--- title: July 2016 News created: 2016-06-23 status: finished previous: /newsletter/2016/06 next: /newsletter/2016/08 confidence: log cssExtension: dropcaps-de-zs backlink: False ... This is the July 2016 edition of [the Gwern.net newsletter](https://gwern.substack.com/ "'Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)', Branwen 2013"); previous, [June 2016](/newsletter/2016/06 "'June 2016 News', Branwen 2016"). 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 - [Computational Complexity vs the Singularity](/complexity "Complexity no Bar to AI: Critics of AI risk suggest diminishing returns to computing means AI will be weak; I argue argument breaks if any premises rejected") # Media ## Links **Genetics**: - [Everything Is Heritable]{.smallcaps}: - ["Predicting educational achievement from DNA"](https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2016107), Selzam et al 2016 ([supplement](https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fmp.2016.107/MediaObjects/41380_2017_BFmp2016107_MOESM351_ESM.pdf); polygenic scores now predict 3.5% of intelligence, 7% of family SES, and 9% of education) - ["Genetically-Mediated Associations Between Measures of Childhood Character and Academic Achievement"](https://labs.la.utexas.edu/tucker-drob/files/2015/02/Tucker-Drob-et-al.-in-press-JPSP-Genetics-of-Character-and-Achievement.pdf), Tucker-Drob et al 2016 - ["The continuing value of twin studies in the -omics era"](/doc/genetics/heritable/2012-vandongen.pdf), van Dongen et al 2012 - ["Estimate of disease heritability using 4.7 million familial relationships inferred from electronic health records"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/066068.full "'Estimate of disease heritability using 7.4 million familial relationships inferred from electronic health records', Polubriaginof et al 2017"), Polubriaginof 2016 - ["Diagnoses in Siblings of Probands With Autism Spectrum Disorders"](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2519364), Jokiranta-Olkoniemi et al 2016 (see also ["Different neurodevelopmental symptoms have a common genetic etiology"](/doc/genetics/heritable/correlation/2013-pettersson.pdf), Pettersson et al 2013) - ["Autism As a Disorder of High Intelligence"](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2016.00300/full), Crespi 2016 (Seems to overemphasize the role of common variants and underplay all the severe de novo mutations discovered in autism cases.) - ["Detecting Genome-wide Variants of Eurasian Facial Shape Differentiation: DNA based Face Prediction Tested in Forensic Scenario"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/062950.full "'Genome-wide Variants of Eurasian Facial Shape Differentiation and DNA based Face Prediction', Qiao et al 2016"), Qiao et al 2016 - [Recent Evolution]{.smallcaps}: - ["Evolution Is Happening Faster Than We Thought"](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/evolution-is-happening-faster-than-we-thought.html) ([Coyne commentary](https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2016/07/24/rapid-urban-evolution/ "Rapid urban evolution")) - [Engineering]{.smallcaps}: - ["Chinese scientists to pioneer first human CRISPR trial: Gene-editing technique to treat lung cancer is due to be tested in people in August"](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.20302) - ["Healthy ageing of cloned sheep"](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12359), Sinclair et al 2016 **Politics/religion**: - ["Preparing for the Possibility of a North Korean Collapse"](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR331/RAND_RR331.pdf), Bennett 2013 (I didn't know many of those details about how the East German collapse was able to go so smoothly, or that Kim Jong-Il had intimidated his subordinates during the '90s famines with footage of impoverished East German elites.) - ["Police, Prosecutors and Judges Rely on a Flawed \$2 Road-Side Drug Test That Puts Innocent People Behind Bars"](https://www.propublica.org/article/common-roadside-drug-test-routinely-produces-false-positives) - ["How Successful Was Christianity?"](https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard-carrier-improbable-luck/), Carrier - ["Opium Made Easy"](https://web.archive.org/web/20100702125114/https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/opium-made-easy/) - [France's untouchables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagot) - ["Seeds of Doubt: An activist's controversial crusade against genetically modified crops"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt) - ["Hell is the Absence of God"](https://web.archive.org/web/20161021035119/http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/hell.html), by Ted Chiang - ["The shadow commander: Qassem Suleimani is the Iranian operative who has been reshaping the Middle East. Now he's directing Assad's war in Syria"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander) **AI**: - ["Alignment for Advanced Machine Learning Systems"](https://intelligence.org/files/AlignmentMachineLearning.pdf), Taylor et al 2016 - ["Assessing Human Error Against a Benchmark of Perfection"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.04956), Anderson et al 2016 (Difficulty of a chess endgame position predicts mistakes far better than time constraints or chess ability. Not necessarily surprising---as chess AIs demonstrate, humans only span a fraction of the possible range of objective chess playing ability, so individual human differences in ability won't matter much.) - ["Accelerating Eulerian Fluid Simulation With Convolutional Networks"](https://cims.nyu.edu/~schlacht/CNNFluids.htm) (neural network all the things) **Statistics/meta-science**: - ["Preventing future offending of delinquents and offenders: what have we learned from experiments and meta-analyses?"](/doc/sociology/2015-mackenzie.pdf), Mackenzie & Farrington 2015 - ["Why It Took Social Science Years to Correct a Simple Error About 'Psychoticism'"](https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/why-it-took-social-science-years-to-correct-a-simple-error-about-psychoticism.html) - ["Can Results-Free Review Reduce Publication Bias? The Results and Implications of a Pilot Study"](/doc/statistics/peer-review/2016-findley.pdf), Findley et al 2016 (on [result-blind peer review](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarly_peer_review#Result-blind_peer_review)) - ["Laplace the Bayesianista and the Mass of Saturn"](https://perfdynamics.blogspot.com/2013/09/laplace-bayesianista-and-mass-of-saturn.html) - ["Our Fathers of Old"](https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/verse-1885-1918/our-fathers-of-old/), Rudyard Kipling **Psychology/biology**: - [Do _Portia_ spiders have a mind?](/doc/biology/portia/2006-mccrone.pdf "'Smarter Than The Average Bug', McCrone 2006"), John McCrone 2006 ([commentary](https://www.rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem.html "'Iterating Towards Bethelhem', Watts 2009") on [_Portia_ spiders](/doc/biology/portia/index)) - ["The Medical Mystery Behind the Itch"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/30/the-itch) - ["United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers"](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/health/gang-stalking-targeted-individuals.html) - ["New Drug Development: Estimating entry from human clinical trials"](https://www.ftc.gov/reports/new-drug-development-estimating-entry-human-clinical-trials), Adams & Brantner 2003 - ["The Efficacy of Psychological, Educational, and Behavioral Treatment: Confirmation From Meta-Analysis"](/doc/psychology/1993-lipsey.pdf "'The Efficacy of Psychological, Educational, and Behavioral Treatment: Confirmation from Meta-Analysis', Lipsey & Wilson 1993"), Lipsey & Wilson 1993 (incidentally, published studies yield mean effects 0.14 SDs larger than unpublished studies.) - ["Could Women Be Trusted With Their Own Pregnancy Tests?"](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/could-women-be-trusted-with-their-own-pregnancy-tests.html) - ["Breast-feeding the microbiome"](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/breast-feeding-the-microbiome) - ["Dengue fever cases drop 91% in neighbourhood of Piracicaba, Brazil, where Oxitec's Friendly _Aedes_ were released"](https://web.archive.org/web/20160718123204/https://www.oxitec.com/dengue-fever-cases-drop-91-percent-neighbourhood-piracicaba-brazil-oxitecs-friendly-aedes-released/) - ["Genetically Engineering an Icon: Can Biotech Bring the Chestnut Back to America's Forests?"](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/genetically-engineering-an-icon-can-biotech-bring-the-chestnut-back-to-americas-forests/276356/) - ["A Cavity-Fighting Liquid Lets Kids Avoid Dentists' Drills"](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/health/silver-diamine-fluoride-dentist-cavities.html) - [Have a nice day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_a_nice_day) **Technology**: - ["The Slow Winter"](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1309_14-17_mickens.pdf) (James Mickens) - ["Helium Dreams: A new generation of airships is born"](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/a-new-generation-of-airships-is-born) - ["Liking What You See: A Documentary"](https://web.archive.org/web/20120530143243/http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/liking.html), by Ted Chiang **Economics**: - ["The Emergence of an Informal Health-Care Sector in North Korea"](https://apjjf.org/2016/11/Soh.html), Soh et al 2016 - ["The True Story Of The Great Marijuana Crash Of 2011"](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-great-marijuana-crash-of-2011-2013-9) - ["How America's Favorite Sports Betting Expert Turned A Sucker's Game Into An Industry"](https://deadspin.com/how-america-s-favorite-sports-betting-expert-turned-a-s-1782438574) - ["Recycling Eyeglasses Is a Feel-Good Waste of Money"](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2012-05-03/recycling-eyeglasses-is-a-feel-good-waste-of-money) - ["Information, Beliefs, and Trading"](https://rajivsethi.blogspot.com/2013/09/information-beliefs-and-trading.html) - ["Yet another modest proposal: The Roentgen Standard"](https://larryniven.net/stories/roentgen.shtml) **Philosophy**: - ["Squashed Philosophers"](http://sqapo.com/index.htm) - ["SCP-988"](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-988) **Fiction**: - [_There Is No Anti-Memetics Division_](https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub), by Sam Hughes - ["Seventy-Two Letters"](https://web.archive.org/web/20010802144026/http://www.tor.com/72ltrs.html), by Ted Chiang - ["Equoid"](https://www.tor.com/2013/09/24/equoid/), by Charles Stross - ["Calvin & Muad'dib"](https://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/) ([1](https://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/image/55596841924), [2](https://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/image/42501251740), [3](https://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/image/41781088433), [4](https://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/image/41205262878), [5](https://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/image/38150595850), [6](https://calvinanddune.tumblr.com/image/60837830203)) - ["The Death of Bowie Gizzardsbane"](http://anitra.net/commonwealth/alamo.html), by John Myers Myers (The fall of the Alamo, in alliterative verse.) - ["Suminoe Beach"](/doc/japan/poetry/1940-nippongakujutsushinkokai-manyoshu.pdf#page=197 "'The Manyoshu: The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai Translation of One Thousand Poems with the Texts in Romaji', Shinkokai & Keene 1940-page-197"), by Kuramochi Chitose (328-9; VI: 931-2) > The beach is beautiful; and there grow \ > The sea-tangles swaying, \ > Lapped by a thousand waves \ > In the calm of morning, \ > And by five hundred waves \ > In the evening calm. \ > O Suminoe Beach, \ > Where white-crested waves are racing around! \ > Could I weary of watching, not only now, \ > But day in, day out, over and over again, \ > As those waves break on the shore? \ > > *Envoy* > > Let me go, with my clothes stained \ > For remembrance with the yellow clay \ > Of Suminoe's shore, which white-crested waves \ > Visit, ceaselessly lapping! - ["Poverty"](https://jaypsong.blog/2011/11/15/poverty-by-moon-byung-ran/), by Moon Byung-ran - [Sanderson's First Law](https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/) ## Books **Nonfiction**: - [_The Theory of Special Operations_](/doc/history/1993-mcraven.pdf), [McRaven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._McRaven) 1992 ([review](/review/book#spec-ops-mcraven-1996)) - [_The Genius Factory_](https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Factory-Curious-History-Nobel/dp/0812970527), Plotz 2005 ([review](/review/book#the-genius-factory-plotz-2006)) - [_Average is Over_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_Is_Over), Cowen 2013 ([review](/review/book#average-is-over-cowen-2013)) - [_The Pillow Book_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillow_Book) of [Sei Shonagon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sei_Sh%C5%8Dnagon) ([review](/review/book#the-pillow-book-shonagon-2006)) **Fiction**: - The [_Man’yoshu_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man\'yoshu), [1940 Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai translation](/doc/japan/poetry/1940-nippongakujutsushinkokai-manyoshu.pdf "'The Manyoshu: The Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai Translation of One Thousand Poems with the Texts in Romaji', Shinkokai & Keene 1940") ([review](/review/book#poems-from-the-manyoshu-yakamochi-2005)) ## Film/TV **Anime**: - [_Zero Escape 3---Zero Time Dilemma_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Time_Dilemma) (video game with positive review on [LW](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ngjsdAvbBNhM4rB6w/july-2016-media-thread?commentId=wYMbFnFjnbrtiYjN7) and [ANN](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/game/ps-vita/zero-time-dilemma/.103602) I instead watched a YouTube 100% walkthrough of, skipping the [room-escape puzzles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_the_room). I watched the first few such puzzles but found them rather tedious-looking, so that's definitely a reason to prefer watching _Zero Time Dilemma_ to playing it. This way, ZTD can be considered an ultra-low-budget anime done using 3D CGI lasting perhaps 10 hours. The CGI itself is... not great, by any means, but one understands what's going on, and it's not quite as tedious as reading a visual novel like _Umineko_ even if _Umineko_ had much better 2D artwork. That leaves the story itself, which is ambitious SF, trying to work together time travel, parallel universes & shifting, the anthropic principle, the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Sleeping Beauty problem, and amnesia drugs, in the framework of people trapped in a bomb shelter by a psychopathic mastermind. The 'decisions' made in each game provide a garden of forking paths the player navigates between to explore the consequences of particular choices, trying to navigate to a good end, where good is relative to the consequences of other possible universes. Eventually the characters themselves start understanding the situation and start shifting as well. Most choices end in death, so the exponential increase doesn't get out of hand. Some of the plot twists are dramatic and surprised me---for example, the architecture twist surprised me because while I had wondered how they could all have access to the same exit elevator if they were sealed off, I never put the remaining pieces together. Probably I would've enjoyed it more if I had watched the previous games to get the backstory, but it was still a fun SF series. That said, I felt some of the story was half-baked and it did not work as well as _Steins;gate_: the characters do disappointingly little to work around the amnesia despite ample opportunity; I was surprised by the ending because although I had guessed Zero's motive long before, at the anthropic principle/dice game, some of the events involving x-codes had seemed to specifically disconfirm it and the ultimate product seems kind of trivial compared to Zero's efforts to obtain it; the availability of both sliding and a space-time teleporter felt inelegant and the possibilities underused; the revelation of who Zero is was a complete asspull which---shades of _Umineko_---relies on a 'treachery of images' trick which simply doesn't work for both narrative & animation reasons, and worse, was unnecessary; and the narrative pacing is weak as the first part of the game spends what feels like an eternity on the repetitive starting Prisoner’s dilemma game and then rushes through the rest.) - [_La Maison en Petits Cubes_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Maison_en_Petits_Cubes) (a simple concept, similar to the later memory sequence in Pixar's [_Up_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_%282009_film%29), but like _Up_, effective) - [_Yurikuma Arashi_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurikuma_Arashi) ([review](/review/anime#yurikuma-arashi)) ## Music **Touhou**: - ["Trojan Asteroid Jungle"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ3IDPcIBgg) (akikiki; {2015}) [classical] **Vocaloid**: - ["Heliosphere"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GMcRZtQaOQ) (Jizel {2013}; a tribute to the Voyager probes)