--- title: January 2016 News created: 2016-01-01 status: finished previous: /newsletter/2015/13 next: /newsletter/2016/02 confidence: log cssExtension: dropcaps-de-zs backlink: False ... This is the January 2016 edition of [the Gwern.net newsletter](https://gwern.substack.com/ "'Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)', Branwen 2013"); previous, [December 2015](/newsletter/2015/12 "'December 2015 News', Branwen 2015"). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with [Changelog](/changelog); brought to you by my donors on [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/gwern). # Writings - [vitamin D for longevity](/longevity#vitamin-d) - ["The Power of Twins: Revisiting Student's Scottish Milk Experiment Example"](/milk "'The Power of Twins: The Scottish Milk Experiment', Branwen 2016") # Media ## Links **Genetics**: - [Everything Is Heritable]{.smallcaps}: - ["Shared genetic aetiology between cognitive functions and physical and mental health in UK Biobank (_n_ = 112151) and 24 GWAS consortia"](https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2015225 "'Shared genetic aetiology between cognitive functions and physical and mental health in UK Biobank (n = 112,151) and 24 GWAS consortia', Hagenaars et al 2016"), Hagenaars et al 2016 - ["Top 10 Replicated Findings From Behavioral Genetics"](/doc/genetics/heritable/adoption/2016-plomin.pdf), Plomin et al 2016 - ["The Muscular Dystrophy Patient and Olympic Medalist with the Same Genetic Disorder"](https://www.propublica.org/article/muscular-dystrophy-patient-olympic-medalist-same-genetic-mutation) - ["Genetically low vitamin D concentrations and increased mortality: Mendelian Randomization analysis in three large cohorts"](https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g6330.long), Afzal et al 2014 - [Engineering]{.smallcaps}: - ["Improved CRISPR–Cas9: Safe and Effective?"](https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/01/improved-crisprcas9-safe-and-effective.html): ["High-fidelity CRISPR–Cas9 nucleases with no detectable genome-wide off-target effects"](/doc/genetics/editing/2016-kleinstiver.pdf "Kleinstiver et al 2016")/["Rationally engineered Cas9 nucleases with improved specificity"](/doc/genetics/editing/2016-slaymaker.pdf "Slaymaker et al 2016") **Politics/religion**: - ["Once Upon a Jihad"](https://web.archive.org/web/20160130041021/http://reprints.longform.org/perry-once-upon-a-jihad) / ["Experiencing Ecstasy: How Bad It Is to Be 20 Years Old"](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/21/magazine/experiencing-ecstasy.html) - ["Introduction to the Economics of Religion"](/doc/economics/1998-iannaccone.pdf), Iannaccone 1998 - ["The Pilot's Tale: At Sea with 90,000 Tons of Diplomacy"](https://web.archive.org/web/20161021040958/http://www.matthewklam.com/nonfiction/pilotstale.html) - ["Systems, Not Sith: How Inter-service Rivalries Doomed the Galactic Empire"](https://www.overthinkingit.com/2012/09/17/star-wars-empire-inter-service-rivalries/?page=all) - ["Boss Rail: The disaster that exposed the underside of the boom"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/22/boss-rail) - ["Why China should celebrate Columbus Day"](https://www.themoneyillusion.com/why-china-should-celebrate-columbus-day/) **Statistics/AI/meta-science**: - ["Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search"](/doc/reinforcement-learning/model/alphago/2016-silver.pdf#deepmind), Silver et al 2016 - ["The Top A.I. Breakthroughs of 2015"](https://futureoflife.org/ai/the-top-a-i-breakthroughs-of-2015/) (omits residual networks!) - ["Gradient-based Hyperparameter Optimization through Reversible Learning"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03492), Maclaurin et al 2015 - ["Recognizing and Localizing Endangered Right Whales with Extremely Deep Neural Networks"](https://felixlaumon.github.io/2015/01/08/kaggle-right-whale.html) - [new /r/DecisionTheory subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/DecisionTheory/) - ["Why do we Sometimes get Nonsense-Correlations between Time-Series? A Study in Sampling and the Nature of Time-Series"](/doc/statistics/causality/1926-yule.pdf "'Why do we Sometimes get Nonsense-Correlations between Time-Series?—A Study in Sampling and the Nature of Time-Series', Yule 1926"), Yule 1926 ("the ratio of Catholic vs Protestant marriages correlates _r_ = 0.95 with the English death rate") - ["Comparison of evidence on harms of medical interventions in randomized and nonrandomized studies"](/doc/statistics/causality/2006-papanikolaou.pdf), Papanikolaou et al 2006 ([How often](/correlation "'How Often Does Correlation=Causality?', Branwen 2014") does correlation=causation?) **Psychology/biology**: - ["A Look Back at 2015 in Longevity Science"](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2015/12/a-look-back-at-2015-in-longevity-science/) - ["Bayesian Belief Polarization"](https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2009/file/3435c378bb76d4357324dd7e69f3cd18-Paper.pdf), Jern et al 2009 - ["Stupider Than You Realize"](https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/stupider-than-you-realizehtml) - ["The philosophical case against sleeping in"](https://www.vox.com/2015/2/4/7972077/against-oversleeping) - [Frog battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_battery) - ["Using Neurotechnologies to Develop Virtues---A Buddhist Approach to Cognitive Enhancement"](https://web.archive.org/web/20121018033729/http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/hughes20121016) - ["Be Happier"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JHcTP4Ad8QAmRTCZm/be-happier) **Technology**: - ["Google releases detailed intervention rates---and the real unsolved problem of robocars"](https://ideas.4brad.com/google-releases-detailed-intervention-rates-and-real-unsolved-problem-robocars) - ["The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work"](https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf), Rogaway 2015 - ["These Tricks Make Virtual Reality (VR) Feel Real: Realistic digital spaces need delusions as much as they need detail"](https://nautil.us/these-tricks-make-virtual-reality-feel-real-235740/) - ["Dead reckoning and the exploration explosion"](https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2012/10/dead-reckoning-and-exploration-explosion.html) **Economics**: - ["Does High School Algebra Pass a Cost-Benefit Test?"](https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/10/does_high_schoo.html) - [When will corporations defect?](/doc/existential-risk/2012-schneier-liarsandoutliers-ch13.pdf) (Schneier's _Liars and Outliers_) - ["Interview: John A. List"](https://www.richmondfed.org/-/media/richmondfedorg/publications/research/econ_focus/2012/q2-3/pdf/interview.pdf) - [Jonathan Wild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Wild) (["baptists and bootleggers"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists)) **Philosophy**: - ["Technology will destroy human nature"](https://kajsotala.fi/2012/10/technology-will-destroy-human-nature/) - ["Lord Russell meet Lord Russell"](https://web.archive.org/web/20200516093838/http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=6160) **Fiction**: - ["The Star Gauge"](https://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/10/02/the-star-gauge/) of [Su Hui](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_Hui_%28poet%29#Palindrome_Poem:_Xuanji_Tu) ## Books **Fiction**: - [_The Dark Forest_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest), Liu Cixin **Nonfiction**: - [Lucretius's _On the Nature of Things_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura) ## Film/TV - [_The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_Dreams_and_Madness) ([review](/review/anime#the-kingdom-of-dreams-and-madness)) ## Music **Touhou**: - ["ねこまたアキアート"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9jywdtl3xf9iqu1/%E6%B0%B4%E6%A9%8B%E3%82%86%E3%81%A3%E3%81%8D-teahakugyokurou-%E3%81%AD%E3%81%93%E3%81%BE%E3%81%9F%E3%82%A2%E3%82%AD%E3%82%A2%E3%83%88.ogg) (水橋ゆっきー; _Tea Hakugyokurou_ {C88}) [classical] - ["Lunatic Eyes"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/1r2yj1u4ichhq6j/setsugen-%E5%A5%8F%E4%B9%B1%E7%B5%B5%E5%B7%BB-%E7%8B%82%E6%B0%97%E3%81%AE%E7%9E%B3lunaticeyes.ogg) (Setsugen; _So-ran-e-maki_ {R12}) [classical] - ["Emotional Skyscraper"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyvgn4y2iqs6g3n/setsugen-%E5%A5%8F%E4%B9%B1%E7%B5%B5%E5%B7%BB-%E5%A3%B1%E3%80%81%E6%84%9F%E6%83%85%E3%81%AE%E6%91%A9%E5%A4%A9%E6%A5%BCemotionalskyscraper.ogg) (Setsugen; _So-ran-e-maki_ {R12}) [classical] - ["Deaf to All but the Song"](https://www.dropbox.com/s/oe6imnheps6a1hy/setsugen-%E5%A5%8F%E4%B9%B1%E7%B5%B5%E5%B7%BB-%E3%82%82%E3%81%86%E6%AD%8C%E3%81%97%E3%81%8B%E8%81%9E%E3%81%93%E3%81%88%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E5%A4%9C%E9%9B%80%E3%81%AE%E6%AD%8C%E5%A3%B0deaftoallbutthesong.ogg) (Setsugen; _So-ran-e-maki_ {R12}) [classical] **Doujin**: - ["灼耀の内声 -Inclusion Inner Light-"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0VJrjLN-W4) (Morrigan feat. Lily; _Citla re:verse -其歌は真言顕す欠片と為りて-_ {C88}) [orchestral/choral] - ["天照大御神-AMATERAS SYSTEM-"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rd9H3ufpGU) (Morrigan feat. Lily; _Citla re:verse -其歌は真言顕す欠片と為りて-_ {C88}) [orchestral/choral]