Links for January 2025
– personal
- There is no such thing as “Rightism” by Sectionalism Archive (2025-01-06).
- Selective migration and regression towards the mean by Emil Kirkegaard (2024-12-31).
- Old but interesting article that the Substack app recommended to me: The Church’s crusade against cousin-marriage did not create the Western nuclear family by Policy Tensor (2021-05-07). Basically argues that the family structures of different societies originated far before what is often thought and are very persistent, and thus the common narrative that reforms implemented by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages led to the rise of the nuclear family is incorrect. See also Peter Frost’s comment briefly arguing that the truth is likely somewhere in between.
- In defense of Richard Lynn’s national IQ estimates:
- How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn’s National IQ Estimates by Scott Alexander (2025-01-15).
- Supplement with Highlights From The Comments On Lynn And IQ (2025-01-16).
- National IQs Are Valid by Cremieux Recueil (2025-01-16). Probably the most comprehensive defense.
- How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn’s National IQ Estimates by Scott Alexander (2025-01-15).
- Against Lyman Stone’s article arguing that dysgenic fertility is not a generally applicable long-term problem:
- Dysgenics: within and between by Emil Kirkegaard (2025-01-11).
- International dysgenics do matter, national IQs are valid by Sebastian Jensen (2025-01-18).
- Razib Khan’s summaries of what he considers were the three most important findings on the area of ancient genomics research in 2024:
- Number 3: We were selected: tracing what humans were made for (2024-12-30). Talks about this preprint.
- Number 2: The other man: Neanderthal findings test our power of imagination (2024-12-31). Talks about this paper.
- Number 1: We are what we speak: Indo-European phylogenetic and linguistic trees concur (2025-01-18). Talks about this preprint. This post is paywalled after the first few sections so I haven’t actually read it in full, but what I read so far is good.
- ACX Survey Results 2025 by Scott Alexander (2025-01-29).
- Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction by Scott Alexander (2024-12-05). Brief overview of the insights (or lack thereof) from Astral Codex Ten’s readers survey.
- Miscellaneous articles about immigration:
- Will America lose its technological edge without H1-B workers? by Lipton Matthews (2025-01-15).
- Good immigrants, bad immigrants: Dutch edition by Emil Kirkegaard (2025-01-10).
- Podcast episode video and transcript: Gwern Branwen - How an Anonymous Researcher Predicted AI’s Trajectory by Dwarkesh Patel (2024-11-13).