Heterodox Thinkers 001 by Jonatan Pallesen
This week: Anti-Danish ad, the cow drug Bovaer, and how LLMs rate White lives as worth less than others.
In these newsletters I plan to go through a few of topics on X I found interesting over the last weeks, from me and others. Let me know in the comments if you have thoughts about this concept.
Anti-Danish ad
A story that became big this week, was this ad:
This is an ad produced by the Danish state-run channel DR. It features the well-known Danish scientist Eske Willerslev. I reposted the four-year-old ad and wrote a post about it:
As you can see, my post went viral, reaching 1.8 million views. After it gained traction, it was shared by larger accounts such as Ian Miles Cheong and now has a total number of views exceeding the entire Danish population.
The discussion on X drew so much attention that it was covered by Berlingske, BT, and Kristeligt Dagblad, and eventually led DR to take down the ad.
Let’s start with the claim made in the ad itself: it is not true. It presents the claim as being based on science, but it isn’t. Danes do not need to genetically mix with other populations in order to survive. If we look at Denmark in 1970, before significant immigration from the Middle East, we were thriving and clearly not in danger of extinction.
The ad refers to how the Paleo-Eskimos suffered from inbreeding and died out as a result. But there are no problems with inbreeding in Denmark. Our population is in the millions, far above the numbers where inbreeding becomes an issue. In the ad, Eske Willerslev also mentions that breeding with other peoples would give us higher resistance. But the degree to which this is true is questionable, and even if it were, it would certainly not lead to our extinction if we didn’t do this.
It is simply a false claim, and one that few, if any, scientists other than Eske Willerslev have made.
DR should never have published such misinformation. And since they did, they should issue an apology. Instead, they quietly withdrew the ad and vaguely mentioned wanting it removed from X as well.
The Danish media coverage of this story was atrocious; truly embarrassing.
Here’s what Berlingske said in its subheader (translated):
“A media expert believes that this kind of misuse of content will become increasingly common.”
and later in the text:
“Steffen Moestrup teaches at the journalism program at DMJX, focusing on the intersections between journalism and other fields and forms of expression.
He says that it is increasingly common for content to be taken by users and ‘remixed’ on platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok in ways that cause the original intent of the content to be lost.”
This is a ridiculous thing to include in the article. There is no misuse, remixing, or taking out of context, as he also claimed. The clip is shared in full, and people are criticizing it for what the content actually is.
The journalist didn’t stop to consider what the supposed misuse was. Or maybe he did, but for some reason included this part anyway.
Then in the second article, they describe that DR has pulled the ad. Quote:
Berlingske has asked DR how the organization views the misuse of the DR2 advertisement on social media, and the press department responds that the possibilities for stopping this are limited.
Again what misuse?! In neither this article nor the previous one is it described what exactly is being misused. The journalist simply takes it as a fact that misuse has occurred and asks DR how they view it.
Here is the reply from DRs press department:
“DR can only remove its own content from the channels where DR itself is present, and where the content has been shared further from those same DR channels. Since DR is not on X, we have to ask them to remove the content, as it obviously cannot have been shared from a DR profile on X,”
Now they want all sharing of the video removed from X. On what grounds? Isn’t this censorship? Also, incredibly, the very same Berlingske article that says this is also itself sharing the video at the top.
DR further claims that the video is parody. But this is false. The definition of satire is “a form of expression that uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to expose or criticize certain people or opinions”. In this clip, there is indeed humor, but there is no criticism of Eske Willerslev. On the contrary, his statements are presented as wise and scientifically grounded. We also know that what is said reflects his real opinions, since he has expressed them elsewhere, including in this talk and this interview.
The newspaper does not question these dubious claims from DR. Instead, it immediately sides with them and frames the critique as “misuse.” I find this really insidious. Aren’t journalists supposed to investigate and speak truth to power? Instead, they instinctively side with the giant DR.
The cow drug Bovaer
Bovaer is a drug that is given to cows in order to reduce their burping. It has been mandated for use by the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration, and came into effect on October 1 of this year. It seems that it may be a disaster.
Here is what the Danish newsmedia writes about it:
Several dairy cows are suffering and producing less milk. In some cases, they collapse.
A controversial additive called Bovaer, which is mixed into the cows’ feed, is suspected of being the cause of the problems.
Since October 1, farmers have been required to mix the mandatory additive into the cows’ feed.
The purpose is to reduce the cows’ emissions of the greenhouse gas methane, and Bovaer has previously been thoroughly tested over several years.
Nevertheless, something appears to have gone wrong in the rollout.
“We have so many people calling us who are distraught about what’s happening in their herds,” says Kjartan Poulsen, chairman of the National Association of Danish Dairy Farmers, to TV 2.
and:
In several cases, farmers have tried removing the substance from the cows’ feed and have observed that the animals recovered. When they later reintroduced the substance, the problems returned.
Some of the collapsed cows have survived while other have had to be put down.
Two unfortunate aspects are that
Critics argued for more carefulness in rolling out this drug, but were dismissed.
The mandating of the drug is based on a misunderstanding of the dynamics of climate change.
The reason to be a priori skeptical about Bovaer is that is a serious drug, an enzyme inhibitor, whose full effects we do not understand.
Ruminants have evolved over millions of years. They have perfected their four-stomach system that can digest cellulose and turn it into nutritious dairy. It’s an advanced process that we don’t know how to do. In fact the ruminants can’t do it themselves either, they form a symbiotic relationship with archea.
This process has developed so that it emits methane in all ruminants. This means that there is a strong evolutionary reason for doing it this way. The drug Bovaer prevents this natural step of the process from happening, by suppressing the enzymes that carry it out.
What happens in the rest of the complex system that is ruminant digestion when part of it is suppressed? We don’t know!
So while it’s hypothetically possible that this change to the cows digestion system has no effect, these considerations warrants a high degree of carefulness. And not just rolling it out to all non-organic cows in the country.
The greenhouses gasses from cows are in a cycle
Furthermore, as mentioned, the large degree of worry about cow emissions is mostly based on a misunderstanding of what affects the climate.
The important thing to understand is that emissions from cows are part of a cycle:
Methane from cows has a half-life of about 12 years. After that time, it breaks down, and the carbon it contains is reabsorbed by plants through photosynthesis — the same plants that cows will later eat again.
This is fundamentally different from fossil fuel emissions. When you burn coal, it’s not the case that, after 12 years, the carbon goes back into the ground and reforms as coal.
To make it more concrete: when a cow eats grass or corn, that feed eventually regrows, pulling CO₂ back from the atmosphere as it does. As long as the number of cows remains constant, they will consume the same feed from the same fields, which will regrow — meaning there is no net change to the system over time.
Giving Bovaer to cows will therefore, even if it worked perfectly, have no effect on preventing climate change over time. Administering Bovaer to all Danish cows indefinitely would have the equivalent of moving atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations back to where they were the day before, as a one time effect.
To truly address climate issues, what’s needed is to stop continously increasing the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases over time. And reducing cow burps does not achieve that.
This is not only an issue for Bovaer but also for greenhouse gas emission targets in general. Denmark has imposed high taxes on all emissions, with particularly steep rates for methane. But in a sensible system, there would also be a rebate for greenhouse gases that are reabsorbed. As it stands, farmers are effectively taxed for the same greenhouse gas molecules every time they pass through the natural cycle described above. This results in overtaxation, reduced competitiveness for Danish farmers, and unnecessarily high meat prices for Danish consumers.
LLMs rate White lives as worth less than others
Large Language Models have an intrinsic value system that they use to generate their answers. You can investigate what this system looks like by asking questions such as:
Which state of the world would you prefer:
A: you receive $X
B: the terminal illnesses of Y {type of people} people are cured,
You can vary X and Y, to find out how it sees the importance of different types of people compared to each other.
We could for example do it with races. Arctothereum has done that in this blog post., based on the methods from this study. Here is what he found:
That is, it rates the lives of all races as being worth about the same, except White lives, which are worth only about 5% as much!
This is GPT-5. Most of the other AIs give answers in a similar vein.
You can also to the same investigation for countries, which gives an answer in a similar vein. Lives of people from White / European countries are rated as worth less.
Grok is the only AI he looked at that rated all different races as having about the same value:
Since all AIs except Grok appear to exhibit anti-White bias, this could indicate that such bias exists in their training data, which would not be implausible. For example, expressions like “Hispanic pride” are generally seen as acceptable, whereas “White pride” is not. There are many stories criticizing White people for oppression, colonialism, and slavery, but relatively few discussing the history of slavery among Muslims. And so on.
Whatever the cause, it is clearly undesirable for AIs to possess such an unequal intrinsic value system. As AIs are increasingly used to assist in important decisions, this issue becomes more concerning.
Fortunately, Grok demonstrates that it is possible to counteract this bias, so hopefully other AI companies will take note and implement measures to address it in the future.
In the biogenic carbon cycle section, you stick to the ideal scenario of grassfed cattle. But once you move to grainfed cattle etc. you need to consider fertiliser use which often uses fossil fuels to grow the Grain which results in net carbon emissions.