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"With the loss of E. O. Wilson’s in 2021, and Stephen Jay Gould’s early passing in 2002, Dawkins and Steve Pinker are the last representatives of a generation of scientific thinkers who were also estimable prose stylists; there are no natural heirs apparent."

Razib is the heir apparent. He has written the great book on genetically-informed anthropology. He just needs to collate it.

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thanks arnold *blush*

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"Razib is the heir apparent."

LOL

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So, Are You Pregnant Yet? .. From an American perspective this sounds patently obnoxious, but I also suspect it will be futile.

Xi is head of the Big Family. Literally.

He has 100,000,000 volunteer, senior family members standing by, ready to hector reluctant offspring and grand-offspring.

He has 400-600 provincial-to-village Trial Spots, where ever both-positive inducement gets a trial run, with successful ones winning renown and promotions for their successes.

And he has 93% home ownership.

If China can't do it, nobody can.

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Nobody can. And that's a good thing.

Falling birth rates will ultimately result in a profound increase in quality of life.

Remember, the global population in 1970 was 3.7 billion, less than half of what it is now. Was it a dystopian hellscape then? I think not.

All the hand wringing from Elon Musk on down about this issue is a waste of time. Now that people in most societies are moving away from survival mode, sub-replacement birth rates and population decline are inevitable.

We should be focusing our efforts on how to manage the decline -- eg, how to survive in a world with an imbalance of young vs old people (at least initially), how to prevent being overrun by people fleeing from overpopulated shitholes, etc.

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In 1970 40% of the world lived in extreme poverty, now it's 10%. The total has halved despite the population doubling.

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Richard Dawkins's ideas about genes are ultimately less than advertised because, like Gould, he did not have a deep grasp of molecular biology and multiple biomedical sciences, such as immunology. His discussion of the clonal selection theory in The Extended Phenotype is a disastrously botched muddle of multiple major misunderstandings. Although Dawkins is, in general, much more insightful than many of his acolytes and promoters, the selfish gene concept is ultimately not fully adequate on several counts.

By the way, in an earlier one of these email messages, you stated the Watson Crick discovered DNA. Presumably you meant to say that Watson and Crick discovered the (one possible) structure of DNA. The discover of DNA, per se, was accomplished in 1869 by the Swiss physician, Friedrich Miescher.

Neil Greenspan

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Please excuse the two typos above:

2nd paragraph, first sentence: "Watson Crick" was supposed to be "Watson and Crick."

2nd paragraph, last sentence: ""discover" was supposed to be "discovery."

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You sold me on "The Selfish Gene", Razib. I'm glad to have waited until now to see what Dawkins' scientific work is all about.

I'm less sold on persistent efforts to explain us exclusively in terms of evolution. Yes culture is most broadly the collection of artifacts attesting to our existence. Still I keep thinking there's an ineffable part science will always misconstrue.

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