot of people, we have like a desk full of phones. Old phones that we never threw away because of whatever, right? Um, and so like, you know, my kids saw the phone and they were like, what is this thing? And like, it's cool. And they're like, I'm like, oh, that's a phone. And they're like, no, but a phone's square. You know? And um they have an old rotary like toy phone. Um, they traditionally use it as a hammer. You know, it's just like, they don't really know what the the form factor. It's totally like weird for them.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  So, you know, um, we are living through a radical change in terms of, you know, like our social technology or information technology, like most of your viewers probably know Kurzweil, information technology is exponential. Yeah. So there are some radical changes going on right now. And we need to um think about what that means because I think we're like, you know. I mean, VR is gonna be a big deal. So I I I have said, like, I did say twenty years ago, probably.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Um, can we, again, like, you know, I know people hope Holden will be okay with saying that. I've known Holden for fifteen years, you know. Uh, Holden Karnofsky, I think he's, you know, might be one of the people you're talking about, about this century. And I said, like, this might be like the last century of humans in a way that we would recognize, or it might be a century of regression. I, I think that we are in a meta-stable state right now where, I mean, I'm looking at you right now and you look like the primate, you know, and you are a primate. You know, but like you have access to all this technology, like what's going on. Me especially, or? Not just in general, like I look at myself, when I see myself, I don't see a primate, I see Razib, you know what I'm saying?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  But if you look at another person, it's just like really, really like, you know, you think about it, it can be really, really visible. Um, um, it's really, really visible, uh, that, um,

• 49:01Speaker 01

  that you're an animal of like that particular lineage, you know, when you look at, you see where they move. You know, you think about, so like, how long is this gonna persist? Like, we obviously evolved during the Pleistocene and even earlier with a lot of our instincts. Now we have like the ability to destroy the world, our civilization. Like, we're not gonna exterminate all life on Earth, like, that's just, you know, probably not even all humans. You know, there's probably gonna be people in the Southern Hemisphere for sure that are gonna survive. But if we destroy our civilization, and civilizations have destroyed in the pa- have been destroyed in the past, um, by, you know, overreach, you know? But those civilizations had like local collapses, local regressions.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  And then they got like more, we got more robust with Sama Burya with social technology, right? Um, so for example, you see the Chinese dynastic cycle, uh, keeps shrinking every single time in terms of the chaotic interregnum. So, one, that means that the previous dynasty was, its institutional structure is probably more robust, to shocks, and then it can rewind itself back up, uh, relatively easily, right? So like the first big, um, first big unwinding is, the Xia dynasty doesn't really count, but let's do the Xia. That's like five hundred years decline, period of warring states, and then the Han, you know, the, the Qin Han dynasty. Then there's like, like a three hundred year period of collapse.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  And then there's like a hundred fifty year period of collapse, you know, it just keeps shrinking every single time. And so showing you that like cultural or social technology is getting better, information technology is getting better. But now we're global. And so like even if there's like a fifty year collapse, I mean, you know. There's a lot of stuff that we're gonna lose, you know, and you know, Samo and others have talked about the fact that like. We can't make rockets the way we could fifty years ago, because a lot of those engineers are not, you know. And our military runs on like Cobol Cobol software that barely anyone can read as a cuneiform.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  You know, so it's like the Babylonians, like we laugh at them for like two thousand years or thou- fifteen hundred years. Two thousand years after the last native Sumerian speaker died, they were using Sumerian liturgy. You know, but we are gonna have a situation soon where there's gonna be almost no Cobol programmers, but we have Cobol software base. And so people are gonna have to like, you know, train and like learn from these manuals. These ancient texts from the nineteen seventies, uh, how did, I mean, it's not like that difficult, it's feasible, but the issue here is like. A timing and time, um, because you might not have enough programmers to service all the code that you have.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  So these, these are real issues that I think we have to deal with as primates who've organically developed this technological system. And are trying to figure out, um, how to make it work.

• 51:54Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Sustain, sustain.

• 51:57Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right, uh, yeah, I, I had Samo on just a little while back to discuss exactly these topics, so for the listeners who are interested. Definitely check out that episode. Yeah, and even with something like, um, you know, Cobol or software engineering, like as somebody who started computer science. Like even something that's that legible, you know, you can have a sort of implicit knowledge from previous programmers or like, how, how does the entire system work? And you know, this is like literally a written word, right? That's what a program is. So that's super legible. Compare that to other forms of manufacturing. I, I, I know a guy who worked at a. fertilizer plant and you know maybe I shouldn't say this on air but he basically said like if somebody did something to this fertilizer plant that's like okay that's a famine right there right

• 52:37Dwarkesh Patel?

  we've lost the source of nitrogen here um so yeah um oh so going back to you made a very interesting comment about like we're at a point where we're using our computers to do magic but the person behind that computer is a primate so do you see knowing what you know about genetics and the potential malleability of our genetics do you see the future iteration as as us adding on to or modifying or selecting on the same biological substrate or do you see the future iteration do you think it's more feasible that we just move on to entirely virtual um we're like ends living on computers like which seems more feasible to you

• 53:19Speaker 01

  I mean it would be ironic if we're a simulation that uploads ourselves into a computer but I don't want to get into that you know I don't want to get into that um what's even more feasible I think in the in the okay like the biological program of redoing ourselves I think is like actually it's not straightforward in terms of like you know minimal risk there's going to be a lot of false starts which is going to be kind of crazy but I do think people will improve themselves okay I think they will edit themselves better over the next century um and but I think that there's going to be

• 53:54Speaker 01

  some integration with brain computer interfaces yes I do I mean I haven't like followed it closely but you know I do move in some of the similar circles and I think you know brain technology interfaces are going to be a big deal and I think they're going to really change the game and I think that's going to be um but but the issue there is like so I guess I think of gene editing to be honest more as like smithian growth whereas like you know increased efficiencies because we have the genetic variation now like we can make him smarter we have the technology okay we're not there yet I can see that though I mean we can all like understand the basic logic there like there is John John von Neumann existed the experiment has been done

• 54:34Dwarkesh Patel?

  yeah

• 54:34Speaker 01

  so we can aspire to create like a bunch of von Neumann okay that's great now the issue is like um With with like with the with the human computer interfaces, that's never been done, right? So that is um, that is like an innovation. That's like, you know, uh, technology-driven growth, that's increasing like the baseline productivity by like crazy amount, like that's that could be the possible quantum leap, so. Um. Excuse me, um, that could be a big deal, uh, in a good way or a bad way, and I think a lot of your listeners know about all the existential risk crisis and artificial, you know, like we talked about like, you know, hostile AI and general artificial intelligence and all this stuff, but I mean, I mean, perhaps it'll start with us.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  You know, perhaps Skynet will be some uploaded crazy kid. You know, where it's like, there's some ma- maybe it's gonna be a situation where it's like, it's like going to the new world where, you know, there were attempts to go to like to the new world, they didn't know the new world was there, but there were people in the Middle Ages who left for the West and they never obviously the ships just disappeared, you know, they die, you know, they died at sea, right? So there's gonna be people who do things like going to Mars, there's gonna be high mortality rates, you know, these sorts of things. Uh, similarly with like these human computer interfaces, there're gonna be high death rates, like just basically people just disappear into the ether. But then the first person that gets in there,

• 56:02Speaker 01

  it's gonna be like Christopher Columbus or, you know, it's gonna be a situation where they may be like actually like a very, very advantageous position. Instead of being a primitive prototype, they might like basically have all the quote-unquote land in this cyberspace, right? Where it's like they do all the learnings really early on, they iterate, they pivot, and so they could be like, you know, the god of that universe, I don't know, I'm just speculating here. But I'm trying to say that like I think the possibilities there are like pretty extensive, pretty high variance.

• 56:32Dwarkesh Patel?

  And in the short term, what is the landscape of just, I guess, gene editing, polygenic selection? What does that look like in the next 10 to 20 years? So, I mean, is there potential that, you know, you could like raise your kids IQ by one or two standard deviations? Or are these gonna be like marginal, marginal improvements? Like, by the time I'm ready to have kids, what will it look like?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think with gene editing, the intelligence thing is gonna be like 20 years, let's say 20 years, okay? Like, I think in the short term, gene editing really will do, will probably cure cystic fibrosis. Clear sickle cell, like, these are like Mendelian, positive Mendelian disease with large effect loci. And people just have issues. And so, you know, there's always a delivery problem, there's always a problem with off-target effects, which could cause mutations, there's also cancers. But, you know, if you're cystic fibrosis, you're gonna be dead by 45. You're gonna take the risk, right? So I think that's honestly gonna be the first thing. The first thing is gonna be transfection, or like, you know, gene editing of adults for Mendelian diseases. So that's the next 10 years, okay? It's already happening now. They're already curing people of malaria or sickle cell.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  And I think they're working literally right now as we record on cystic fibrosis and ALS. You know? Because they're just degenerative diseases that kill people in the prime of their life, lives. But, you know, 20 years, that's a long time. You know, we have 40-year-old IVF babies now, you know? I think almost 40. But, uh, so, I think 20 years, yes, you will start to see parents editing the genes of their offspring. I think intelligence is like difficult. Because it's a polygenic trait with a lot of, lot of different genomic positions. I wonder if they're gonna go for other things first, and then kind of work to it.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  And then, you know, there's that theory that, you know, Armand Leroy was, was talking about it, but other people is like, it's not like, what you should do is focus for like, focus on mutations and other things, try to fix those. And see if that just inadvertently, like, increases the... You know.

• 58:36Dwarkesh Patel?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Rather than focusing on getting gain of function genes, which is like, okay, like, how do you identify those? Uh, fix all of your copy errors.

• 58:44Dwarkesh Patel?

  Uh.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Cause that's a finite number. Look at, compare to the pedigree of the parents, look at the de novo mutations, look at the parents de novo mutations against the idealized reference. Et cetera, et cetera. That might be much more feasible. Yeah.

• 58:56Dwarkesh Patel?

  Oh, interesting. Yeah, I didn't know about that. Do you have an estimate for how many SNPs uh affect the variation in intelligence between people?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Uh, let's see, um. How many SNPs?

• 59:10Speaker 01

  I think it's gonna be an order of thousands. Um, just, yeah, it's uh, yeah.

• 59:16Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, all right, so ju- just, just some meta questions to close out on. So, um, you, you've uh, you know, you, you distinguish yourself uh in your career by being somebody who who's like an expert in history and an expert in genomics and life sciences more generally. Uh, are there other fields where you think uh knowledge of history would be very useful in setting up like a separate niche? It's because like you, you have a niche in history and genomics. Um, but you know, it would be hard to imagine, for example, somebody knowing a lot about history and computer science having a special niche, right?

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like cultural evolution. Yeah, cultural evolution. That's what Joe Henrick and some of his people wanted, wanted to do. Um, yeah, so I think um, I think like in cultural evolution, there's gonna be a lot of gains because uh, you know, Peter Turchin, Joe Henrick, these people are applying evolutionary principles to historical processes and to have the empirical data set, um.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Uh, to have the empirical data, that's really important. And this is a really new nascent field. So I think that that's gonna be the big thing that I would think people should focus on. Um, Peter said like, oh, like get anthropology knowledge. Oh, my God. And I, I don't think the short term knowledge is super important. I think having a deep, deep, not deep, thick knowledge about historical arcs um, um, would probably be pretty useful. Yeah.

• 1:00:32Dwarkesh Patel?

  Hmm, interesting, interesting.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  But Joe, Joe and his group are, they're working in that. They're, they're moving into history. They're going, they're doing some serious imperial, imperialism that's causing problems. Yeah.

• 1:00:43Dwarkesh Patel?

  Ca- causing problems out?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Ah, just historians do not like the turf turf infringement. That's what I'm saying.

• 1:00:51Dwarkesh Patel?

  I see, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:53Dwarkesh Patel?

  Right, um, and you so you you're you're one of the top bloggers on Substack and you have this like deeply technical blog on, you know, the science of genomics and other things. Um, you know, that that's like, uh, you know, you would think beforehand that your prior would be like, oh, like, how many people are going to be able to understand this or be interested in this? But in fact, you're, you know, you're one of the top people on Substack. Like, what is the experience of that been like? And like, has it surprised you, the popularity of your work and everything?

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Uh, honestly, no, because, uh, well, I mean, it surprised, okay, I'm gonna be honest, it probably surprised me like how many people are willing to pay, but people have been reading me for a long time, so I just kind of like professionalized it some. Um, and, uh, yeah, um, it's it's been great. Uh, and it's really like helped me figure out what people are interested in, in terms of what they're willing to pay for. And, uh, you know, it's it's given me some direction, I guess, but, um, I'm I'm planning to do, I basically do what I continue to have done in various ways in the past into the future. And, um, you know, like thinking of startup world, uh, way I would pivot and iterate is what is what I'm thinking.

• 1:02:00Dwarkesh Patel?

  Hmm, and and final question, do you have any advice for people who like want to write about technical topics, uh, in a way that's like very interesting to a broad audience?

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Uh, okay, so you have to make it relevant to them somehow. So, for example, uh, like, let's say you want to write about signal detection. Um, I think, you know, um, text to speech type stuff. Is one, there there there are things people are super interested in. So, for example, people are super interested in Jewish genetics. Uh, people are super interested in the genetic architecture of skin color. I mean, okay, why? I can talk about the genetic architecture of like, I don't know, something else. You know, uh, and it wouldn't be a super interesting. So you you have to find the domain that they're interested in and then apply your method. Right?

• 1:02:50Dwarkesh Patel?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  So if you're interested in, so actually, there's a Substack on personality. Uh, that talks about personality and using, um, machine learning methods to classify personality. Okay, machine learning is technical, but personality is interesting.

• 1:03:08Dwarkesh Patel?

  Interesting. Okay. Yeah, yeah, it's good advice. All right, Razeem. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for your time.