--- title: November 2014 News created: 2014-10-31 status: finished previous: /newsletter/2014/10 next: /newsletter/2014/12 confidence: log cssExtension: dropcaps-de-zs backlink: False ... This is the November 2014 edition of [the Gwern.net newsletter](https://gwern.substack.com/ "'Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)', Branwen 2013"); previously, [October](/newsletter/2014/10 "'October 2014 News', Branwen 2014"). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with [Changelog](/changelog). Thanks to my donors on Gratipay. # Writings - [A/B indentation test](/ab-test#indented-paragraphs): no real result, defaulted to 2em # Media ## Links **Genetics**: - [Everything Is Heritable]{.smallcaps}: - ["The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4313871/), Iossifov et al 2014 (media: [1](https://www.spring.org.uk/2014/11/autism-new-studies-identify-dozens-more-associated-genes.php), [2](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/10/29/359818102/scientists-implicate-more-than-100-genes-in-causing-autism/); [discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2l9dpi/two_new_studies_published_in_nature_provide/)) - [Engineering]{.smallcaps}: - ["Cloning Cows From Steaks (and Other Ways of Building Better Cattle)"](https://web.archive.org/web/20141018022010/https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015-better-beef-genetics-science-agriculture-environment-ngfood/) **Politics/religion**: - ["Whither the Blank Slate? A Report on the Reception of Evolutionary Biological Ideas among Sociological Theorists"](/doc/genetics/heritable/2014-horowitz.pdf), Horowitz et al 2014 ([media](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/28/liberals-deny-science-too/)) - ["Transcript of secret meeting between Julian Assange and Google CEO Eric Schmidt"](https://web.archive.org/web/20130419211444/https://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt) - ["The Micro-sociology of Violent Confrontations"](https://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8547.pdf), Collins 2009 - ["Aum Shinrikyo and a Panic About Manga and Anime"](/doc/anime/eva/2008-gardner-2.pdf), Gardner 2008 - ["A Few Bad Men: Why America doesn't really have a terrorism problem"](https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/17/a-few-bad-men/) - ["Bottom of the Barrel: Today's terrorists aren't 'sophisticated'. They're stupider than ever."](https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/24/bottom-of-the-barrel/) **Statistics/AI/meta-science**: - ["What’s to know about the credibility of empirical economics?"](/doc/statistics/bias/2013-ioannidis.pdf), Ioannidis & Doucouliagos 2013 - ["The Ironic Effect of Significant Results on the Credibility of Multiple-Study Articles"](https://ubc-emotionlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Schimmack-2012-Effect-of-Significance-on-Article-Credibility.pdf), Schimmack 2012 - ["Bayesian data analysis"](/doc/statistics/bayes/2010-kruschke.pdf), Kruschke 2010 - ["What Teachers Should Know about the Bootstrap: Resampling in the Undergraduate Statistics Curriculum"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.5279), Hesterberg 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"](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/1154-Hauer-The-harm-done-by-tests-of-significance.pdf), Hauer 2004 (how _p_-values increase traffic fatalities) - ["The Mind of a Con Man": Stapel](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-audacious-academic-fraud.html) - [Stein’s paradox](https://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/steins-paradox/) - ["Tiny Data, Approximate Bayesian Computation and the Unpaired Socks of Karl Broman"](https://www.sumsar.net/blog/2014/10/tiny-data-and-the-socks-of-karl-broman/) (demonstration of [ABC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximate_Bayesian_computation)) - ["A Vast Graveyard of Undead Theories: Publication Bias and Psychological Science's Aversion to the Null"](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2013/04/26/a-vast-graveyard-of-undead-theories-publication-bias-and-psychological-sciences-aversion-to-the-null-2/) - ["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"](https://www.theguardian.com/science/sifting-the-evidence/2013/apr/10/unreliable-neuroscience-power-matters) **Psychology/biology**: - ["Is Psychometric _g_ a Myth?"](https://humanvarieties.org/2013/04/03/is-psychometric-g-a-myth/) - ["Suppressing Intelligence Research: Hurting Those We Intend to Help"](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.138.3468&rep=rep1&type=pdf), Gottfredson 2005 - ["Who Rises to the Top? Early Indicators"](/doc/iq/high/smpy/2013-kell.pdf), Kell et al 2013 (does IQ cease to matter past 130? No.) - ["Life Paths and Accomplishments of Mathematically Precocious Males and Females Four Decades Later"](/doc/iq/high/smpy/2014-lubinski.pdf), Lubinski et al 2014 ([graphs](https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2014/11/gender-differences-in-preferences.html "Gender differences in preferences, choices, and outcomes: SMPY longitudinal study")) - ["Annals of psychometry: IQs of eminent scientists"](https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html) - ["Studies Highlight [Futility] of Early Education"](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/studies-highlight-benefits-of-early-education.html) - ["Don't Know? Or Don't Care?: Predicting Educational Attainment Using Survey Item Response Rates and Coding Speed Tests as Measures of Conscientiousness"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2684096), Hitt & Trivitt 2013 - ["Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science"](https://scottlilienfeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/lilienfeld2015-3.pdf), Duarte 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."](https://nymag.com/news/features/synthetic-drugs-2013-4/#print) **Technology**: - ["Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like `qeadzcwrsfxv1331`; For Ars, three crackers have at 16,000+ hashed passcodes---with 90% success"](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/) (computers are *much* faster than you think, [when used right](/note/faster "'Computer Optimization: Your Computer Is Faster Than You Think', Branwen 2021"), 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"](https://www.wired.com/1993/02/crypto-rebels/) - [_N_-body choreographies](http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/N-body_choreographies) - ["How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 'moon rocket' engine back to life"](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/f-1-moon-rocket) - ["A history of the Amiga, part 8: The demo scene"](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/a-history-of-the-amiga-part-9-the-demo-scene/) - ["Reimplementing `git clone` in Haskell from the bottom up"](https://stefan.saasen.me/articles/git-clone-in-haskell-from-the-bottom-up/) **Economics**: - ["The death of peak oil"](https://econbrowser.com/archives/2013/04/the_death_of_pe) - [Survivorship bias in equity returns](/doc/economics/2013-creditsuisse.pdf "Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2013") - disability, immigration, globalization, and technological unemployment: - ["Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America"](https://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/) - Murray's [_Coming Apart_](https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X) - [Autor on disability](https://www.econtalk.org/autor-on-disability/) - ["Untangling Trade and Technology: Evidence from Local Labor Markets"](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/trade-vs-technology-in-terms-of-their-labor-market-effects.html) - ["The Effect of Intelligence on Job Performance is Intuitive"](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/the_effect_of_i.html) - ["Immigration and the American Worker: A Review of the Academic Literature"](https://cis.org/Report/Immigration-and-American-Worker), Borjas 2013 **Philosophy**: - ["Bayesian Informal Logic and Fallacy"](/doc/statistics/bayes/2003-korb.pdf), Korb 2003; ["Fallacies as weak Bayesian evidence"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YgNLfytckSyKTnDXN/fallacies-as-weak-bayesian-evidence) - ["Privileging the Question"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6vcxuRHzeM99jYcYd/privileging-the-question) - ["Be Specific"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NgtYDP3ZtLJaM248W/sotw-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"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iCa9JXAXAuCzuv3DT/taking-charity-seriously-toby-ord-talk-on-charity) **Misc**: - [Taikyoku shogi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi) - ["Try To Praise The Mutilated World"](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/try-to-praise-the-mutilated-world/), Adam Zagajewski - ["Morning Song of Senlin"](https://www.poetry-archive.com/a/morning_song_of_senlin.html), Conrad Aiken - ["When Dickens met Dostoevsky"](https://www.the-tls.co.uk/issues/november-8-2019-1/) (literary hoaxes; [followup](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/10/man-behind-dickens-dostoevsky-hoax "The man behind the great Dickens and Dostoevsky hoax: When writer AD Harvey invented an 1862 meeting between Dickens and Dostoevsky, it was for years accepted as fact. So why did he do it—and why did he also create a series of fake academic identities?")) ## Books **Nonfiction**: - [_Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?_](https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopropyl_bromide.pdf) ([review](/review/book#excuse-me-sir-would-you-like-to-buy-a-kilo-of-isopropyl-bromide-gergel-1979)) - [_The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett_](https://www.amazon.com/The-Many-Worlds-Hugh-Everett/dp/0199659249), Bryne ([review](/review/book#the-many-worlds-of-hugh-everett-iii-byrne-2010)) - [_Ketamine: Dreams and Realities_](https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/K-DreamsKJansenMAPS.pdf), Jansen ([review](/review/book#ketamine-jansen-2004)) - [_The Art of Unix Usability_](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taouu/html/), ESR ([review](/review/book#the-art-of-unix-programming-raymond-2003)) **Fiction**: - [_A Clockwork Orange_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_\(novel\)), Burgess - [_Lud-in-the-Mist_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire) ([review](/review/movie#the-wire)) - [_The Shining_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shining_%28film%29) ([review](/review/movie#the-shining)) - [_Blue Blazes_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aoi_Hon%C5%8D) ([review](/review/anime#blue-blazes)) - [_The Secret Life of Walter Mitty_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Life_of_Walter_Mitty_%282013_film%29) (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"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kSv46mOApg) (Liverne (ゆう), Yu- (Phoenix Project), Tokunan; _Touhou Gensou Shiten 2 "Canon"_ {C71}) [metal] - ["チルノ /おてんば恋娘"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpYOzgIwbXY) (Yoshiki Ara; _Charisma Lash Type-M_ {C86}) [orchestral] - ["ソリテス・パラドックス"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8GdWiPh6Xw) (Ryuuha Mikaido; _ティマイオス ~風の詩~_ {C86}) [orchestral] - ["オッカムの剃刀"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tfx0cOc5no) (Ryuuha Mikaido; _ティマイオス ~風の詩~_ {C86}) [orchestral] - ["Even if they say nothing in the night"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGCKucb2DlE) (Machikado-Mapoze; _Dancing Phantasmagoria_ {C86}) [waltz] - ["Library Rag"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/zxfturz83ro6ss2/machikadomapoze-dancingphantasmagoria-libraryrag.ogg) (Machikado-Mapoze; _Dancing Phantasmagoria_ {C86}) [ragtime] - ["巫女みこ茶々々"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/vlp4s1o4svbrx0i/machikadomapoze-dancingphantasmagoria-%E5%B7%AB%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%BF%E3%81%93%E8%8C%B6%E3%80%85%E3%80%85.ogg) (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"](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5317066/music/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%A0-daydreamtunes-%E4%BD%90%E3%80%85%E6%9C%A8%E5%96%9C%E5%96%84%E3%81%AF%E3%81%8B%E3%81%8F%E8%AA%9E%E3%82%8A%E3%81%8D%E9%A1%98%E3%82%8F%E3%81%8F%E3%81%AF%E3%81%93%E3%82%8C%E3%82%92%E8%AA%9E%E3%82%8A%E3%81%A6%E5%B9%B3%E5%9C%B0%E4%BA%BA%E3%82%92%E6%88%A6%E6%85%84%E3%81%9B%E3%81%97%E3%82%81%E3%82%88.ogg) (ジャム; _DAYDREAM TUNES_ {C86}) [classical] - ["天空の花の都"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/7lic0w53ct0dszt/%E5%9F%BC%E7%8E%89%E6%9C%80%E7%B5%82%E5%85%B5%E5%99%A8-cradlereboot-%E6%9D%B1%E6%96%B9%E5%B9%BB%E6%A8%82%E7%A5%80%E5%85%B8%E5%A4%A9%E7%A9%BA%E3%81%AE%E8%8A%B1%E3%81%AE%E9%83%BD.ogg) (埼玉最終兵器; _Cradle Re:BOOT -東方幻樂祀典-_ {C86}) [metal] - ["An Enlarging Story"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKsAtiFwyAk) (RD-Sounds; _Slaughter_ {C86}) [orchestral] - ["Way to go Shinmyoumaru ~Battle with Titans~"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cUFfBpLCUw) (RD-Sounds; _Slaughter_ {C86}) [orchestral] - ["Could She Know The Summer?"](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5317066/music/setsugen-daydreamtunes-couldsheknowthesummer.ogg) (setsugen; _DAYDREAM TUNES_ {C86}) [classical] **Doujin**: - ["Summer Dayz"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ruqrzypuvf1oblw/%E6%9D%91%E7%80%AC%E6%82%A0%E5%A4%AA-adhouse3-summerdayz.ogg?dl=0) (村瀬悠太; _AD:HOUSE 3_ {C86}) [instrumental] - ["またあした"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S35CzMaeCA) (bacon8 feat. nijimine kakoi; _luminous flux_ {C85}) [acoustic] - ["パラミシアの狼"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/x2cmb3fnw2w19zv/okei-sonora-%E3%83%91%E3%83%A9%E3%83%9F%E3%82%B7%E3%82%A2%E3%81%AE%E7%8B%BC.ogg) (O-kei feat. ヤマイ; _SONORA_ {2014}) [Jpop] - ["Call My Cell"](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5317066/music/higedriver-higedance-callmycell.ogg) (Hige Driver feat. ΦKushiΦ; _Hige Dance_ {C86}) [electronic] **Vocaloid**: - ["Back to You"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5A03IkWDE&t=4m20s) (Luka; Planty; _Planet Planty_ {2014}) [trance] - ["In Adversae"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5A03IkWDE#t=3m25s) (Luka, Kaito; Planty; _Planet Planty_ {2014}) [trance] - ["It was ten days ago."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbn1AcvXKQQ) (Miku; Toku-P; _The Universe_ {2009}) [vocal] - ["魁!パンツメン☆ミ"](https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm22678844) (Miku; KASANE; _sync-loid:05_ {2014}) [Jpop] - ["Boku mo Kuzu Dakara"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oypERR3HKOU) (Miku; PinnochioP; _Yusei Masshirake_ {VM27}) [Jpop]