Predicting the ups and downs of the economy was mixed in there too, maybe even on an equal basis with the other two, but predictivity has proven hard to attain as time has passed, the empirical and theoretical obstacles to the attainment of predictivity have accumulated, and just recently one predictive scheme (“The Great Moderation”) has proven to be utter garbage. (Incidentally, that’s my suggestion for the name of the present slump, the worst since the Great Depression. We should just call it “The X Moderation” and attach the names of the great scientists who discovered it — “The Fama Moderation”, perhaps.)

So when actual human beings turn out not to behave like Economic Man, that’s not as important as it seems, since the goal of economics has been to figure out how to produce Economic Man by finding reinforcement structures which will favor Economic Man and destroy everyone else.

Venereal diseases have a big impact on fitness and can propagate at low density. If Africans carried one and were fairly resistant to it… Could be that we’re here today because of chlamydia.

Incidentally, I was in contact with a new Relative from 23AndMe, who identifies as German-American, but her mtDNA points to West Africa, who questioned me about the “mistake” in testing that must have happened, and how it absolutely couldn’t be correct. When I pointed out that her result though unexpected was normal, she sent me a flood of emails to explain. So, I told her that I had 3 such relatives, who were “White”, but carried African mtDNA – all in the Southern US btw – and pointed her to the story of Sally Hemings, whose son Eston’s family were White identified, and professed no knowledge of their African ancestry when contacted in the 1970′s about the connection.

So amid the apocalypse, the last Inca kings put their daughters on the Spaniard lifeboat? Just one of the many situations where the gene’s-eye view looks very different from the individual’s.