This is the November 2014 edition of the Gwern.net newsletter; previously, October.
This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with Changelog. Thanks to my donors on Gratipay.
Writings
- A / B indentation test: no real result, defaulted to 2em
Media
Links
Genetics:
-
Everything Is Heritable:
- “The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder”, et al 2014 (media: 1, 2; discussion)
-
Engineering:
Politics/religion:
- “Whither the Blank Slate? A Report on the Reception of Evolutionary Biological Ideas among Sociological Theorists”, et al 2014 ( media)
- “Transcript of secret meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt”
- “The Micro-sociology of Violent Confrontations”, 2009
- “Aum Shinrikyo and a Panic About Manga and Anime”, 2008
- “A Few Bad Men: Why America doesn’t really have a terrorism problem”
- “Bottom of the Barrel: Today’s terrorists aren’t ‘sophisticated’. They’re stupider than ever.”
Statistics/AI/meta-science:
- “What’s to know about the credibility of empirical economics?”, 2013
- “The Ironic Effect of Significant Results on the Credibility of Multiple-Study Articles”, 2012
- “Bayesian data analysis”, 2010
- “What Teachers Should Know about the Bootstrap: Resampling in the Undergraduate Statistics Curriculum”, 2014 (nice comprehensible discussion of various kinds of bootstraps and resampling which helps put together everything I’d learned piecemeal)
- “The harm done by tests of significance”, 2004 (how p-values increase traffic fatalities)
- “The Mind of a Con Man”: Stapel
- Stein’s paradox
- “Tiny Data, Approximate Bayesian Computation and the Unpaired Socks of Karl Broman” (demonstration of ABC)
- “A Vast Graveyard of Undead Theories: Publication Bias and Psychological Science’s Aversion to the Null”
- “Unreliable neuroscience? Why power matters: Small studies with low power undermine the reliability of science and new evidence suggests that low power is the norm in neuroscience”
Psychology/biology:
- “Is Psychometric g a Myth?”
- “Suppressing Intelligence Research: Hurting Those We Intend to Help”, 2005
- “Who Rises to the Top? Early Indicators”, et al 2013 (does IQ cease to matter past 130? No.)
- “Life Paths and Accomplishments of Mathematically Precocious Males and Females Four Decades Later”, et al 2014 ( graphs)
- “Annals of psychometry: IQs of eminent scientists”
- “Studies Highlight [Futility] of Early Education”
- “Don’t Know? Or Don’t Care?: Predicting Educational Attainment Using Survey Item Response Rates and Coding Speed Tests as Measures of Conscientiousness”, 2013
- “Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science”, et al 2015 (liberal ideological homogeneity in social sciences causing problems)
- “Travels in the New Psychedelic Bazaar: The synthetic drugs being invented, refined, and produced today—and often shipped in from China—would have blown Timothy Leary’s mind. Who knows what they’re doing to the brains of users.”
Technology:
-
“Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like
qeadzcwrsfxv1331
; For Ars, three crackers have at 16,000+ hashed passcodes—with 90% success” (computers are much faster than you think, when used right, unfortunately) - “Crypto Rebels: It’s the FBIs, NSAs, and Equifaxes of the world versus a swelling movement of Cypherpunks, civil libertarians, and millionaire hackers. At stake: Whether privacy will exist in the 21st century”
- N-body choreographies
- “How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 ‘moon rocket’ engine back to life”
- “A history of the Amiga, part 8: The demo scene”
-
“Reimplementing
git clone
in Haskell from the bottom up”
Economics:
-
disability, immigration, globalization, and technological unemployment:
- “Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America”
- Murray’s Coming Apart
- Autor on disability
- “Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labor Markets”
- “The Effect of Intelligence on Job Performance is Intuitive”
- “Immigration and the American Worker: A Review of the Academic Literature”, 2013
Philosophy:
- “Bayesian Informal Logic and Fallacy”, 2003; “Fallacies as weak Bayesian evidence”
- “Privileging the Question”
- “Be Specific” (if you make an abstract claim, can you give at least 3 specific examples? if not, maybe you need to think about it more)
- “Taking Charity Seriously: Toby Ord talk on charity effectiveness”
Misc:
- Taikyoku shogi
- “Try To Praise The Mutilated World”, Adam Zagajewski
- “Morning Song of Senlin”, Conrad Aiken
- “When Dickens met Dostoevsky” (literary hoaxes; followup)
Books
Nonfiction:
- Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide? (review)
- The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett, Bryne (review)
- Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, Jansen (review)
- The Art of Unix Usability, ESR (review)
Fiction:
- A Clockwork Orange, Burgess
- Lud-in-the-Mist, Mirrlees
- The Far Side Gallery 3 (I think I liked them better as a kid; re-reading, I realize Larson really only had a few jokes & characters which he permuted endlessly. It doesn’t grow up with you as much as some others like Calvin & Hobbes do.)
Film/TV
Live-action:
- The Wire (review)
- The Shining (review)
- Blue Blazes (review)
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013 remake); pretty decent, albeit very little like story, and a rather shoehorned in quest/Blue Bird of Happiness which undermines original short story’s protagonist by implying he was a failure before & the core dreaming was escapism
Music
Touhou:
- “千年幻想郷 ~ History of the Moon” (Liverne (ゆう), Yu- (Phoenix Project), Tokunan; Touhou Gensou Shiten 2 “Canon” {C71}) [metal]
- “チルノ /おてんば恋娘” (Yoshiki Ara; Charisma Lash Type-M {C86}) [orchestral]
- “ソリテス・パラドックス” (Ryuuha Mikaido; ティマイオス ~風の詩~ {C86}) [orchestral]
- “オッカムの剃刀” (Ryuuha Mikaido; ティマイオス ~風の詩~ {C86}) [orchestral]
- “Even if they say nothing in the night” (Machikado-Mapoze; Dancing Phantasmagoria {C86}) [waltz]
- “Library Rag” (Machikado-Mapoze; Dancing Phantasmagoria {C86}) [ragtime]
- “巫女みこ茶々々” (Machikado-Mapoze; Dancing Phantasmagoria {C86}) [Cha-cha-chá]
- “佐々木喜善はかく語りき ~ 願わくはこれを語りて平地人を戦慄せしめよ” (ジャム; DAYDREAM TUNES {C86}) [classical]
- “天空の花の都” (埼玉最終兵器; Cradle Re:BOOT -東方幻樂祀典- {C86}) [metal]
- “An Enlarging Story” (RD-Sounds; Slaughter {C86}) [orchestral]
- “Way to go Shinmyoumaru ~Battle with Titans~” (RD-Sounds; Slaughter {C86}) [orchestral]
- “Could She Know The Summer?” (setsugen; DAYDREAM TUNES {C86}) [classical]
Doujin:
- “Summer Dayz” (村瀬悠太; AD:HOUSE 3 {C86}) [instrumental]
- “またあした” (bacon8 feat. nijimine kakoi; luminous flux {C85}) [acoustic]
- “パラミシアの狼” (O-kei feat. ヤマイ; SONORA {2014}) [Jpop]
- “Call My Cell” (Hige Driver feat. ΦKushiΦ; Hige Dance {C86}) [electronic]
Vocaloid:
- “Back to You” (Luka; Planty; Planet Planty {2014}) [trance]
- “In Adversae” (Luka, Kaito; Planty; Planet Planty {2014}) [trance]
- “It was ten days ago.” (Miku; Toku-P; The Universe {2009}) [vocal]
- “魁!パンツメン☆ミ” (Miku; KASANE; sync-loid:05 {2014}) [Jpop]
- “Boku mo Kuzu Dakara” (Miku; PinnochioP; Yusei Masshirake {VM27}) [Jpop]