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Long-form writing about computation, biology, medicine, philosophy, and the tools I build. Some articles are free; create an account to read everything.
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Who Gets the Organ?
There are roughly 104,000 people on the US organ transplant waitlist. About 17 will die today. The part that should make you angry: whether you live or die depends less on biology than on your zip code, your bank account, and whether anyone told you the system is gameable.
The Tool That Shouldn't Exist
A billionaire who needs a kidney calls an epidemiologist. That epidemiologist looks at car crash rates, donor registration density, center acceptance criteria, and a dozen other variables most patients have never heard of. Here is exactly what that analysis looks like.
More People Benefit. Is That Enough?
Two worlds. In World A, 999 people wait the same time for a kidney and one rich person waits half as long. In World B, 500 wait shorter than anyone in World A, and 500 wait longer. World B has less total suffering. World B also has more inequality. Which world do you want to live in?
Are We Still Evolving? Human Speciation in the Age of Gene Flow and Gene Editing
Homo sapiens has more gene flow now than at any point in our history. Classical speciation should be impossible. But we've also developed tools that could create biological divergence intentionally — and one plausible scenario that could do it by accident.
Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium: The Null Hypothesis of Evolution
Before we can understand how populations change, we need to understand what a population looks like when nothing is happening. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is that baseline — and deviations from it are where evolution lives.
The Four Forces: Mutation, Drift, Migration, and Selection
Hardy-Weinberg tells us what a population looks like in the absence of evolution. These four forces are why that never actually happens — and together they explain almost everything we see in the tree of life.