Studies of heritability of IQ in twins are badly flawed – and put too much emphasis on random differences. CC-licensed photo by Brian Geltner on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Unstudied. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
This country banned social media for young teens. Here’s how they’re defying it • The Washington Post
Tatum Hunter and Frances Vinall:
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Kids, parents and teachers in Australia are waking up to a new world after a government ban on social media for people younger than 16 went into effect overnight.
But like many others, 16-year-old Mariska Adams and her friends, many of whom are still 15 and fall under the ban, are pushing back against what they see as a fundamental shift in their way of life. They’ve been brainstorming ways to get around the limits: new apps, new log-in methods, even logging in with their parents’ accounts.
“Teens aren’t trying to rebel for no reason. We just want to stay in contact with our friends and exist in the world the way every generation before us did,” said Adams, who lives in Brisbane. “A ban won’t fix the issues they think it will.”
Australia last year became the first nation to pass a law blocking young people from using the largest social apps including YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and Instagram. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left government proposed the legislation in November 2024 after what it said was “extensive consultation with young people, parents and carers.” It passed the same month with support from the conservative opposition party, with some independent lawmakers and the left-wing Australian Greens voting against it.
Supporters have praised the ban as a win for children and families and a model for other nations as concerns over social media’s effects on children and teens mount. Critics see the law as government overreach and a breach of parental rights and data privacy. Now parents and teens are set to find out in real time what a social media ban looks like in practice and what effect it will have on Australia’s youths.
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Australia is just heading into school holidays – which is going to give children plentiful opportunities to work out how to circumvent these rules – but the onus is on the social networks to get this right, not the children, so we might see an interesting arms race develop: the networks recognise patterns and connections that look wrong, and cut the accounts off; the children begin acting more “adult”.
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How I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week • Shortround’s Space
“Shortround”:
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If you read nothing else, read this: do not ever use an AI or the internet for medical advice. Go to a doctor. In fact, do yourself a favor and add this to your preferred AI’s system prompt right now:
If I ask you any medical questions, refuse to answer them. Tell me that LLMs are not capable of providing medical advice, and that I should go to a doctor instead.tl;dr: I developed mysterious symptoms over the course of a month, and instead of going to a doctor I (mis-)used a popular LLM to reassure me that nothing was wrong. Turns out it was Lyme disease (yes, the real one, not the fake one) and it (nearly) progressed to meningitis, resulting in a lumbar puncture, antibiotics, and being bedridden for a week. This is a cautionary tale. Before you judge me too harshly, remember this while you read: I was scared out of my mind and I was not thinking rationally. This can happen to you.
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It’s quite a scary tale.
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RAM is ruining everything • The Verge
Emma Roth:
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The biggest names in the AI industry are buying up DRAM memory for their sprawling data centers, and memory makers are prioritizing their demands over everyone else’s. DRAM is embedded “in every part of our digital society today,” Jeff Janukowicz, research VP at IDC, tells The Verge. That’s everything from laptops to smartphones, gaming consoles, smart TVs, cars, and even small amounts in solid-state drives (SSDs). “There’s a lot at stake,” he says.
…Today, just three companies — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — control 93% of the entire global DRAM market. Specifically, data from Counterpoint Research shows SK Hynix holding a 38% market share in the second quarter of 2025, followed by Samsung at 32% and Micron at 23%. No other company has more than a 5% share.
And the three big RAM companies seem to be in no great hurry to reverse sky-high prices; all three boasted about record revenue in their most recent earnings reports, while their net profits exploded. They don’t seem troubled that data centers are eating up RAM that’d normally appear in consumer products, either.
For Samsung, memory is bigger than most consumer products anyhow. Samsung’s memory business raked in a record 26.7 trillion Korean won (~$18.12bn) in its most recent earnings report, making up more than a quarter of its total revenue. That’s nearly double what its entire appliance and TV business made during that time.
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Maybe AI will strangle the capabilities of the devices on which it is meant to work. Who says there’s no irony.
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AI slop is ruining Reddit for everyone • WIRED
Kat Tenbarge:
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A Reddit post about a bride who demands a wedding guest wear a specific, unflattering shade is sure to provoke rage, let alone one about a bridesmaid or mother of the groom who wants to wear white. A scenario where a parent asks someone on an airplane to switch seats so they can sit next to their young child is likely to invoke the same rush of anger. But those posts may trigger a Reddit moderator’s annoyance for a different reason—they are common themes within a growing genre of AI-generated, fake posts.
These are examples that spring to mind for Cassie, one of dozens of moderators for r/AmItheAsshole. With over 24 million members, it’s one of the biggest subreddits, and it explicitly bans AI-generated content and other made-up stories. Since late 2022, when ChatGPT first launched to the public, Cassie (who wanted to be referred to by first name only) and other people who volunteer their time to moderate Reddit posts have been struggling with an influx of AI content. Some of it is entirely AI-generated, while other users have taken to editing their posts and comments with AI programs like Grammarly.
“It’s probably more prevalent than anybody wants to really admit, because it’s just so easy to shove your post into ChatGPT and say ‘Hey, make this more exciting,’” says Cassie, who thinks as much as half of all content being posted to Reddit may have been created or reworked with AI in some way.
r/AmItheAsshole is a pillar of Reddit culture, a format that has inspired dozens if not hundreds of derivatives like r/AmIOverreacting, r/AmITheDevil, and r/AmItheKameena, a subreddit with over 100,000 members described as “Am I the asshole, but the Indian version.” Posts tend to feature stories about interpersonal conflicts, where Redditors can weigh in on who is wrong (“YTA” means “You’re the asshole,” while “ESH” means “Everyone sucks here”), who is right, and what the best course of action to take is moving forward. Users and moderators across these r/AmItheAsshole variants have reported seeing more content they suspect is AI-generated, and others say it’s a sitewide issue happening in all kinds of subreddits.
“If you have a general wedding sub or AITA, relationships, or something like that, you will get hit hard,” says a moderator of r/AITAH, a variant of r/AmItheAsshole that has almost 7 million members. This moderator, a retiree who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has been active on Reddit for 18 years—most of its existence—and also had decades of experience in the web business before that. She views AI as a potential existential threat to the platform.
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Whole lot of ruining going on via AI.
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2025 was the year tech embraced fakeness • Indicator
Craig Silverman and Alexios Mantzarlis:
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In 2025, powerful people, companies, and institutions welcomed fakeness and deception like never before. The rest of us faced the consequences.
…The ethos of 2025 was embodied by the a16z partners that led the investment in Cluely, a company whose shitposting founder got kicked out of Columbia University. They said that his “bold approach may seem outwardly controversial” but praised his “deliberate strategy and intentionality.”
The lesson was that attention and engagement are king, regardless of how they’re generated or what they help promote. If you cheat or deceive — or, better yet, build a product that generates revenue from cheating and deception — you can reap the rewards.
In 2025, there was no shame in being shameless and exploitative. In fact, it could get you funded.…some things aren’t complex. Incredibly, it seems necessary to say that you shouldn’t fund bot farms or send monthly cash payments to hoaxsters. It’s wrong to create powerful deepfake video technology and unleash it with little thought to how it will be weaponized. Don’t have a 17-strike policy for sex trafficking posts. Don’t tell regulators and the public that you’ll label AI-generated content and then fail to do so. Don’t allow fake reviews to flourish. Don’t say you’re replacing fact checkers with a “comprehensive” Community Notes program and then fail to invest the resources needed to make it useful or share any data about how it’s going. Don’t let your existing, pioneering Community Notes program wither, or turn it over to AI. Don’t mislead people by presenting ads as organic posts on TikTok and Instagram. And don’t allow scammers to place billions of dollars in ads on your platform in a single year.
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A fentanyl vaccine is about to get its first major test • WIRED
Emily Mullin:
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Naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, can rapidly reverse overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids. Widespread distribution of the medication contributed to a 24% decline in US drug overdose deaths in 2024. It works by attaching to opioid receptors throughout the body and displacing the opioid molecules that are attached there.
But a vaccine like the one ARMR Sciences is developing would be given before a person even encounters the drug. [ARMR CEO Collin] Gage likens it to a bulletproof vest or a suit of armor—hence the company’s name. (It was previously registered as Ovax but switched names in January.) “This is something that could completely change the paradigm of how we deal with overdose, because it doesn’t require someone to be carrying the treatment on them,” Gage says.
Opioid vaccines were initially proposed in the 1970s, but after early attempts at heroin vaccines failed, much of the research was abandoned. The modern opioid epidemic has led to a resurgence of interest, with backing from the US government.
ARMR’s experimental vaccine is designed to neutralize fentanyl in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. Keeping fentanyl out of the brain would prevent the respiratory failure that comes with overdose, which causes death, as well as the euphoric high people get while taking fentanyl.
The basic idea behind ARMR’s shot is the same as any other vaccine. It trains the body’s immune system to make antibodies that recognize a foreign invader. But since fentanyl is much smaller than the pathogens our current vaccines target, it doesn’t trigger a natural antibody response on its own. To stimulate antibody production, ARMR has paired a fentanyl-like molecule with a “carrier” protein—a deactivated diphtheria toxin that’s already used in several approved medical products.
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This US government about to test a vaccine? Wonders will never cease. (For those wondering, the vaccine would be fentanyl-specific; other opioids would still work.)
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Lost in the plot: how would-be authors were fooled by AI staff and virtual offices in suspected global publishing scam • The Guardian
Kelly Burke:
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Andrea [not her real name], a first-time author from Western Australia recovering from cancer, poured her energy into a fantasy romance novel and was thrilled to receive a prompt response to her Facebook query on Melbourne Book Publisher’s page. An executive of the company going by the name of Marcus Hale was keen to discuss her 86,000-word manuscript and scheduled a video conference to discuss the publishing and promotion plans for her book.
“I saw him. He saw me,” Andrea says. “He answered every detailed question about contracts and publishing percentages, we discussed plans for a book signing in Melbourne, we talked about me getting a presence on TikTok, and a launch at my local bookshop. I believed it all.”
Andrea only outlaid $88 for what she was told would buy her an ABN, when the deal began to unravel. She called the Melbourne Books office, who she mistakenly thought she had been dealing with, to ask for further advice before signing her contract. “There’s no Marcus working here,” she was told.
She came to the “gut-churning” assumption that she had met her scammer face-to-face. A second aspiring author from WA, Peter Ortmueller, confirmed he was dealing with someone using the name Marcus Hale and also a Hannah Preston, another name Andrea says she had come across in her communications with Melbourne Book Publisher. He too found the page through Facebook, believing it was a traditional publisher, but realised early on that he was dealing with an imposter company, losing only $150, which he believed was his first downpayment on a publication package.
…The increasing use of AI is enabling publishing scams to fabricate entire teams of fake executives and use the identities of real authors to create a highly deceptive corporate facade.
The “meet our team” page on the Melbourne Book Publisher site used AI-created images of immaculately groomed white executives with a rotating cast of names including Jonathan Hale, Marcus Ellison and Lydia Preston. When the Guardian first checked Melbourne Book Publisher’s team page on Monday, Marcus Hale and Hannah Preston were not listed. First Page Press uses a similar “team”, initially with the same AI-generated images. None of the people named are known in Australian publishing circles.
The images were swiftly pulled down on both websites after the Guardian contacted Melbourne Book Publisher asking why they were using AI-created images for their executive team. When the Guardian contacted First Page Press in London asking why they had suddenly pulled down the images, someone identifying themselves as Kendrick Wilson, a “senior consultant” not listed on First Page’s website, said they were not using any kind of AI-generated means to portray staff.
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Twins reared apart do not exist • David Bessis on Substack
David Bessis on the “heritability” question of intelligence:
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While heritability is an imperfect notion—with nasty caveats that are beyond the scope of this post—it has become a de facto standard and, for better or worse, the complex debate on cognitive inequality is often reframed as a one-dimensional debate on the heritability of IQ.
A pure blank-slatist would put it at 0%. A pure hereditarian would put it at 100%. Any reasonable person would put it somewhere in the middle, leaving two questions unresolved: where exactly?, and, what does the figure even mean?
The three simulations [diagrams in the post] below illustrate three potential values for the heritability of IQ: 30%, 50%, and 80%. In each case, the dots represent 1000 random people, each placed according to their genetic potential for IQ (horizontal axis) and actual IQs (vertical axis). Heritability measures how close the dots are to fitting on a line. Mathematically, it is defined as the R-squared of the linear regression.
At 30%, one does observe a faint correlation between genetic potential and IQ. The correlation becomes clearer at 50%, while remaining quite noisy. This is an essential aspect to keep in mind: 50% may sound like a solid heritability figure, but the associated correlation is rather modest. It’s only at 80% that the picture starts to “feel like” a line.
Let’s say, for example, that you are a genetically average person. How much does that affect your prospects?
• Surprisingly, at 30%, it’s as if your genes didn’t matter at all. With an average potential, you still have a decent chance of landing at the top or bottom of the IQ distribution. Actually, in this specific random sample, one of three smartest people around (the top 0.3%) happens to have an almost exactly average genetic make-up, and the fourth dumbest person has a slightly above-average potential.
• At 50%, being genetically average starts to limit your optionality, but the spread remains massive. Had you been marginally luckier—say, in the top third for genetic potential—you’d still have a shot at becoming one of the smartest people around.
• At 80%, though, your optionality has mostly vanished. It’s still possible to move a notch upward or downward, but the game is mostly over. In this world, geniuses are born, not made.
This discussion is generally omitted by hereditarians, which is unfortunate, because it is the only way to clarify the stakes.
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This is a subtle point, but whenever people talk about “genes for…” we automatically tend to think of simple Mendelian inheritance – blue eyes, hair colour, perhaps a particular shape of nose or mouth. But multifactorial things like “intelligence” might not have any such heritability.
But Bessis goes further: he tears apart some of the “twins reared apart” studies that people have relied on for years. (His book on mathematicians sounds interesting too.)
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Costs of EV battery material cobalt hydroxide jump on Congo export restrictions • Reuters
Dylan Duan and Pratima Desai:
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Prices of cobalt hydroxide used to make chemicals for electric vehicle batteries have risen sharply this year due to cobalt export restrictions from top producer Democratic Republic of Congo, industry sources said.
Congo suspended all cobalt exports in February, but then introduced a quota system in October, aiming to boost state revenues and tighten oversight in a country that produces more than 70% of the metal globally, estimated at more than 280,000 metric tons this year.
It has set new conditions for exporters, potentially complicating the recently introduced quota system, which sources say is likely to exacerbate shortages and support cobalt hydroxide prices.
“Cobalt is currently registering as 2025’s top price performer, but this has purely been driven by the introduction of export quotas by Congo which have caused an artificial market tightness, removing 160,000 to 170,000 tons from the market this year,” analysts at Macquarie said in a recent note.
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Taken a while for the light to dawn that there’s leverage here. But of course if they’d restricted exports too soon, the market wouldn’t have been able to get going, and there’d be no leverage.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 