Monthly Archives: March 2018

A few people have occasionally claimed that natural selection takes a long time to change any trait that might bother them – sometimes, they say this of polygenic traits, ones influenced by many genes, like height and intelligence. Kevin Mitchell … Continue reading →

I’ve talked about this a bit before, but this point comes up repeatedly in Reich’s book, and it needs to be made clear. Again and again he says that races aren’t ‘pure’ – and he’s right. They’re the product of … Continue reading →

Reich’s book, Who We Are and How We Got Here, is really two books. The first is an exposition of his excellent work using ancient DNA to understand prehistory. The second is about the impact of advances in genetics on … Continue reading →

I was talking with one of my boys about how unsatisfactory the current year is – how we got the wrong future. Bruce Jenner instead of flying cars. The wrong Solar System too – no advanced but declining humanoid civilization … Continue reading →

The Soviets send coded traffic to their embassy in Washington in WWII. Those messages were encrypted using a one-time pad system – in principle unbreakable, as long as you follow the rules. But the Soviet company making the pads, under … Continue reading →

I’m going to review David Reich’s new book, Who We Are and How We Got Here. Extensively: in a sense I’ve already been doing this for a long time. Probably there will be a podcast. The GoFundMe link is here. … Continue reading →

Nathan Cofnas wrote a paper [ Science is not always “Self-Correcting” ] on how various scientists and philosophers choose or reject scientific theories about human intelligence. Not just quietly avoiding truths they don’t like, but explicitly saying that everyone should … Continue reading →

The Nazis were against smoking well before it was cool. Therefore…

Sometimes a population has effective adaptations that protect against a very serious local problem – a problem so serious that outsiders that don’t have those special adaptations cannot invade, at least not without a fair amount of gene flow from … Continue reading →

gcochran9 says: June 20, 2016 at 11:06 am (Edit) All of Southeast Asia was occupied, relatively recently, (~6000 years ago) by populations that were genetically close to the Andamanese and to the funny admixture fraction in Brazilian Amerindians. Closer than … Continue reading →