--- title: February 2018 News description: February 2018 Gwern.net newsletter with 3 new essays and links on genetics/AI/psychology/economics, 1 book review, 1 movie review, and 7 pieces of music. created: 2018-01-28 status: finished previous: /newsletter/2018/01 next: /newsletter/2018/03 confidence: log cssExtension: dropcaps-de-zs backlink: False ... This is the February 2018 edition of [the Gwern.net newsletter](https://gwern.substack.com/ "'Gwern.net newsletter (Substack subscription page)', Branwen 2013"); previous, [January](/newsletter/2018/01 "'January 2018 News', Branwen 2017") 2018 ([archives](/doc/newsletter/index)). This is a collation of links and summary of major changes, overlapping with my [Changelog](/changelog); brought to you by my donors on [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/gwern). # Writings - [Danbooru2017: a new dataset of 2.94m anime images (1.9tb) with 77.5m descriptive tags](/danbooru2021#danbooru2017 "Danbooru2017 is a large-scale anime image database with 2.9m+ images annotated with 77.5m+ tags; it can be useful for machine learning purposes such as image recognition and generation.") - ["The Gift of the Amygdali"](/fiction/batman "'Batman' short story in the style of a 1980s comic book script about the Scarecrow and the gifts no one appreciates: pain/guilt/fear/anxiety.") - ["Dynasties and Embryo Selection"](/embryo-selection#embryo-selection-and-dynasties "A toy model of dynastic succession as order statistics in a liability-threshold model suggests that full-strength multiple embryo selection could make a meaningful difference in ensuring perpetuation of powerful families.") - tweaked Gwern.net logo courtesy of Kezarin Brando # Media ## Links **Genetics**: - [Everything Is Heritable]{.smallcaps}: - ["Genome-wide study identifies 611 loci associated with risk tolerance and risky behaviors"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/261081.full), Linner et al 2018 - ["DeepGS: Predicting phenotypes from genotypes using Deep Learning"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/241414.full), Ma et al 2017 (rrBLUP is one of the best generic methods if you're working with relatively small _n_/_p_ GWAS data, and this is not a setup or design that favors CNNs: single trait w/no auxiliary data, tiny _n_/_p_, shallow CNN, no hyperparameter or architecture optimization or data augmentation---but the crippled CNN still beats rr-BLUP. What would happen if one did a full-strength CNN GWAS across the UKBB? The memory and computation requirements would be exorbitant, but one can dream.) - ["2017 was the year consumer DNA testing blew up"](https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/02/12/145676/2017-was-the-year-consumer-dna-testing-blew-up/) ("More people took genetic ancestry tests last year than in all previous years, combined. The number of people who have had their DNA analyzed with direct-to-consumer genetic genealogy tests more than doubled during 2017 and now exceeds *12 million*, according to industry estimates.") - ["Whose poop is that on the lawn? DNA testing is cracking down on doggie-doo offenders"](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article199044679.html) (unexpected consequences of exponential decreases in DNA testing costs) - [Recent Evolution]{.smallcaps}: - ["Common schizophrenia alleles are enriched in mutation-intolerant genes and in regions under strong background selection"](/doc/psychiatry/schizophrenia/2018-pardinas.pdf), Pardiñas et al 2018 (['Background selection'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_selection) as the mechanism driving all the human mutation load in common schizophrenia variants? Could this also explain other traits like intelligence?) - [Engineering]{.smallcaps}: - ["Metaphase II oocytes from human unilaminar follicles grown in a multi-step culture system"](https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/24/3/135/4829657), McLaughlin et al 2018 ([media](https://www.science.org/content/article/these-lab-grown-human-eggs-could-combat-infertility-if-they-prove-healthy "These lab-grown human eggs could combat infertility---if they prove healthy"); steps towards massive embryo selection & IES) **AI**: - ["DAML: One-Shot Imitation from Observing Humans via Domain-Adaptive Meta-Learning"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.01557 "'One-Shot Imitation from Observing Humans via Domain-Adaptive Meta-Learning', Yu et al 2018"), Yu et al 2018 ([video](https://sites.google.com/view/daml)) - ["Unicorn: Continual Learning with a Universal, Off-policy Agent"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08294#deepmind), Mankowitz et al 2018; ["IMPALA: Scalable Distributed Deep-RL with Importance Weighted Actor-Learner Architectures"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.01561#deepmind), Espeholt et al 2018 ([blog](https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/scalable-agent-architecture-for-distributed-training/); Real transfer learning, and even more wallclock speedups/parallel scaling, on ALE) - ["Learning and Querying Fast Generative Models for Reinforcement Learning"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.03006#deepmind), Buesing et al 2018 (Learning deep environment models for planning) - ["Deep Reinforcement Learning Doesn't Work Yet"](https://www.alexirpan.com/2018/02/14/rl-hard.html), Alex Irpan - ["Machine Theory of Mind"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07740#deepmind), Rabinowitz et al 2018 - ["ENAS: Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Parameter Sharing"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.03268 "'Efficient Neural Architecture Search via Parameter Sharing', Pham et al 2018"), Pham et al 2018 - ["One Big Net for Everything"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08864#schmidhuber "'One Big Net For Everything', Schmidhuber 2018"), Schmidhuber 2018 (An update on [NNAISENSE](https://web.archive.org/web/20170116233408/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-16/ai-pioneer-wants-to-build-the-renaissance-machine-of-the-future#schmidhuber "AI Pioneer Wants to Build the Renaissance Machine of the Future")? Or still just proposals like [Schmidhuber 2015](https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09249#schmidhuber "On Learning to Think: Algorithmic Information Theory for Novel Combinations of Reinforcement Learning Controllers and Recurrent Neural World Models")?) - [Holden Karnofsky & Robert Wiblin podcast discussing Open Philanthropy's approach to AI safety (transcript)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/holden-karnofsky-open-philanthropy/) **Statistics/Meta-Science**: - ["Statistical power of clinical trials has increased whilst effect size remained stable: an empirical analysis of 137,032 clinical trials between 1975--2017"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/225730.full "'Statistical power of clinical trials has increased whilst effect size remained stable: an empirical analysis of 137 032 clinical trials between 1975-2017', Lamberink et al 2017"), Lamberink et al 2017 (Medical experiments are still usually grossly underpowered but things seem to be getting a little bit better.) **Politics/religion**: - ["The Impact of Media Censorship: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in China"](/doc/sociology/2019-chen.pdf), Chen & Yang 2018 - ["What Really Happened At The School Where Every Graduate Got Into College"](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/11/28/564054556/what-really-happened-at-the-school-where-every-senior-got-into-college) ([The Stainless Steel Law of Evaluation](/doc/sociology/1987-rossi "'The Iron Law Of Evaluation And Other Metallic Rules', Rossi 1987"): "The better designed the impact assessment of a social program, the more likely is the resulting estimate of net impact to be zero.") **Psychology/biology**: - ["Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/240317.full), Shen et al 2018a; ["End-to-end deep image reconstruction from human brain activity"](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/272518.full), Shen et al 2018b - ["Investigating the right tail of wealth: Education, cognitive ability, giving, network power, gender, ethnicity, leadership, and other characteristics"](/doc/iq/2018-wai.pdf "'Sex differences in ability tilt in the right tail of cognitive abilities: A 35-year examination', Wai et al 2018"), Wai & Lincoln 2018 - ["Adversarial Examples that Fool both Human and Computer Vision"](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08195#google "'Adversarial Examples that Fool both Computer Vision and Time-Limited Humans', Elsayed et al 2018"), Elsayed et al 2018 (it's a start) - ["It's a Dog's World, Especially in the Lab. Where Are the Cats?"](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/science/dog-science-cats.html) (particularly in my catnip research, I've noticed a lamentable lack of cat research.) **Technology**: - ["Augur: a Decentralized Oracle and Prediction Market Platform"](http://www.augur.net/whitepaper.pdf), Peterson et al 2018 (If you last read the original Augur/Truthcoin whitepapers back in ~2014, the mechanism design has changed radically so may be worth reading the latest whitepaper.) - [The Alinea Project](https://www.allenhemberger.com/alinea/the-state-of-everything/) (I'm awed by the depth of this guy's foray into doing ["modernist cuisine"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy) at home and replicating every single [Alinea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alinea_\(restaurant\)) recipe published in _Alinea_, with impeccable photographic documentation.) **Economics**: - ["Effects Of Copyrights On Science---Evidence From The US Book Republication Program"](/doc/economics/copyright/2018-biasi.pdf), Biasi & Moser 2018 (Estimating the large [deadweight](/doc/economics/copyright/index) losses of copyright using the natural experiment of US expropriation of German copyrights in WWII) - ["The Robots Are Coming for Garment Workers"](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-robots-are-coming-for-garment-workers-thats-good-for-the-u-s-bad-for-poor-countries-1518797631) (Automation comes to the last few steps in the clothes-making process. Reminds me of [Hanson's model](https://www.datascienceassn.org/sites/default/files/Economic%20Growth%20Given%20Machine%20Intelligence%202009%20Paper.pdf "'Economic Growth Given Machine Intelligence', Hanson 2009") of how automation/tech/capital initially serves as a complement to labor, making labor ever better off, but then at a sufficient point of development, flips over to being a substitute for labor.) - ["Inside North Korea's Hacker Army"](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-07/inside-kim-jong-un-s-hacker-army) - ["Are We Running Out of Trademarks? An Empirical Study of Trademark Depletion and Congestion"](https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-131/are-we-running-out-of-trademarks/), Beebe & Frommer 2018 ## Books **Nonfiction**: - [_The Operations Evaluation Group: A History of Naval Operations Analysis_](/doc/statistics/decision/1984-tidman-theoperationsevaluationgroup.pdf), Tidman 1984 ([review](/review/book#the-operations-evaluation-group-tidman-1984)) ## Film/TV **Live-action**: - [_AlphaGo_](https://www.alphagomovie.com/#deepmind) ([review](/review/movie#alphago)) ## Music **Touhou**: - ["A LA MODE"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjwYrKJ57Bs&t=93s) (Attrielectrock feat. こばきょん; _du Cafe' tre_ {C83}) [jazz/vocal] - ["your heart, your smile"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjwYrKJ57Bs&t=996s) (Attrielectrock; _du Cafe' tre_ {C83}) [jazz/instrumental rock] - ["LES TOILES"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjwYrKJ57Bs&t=1663s) (Attrielectrock; _du Cafe' tre_ {C83}) [jazz] - ["DU SOLEIL"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjwYrKJ57Bs&t=1978s) (Attrielectrock; _du Cafe' tre_ {C83}) [jazz] **Doujin**: - ["凍る花"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuMPBGCCozo) (bermei.inazawa feat. YURiCa; _ERiCa_ {2016}) [vocal] **Vocaloid**: - ["alta mugs"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0TwI0Kuq3I) (FukukawaP; Miku; _alta mugs E.P._ {VM15}) [trance] - ["Open Your Lights"](https://bigheadjapan.bandcamp.com/track/open-your-lights-feat-hatsune-miku) (BIGHEAD; Miku; _RELOVE [Deluxe Edition]_ {C91}) [trance]